Friday The 13th Part III 3-D Review

By: Michael Lee

Starring: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Richard Brooker
Year: 1982

It's that time of year again. HALLOWEEN! That's right, the only holiday that endorses dressing up as your favorite superhero or movie villain and taking candy from old people! Okay, so technically, Halloween doesn't start for practically another two months. Still, that doesn't mean we at Nerdism can't start the celebration early. Therefore, every week until Halloween, we'll release a new and special horror movie review, graded on our new Super Scary Zombie Serial Killer's Hockey Mask scale! That means for nine weeks, we'll have nine horror movie reviews, plus a couple other normal movie reviews since "9", "Where the Wild Things Are", and a few other cool looking movies are also coming out within these two months. So let's start things off with a movie from a classic horror series: "Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D"

I noticed I had left off death scenes from this series in my "25 greatest horror movie death scenes" editorial, so to make up for it, I'll review one of the cheesiest "Friday the 13th"s. Part III starts off with right where Part II ended, with Jason taking a cleaver to the neck and the two remaining teens run off to safety. Now we all know that this won't stop the Jason in the slightest, as he has 8 more sequels, 1 spin-off, and 1 remake to star in, so he pulls out the cleaver and crawls away to recover.

This is when the movie really begins, as it switched over to the 3-D format after this opener and the credits play. Jason has now recovered and kills off a bickering old merchant and his wife, who both live their lives as if they knew they were in a 3-D movie, pointing sticks and TV antennas directly at the screen. Like I said though, Jason kills them off rather quickly. The next day, Chris and her pot smoking friends drive by the shop going to Camp Crystal Lake, and see cops investigating the couples deaths. After a close run in with said cops, all the teens ingest their weed, so now they're drugless. But that's okay, since they still have beer and sex to prove that they can fit into the horror series's clichés. Once they run into a crazy old hobo who carries around an eyeball with him, the group starts to get a little paranoid for going to a place that apparently Chris had run into a serial killer at earlier in her life. That's right, in possibly the most inconceivably stupid horror movie logic, the main character, who ran into a serial killer at the camp earlier in her life, wants to return there to face her fears, while smoking pot and drinking booze at the same time. Did I mention that one of her friends, Shelly, who is one of the more likable but still douchey characters of the "Friday the 13th" series, has a penchant for dressing up as serial killers or serial killer's victims. Pot, booze, run down creepy camp, bad memories, and a guy who dresses up as murders for fun. Can't go wrong there.

Within time, Shelly manages to piss off everybody with his stupid pranks, and decides to take some time to let everyone cool down and go to another little shop with this chick he seems to dig. They meet up with a biker gang composed of three badly dressed thirty-ish year olds. Shelly drives over their bikes with a yellow Volkswagen bug. Being bested by such a wimpy car really ticks them off, so they follow Shelly and the chick back to where they are staying. They syphon all the gas out of Chris' van and use attempt to use the gas to burn down the barn behind the house the group is staying at. But guess who's living in that barn. Let's just say, he's big, has mommy issues, and doesn't have his hockey mask yet. After all three gang members are disposed of with the help of cheesy 3-D, Jason decided it's time to wreak havoc on some sinning teenagers...

Chris and her boyfriend wind up going to the lake and she dives deeper into her past experiences with that serial killer who is Jason (which I couldn't tell was supposed to be a surprise or not, since it was fairly obvious all along). They plan to drive back up to where they're staying, but their little yellow bug is out of gas, so guess who's walking. This provides time for Jason to wipe out the home team. Shelly and the guy I like to call Jason fodder #1 since I can't remember his name, spend the night juggling (in 3-D), ignoring the females in the room. You heard me, juggling... while there are two perfectly horny babes in their room. "Sorry Becky. No sex tonight. I'm juggling" This is further proof that the writers of this movie have never met an actual teenager. Okay, so that's not all true since Jason fodder #1 quits to get laid. This leaves Shelly and the babe he likes to have a quick little conversation along the lines of:

