#359: Friday the 13th Part III

Release Date: August 13th, 1982

Format: DVD (2-D version)

Written by: Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson

Directed by: Steve Miner

2 Stars

If you can withstand the first half of Friday the 13th Part III, with its stock dumb-dumb teenage characters and their banal conversations, you’ll be finally rewarded with the proper entrance of Jason Voorhees in his iconic form. No more bag-headed version of him as a young man as he is in Part II, who struggles to wrestle down his victims and clumsily kill them.

It’s in Part III that Jason finally dons his signature hockey mask, wields his steel machete, and kills with total brutality (and magically gets about half a foot taller and 50lbs heavier; the 6’3” actor Richard Brooker gets the role in Part III, whereas the 5’10” Steve Daskawisz donned the canvas bag-version of Jason in Part II).

Part III improves immediately when the signature Jason shows up, too. The franchise finally leans into some schlock and abandons the slower, more character-driven storytelling of the first two entries in the franchise (neither of which I think are particularly good). So while the teenagers in the first half of Part III are mindless and boringly written, in a way it works to wet our appetites. We’ve had enough of their meaningless sex and their stupid practical jokes. We want some action. We want some blood. 

Jason is happy to give us just that, and we’re happy to receive it.  

Postscript: My DVD copy of Part III has the 3-D version of the film (the effects of which I hear are excellent), but they didn’t include any 3-D glasses. Does Paramount think that people have 3-D glasses just sitting around their house?