Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D

Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D

Released: 1982

MPAA Rating: R

Genre: Slasher

Nuts and Bolts: Hot on the heels of Friday the 13th Part 2, we join a new group of angst ridden teens who fall below the blade of Jason Voorhees. Watch Jason don his trademark hockey mask for the first time in this thrilling 3D epic!

Summary: This film picks up immediately after Friday the 13th Part 2. Our boy Jay, seems to be healing up really well after having a machete cleaved through his shoulder, and he decides that a change of clothes are in order. He wanders over to the general store owned by Harold and Edna Hatcher. Edna is a total fishwife who berates her poor downtrodden husband for his eating habits. Jason steals a fresh set of clothes and for no discernable reason decides to take out Harold and Edna while he’s at it. Harold ends up with a butcher knife to the chest while Edna finds one of her own sewing needles firmly planted into the back of her skull. (I gotta give props to Jason’s manual dexterity here. With one hand clamped over Edna’s face, he pushes the sewing needle through the back of her head without stabbing his own fingers. Jay is truly a master of his craft.)

Across town, we meet a whole new gang of Scoobies. Chris Higgins decides to spend the summer with some friends at her grandmother’s old farmhouse not far away from Camp Crystal Lake. Chris has a traumatic history concerning Crystal Lake and feels the need to return in order to come to terms with her emotions. Joining in Chris’ vacation is Vera Sanchez (The bitch), Shelly (The prankster/geek), Andy (The Stud) and his girlfriend Debbie. There are also two stoners Chuck and Chili, who look like they walked straight off the set of a Cheech and Chong movie.

They all take the Mystery Machine over to the farmhouse where they meet up with Chris’ ex-beau, Rick. While everyone settles in, Vera and Shelly take Rick’s Volkswagen into town to get supplies. After being harassed by a biker gang, the two make for a hasty escape. Shelly accidentally runs over the groups’ parked motorcycles and the bikers swear revenge against them.

The three bikers; Ali, Fox and Loco follow them back to the farmhouse where they steal gasoline from the van with the intent of setting the property on fire. (Plot tool here kiddies! You know the gasoline deficient van is going to cause problems later.) Jason Voorhees enters the barn and takes to the bikers like a mid-morning snack. Fox ends up with a pitchfork to the throat while Loco gets one through his gut. Ali enters the barn and takes a swing at Jason. Jason evades the blow and takes Ali down with a blunt object of some kind. Ali is left for dead.

Now we get back to the farmhouse on the other side of the property. Shelly is really a lost cause and feels the need to pull practical jokes on his friends in an effort to get people to like him. Vera tries to be nice, but even she can only take so much of Shelly’s shit. Vera goes down to the lake and sits on the dock. Shelly, refusing to give up his prankish nature, decides to play one final joke on Vera. He dresses up in a wetsuit and a hockey mask and pretends to attack her with a harpoon. Vera gets infuriated with him and tells him to fuck off. As Shelly walks away, he has his throat slit by Jason. Jason, feeling a bit camera shy at this point dons the hockey mask and grabs the harpoon. He’s apparently a natural with ranged weapons as he sinks a harpoon deep into Vera’s eye. Bulls-eye! Jason’s got more skills than James Bond.

Back at the farmhouse, Andy and Debbie make love upstairs. Take a guess as to where THIS is headed. Debbie gets a knife through the throat while Andy is cut down the middle. Downstairs, the stoners decide to make some popcorn. I guess they have the munchies. In classic Jason fashion, the power craps out and Chong has to go check on the fuse box while Cheech waits upstairs. Chuck (Chong) meanders about in the dark until Jason arrives throwing him into the fuse box. Chuck is electrocuted on the spot. Meanwhile, Chili (Cheech) finds a dying Shelly stumbling into the house. She doesn’t believe that he is really hurt and thinks that he is just engaging upon one of his pranks. She realizes quickly enough though that Shelly is dead as he falls onto the floor. Chili does the typical female Jason victim thing and starts running about the house screaming like a rooster after a vasectomy. Jason takes her out with a red-hot fire poker through the gut. (Shweet.) The only ones left are Chris and Rick the token penis.

