Friday the 13th part 3 (1982) · 10:13am May 18th, 2016
Is it just me or do movies and properties that don't know if they're going to be any good try to lure you in with peripheral stuff? I mean seriously, how many times have we seen this over the years? From the writer of... is usually a tip off that you're in trouble. Or what about when they put the director or writers name at the beginning? Ladies and gentlemen get ready to scream for "John Carpenter's Roman Fanny Pack," or "Stephen King's Old People in Maine."
Sometimes they do that with casting decisions too. They're sort of doing it for the new My Little Pony movie but, honestly do any of these people attached to the movie make you really want to see the movie more? Emily Blunt, Michael Pena, Liev Schreiber and Taye Diggs have all had success and done roles that were at least okay. What does that have to do with the current project being any good? Delgo, Foodfight, The Swarm, and a number of Uwe Boll movies had casts that were recognizable and they all were terrible.
The best movies don't seem to do that. You might hear that something is in the works but, that's about it. Then the trailer drops online or in theaters and if it's good you bookmark it and wait for the day the movie drops. I don't recall The Lion King being like, "Hey we got Matthew Broderick AND Jeremy Irons. Watch this movie!" No they were just like, "Here's the first few minutes. Look at how bad ass we are. We'll take your money because you're showing up and we'll have the game ready for Christmas."
You want to get me interested in your pony movie? Okay, make a damn good movie with a great trailer. Peak my interest. I don't care if you got the ghost of Christopher Lee to do Starswirl give me something worth watching.
If you were in the 1980s and liked slasher films well this next one probably would have gotten you in the theater. Friday the 13th part 3 is probably one of the weirder and most important entries in the series. It's important because this is the movie where Jason gets his hockey mask. It's also important because you could release this movie today in 3D. Why? Because it was made for 3D!
But enough about that, this is the scoop on this movie. Part 3 takes place a day or two after the events of part two. This is interesting because it goes to show how quickly Jason can heal. I mean he got a good whack with a machete in part two so I mean he should at least need a bandage right? Nope. Jason's a trooper. He runs around a cabin/farm and does his thing to a bunch of hapless college students that include a first place runner up in the 1977 Miss America pageant, an eventual news anchor and apparently a guy who later in life became a doctor. Or as I like to think of it victim, survivor and someone who patches up everyone for the sequel.
The movie itself is pretty standard for a Friday movie. I will say that some of the editing is a bit weird. At one point a bunch of the students go skinny dipping but then apparently not because one of them is show them where they are going to sleep, then they're either at the barn or walking around then everyone's at the lake but not skinny dipping. At another point a biker gets knocked out but wakes up in time to distract Jason. Why did nobody notice him there? They kept walking right past where he would have been.
As far as overall sequels go, this is probably one of the lesser ones. Still, if you like slasher films and want to see where Jason pretty much becomes Jason and not just some random back wood dude this is require viewing. If slasher films aren't quite your thing it's also one that you can poke fun of too. For example, at one point Andy bounces a yoyo off of his girlfriend's face to which she says, "Hey that was close." To what, crashing through your brain?
Check it out.
Stats: 11 Dead Bodies, 2 Breasts, 2 Dead Rabbits, 1 Crazy Old Man, 1 Dead Fetus, Hammock Aardvarking, Knitting Needle to the head, cleaver to the chest, throat slitting, harpooning, pitchforking, fire poker to the chest, knife to the chest, electrocution, rat fu, snake fu, pot fu, dream fu, gratuitous juggling.
Shout outs:
Tracie Savage (future news person) as Debbie the "pregnant" girl who sarcastically explains sex to her boyfriend.
Jeffrey Rogers as Andy who when approached about kinky beach fun says, "Oooh sounds 'disgusting'."
Larry Zerner as Shelly who gives Jason his hockey mask and says, "I'm not an asshole, I'm an actor."
Dana Kimmell as Chris for surviving Jason's advances in more than one way.
Catherine Parks as Vera for being Miss Florida in 1977.
Ah Friday the 13th. the series that gave horror movies such important tropes. Like teenagers who look like their approaching forty are attracted to places where a massacres happened and the killer was never found. The best way to survive a psycho is to be a virgin. Sex means instant death. And the best thing to do when being chased by a killer is to run to a room (like a basement) where theirs no other way out.
Also don't forget when running from said killer (who is casually strolling along yet somehow manages to keep pace with you.) and you fall to the ground, be sure to just lie their screaming as they slowly walk over to you holding some instrument for your death.
