With Friday the 13th now well and surely perpetuating, it has absolutely nothing more to say. Friday the 13th Part III (that Roman numeral is a furtive attempt to class up the joint) abandons the series-distinguishing thematic relationship between Jason and his mother, a major loss even while it is convoluted and contradictory. Hell, the name “Jason” is never even uttered in Part III, excepting the recycled footage from Part 2 which devours up the first never-ending 8 minutes. The series story has now been reduced wholly to “man kills people.” That killer’s existence is simply a given, and the victims are hardly more defined.
Correcting for a movie-wide uselessness, Part III is presented in III-D. As I glanced over when considering Jaws 3-D, the early ‘80s enjoyed a desultory 3-D outbreak. But unlike the sturdier contemporary movement, there was no Avatar to buoy the fad. In fact, this Friday the 13th movie was the most successful 3-D epic of its era! Otherwise, the craze is represented by the likes of Comin’ at Ya!, Parasite, and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. And certain other “Parts 3 in 3-D”.
The dreaded third dimension absolutely defines this Part III. Returning director Steve Miner, whose camera was reasonably mobile in Part 2, is hampered by the bulky new cameras. All his energies seem eaten up with this system’s mere basic usage. Whatever extra effort left over is put Part III is put into specific 3D gags, as boring objects protrude towards us – such a basic 3D gimmick, I can’t even muster up the proper faux outrage. Just accept that scenes are planned around a yo-yo nearly cracking the lens, in true House of Wax style, in favor of story. Meaning all non-3D related techniques are severely diminished. Miner’s turgid version of suspense is reduced to “nothing happens for several minutes, while Henry Manfredini’s score desperately makes up for it.” It is ineffective.
Manfredini, once the sole continuously good element in the series, has his score, um, supplemented with a funktastic disco dance variation, accompanying zooming 3D credits. Really?! Disco in 1982?! It’s…not…good, and I present it here as a wretched temptation.
At least that misdirected example of…whatever that is indicates how Friday the 13th Part III is to be, er, enjoyed. It doesn’t take place at a camp; it is camp. Friday the 13th now casually edges into the bad/good realm, dysfunctional as a serious thriller, but somehow funny in its idiocy. It seems producer Mancuso’s aim to create “roller coasters first, movies second” was successful. So with this quality, it’s no wonder the movie itself, stripped of the third dimension and a drunken, supportive audience, is quite rancid.
It takes Part III a full 16 minutes to get well and truly started. Beyond even the artless recap and titles, an equal amount of time is wasted on the introductory double murder, a requisite for most horror movies of this type. Harold and Edna, like a live action version of “The Lockhorns,” are the world’s most viscously ugly (physically, morally, etc.) married couple. The eight minutes it takes Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker, undistinguished stuntman like basically all the Jasons) to fulfill their predestined murders are just hellish.
These movies really are pointless. Anyone even remotely schooled in movie watching can predict the victims far ahead of time. Any time thus spent in their company is redundant, from certain perspectives. Sure, the more grotesque among us could spend that time predicting the mode of death, and often imagine something far more evil than what we get. Or we could just find “entertainment” in the characters themselves…that ain’t gonna happen! Part III offers its own joys, pelting our faces with laundry poles, rubbery rattlesnakes and rats. Part III is so nonexistent as a proper movie, it’ a chance for the viewer to contemplate the sheer passage of time as an abstract concept, a Kafkaesque terror most horror movies don’t even strive to accomplish. So kudos for that one, Friday the 13th Part III.
A quarter of an hour in, we Meet the Meat. It then takes them like another quarter of an hour to reach, well, not Camp Crystal Lake, but someplace due up for a dozen murders. Awful, awful screenwriters Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson (who were also accessories to Meatballs Part II) have no idea about how to craft even a halfway functional script, so they over-elaborate on certain simple notions, and neglect more important things. It’s no wonder “Jason” is never even uttered! But enough of this, what of those victims?
Chris Higgins (Dana Kimell): She is the only character who will still be alive at the end. She is the Final Girl. We note this because she has a last name (ooh!), and she has a backstory. A fabulously vague backstory, with lines like “Whatever happened to me happened a long time ago.” With no hints to flesh it out, this is meant to guide us along sluggish scene after scene? Now what Chris doesn't have is a personality, really, but you can’t have everything.
Debbie (Tracie Savage) and Andy (Jeffrey Rogers): The Horny Couple. Distinguishing characteristics: Debbie is pregnant, a fact which is mentioned once, then never addressed again. See how that script just sort of splatters itself everywhere? (What’s this do for Jason’s body count?) As for Andy, well, he juggles. And yo-yos. And walks on his hands. Mostly, he does things which perpetuate 3D sight gags, has sex, and dies.
Shelly (Larry Zerner): The jokester type. Not just that! A dweeb prankster asshole self-loathing Jew-froed douchebag actor! Makes one pine for Ned/Ted. Shelly, armed with a box full of “whatever the filmmakers wanted,” perpetuates pranks seemingly every third hour in real time, mostly faking either his death or someone else’s. See where this is going? This is the sort of guy who buries prop hatchets in his own forehead, or leaps out of a lake in a wetsuit with a spear gun and a hockey mask (THERE IT IS!), all in order to win over a girl. I’ve accustomed myself to characters greeting each other by habitually leaping out from behind, as no real human has ever done, because we gotta parcel out the jump scares somehow, but butt-monkey Shelly is completely over the line!