Chris and Rick are out in the woods talking. Chris reveals that she was once attacked by a maniac on these grounds a year prior. We see a hazy flashback of Jason chasing after Chris with a knife. For some reason, this dizzy bitch felt compelled to actually RETURN to the site of her traumatic encounter. They decide to return to the farmhouse only to discover the place to be uncharacteristically quiet. Since Chris is obviously meant to be the heroine of this feature, we know that Rick is not long for this world. The dumb redneck gets it when Jason appears from behind and crushes his skull like a vice, causing his eye to pop straight out of its socket in a scene straight out of a Wiley Coyote cartoon.

Now its time for the showdown. Jason hurls Rick’s body through the bay window in order to attract Chris’ attention. He then enters the house and begins chasing her around. Chris holds her own pretty well and even manages to stab Jason in both the hand and the leg. She escapes from a downstairs window and takes off in the van. (Remember that gasoline scene I warned you about?) She gets about a mile down the road before the piece of shit conks out. Jason attacks her and Chris manages to delay her pending death by trapping Jason’s arm in the window of the driver side door. She gets out of the van and runs to the barn. Naturally it will take more than some stinking car window to stop our boy and he smashes the glass with a head-butt worthy of Macho Man Randy Savage. Jason tracks Chris down to the barn.

Chris gets help from an unexpected source. The biker Ali has somehow manages to survive and distracts Jason long enough to give Chris a moment to run. Ali barely manages to utter a few expletives when Jason finishes him off with a series of blows from a machete. He then turns his sites back on Chris whom he chases into the hayloft. Using a rope and pulley, Chris snares a noose around Jason’s neck and pushes his wrinkled ass out of the hayloft. His body snaps with a violent tug and he is left hanging at the bottom of the rope. Chris, believing him to be dead, climbs downstairs and tries to exit the barn. But Jason is still alive and pulls himself down off the makeshift noose. He removes the hockey mask revealing himself as the stalker who attacked Chris the previous summer. Chris picks up an axe and slams it hard down into Jason’s forehead killing him.

During the epilogue, Chris rows out into the center of the lake where she suffers immense hallucinations of Jason attacking her. In an incomprehensible shock ending, the decayed body of Pamela Voorhees rises from the lake to attack her. The film goes white and we finally see an insane Chris Higgins being collected by the police. Whether or not Pamela Voorhees actually rose from the lake or whether or not it was just one of Chris’ delusions is unknown.

Acting/Dialogue: Pretty shoddy work here. Chris is the lead character, and she is probably the worst actress of the group. Her reactions were very wooden and she only really begins to shine within the last ten minutes of the flick. To her credit however, her reaction to Jason’s identity as well as her final breakdown scenes are really really nice. It’s a shame she couldn’t pull off this kind of convincing acting in the first three quarters of the film. Channel 4 co-anchor Tracie Savage did a real nice job as Debbie and her performance was a nice compliment to boyfriend Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) who did a real nice job as well. Larry Zerner did a fair enough job as Shelly but unfortunately, the character is so fucking ugly and annoying that Zerner’s performance is difficult to appreciate.

Gore: The gore is a little bit more subdued than what we are used to from a Jason flick, but there are still some gruesome noteworthy scenes. One of the best is of course the death of Andy. Andy is walking on his hands down the hallway when he meets Jason. Jason brings his machete down hard slicing Andy in half down the middle. It’s a nice fast moving sequence but it works very well. We also have the token hatchet head deaths, gut-stabs, eviscerations and some serious optical trauma going on here. Some good stuff here.

Guilty Pleasures: Surprisingly, this film is practically absent of all nudity. We get a very quick flash of Debbie’s breasts during the shower scene, but the shot is so fast that you barely even notice.

Also, did you notice that Rick wears a sweater that looks hauntingly reminiscent of that worn by Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th? I wonder if this was done deliberately.

The Good: Although this is my second-favorite Friday film, it is admittedly not that good. Its strengths however lie within the cast of characters. Despite the shit acting, all of the characters are very likable and enjoyable to watch. Stoners Chuck and Chili bring a nice amount of levity but they are used sparingly, much to the benefit of the film.

