Previously at Crystal Lake, eight people had been killed in highly entertaining ways by a man wearing a sack on his head with one eye hole in it. It is clear that this person is Jason, the boy who everyone thought had drowned. Now he is all grown up. In trying to escape, Ginny runs across Jason’s shack in the woods. Inside, she finds the head of Mrs. Voorhees, surrounded by candles, as well as the body of Alice. There is a scuffle between her, Jason and Paul and Jason takes a machete to the shoulder (the obvious place you would chop someone if you wanted to kill them. I mean fuck, there is a severed head in the room, did that not give you any ideas?). As Paul and Ginny are back at the cabin recovering from the attack, an unmasked Jason leaps through the window and grabs Ginny. His hair is wild and unfettered. His face is deformed. He is quite ghastly. The next scene is during the day and Ginny is being placed in the back of an ambulance. This scene leaves us unsure as to what happened during the last scene (if it even happened at all; it is ambiguous just like the end of the first one) and what happened to Paul.
Friday the 13th Part III takes place the day after Part 2 (so we are still in 1984). And right there is the first thing that is wrong with this sequel. Why in the FUCK does it switch to Roman numerals? That, to me, is more disturbing than the machete to the crotch one of the kids gets whilst walking on his hands. But I digress.
Chris and a bunch of her friends are going to her father’s cabin, Higgins Haven. Guess where it happens to be near? If you guessed Elm Street, you are dead wrong. Two years ago (1982) Chris and her family were at the cabin and had a fight. After her mother slapped her, she ran in to the woods. Seeking shelter from the pouring rain, she sat under a tree (!) and fell asleep. A disfigured man startles her awake and attacks her. She hands us some flimsy story about having blacked out and waking up in her own bed and not remembering how she survived. She is returning to Higgins Haven to prove to herself that she is strong.
Or fucking retarded. At this point, there are more than a dozen corpses from just the first two films alone before anyone dies in this one. There is a legend of a killer, the camp down the road is nicknamed Camp Blood and you were attacked. How many more warning signs do you need? How about a weird old guy laying in the road who found a human eyeball? No? Well, then fuck it, go get you and your friends killed.
This film is also in 3-D (and Paramount’s first film produced in 3-D since 1954) which would normally bother me, but it was 1982 and 3-D was all the rage back then (I guess. I was 6). There were a lot of 3-D gags, but eventually they become less frequent. Although the harpoon flying at the screen was entertaining.
This film is vastly inferior to the previous installment, which both were directed by Steve Miner. I guess it’s really not his fault, per se. At this point the formula has started to become tiresome. The “legend” aspect of it is interesting, as we see Jason progress. For example, this is the film where he gets his trademark hockey mask. But this chapter is rife with way too many false scares, and it also begins the whole “wouldn’t Jason have died after that?” thing. Not to spoil the ending of a film that is almost 30 years old, but I declare that Jason is officially a zombie after this film. It is assumed that he survived his drowning (by the fact that he is an adult). Therefore he has to be dead at the end of this film based on what happens to him.
The previous two films had scenes at the end where the survivor is “attacked” and then suddenly wakes up or a new scene happens. As the viewer we are left to wonder if the attack scene was real. In part III, the attack scene is clearly a dream and ruins what was a neat little device to cap each film off.
So, this is where the series begins to unravel. It is not a complete mess yet, but it is getting there. Favorite kill of part III: Andy is walking on his hands (cause that’s what the cool kids do) to get a beer. He looks up and sees Jason. BAM! Machete right to the crotch. Nicely done, sir.
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