Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982)


Friday the 13th Part 2 may have been the better movie but it existed for one reason: the original Friday the 13th made a lot of money, and Paramount saw the usefulness of making cheap horror sequels and raking in the returns.  They weren't wrong, and throughout the 1980s it became a tradition to dish out another movie featuring a bunch of kids getting killed by Jason Voorhees.  The problem was that, creatively, the story was done after the first two movies.  

That meant gimmicks to keep the audience coming back.  Director Steve Miner returns for the second sequel but, instead of making a decent suspense film, spent his time thinking of ways to poke stuff at the camera.  Even the cast while making it realized that the whole point was to get people in the theater to watch a 3-D movie.  Though forgotten today, Comin' at Ya, a 3-D western made in Spain, was a bit of a hit and kicked off a revival of the 3-D fad that had been popular nearly 30 years prior.  Producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. didn't care much about the quality of the third film, only that it got people interested in seeing the current batch of teenagers killed in a way that looked like Jason was popping off the screen.  

The day after the events of the second film Ginny (Amy Steel) is taken to the hospital and it is hinted that her boyfriend was killed.  Jason (Richard Brooker) survived getting a machete through his shoulder and, after getting revenge on the couple that almost killed him, leaves his shack and goes wandering, leaving some new bodies in his wake.  He eventually takes refuge in a barn on a property that happens to be the childhood home of Chris (Dana Kimmell), who is returning to face a childhood trauma. 

Waiting for her is her old boyfriend Rick (Paul Kratka) who is eager to rekindle their romance.  Also along for the ride is her best friend Debbie (Tracie Savage), her boyfriend Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), his roommate Shelly (Larry Zerner) and his reluctant date Vera (Catherine Parks).  Some other friends tag along as well and get up to the usual hijinks, as well as annoying a local biker gang, giving Jason plenty to do before going on a final rampage that sees him facing off against Chris. 

Friday the 13th: Part 3, despite the 3-D hook to get people in the theaters, encapsulates the reason so many critics hated slasher films.  They hated the first two movies as well, but there has been some reassessment of them despite the fact that, at heart, they were cynical cash grabs that just happened to be decent horror films.  This one, in contrast, is just following formula.  It tries to introduce certain other elements, such as Chris's trauma at being attacked by a deformed boy and Debbie being pregnant, the latter of which is barely spoken of after the beginning of the movie.  Instead of following those plot points the script introduces extraneous characters just to set up kills and rarely builds any kind of tension.  It doesn't help that the music, despite a great theme song, is intrusive throughout. 

What partially redeems it are the last 20 minutes of the film.  At this point pretty much everyone else is gone and it's just Jason and Chris, and some of the magic that was in the second movie returns.  From the point of the death by speargun forward, this is the movie fans wanted to see, rather than bad Cheech and Chong inspired antics and side jaunts that do nothing but set up a few gags which aren't that impressive to begin with.  This does have some of the best kills in the series, but there is a long wait to get there. 

The other major event in this film is that Jason gets his hockey mask.  While in the second movie he wore a bag over his head in this one he pretty much goes without any disguise until he liberates the mask from Shelly, whose unfunny clowning around combined with his Eeyore personality makes him one of the worst characters in the whole series.  I have to feel a bit sorry for Larry Zerner, who was discovered on a street corner handing out flyers and asked if he would like to be in this movie, and who got saddled with this role.  It didn't do much for his future in acting, and often when he did get cast he got roles that were similar to Shelly.  

Despite the fact the movies were making money this was planned to be the last one, but the first was never intended to have any sequels, nor was Jason ever supposed to be the killer.  The truth was that there wasn't much the producers could do with these films and they pretty much knew it.  Still, this one made money as well, so it was inevitable that there would be at least one more in order to finish up the series.  

Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982)
Time: 95 minutes
Starring: Dana Kimmell, Tracie Savage, Paul Kratka, Richard Brooker
Director: Steve Miner

 

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