He cannot get his own date (not much of a surprise), so the poor girl Andy’s press-gangs into humoring the rolly-polly dickhead is Vera (Catherine Parks). This girl’s ethnicity is her personality: Latina, a detail which doesn’t even remotely extend to Miss Parks – Miss America runner-up Miss Parks. Vera’s a nice enough girl, and her only death-warranting sin is the lack of a “compelling” backstory ala Chris. Not much fun.
Then there’s Chuck and Chili (David Katims and Rachel Howard), an ersatz Cheech and Chong duo as written and performed by people who do not understand comedy. Let’s see, do you find marijuana itself to be inherently funny? If so, this still isn’t effective. At least an impromptu devouring of the entire stash early on renders Chuck and Chili comatose for much of what follows (somehow, it doesn’t affect their fellow devourers – basically everyone other than sweet, moral Chris). Then Chuck perpetuates a mighty shallow poop-pot combo joke (“Heavy shit!”), and dies. Oh yes, these movies have an inexplicable fascination with the act of human defecation. Critics do not like these movies.
Joining this traveling shortbus shortly thereafter is Rick (Paul Kratka, a Ray Romano-looking motherfucker who’s now a chiropractor), Chris’ would-be paramour/rapist. If one pays attention (why?!), it seems like Chris’ unexplored backstory is sexual in nature, hence her spurning of Rick. Yet…Rick is so desperate for grotesque, sudden fornication NOW – Was this assumed to be a normal approach to relations? (Seeing as how Part III otherwise misconstrues human behavior, yeah.) There’s even an apparent gigantic age different between Rick and Chris, though checking the actors’ bios, it seems this is just because Paul Kratka has Jack syndrome.
So many idiots who be askin’ for death, even without a horror icon on the loose (especially Shelly)! All riding a “Scooby” van out to Chris’ family’s farm, Higgins Haven (oy!). It takes a while, as we must pause so a prophet of who makes Crazy Ralph seem Shakespearean can smear a fake eyeball on the lens. They also ride right past the police outside of Harold and Edna’s murder scene, caring not a whit. And ride on to, arguably, Crystal Lake!
Now, Part III takes place the day after Part 2 – meaning at least one of these isn’t on a Friday the Thirteenth, as they’ve already forgotten the series’ scant “inspiration”. (Compare to the Halloween series, which is never fool enough to forget its holiday.) And with a killer still on the loose, around a dozen deaths to his credit, these people are allowed to saunter right into the woods? I can accept the presence of the victims in Friday the 13th and its sequel, but this begs the question!
Actually, Higgins Haven might not be anywhere around Crystal Lake. For one thing, it’s evidently a film ranch in the Saugus, outside of L.A., a far cry from the bucolic New Jersey wilderness of the previous two. For someone familiar with L.A.’s mountains (having fought dozens of fires throughout there), this setting just screams cheapness. So does the ostensible lake, a muddy puddle that seems the likely result of a light rain. If this is the Crystal Lake, it’s downright impossible to attribute two separate murder sites along its shores, as the thing’s entire area is visible at once.
Of course, if that slimy trough is not Crystal Lake, then what the hell is Jason doing here? (Why indeed did he slay Harold and Edna, ignoring the formula demands it? As lifelong residents of the region, it’s not like they’d suddenly angered Old Man Voorhees.) Really, Jason’s actions are inscrutable; he kills because he kills, not even following his wonky former motive. Eh, maybe he just got a taste for it. And as the physical manifestation of his entire subgenre, he has an unerring teen-dar to point out juicy, plump murderees.
There’s neither rhyme nor reason to any of this.
But one logical constant remains, and that’s body count escalation. Breaking out the old slide rule, and doing mathematics even Kitrosser and Watson are capable of, I find we have the makings for a mere nine dead in this entry, unacceptable with the ten each before. Better pile in some more nascent corpses! Oh, it isn’t seamless! Vera seeks to escape the farm, to get away from Shelly for his latest “self-killing prank.” Somehow, this involves taking Shelly with her. Uh, um…sure. So they go to the local store, and are accosted by a local biker gang (of three!), for reasons just as random and arbitrary as anything else. (For a movie which misrepresents the Cheech and Chong phenomenon, there’s no way anachronistic sub-Corman bikers will come off well.) A few thrill-free 3D gags later, and Shelly has angered these ciphers.
The bikers head to the farm, to burn down its barn. Or die, either way. The way this scene is structured is just jaw dropping. First one of the bikers (Fox) heads into barn. She searches for several minutes. She gets killed with a pitchfork.
Then the second biker (Loco) goes into the barn. He searches for several minutes. He gets killed with a pitchfork.
Then the final biker (Ali – love these names!) goes into the barn. He searches for several minutes. He gets…smacked around a bit with a hunk of wood. Uh? Oh, this is so they can “surprise” us during the climax with Ali’s survival, only for Jason to then hack him to bits with a machete. Alrighty then! Bad form, Jason, leavin’ one guy not dead yet.
