Friday the 13th Part 2 1981 Iggy Pop Cry Baby

Dear Blog Reader,

Recently, there have been comments that I started this year a bit grumpy. That's possibly true. But I do, honestly, try to find the good things in what I watch. I think I've been pretty positive recently.

So please bear this in mind as I watchFriday the 13th Part V. Was the subtitleThe New Beginning? Does anybody care? It's Number Five of a franchise that wasn't even original when it started. At least Part IV tried something a little different. I was fairly even handed with that one when I looked at it. So let's stick in the tape, push down the tape door, press the large piano-key style play button, and see if the creaky old franchise can achieve a renaissance.

(Before we start – there's a couple of frames of BBC Two Christmas ident, so I wonder what was on this tape that I recorded over.)

OK, here we go. It's raining. Someone's walking through the dark in a yellow cagoule. The music is scary. Well, the music is always scary in these movies. There's a clearing. A gravestone. The figure walks towards it. Who could it be? It's….. Rebecca Vardy Corey Feldman, young Tommy Jarvis from the last movie.

You'd think the Jason fanboys who crowdfunded this grave would have got a little more money for a decent headstone.

Haha! I said there were Jason fanboys, now two of them turn up to dig him up and look at him.

That isnot buried six feet under.

Jason does not care about the welfare of his fans.

It's nice that they buried him in his favourite mask, and not the pillowcase he wore for part 2.

OH! It was all a dream. And Tommy wakes up except that Corey Feldman is too expensive to get for a whole movie this time around, so Tommy has grown up (but still likes those round glasses). It's thoughtful touches like these that help people like me who can barely tell one character from another in most of these things.

And it looks like the mental health issues I suggested might be there at the end of the last movie were there, as he's being driven in a secure vehicle from the Unger Institute of Mental Health.

He gets to a place that looks suspiciously like a summer camp, and she's met by Pam (Melanie Kinnaman) who's running the camp.

He also meets young Reggie (Shavar Ross). He's not at the camp, he's there because his grandad works there.

Reggie's grandad is Vernon Washington, who played Otis in The Last Starfighter, a film I love.

Oh good, a couple of comedy rednecks. The mother is complaining about kids from the camp coming into her farm (and presumably having sex, for this is a Friday 13th movie). She even makes a joke about having a bomb on her an blowing everyone up. It's very odd.

Oh cool, they've got another fat bloke, like in Number 3. He's sure to be popular and a hit with the ladies.

He tries to bond with Vic while he's chopping wood. I'm not quite sure why he's chopping wood as he just seems to be hacking away at the same stump for ages, just producing a lot of splinters.

Joey the fat bloke is so annoying that Vic the Axeman actually chops him up. In front of everyone. Except the cinema audience who are spared this sight, for budgetary artistic reasons.

We even get the comedy Naked Gun police red light.

At least we get to see what happened to Joey. Did Vic put his severed arm on top of his torso? I'm no Crime Scene Investigator (but I do watch them on TV) but I'd have expected a frenzied killing like this to have left the arm lying nearby. I hope this is a clue. (This isn't a clue.)

The two paramedics aren't helping. There's Roy, who's shocked at the sight.

And Duke, who's seen it all before, and blows bubble gum as he examines the body. (This is the paramedic equivalent of the morgue attendant who's always eating a big sandwich when a corpse is delivered. Them's the movie rules.)

Now we meet two tough guys (which you can tell because they dress like The Fonz and wear those leather caps that mean either they're gay or they think they're Marlon Brando. One of them asks if the other is scared after the murder at "the nut house". "As far as I'm concerned, all those looneys should be killed off one by one." It feels like these films are imperceptibly edging towards post-modernism.

Looks like there's another killer on the loose, as one of them gets a lit flare in his mouth.

The other one gets his throat cut.

Tommy is still having his dreams. Is he sleepmurdering? He's also seeing things when he's awake.

At breakfast, one of the other people at the camp comes in wearing one of Tommy's monster masks, then asks "What's the matter, can't you take a joke?" So Tommy body slams him onto the drinks table. I don't blame him.

More people we don't really know getting killed. A man from the Institute calls for his girlfriend who's just finishing her shift at a restaurant. We get a totally gratuitous shot of her taking her top off as she changes, on her own. Then her boyfriend (who looks about 10 years older than she is) gets an axe in the head. There's little or no suspense in any of these scenes.

His girlfriend soon follows him, with an axe in the belly.

Sheriff Tucker thinks that Jason must be back from the dead.

Mayor Cobb isn't buying it. Jason was cremated.

A local drifter is spying on two of the kids making out in the woods. He's next to go with a machete to the stomach.

