I wouldn’t say that no one ever makes a sequel to tell a story. There are plenty of plot-lines that were intended to span multiple films/chapters before the first in the series is ever released. (Granted, whether or not the next planned chapter in story gets made into a film is often dependent on the success of the original.) Friday the 13th clearly does not fall into this category, though, as Victor Miller has stated that he never intended “Long Night at Camp Blood” to be anything more than a stand-alone story.

The hair discrepancy between the original and Part 2 is actually for less of an issue for me than the “Jason never drowned” plot line. That’s the thing that bothers me the most about Part 2. I’m with you on the sequence at the end being a dream, but Jason appears bald in the “flashback” sequence of his drowning, as well, which I assume to be from Mrs. Voorhees’ perspective. I think the film makers of the original fully-intended for Jason’s actual appearance to be consistent with how he appears in both the dream sequence and the flashback.

As for the “Umm, wait, Jason didn’t really drown. He, uh, uh, OH! He almost drowned and then raised himself in the woods, and now he’s back for revenge! Yeah!” storyline, I realize that the studio was trying to quickly cash in on the success of the original with a sequel and need some kind of storyline to run with. Let’s face it, the original didn’t really leave many doors open for sequel opportunities with Mrs. V losing her head at the end. I’ve always wondered what it would be like if the plot for Part 2 involved a supernatural element, as opposed to somewhat “re-writing” back-story for the original. Instead of Jason never drowning, they could have gone with the idea that his soul was set into a state of unrest with the death of his mother, which resulted in the Crystal Lake area being haunted by his “presence.” Yeah, it’s far-fetched, but it isn’t any less plausible to me than a 10-year-old near-drowning and raising himself in the woods, especially when you consider that his drowning is mention in such a matter of fact manner by multiple characters in the original film. If his body was never found, I would expect that,at the very least, Mrs. Voorhees would have mentioned it.

Of course, even a supernatural twist to the story wouldn’t really give a good explanation as to how he sprouted from a 10-year-old into a fully-grown man over such a short period of time. I’ve wondered what a sequel to the original would have been like if it had featured a Jason with a child-like appearance. I think it could have been pulled off with some very creepy results if done properly.

He didn’t start out with hair. He was about as bald as Charlie Brown in Friday the 13th. He then magically grew hair in Part 2, and then it all fell out in Part 3. He must have been using some kind of experimental hair growth formula. Either that or the filmmakers were just trying to cash in on the success of the original by throwing together sequels as fast as they could with little regard for series continuity.