3953478 Actually, it's sort of interesting how many of the horror tropes don't apply to Friday the13th but just get tossed upon it. Most of the tropes don't apply quite as much as folks would think. In Friday the 13th the teens are usually college kids which, we can sort of tell based upon the dialog they have. In part 3 Shelly is Andy's roommate and in parts 1 and 2 various classes are mentioned that the main heroine is taking. The ones that don't follow that are the ones that are specifically set with a high school or graduating high school class.
The survivor (or one of them) isn't always a virgin. That idea began with Halloween. However, the survivor girls from parts 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9 have all definitely had sex. Heck Chris, in part 3, was alluded to have been raped by Jason and has another guy, Rick interested in her. The hiding in silly places part usually comes as a part of them trying to barricade themselves in a place. To a degree that makes sense especially since the survivor usually grabs some sort of weapon as well. The trope that does apply and work pretty much every time is that your escape vehicle won't start for one reason or another. Then again, there are a ton of VW bugs in these movies so... yeah.
The strolling part though does sort of apply. Sometimes fairly in that the victim may have flung herself from a car. Sometimes honestly they are so scared because the killer will literally teleport around them. Seriously, there's no other explanation for how Jason gets to where he gets and I think we're supposed to sort of believe that's so. In that case yeah I'd probably fall to the ground too and carry on.
Most of these tropes actually come from the tons of other lower quality slasher films that came out around the same time. In fact some of them are so old that that they are kind of standards for certain types of fiction. It just so happens that between Friday and Nightmare these were the two best funded and most successful series. Therefore it all applies.
3953897 huh Interesting, I don't remember her alluding to a rape, but its been awhile ago.
3953927 Well, the way her story goes, she went on a date and came home late. Her parents were mad and her mother struck her during the course of the heated argument. Chris ran off into the woods and decided to stay out there all night to essentially, "show them."
She fell asleep under a tree when she heard some branches snapping. She thought it was her dad and waited for him. Instead it was Jason who proceeded to grab her. She tried to fight him and escape but he kept going after her. Then he finally got hold of her and dragged her off. At some point she blacks out.
Now, early drafts of the script for the movie go into explicit detail as to maskless Jason raping her and leaving her in the woods. The idea was to take the audience out of its comfort zone. Movie producers frowned on this and had any direct or explicit reference to the rape taken out due to the fear that it would alienate fans of the movies. That said, her story as it stands does allude that something really bad happened and since Jason didn't kill her (as is his want) he did something with her. Something that, nobody would mention to her after the fact.
3954033 That is interesting. In a way I think they should have gone with that, not just for shock value it would have made the villain more three dimensional.
3955389 Eh, I think we'll have to disagree on that. Here's my reasoning why:
Jason was hydrocephalic which led to mental retardation and other developmental disorders. As such he latched on to his mother (dad left early) who happened to be a cook at Camp Crystal Lake. He was picked on by the other kids because of the way he looked and one day allegedly drowned in the lake because nobody was paying attention to him. This drove his mother insane.
It can be argued that she shared a special link to Jason and that he urged her to kill, which she did. She also sabotaged any efforts to reopen the camp. Eventually though Pamela Voorhees was killed by Alice. Jason, who had been living in the woods all this time seeks revenge for his dead mother. A revenge that he will continue to seek as long as people enter his woods. He's basically an unstoppable killing machine who wants revenge. His thirst for said revenge has warped him into a giant evil dude.
Adding a specific graphic rape scene adds nothing to the character. We already know he's a big, angry, deformed, evil dude. The only thing that that scene would have done is probably shock the audience and leave a bad taste in a lot of folks mouths. In this case the implication of what happened is stronger because, we get that Chris had a run in with this guy and it traumatized her. It tells us why she hadn't been back to the cabin in two years and exactly why she's kind of sketched out about being back there. The exact details don't matter in this case because we as an audience can fill those in without feeling too gross about it.
From the creative mind... of an AVR guy... who goes to the same dog park... as a guy who worked on Gone With The Wind...
If they did, I might have to restrain my ordinarily pony-tolerant wife from dragging all of us to the inevitable midnight premiere.
She's a HUGE Christopher Lee fan. If you've got any more Chris Lee movies on the shelf, I'd love to hear about some of your favorites.
3955761 Actually, you could put Christopher Lee in the movie. You'd have to key up the dialog around him and then pull the appropriate dialog from various sources including interviews, movies, plays, commercials and whatever else he spoke. Then it would be a question of evening out the cadence and inflection. After all they did pull Laurence Olivier's image for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and then over dubbed him.
As far as Lee movies um... I'd have to dig a bit. I know I have one and I know I used to have more but, some stuff got lost or taken over the years and I've yet to recoup all of it.