The two kids don't last much longer. She gets her head lopped off.

And he gets his head crushed by a leather strap. There's not a lot of actual special effects on show here, so I get the feeling these films are heavily cut, but since this seems to be the only F13 movie not on NowTV, I can't check. But I swear I saw a gorier stage of this murder in Fangoria.

Young Reggie goes to see his brother, Demon, who appears to be a member of Five-Star.

While Reggie and Pam are socialising, Tommy is out getting freaked out by neon signs. And then the comedy redneck comes in, dressed like Randy Quaid in Independence Day, and picks a fight with Tommy. Tommy beats him up but the fight is stopped by Pam.

They drive back to the camp, but Demon and girlfriend Anita and the next victims, after yet another scene of a character on the toilet. This would appear to be a theme of the series after two of them in Part III.

OK, so Pam and Reggie (nickname Reckless, and totally my favourite character in this along with Gramps) return to the camp to find out that several of the camp people have gone out. Since the film hasn't spent a lot of time establishing this group, or giving us a reason to care about their fates, I don't have a good handle over who they are, but I'm pretty sure they're all dead soon. But, confusingly, Tommy is not with Pam and Reckless, as he ran off when Pam saw him beat up the redneck. I assumed that Pam would stop him and reassure him, but he's got to be missing otherwise we'd stop assuming he's definitely the new Jason. Which we're obviously supposed to do. So Pam says she's going out to find all the missing people, leaving this group at the camp. I predict 75% of them will be dead soon. My money's on Reckless saving the day.

The comedy redneck comes home on his motorcycle, riding in circles around his yard, yelling at his momma that the nasty man hurt him, as momma is in the kitchen screaming at him to come in and eat the stew that she's hurling vegetables into so it cant possibly be cooked yet and it's a blessed relief when his head is cleaved off as he rides past a tree. It's also a little dispiriting that he's been the character with the most clear definition. These aren't characters, they're nametags.

That is one huge pot of stew for a family of two. I hope they have a freezer, and it's going to feed them for a couple of weeks. Momma is also the cast member who gets the most swearing in. Gotta earn that 18 certificate.

But the size of the pot in necessary because seconds later, she gets a hatchet in the face, there's a cutaway as her hand squeezes a tomato – classy – and she tips over into the stewpot.

The TV in the camp reminds me of when you visited your older relatives in the 80s and they'd have the TV on, and all the colours were turned up to absolute full. This is no way to watch a film.

The two teens watching the movie are a perfect illustration of that old adage "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." The socially awkward boy tells the girl he wants to make live and she laughs at him. Of course, in this film that means that he has to leave because he's embarrassed, and then gets killed.

She doesn't last much longer, as she goes to bed, then turns over to see the young man's cleaved face in her bed, and gets a machete from under the bed.

Next it's the turn of this girl, who's practicing her body popping, in front of her poster for The Alan Parsons Project.

Unless I've lost count, young Reckless is now alone with the killer. He's been asleep on the couch, but now he's awake. I can confirm that young children could sleep through a massacre.

But he wakes up and decides to go and see if Pam or Tommy are back yet. Instead, he stumbles over the killer's storage unit.

Pam's back, so at least we have a chance for a last stand against the killer, who could still be Tommy because the bodies were all stacked in Tommy's room.

They try to run from the house. Reggie trips over nothing at all (one of my pet hates in movies) and suddenly Jason bursts through the door. Can it really be Jason? Is it Tommy?

The two escape from the back door, run through the woods in the rain and lightning, and come across an ambulance. Then they discover one of the paramedics is dead – Mr Bubble Gum, Duke.

And Jason(?) is already there, despite the two of them having sprinted directly away from the cabin. Have we ever seen Jason do more than walk very slowly? Are there two Jason's now? Can he teleport? Certainly, when Reggie sprints away, with Pam in hot pursuit, Jason just strides purposefully, no hint of a run.

There's even more victims – I've lost track of who this is – I think he ran the camp. This movie has an incredibly high body count even for a F13 movie. That might account for the total absence of actual characterisation.

Oh no, Reggie's grandad is dead too, and hurled through a window behind Pam – a traditional scene in any F13 movie.

Pam once again runs out of the house through the rain, and this time it's she who trips over, and then for some reason can't stand up again, as she crawls through the mud with Jason(?) in pursuit. Jason looms over her raises the machete, when suddenly, from one of the outbuildings, a digger erupts.

It's Reggie/Reckless. I knew he's come through at the end! Suddenly this film is fun again.