Shelly: "I like you"
Girl: "Shelly, I like you too, but you're so immature. We'll continue this talk after I step outside for a minute"

No lie, she really does say a version of that last line. The writers obviously just gave up at this point, since the best way for them to find a way for this chick to go outside and get killed is to have her say "I'm going outside during the middle of this conversation that we'll continue later". Well Shelly is obviously hurt that she doesn't seem to want to spend time with him, so he grabs a harpoon, a wet suit, and a hockey mask (fan boy scream: EEEEK!) and sets out to scare her into liking him. The chick goes out to the lake and sits, wading her feet in the water. Shelly then pops up, scares the living bejesus out of her, then they continue their conversation and Shelly gets hurt again and wanders into the barn. The chick drops a wallet into the lake and wades out to get it. Then Jason appears in Shelly's hockey mask attire (fan boy scream #2: EEEEK!) and harpoons the chick right in the eye (which I feel justifies Jason using a bow and arrow in the remake). Now we return to Jason fodder #1 and his girlfriend who are making love in a hammock that's for some reason in their room. His girlfriend goes to take a shower (in the only scene containing nudity at all, and I wouldn't even call it nudity since you might see the side of her nipple once) which means Jason fodder #1 has time to goof off and do handstands. He of course gets cut in half while doing this handstands, as Jason has no time to goof off. Jason then proceeds to stab Jason fodder #1's girlfriend. So now there are two people left inside the house now: the two hippie potheads. While the male hippie pothead pops popcorn (in 3-D!) the power goes out. Female hippie pothead makes him go down to the basement to fix the problem, where Jason kills him and then returns upstairs to wipe out the female hippie pothead. Also, we find out what happened to Shelly, who's throat had been slit after he went into the barn before the very first chick was killed and managed to somehow live and make his way back to the house to actually pass away right before the hippie chick was killed.

Chris and her boyfriend finally make it back to the house. She discovers everyone is missing, so her boyfriend goes outside to look for them. Well, while her boyfriend is getting his eyes popped out of him (in 3-D), Chris discovers her friends bodies in the bathtub and closets. She runs out of the house, gets in her van, and takes off down the road. But wait, the gas had been stolen remember, so it breaks down and allows Jason to catch up with her. Chris, however, rolls up her window as soon as Jason reaches in her van. So she escapes as one of the world's biggest horror icons is stopped by a pane of glass. She runs back to her house and hides in the barn, because logic is no longer an option. Jason breaks free, follows her into the barn and nearly kills her. But like I said, logic is no longer an option, as one of the previously hacked-to-bits gang members return from the grave to stop Jason. And by "stop", I mean "allow Jason to chop him into even small bits". This does provide Chris time to axe Jason in the face, which I guess was supposed to kill him (but you know he'll be back). Chris then runs out of the barn and hops into a canoe, and floats out to the middle of Crystal Lake. There she goes crazy and imagines Jason's rotting mother hop out of the lake to kill Chris off, similar to the end of the first movie.

So this isn't the bet "Friday the 13th", but it's not the worst. It was re-released on DVD this year, restored back to 3-D, where as the first DVD release of this movie was just 2-D. It also comes with awesome 3-D glasses designed similar to Jason's hockey mask, which is reason enough to buy it. The 3-D isn't the best, and there's some parts where the red and blue don't match up exactly, like the snake scene, where the snake looked like it had three heads: a blue, red, and normal one. Without 3-D, this movie would not be as entertaining, and a lot of the scenes were clearly shot to show this off. I'd give it a six out of 10 though, because it kept my interest and was pretty good in that bad sort of way. Also, that sceencap up there is in 3-D, so if you want to see how the movie looks, check that out with a pair of 3-D glasses if you have them.

Also, Upon re watching the remake, I think this was the movie "Friday the 13th (2009)" drew most of it's inspiration from, which clearly shows why that movie isn't as good as the original few.

 

6 out of 10 Super Scary Serial Killer's Hockey Mask.