Every Friday The 13th Film Ranked From Worst To Best

Throughout the 1980s, one can only assume Paramount had a mandate in place with Friday the 13th: if it makes money, make a sequel immediately. So it was that the series churned them out almost annually for the bulk of the decade (much as Saw and Paranormal Activity would 20 years later), beginning this tradition with 1981's Friday the 13th Part 2.

Steve Miner's sequel is, in some respects, an even more significant entry that the original, in that it introduces Jason Voorhees himself as the killer. Now, given what we're told of Jason in the previous film, his return as a grown man doesn't make a lick of sense; but, once again, that really doesn't matter. All we need to care about is that another bunch of college-age kids are setting up Camp Crystal Lake for the summer, and there's someone hiding in the woods determined to kill them all.

While Part 2 earns franchise points for introducing Jason, it loses a few with the rather odd decision of dropping a white pillow case with a single eye hole on top of his head. Even so, this is a fun entry, well-paced with some memorable kills, including a wheelchair-bound victim hacked in the head and sent shooting down a staircase, and a couple in bed skewered on a spear (the latter lifted directly from Mario Bava's Bay of Blood).