Let's Talk About the Greatest Scene in the Friday the 13th Series

After 10 franchise movies, one cinematic mash-up, a spin-off television series, and hundreds of homages and other media appearances by its iconic villain Jason Voorhees, you'd think it would be hard to decide on one definitive scene in the Friday the 13th universe that could be considered the greatest above all else. And yet, here I am, preparing to make such a proclamation, as I feel like I have determined just what is the greatest -- and possibly most important -- scene in the entire Friday franchise.

This isn’t something I came to willy-nilly, either. The Friday the 13th movies get a lot of random play in our house so we spend countless hours in the New Jersey forest alongside Camp Crystal Lake’s most notorious killer (and his mom when the mood strikes). So, this was a very scientific decision on my part, and not one I took lightly either (I consider slasher movies to be serious business).

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So after a lot of deliberation, I am prepared to declare that I believe that the greatest scene in all of the Friday the 13th movies is the campfire scene from Part 2. Yes, you can go ahead and be outraged that I didn't pick one of Jason's iconic kills, or Crispin Glover dancing like he didn't have a care in the world, or Mama Voorhees' incredible monologue or even Friday 3's dance-inducing opening credits. Sure, there are so many amazing moments that you could highlight from this series that evolved into a pop culture juggernaut since it launched 45 years ago.

But from a nerdy, somewhat academic viewpoint (for lack of a better word), the campfire scene in Friday 2 is the most crucial moment in the entire series as those four minutes become the foundational text for the rest of the franchise, establishing the lore of Jason Voorhees which was so pivotal in making this character that doesn't actually make a lot of sense, easily become this crucial cornerstone of this world at Camp Crystal Lake.

Let's first discuss how certain elements are staged early on in Friday the 13th Part 2 and how they lead into this pivotal scene at the campfire outside of the Packanack Lodge.

The sequel opens with Alice, the lone survivor from the original Friday the 13th conveniently (for us viewers) having some nightmares about everything that transpired in the original film, and then after taking a shower and fighting with her mom on the phone, she ends up finding Mrs. Voorhees' severed head in her refrigerator and she gets an ice pick rammed through the side of her head courtesy of an unseen assailant.

What's so interesting about this is that at the end of the first Friday, we see Alice get "attacked" in the boat by a young boy who she believes is Mrs. Voorhees' beloved child, Jason, who had drowned years prior. The thing is, that scene was framed as a dream sequence and there was never a child found in those waters. So, if you're sitting in a theater watching Friday 2 in 1981, the idea that the small boy in the lake is now this lumbering giant who can stab through someone's cranium with the greatest of ease may not even be an idea that's on your radar at that point.

So, how on earth do you even begin to get fans to buy into this new killer when logically, it doesn’t exactly work from a logical standpoint? With some brilliant exposition delivered in meticulously conceived scene, of course!

This brings us to Paul Holt, the man who has decided to open the Packanack Lake Region Counselor Training Center just five years after Mrs. Voorhees' was beheaded at the nearby Camp Crystal Lake area. Paul knows that this area carries a dastardly legacy, so rather than just let his counselors gossip about “Camp Blood,” he decides to tackle its reputation head-on with an engaging campfire tale.

It’s never really explained why Jason has become this talked-about figure specifically in the area since it was established that had drowned in 1957 and the timing of the original Friday was 1979/1980 (it’s always a little fuzzy here because technically Friday 2 picks up 5 years after that, which would make it 1984/1985, and since parts 3 & 4 take place over the next few days after the events Part 2, which pretty much brings the franchise up to the current times in which they were released in for the most part — at least with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which came out in 1984).

But in the original Friday the 13th, the locals mostly just discussed how the area was suffering from some bad juju in general (or as “Crazy Ralph” liked to say, “It’s got a death curse!”), but no one person was specifically ever linked to the ongoing woes of Camp Crystal Lake. Until Friday 2, that is.

Suddenly, the legend of Jason Voorhees has become a thing over the years where people now believe that this young child with developmental issues had been living in these New Jersey woods for decades, somehow finding food and clothes over time, and now he’s on a revenge mission to right the wrongs that he and his mother suffered. I mean, this is a horror movie we’re talking about so I’m not one to get caught up too much in logic, but it is pretty telling how FX legend Tom Savini — the man who first brought Jason to life — thought the concept of Jason being the killer was so ridiculous, he didn’t want to return to the Friday franchise at all (Savini did come back for The Final Chapter though).

But this brings us to Paul’s campfire story in Friday the 13th Part 2. And for those who maybe don’t have this speech memorized like I do (I am a weirdo —it’s true), here it is in all its glory:

I don't wanna scare anyone, but I'm gonna give it to you straight about Jason. His body was never recovered from the lake after he drowned. And if you listen to the old-timers in town, they'll tell you he's still out there... some sort of demented creature, surviving in the wilderness, full-grown by now. Stalking... stealing what he needs, living off wild animals and vegetation. Some folks claim they've even seen him, right in this area.

The girl that survived that night at Camp Blood, that Friday the 13th? She claimed she saw him. She disappeared two months later — vanished. Blood was everywhere. No one knows what happened to her. Legend has it that Jason saw his mother beheaded that night and he took his revenge. A revenge that he'll continue to seek if anyone ever enters his wilderness again.

And by now, I guess you all know we're the first to return here. Five years... five long years he's been dormant. And he's hungry. Jason's out there. Watching. Always on the prowl for intruders. Waiting to kill... waiting to devour... thirsty for young blood.

This speech is literally two minutes long (I’ve timed it — it runs from 24:20 to 26:19) and somehow this 120 seconds of dialogue becomes THE moment that would come to define the entire Friday the 13th series from here on out. The stage is set, we’ve been able to root Jason’s lore in somewhat believable circumstances, and nearly every single film that followed would use Paul’s story as a blueprint for how to frame Jason’s motivations (Jason Goes to Hell does deviate to a degree due to the body-swapping story it utilizes, but that’s why I like it).

Beyond the content of Paul’s story, the framing of this scene in Friday the 13th Part 2 is so perfect in and of itself. Everyone huddled together around the fire, leaning into every single word, as the camera slowly moves in closer and closer towards Paul, so that we the audience are right there alongside those trainees hovered around the fire, completely engrossed by every single word that is being said in that moment.

I also love the little cutaways to some of the counselors in training, like Scott who keeps thinking that he hears noises behind him in the bushes, or Sandra and Jeff exchanging glances with every reveal. It’s these little touches that really make this moment so effective and just really great in a franchise that is often dismissed as “silly slasher fun.”

There’s a reason that several of the Friday the 13th movies would include this scene in their own opening sequences — because it’s just that damned good. Sure, it was a way for casual moviegoers to get caught up if they hadn’t seen any of the previous entries, but at the same time, this scene and Paul’s speech became the lynchpin to the Friday franchise and helped introduce the world to Jason Voorhees, forever changing the landscape of horror and popular culture as a whole.

The Final Chapter might always be my favorite Friday the 13th purely for nostalgic reasons, but there’s no denying that Friday the 13th Part 2 should be considered the best of the series simply for how well it approached its story and characters across the board, but most importantly, Jason Voorhees.

Somehow, it managed to redefine what was possible in this series in a completely new way, which isn’t an easy feat by any means, but Friday 2 also gave us our very first slasher anti-hero in the modern age of horror, which is just rad all-around. It may have been an unusual decision at the time to take the series in this direction, but the genre world was better for it.

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