I thought the use of the bikers was a nice touch. I appreciate the fact that director Steve Miner actually provides a reason as to why the van won’t start later on in the movie. And lets face it, how often do you get to see the GEEK strike a victory for geeks around the world? I also found myself endeared to the group’s leader, Ali. Although he’s a dickhead, he risks his life to try and help Chris. I would have liked to see him get a few more shots in on Jason though.

As mentioned in other reviews, I LOVE back-story, and I thought the history between Chris and Jason was a real nice touch. Despite my smart-ass nature, I appreciate the idea of Chris returning to her grandmother’s property using positive reinforcement to come to terms with her past.

The hallmark of the film is when Jason acquires his trademark hockey mask for the first time. He is built like a brick shit house and looks tough as nails. The films true strengths though come towards the end. The look on Chris’ face when she sees Jason’s true face is priceless. Jason looks positively menacing in this. He has a sadistic smile on his face, which actually gives us some chilling insight into how Jason feels when he is carving up all these kids. We know that he really enjoys the work that he does. The most eerie Jason moments take place during Chris’ post-traumatic hallucinations. We see the barefaced Jason groping at a window pain as well as bursting through a screen door. I really have to credit Richard Brooker for ascribing a truly horrific quality to Jason Voorhees; a quality we have not seen before or since.

And of course to cap it all off, we get the death of Jason Voorhees. Although most horror fans credit Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter as being the true death of Jason, it is actually here where he meets his end for the first time. My only issue with the death of Jason is that Miner didn’t use his trademark slow motion climax sequence as he did with parts 1 and 2.

The film is pretty cheesy, but it has a lot of energy and is a lot fun. There’s a great chemistry between all the characters and you actually feel for them (even Shelly) when they receive their eternal reward.

The Bad: I really like this film, but there are a lot flaws here. First off let me mention that when this was originally released theatrically, it was a 3D movie. The 3D effects are really misused here and a lot of great potential is lost. Rather than focusing the strengths of 3D technology on gruesome death scenes, it becomes wasted on flying yo-yos, clotheslines, and popcorn. There were only two times when the 3D effects worked well. The first involved the addle-brained drifter Able, who shoves a severed eyeball in our faces. The second was another eyeball scene. This was when Jason crushes Rick’s skull forcing his left eye to literally pop out of his head. Although the scene is cool, it comes off more laughable than anything else.

My next complaint comes from a very unexpected arena. What the fuck was composer Harry Manfredini thinking? Rather than starting the film with the music score that made Jason famous, he hammers us with this ultra-cheesy hip retro-disco garbage. I won’t bother going into details about how horrible the music is. Let’s just say for the record that it sucks. Thankfully, this crap doesn’t seep its way into the rest of the film.

I should really consider adding a “What the Fuck?” category to these reviews. If there were one scene that really makes you say “What the fuck?” it would have to be the scene where Pamela Voorhees rises from the lake to attack Chris. Now I realize that this is likely just one of Dingbat’s psychotic delusions, but it makes zero sense. Firstly, Pamela ain’t got no head! And yet here, she is seen with head still firmly attached to her neck. Secondly, Pamela is not even mentioned throughout the course of the film so why bother throwing her in at all? I suppose this was meant to represent some sort of spectral revenge on Chris for finally killing her boy. But it just came off as confusing and stupid.

Once again, this film produces some pretty glaring continuity errors. The flashback sequence in which we see Jason attacking Chris for the first time is meant to take place prior to Friday Part 2. This would place it four years (roughly) after the first movie. In Part 1, Jason appears to be no older than eleven-years-old. In this movie’s flashback he is clearly an adult and is seen as being bald. In Part 2, he has a massive head of long stringy hair. Now we come back to the main sequences of part 3 and Jason is hairless again. This is a case of male pattern baldness gone mad! I suppose it’s a forgivable error as it doesn’t really take away from the intensity of the films, but I’m surprised that someone never noticed this in post-production.

Great Lines:

“It can’t be you!” --Chris reacting to seeing Jason’s face for the first time in over a year.

“Would you want to ‘be yourself’, if you looked like…this?” --Shelly taking off a prop mask and revealing himself to be truly ugly S.O.B.

“Andy, I’m warning you. I’ll break your string.” --Debbie speaking to Andy as the latter torments her with a dangling 3D yo-yo. I like this more for the double etendre than anything else.

Overall Rating: 6 out of 10 severed heads.

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