Friday the 13th Part 2

Because Friday the 13th (1980) was such a huge hit, more teenagers had to die in Part II (1981), which picks up a few years later, when another group of camp counselors is butchered one by one at the now infamous Crystal Lake. As with the original, the idea here is body count, and the uninteresting characters are dispatched in the usual ways. The writers even manage to steal the famous double impaling scene from Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood. But this is the kind of pedestrian thriller that makes you yearn for something a little more sophisticated, a little more clever, and a little more fun. However, it's a wonderful movie to heckle with a group of friends. Directed by Steve Miner. With Amy Steel, John Furey, Warrington Gillette, Betsy Palmer, and Adrienne King. ★½

Queen Bee

For lovers of bad movies, it doesn't get much better than Joan Crawford and her deliriously overwrought vehicle, Queen Bee (1955), a ridiculous, over-the-top piece of twaddle about a Southern household full of miserable people, none of them with enough brass to stand up to Miss Crawford's demands. Her husband is the one with the money, but he's an alcoholic and so she pretty much controls every aspect of the family circle, manipulating, blackmailing, backstabbing, or crying, if necessary, to get what she wants. A drab, goody-goody young relative named Jennifer (Lucy Marlow) comes to live with them, and she gets to witness all the cooked-up hokum unfold. This movie has everything: tawdry affairs, murder, suicide, bad pop psychology, and a thin veneer of Southern countrified histrionics to make everything particularly amusing in its badness. With John Ireland, Betsy Palmer, Barry Sullivan, and Fay Wray. Written and directed, with a straight face, by Ranald McDougall. 95 min. ★★