- Directed by Steve Miner
- Written by Ron Kurz, Victor Miller, Sean S. Cunningham
- Stars Betsy Palmer, Amy Steel, John Furey, Adrienne King
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 27 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mNnJuOoI80
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s another fun summer for the young people at the camp by the lake. Jason is still becoming Jason here, more human seeming and not super powered yet. Overall it’s a good slasher romp that moves briskly.
Synopsis
We see the footsteps and hear the “Chee-chee-chee-ha-ha-ha” sound as a man stalks outside Alice’s house. Alice is inside, dreaming of the ending of the previous film, where Mrs. Voorhees explains everything that happened in 1957 and 1958 and why she murdered all those counselors five years ago. Alice wakes up, and it’s probably not the first time she’s had nightmares about all that.
The phone rings and no one is there, so she locks her door what, just now?. The kitchen window is open, which leads us to a feline jump scare. She opens the fridge and finds Mrs. Voorhees’s head inside. Someone sticks Alice in the head with an icepick. Credits roll.
A young couple comes to the town of Crystal Lake, and Crazy Ralph immediately warns them that they’re all doomed once again– is that his job in town? Down the street, someone tows away their truck as they talk on the phone. It’s just a prank. Ted got his truck buddy Max to make them run to his place.
The three young people drive down the road and find a chunk of tree blocking the way. She goes wandering in the woods while the menfolk move the log. She finds an old sign, “Camp Crystal Lake,” and Ted says they call it “Camp Blood” around here. Someone in the woods watches them. He follows them to the new camp, where all the new counselors are half undressed.
Terry, Vicky, Mark, and a whole bunch of generic others get introduced to the other new counselors at the “Packanack Lake Resort Counselor Training Center.” Ginny arrives late, and leader Paul chews her out about it; we see that they’re a couple too.
That night, around the campfire, Paul tells the others about Jason, who is supposed to be surviving in the wilderness, now full grown, living off wild animals. He’s become a local legend. He tells how Alice, the only survivor, went missing, and how Jason still stalks them all waiting for more revenge. “Five long years he’s been dormant,” Paul warns. He says it all creepy-like as a campfire tale, and then Ted jumps out of the woods and scares everyone. “Enough of that, Camp Crystal Lake is off-limits,” Paul insists.
As Ginny and Paul make out in her cabin, we see the footsteps of someone outside. It’s not who you think– it’s Crazy Ralph. Someone kills Crazy Ralph, who should have heeded his own warnings.
The next morning, Terry’s little dog Muffin goes missing. Jeff and his girlfriend Sandra decide to walk over to Camp Blood just so they can say they were there. They climb over the “No trespassing” sign, but we can see they’re already being followed. They find a mutilated dog, it must be Muffin, and they assume it was a wild animal that did it. Then they get a jump scare from a cop, who brings them right back to Paul.
The cop warns Paul that things have been quiet for five years, and that he thinks the new camp is just too close to the old one. As he leaves the camp, the cop spots someone suspicious crossing the road and pursues him on foot to a crazy little shack. That goes poorly for him.
That evening, some of the counselors go to town for a break, leaving most of the named characters behind. Terry goes looking for Muffin, but decides to go skinny-dipping instead. She gets out and finds that Scott has stolen her shirt. She chases him into the woods, and he steps into an animal trap and hangs helplessly upside-down. While she looks for something to cut him down with, someone else cuts throat. Terry finds him, screams, and dies too.
Back in town, Ginny sympathizes with poor Jason, living in the woods all these years without his mother, but Ted and Paul insist that he’s just a legend.
In the camp, Mark says that he’s in a wheelchair because of a motorcycle accident. Soon after, he gets a machete in the head and rolls down the stairs to the woods. Inside the cabin, Jeff and Sandra are killed as well. Vickie comes in and finds the bodies along with the killer, who wears a burlap sack over his head; he kills her with a knife.
Paul and Ginny head back to camp, and it’s storming now. They don’t find anyone there, which is strange. Then Ginny finds the bed covered in blood, but there are no bodies. The hooded killer jumps on Paul, and Ginny runs to hide in the bathroom. That doesn’t work out, so she hides in the kitchen and finds Ralph’s body.
Ginny climbs out a window and runs for her old car which won’t start. There’s a bit of hide-and-seek between the two until she ends up in the old shed, where she finds Mrs. Voorhees’s severed head. Ginny puts on Mrs. Voorhees’s sweater and pretends to be her. She raises the machete just as Jason notices the head on the table behind her. Paul comes in out of nowhere and fights with Jason some more.
Ginny gets the machete and hacks Jason good, who falls over, probably dead. Paul wants her to leave, but she pulls his mask off. They are revolted by what they see, although we don’t see it. Paul then carries the injured Ginny back to their cabin.
There’s a sound at the door. Has Jason returned already? No! It’s Muffin the dog, who isn’t dead. Suddenly Jason jumps out and grabs Ginny, and we get a look at his face finally.
The next morning, they load Ginny into the back of an ambulance and take her away. We cut back to the desiccated head in Jason’s cabin…
Commentary
The killer wears a one-eyed burlap sack for a hood, not the later-iconic hockey mask. He also seems much more “human” and limited than in later films. They were still at least trying to be somewhat realistic in this one. We don’t know for sure that the killer is actually Jason until Ginny finds the head, but then we know it really is him.
This is actually pretty good. There’s not a lot of twists here, but it set the stage for everything that would happen in the next fifty sequels.