FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2

Five years after the massacre that occurred at Crystal Lake, some young people decide to establish a training camp for camp counselors right near the infamous blood camp. But immediately, the young protagonists fall victim to the murderous fury of Jason Voorhees, a crazy psychopath believed drowned due to an accident that happened twenty-five years earlier, right at Crystal Lake. After the enormous public success of "Friday the 13th", already a year later its sequel arrives in theaters, inexplicably titled in Italy "L'assassino ti siede accanto". Cunningham hands over the directing reins to one of the executive producers of the first episode, Steve Miner, who from now on will dedicate himself more often to the horror genre. As was to be expected, this sequel does not stray much from the prototype, repeating the same slasher movie structure and an almost identical plot, perhaps daring a bit more on nude scenes and blood scenes. The murders, as in the first film, are quite imaginative (attention please: a couple of them are practically identical to those already seen in "Reazione a catena" by Mario Bava!) and well choreographed, although Savini's touch is missing in the elaboration of the prosthetics. A key element of "L'assassino ti siede accanto" is the introduction of Jason as the villain of the saga, although he is not yet dressed in his famous look, in fact here instead of the characteristic hockey mask he wears, to cover his disfigured face, a bag with a single hole to see and is dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt of a lumberjack. Furthermore, a possible explanation for Jason's murderous fury is given: the slaughterer of Crystal Lake is a child trapped in an adult's body who does not know the value of life and its boundary with death, so for him killing does not have a tragic and irreversible value, to the point that he keeps the decapitated head of his mother in an altar with the hope of her resurrection. "Friday the 13th Part 2" is a good sequel, rich in tension and with the merit of having brought to the screen one of the most famous boogeymen in cinema history.