Actually, even now Jason’s still getting into his groove. He procures Shelly’s hockey mask before making the rounds that night, slitting Shelly’s throat in the process. This, we do not see. One only infers it some twenty minutes later, once all the rest are already dead, when Shelly stumbles along still dying. (Naturally, the potheads who are still alive take it for a prank.) All this is hilarious, but awkward.
And that hockey mask! Yes! The one thing that’s made Jason an icon, and perpetuated sequels. If they knew how important it’d be, surely its introduction would be a little grander than this:
As it was, the script simply referred to a “mask.” (What, you thought Kitroser and Watson could devise something this effective?) It’s only because the 3D supervisor was separately a hockey nut that they even went this route, instead of some generic rubbery deal like all those forgotten slashers. See, good thing they did a 3D entry! Like the existence and popularity of Friday the 13th movies in the first place, this hockey mask’s origin is mostly accidental. Owe it to kismet and the sick fancies of fate that three movies in, a tossed-together bit of sports gear epitomizes the series.
Jason kills everybody, except for Chris and Rick, because they’ve wandered off for a chat, wherein Chris reveals her backstory. (Always so awkward, how these Final Girls are kept safe.) Her dark secret from two years ago – that a maskless Jason chased her in the woods, then apparently carried her home and gently tucked her into bed, hence her sex terror WHAT?! – has no impact whatsoever on how the rest of this plays out. Except when Jason is unmasked in Part III, he looks as he did back in, let’s say, 1983 (the time is out of joint – oh curséd spite!). So Jason looks like Sloth from The Goonies, and not like he did in Part 2. Maybe he’s readopted an old look, shaved off yesterday’s red hair, then decided against it and settled for a stylish hockey mask. Look, I don’t know! Attempting to patch the series’ continuity problems is not doctor recommended.
Well, that was a waste of time. So Chris and Rick return to the farm, Jason kills Rick (hi-LAR-ious), and a Final Girl chase sequence carries us uselessly through to the end. Bodies are discovered, in that particular jack-in-the-box way all these movies employ, patience is tested, and Jason is stopped in a way which seems decisive enough, yet allows room for more sequels (axe in the face). But the tension isn’t there, and even in his first hockey mask outing, Jason fails to be frightening. Good thing he somehow is awesome anyway.
As for Dana Kimmell’s performance as Chris, she’s just terrible. She doesn’t convey an ounce of terror, but rather lets out an irregular series of odd squeals like an alley cat in heat. In fact, Kimmell has gone on the record with her distaste for morally reprehensible slasher films, which makes it curious indeed she’s the star of one. Work is work, I suppose. Certain Friday fans (an irony-driven lot, mostly) cite Kimmell’s invasive moral crusade as the scapegoat for Part III’s paltry gore effects. The MPAA is as much to blame, as is the 3D makeup work.
Oh, and the shock scare ending is asinine. In a self-defeating quest to endlessly repeat Part One’s lake scene, Mama Voorhees, recapitated, leaps out at Chris in the “lake.” No, placing this into reality is a fool’s errand, as it is for its predecessors’ endings. But the “all a dream” cop out don’t work much either, as Chris doesn’t know about Mrs. Voorhees. So to hell with it all!
But the movie is goofy fun. Reportedly, it’s a laugh riot in retro revival 3D screenings. And I’ll end with a rundown of what you’re all really concerned with…
ALL THE THINGS IN 3-D:
- The title and all the credits
- A toppled-over laundry pole
- A rattlesnake
- A meat cleaver
- A mouse on a plank
- A knitting needle
- A baseball bat
- A doobie
- A fly-ridden rabbit carcass
- An “eyeball”
- Bridge planks
- A hay bale
- Foreground weeds
- Shelley’s wallet
- A motorcycle’s handlebars
- Axle’s chain-wrapped fist
- A yo-yo, repeatedly
- Jason’s back
- Individual strands of hay
- A pitchfork’s handle
- A different pitchfork’s prongs
- That pitchfork’s handle
- The first pitchfork’s handle again
- The upper portion of Jason’s left arm
- A leaking sewage pipe
- Assorted fruit
- Vera’s clothed buttock
- Jason’s back again
- A barn door
- Again, Jason’s back
- A mummified cow’s head dangling dustily from a rope
- A spear
- A machete
- Andy’s groin-flayed corpse
- Popcorn
- Sparks
- A spiral staircase
- A fireplace poker
- Rick’s left eyeball
- Loco’s corpse
- Books
- A knife
- The same knife
- Jason’s bald head
- Chrissie’s jeans-covered crotch
- Jason’s khaki-covered crotch
- An axe
- The axe’s handle, along with Jason’s cupped hands
- The handle again, for good measure
- And one more time
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Friday the 13th (1980)
• No. 2 Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
• No. 4 Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
• No. 5 Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
• No. 6 Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)
• No. 7 Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)
• No. 8 Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
• No. 9 Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
• No. 10 Jason X (2002)
• No. 11 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 12 Friday the 13th (2009)
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