Jason(?) isn't dead, of course, and he grabs at Reggie's ankles when they approach his body, but they get away to a barn. Great Horror Movie potential, barns. Lots of things with spikes. Or even… A CHAINSAW! I literally punched the air when Pam emerged from what looked like a small shed (so it was probably another toilet) wielding a chainsaw.

Sadly, it's a petrol powered chainsaw and it runs out of power before Pam can truly stop Jason(?) so she runs and climbs up to a hayloft where Reggie is hiding. But wait! Who's the figure silhouetted at the barn door? It's Tommy! So he wasn't Jason at all. Hands up who's surprised?

He's not quite as useful against Jason(?) as you'd hope, presumably because he's paralyzed by his childhood trauma. He gets a cut across the chest, but manages to pull out his pocket knife and stab Jason(?) in the thigh. Hang on. He's a patient with a mental facility, how did he get a pocket knife?

Tommy climbs up to the hayloft, and Jason(?) follows, but when he gets up there, Tommy is prone on the floor, so he goes after Reggie. I hope he and Pam have a plan of some kind.

The plan appears to involve Pam hitting Jason(?) ineffectually with an axe handle, which only serves to annoy him. But look, there's a whole bunch of spikes on the floor of the barn, so we know what has to happen.

Pam pushes Jason(?) off the ledge, but we don't see him land on the spikes. Given how cut these movies are, I did wonder if we'd just been denied closure, but no, it's a fakeout, and Jason(?) was hanging from the edge, and tries to grab Reggie. By this time I'm yelling "Kick him in the face!"

And Tommy's still alive! He gets to kill Jason(?) all over again.

A machete to the hand, and Jason(?) falls on the spikes, which we do actually see this time.

And surprise! It's not Jason after all. Although from this shot, can you tell who it is?

Fear not, because there's a coda at the hospital where the Sheriff talks to Pam about it. The killer is Roy, the paramedic at the beginning who freaked out when he saw poor Fat Joey's body. And the reason he freaked out was because Joey was his son, which nobody knew about. He even has a picture of him in his wallet.

Then, after that genuinely entertaining denouement (although perhaps it's only entertaining because it followed over an hour of trudging boredom) we have the obligatory coda. Pam goes to see Tommy. He wakes up, has a machete handy and stabs her. But don't worry, that's just a dream. He wakes up from that dream, but he still sees Jason in the room, still haunting him. He gets up, pulls the drip from his arm, them opens his drawer. Now, you'd think somebody – Pam, the hospital staff, the police – might have questioned why he has a Jason mask in his drawer. Where did he even get it from?

Then Pam hears a window smash, comes in, and Tommy's not there. Except he is…

I probably don't need to tell you that this particular plot strand was totally ignored in all subsequent movies. Let's never speak of it again.

So there we are. Not as bad as Part III, but oh so much badness before that brief bit of fun at the climax. And I did, after all, find something good.

But the fun's not over, because there's time for another movie on this tape, and following straight on fromFriday 13th Part V on the Movie Channel, we haveCry Baby, John Waters' follow-up toHairspray, and Johnny Depp's first starring role in a movie. John Waters, when asked about how he came to cast Depp, said he went and bought all the magazines aimed at teenage girls, and Depp was on the cover of all of them, being the star of21 Jump Street.

Here's a brief introduction to the film featuring John Waters, Iggy Pop and Ricki Lake.

I do enjoy Waters' heightened aesthetic. The kids are getting their Polio vaccines. Pity they didn't have the sugar lump version.

Johnny Depp plays Cry Baby Walker, a juvenile delinquent.

Amy Locane plays Allison Vernon-Williams, a good girl who falls for him.

The Rockabilly music inevitably means the confederate flag. Something slightly more problematic than it might have seemed at the time.

Ricki Lake plays Cry Baby's sister Pepper. "Our bazooms are our weapons."

In among all the familiar faces, there's Willem Dafoe as a prison guard.

This is all very amiable. Even the inevitable game of chicken is slightly subverted by having Cry Baby and his nemesis clinging to the top of the cars.

There's a lot going on in the climactic chase. Pepper even gives birth to her new baby in the back seat.

The one thing I wonder is why they chose to make Hairspray into a stage musical, when this movie is actually already a musical. But I think Hairspray has the slightly more interesting story. This movie doesn't have a lot of story beats to get in the way of the musical numbers. But it's a lot of fun.

After this, recording continues for a short time with the very start of a French film that seems to be calledCops. The tape ends after a few minutes.

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Friday the 13th Part 2 1981 Iggy Pop Cry Baby

Source: https://vhistory.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/friday-the-13th-part-v-cry-baby-tape-1060/

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