Friday the 13th Part III

 

Also known as ‘Part 3-D’, this third entry brought Jason into the third dimension in tacky style. A lot of things come improbably flying towards the screen, because apparently that’s what 3-D means. Otherwise this is a mostly by-the-numbers slasher, though it does make a few attempts to mix things up somewhat with some violent kills, weird characters and its cheesy 3-D effects. It has a noticeably different feel than the first two, and a few faults the others didn’t have but it’s ultimately fun for what it is. This is a tiny move away from the generally more serious horror tone of the first two, and faults aside it’s ok.

In a continuing trend that thankfully mostly stopped here, the first six minutes or so are just the ending six minutes of the previous film. They don’t even tie it in as a flashback here; it’s literally just the ending of the second film shoved right in as the beginning of this one. It’s more than a little jarring and unnecessary since knowing the end of that film isn’t really that necessary to understanding this one.

There are no camp counsellors this time, and we’re no longer even at Camp Crystal Lake. Instead we’re at Higgin’s Haven, a family summer cabin with a barn on a different end of the apparently enormous Crystal Lake (the size of which is highly inconsistent between films). Set the day after Jason’s rampage at Camp Crystal Lake in Part II, the story is focused on college girl Chris Higgins. Chris takes a group of her friends to her family’s lakeside summer home, Higgin’s Haven, which she hasn’t returned to since a traumatic event some two years earlier. A wounded Jason Voorhees also makes his way to Higgin’s Haven, taking refuge in the barn to recuperate from his injuries. It isn’t long before Jason ventures out of the barn and starts to slaughter the group.

Besides the opening recap, the film acknowledges the previous film – a TV shows a news report on the massacre – but the characters don’t seem to know or care that a whole bunch of people were massacred nearby only a day earlier, which is a bit weird. Instead everybody is too busy doing stupid teen things. Once again it takes an absurdly long time before people begin there’s a killer around or even realise a whole bunch of them have been killed already.

 

Our heroine is Chris Higgins, who is another nice, wholesome girl. There’s not much to her, barring a character-defining traumatic event in her past where she was attacked by somebody in the woods. At the end of the film she realises it was Jason who had attacked her. It’s a dumb, meaningless coincidence that doesn’t actually change anything, but this sort of idea will reoccur later on in the series. Chris’ traumatic story is stupid. Upset with her parents for some reason, she wandered into the woods and then fell asleep (I guess she got tired?) before being attacked by a monstrous knife-wielding Jason. Then she blacked out and woke up later in her bed, which just raises a whole bunch of questions – was it a just a dream, and if not how the hell did she escape from Jason if she blacked out? Chris spends a lot of time shrieking like crazy, is really panicky and, by the end, has completely lost her mind, all of which kinda goes against her character story of ‘trying to get over past trauma’.

Once again Jason is still only human in this film and easy to hurt, and Chris gets a lot of good hits in. Jason backs away in fear when Chris starts swinging a knife at him and limbs when she stabs him. Chris actually really delivers a beat-down on Jason; she clobbers him in the head with a log and a shovel, attempts to hang him and eventually finished him off by hitting him in the face with an axe. It does kind of work in the confines of Chris’ weird ‘trauma victim strikes back’ personal story, but as said before her character becoming a shrieking mess sort of counteract this.

Part III is where we get our first truly annoying F13 character: Shelley, the ugly, whiny dweeb. He wants to impress girls, but can’t because he’s gross, ugly and whiny. So instead of talking to them like a normal person he plays stupid pranks using props and make-up to scare them and then whines when they hate him even more. He’s annoying. Thankfully he eventually gets his throat slashed by Jason and in a ‘boy who cried wolf’ bit of karma nobody helps him because they think it’s another prank.

Actually the characters here are noticeably a bit broader and stranger than usual, acting far more ridiculous than the standard, forgettable teen fodder seen before. While we do still get a collection of interchangeable teen victims, we also get some weirder ones with strange quirks which makes them a bit more colourful and fun, while also potentially a bit more annoying. There’s a white trash couple at the beginning, a weird crazy hobo brandishing an eyeball, a duo of stoned hippies, and a guy who can walk around doing a handstand (Jason isn’t impressed by this trick). The most ridiculous by far are the mean bikers who seem way too silly to be taken serious. Their outfits are comprised entirely of leather, denim, bandanas and studs. They get involved when Shelley ends up trashing their bikes, and end up sneaking into Higgin’s Haven, siphoning gas out of their car (giving a good excuse as to why they can’t just drive away from Jason), and coming up with a plan to set fire to the barn as revenge. Of course Jason is in the barn, so their plan doesn’t get far.

Higgin’s Haven has an entirely different feel to Camp Crystal Lake. It seems a little bit more claustrophobic, perhaps because the place is relatively small, really only made up of just a house, a barn and a small jetty. Crystal Lake itself seems substantially smaller, looking more like a pond really. Otherwise the film uses a lot of the same sort of tricks and techniques as before, including more liberal use of the ‘spooky intrigue theme’. This time though there are a lot of dumb fake jump scares. These are things the first two movies didn’t have at all, but here, especially early on, we get a lot of parts of somebody getting scared by an animal or a person. This is coupled with more use of the ‘spooky intrigue theme’. It’s a bit disappointing to see the series go down that route. It also misses the tension of a character being unknowingly stalked.

This is the film where Jason gets his iconic hockey mask. Actually the film is pretty much responsible for establishing a lot of the basic elements to Jason’s iconic look for much of the series – the hulking frame, the green clothes and the hockey mask, even a bit of his ugly mug. Speaking of which, Jason looks really damn goofy when unmasked this time around. When you see him right at the end he’s grinning like an idiot, resembling some kind of simple minded, malformed goon. Basically without the mask he’s far from intimidating, even though it seems they tried hard to make him look inhuman and grotesque.

The end does the ‘nightmare twist’ thing again, this time as a dumb call-back to the first film – Chris, thinking Jason is dead, is in a canoe floating on the lake when she  sees a mask-less Jason alive, staring at her from the barn window. He bursts out of the barn and comes running towards her as she paddles away and then, suddenly, Jason’s dead, zombified mother bursts out of the lake to attack her. Then she wakes up with the police escorting her away as she shrieks hysterically. It’s a really stupid end twist.

 

 

The 3-D stuff is silly and often more than a little forced. Amongst the things that come towards the screen are fists, a snake, a yoyo, a baseball bat, a harpoon, popcorn and some eyeballs. Honestly for the most part it’s unnoticeable and barely used, and when it is it’s obvious. On a better point, some of the deaths are fairly gory and inventive this time through, though the effects are pretty fake and silly looking. A guy’s head is crushed forcing his eye to pop out (in goofy 3-D!), one guy is cut in half, a girl gets shot in the face with a spear-gun and there are a few stabbings/impaling with knives, needles, pitchforks and fireplace pokers. It’s more violent and memorable than most of the stuff in Part 2. One unfortunate issue, linked to the 3-D effects, is that some of the gore effects are painfully obvious. With every object that comes flying towards the screen, be it a knife or spear, you can visibly see wires holding them.

There really isn’t much else to say about this one. It has got plenty of faults, some annoying characters and overall it’s pretty silly, but it’s a little bit of a step up from Part II, if only because it’s a bit different. It has a different feel with the change in location, the goofy 3-D effects and the focus on somewhat stranger characters. It’s ok. Not one of the good ones, but still entertaining. Jason looks pretty dead at the end here – after the nightmare twist the camera shows his body, with an axe still embedded in his face, and he seems pretty definitively dead. But we’re nowhere near that done yet. We’ve got a whole lot more F13 movies to get through.