FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III (1982)

Add Review To List
Add Film To List
Write Your Own Review

"You."

Opening as the film's montage, the final Act III scene of the previous film of the series plays out like a dream. Remember the one? Where Paul appears out of nowhere to help a wounded Ginny fiend off the bag-headed Jason in the deranged killer's shack? Only this time, however, the wounded Jason is shown taking the machete out of his shoulder and dragging himself off-screen as a precursor to the title sequence.

Save for that footage from the last movie, the entire film is done in 3-D technology. This is evident when the titles appear. Words literally pop off the screen. After the titles, we get right into the story. A woman is watching the news in her humble abode, in what is thought to be that nearby town of Hope, as news of the events that took place in Part II are revealed to have just happened the night before. The only survivor, Ginny, was taken to the hospital earlier that morning. It seems she had survived multiple attempts on her life against an ax-wielding murderer. This, it seems, must be integral to the story as it is relatively the next night after the killings, whose names are all but being withheld except for Ginny's, the only survivor. The woman, Edna, and her man, Harold, are violently murdered inside their home/ feed store.

In the next scene we see that some kids are planning a trip and they are in their VW bus when they park in a residential area to pick up another obviously potential slasher victim. On the way to their destination, one of the dudes - an older, Tommy-Chong-look-alike hippie starts smokin' the van out with some freshly rolled herb joints. He and his woman start "spreading the wealth" - passing them around to whoever wants to get blazed. The dork, Shelly (who is a guy by the way), isn't up for it. As a matter of fact, I think I heard him say that he was allergic to pot. His blind date however gladly puffs it up. One of the girls is pregnant, and the other woman is driving. Everyone else pretty much gets high. All of a sudden, two police patrol units are directly behind them, sirens wailing. They begin to digest the weed, and pull over. To their dismay, the cops zoom past them. Everyone scoffs. It only looked like they chowed about an eighth worth, so really they'd only be out $40, but then again, this is the 80's, ten years before my wild days.

They see the cops have stopped about a few miles up at a local store. There is an ambulance there, and a stretcher with a tarp covering a body is being hauled inside of it. Never good. As they elude a disturbing old man with an omen, they arrive about a mile up the road to where one can only assume must be Crystal Lake. As the new victims start to settle in, the main female character, Chris, starts noticing oddball things pretty much right off the bat. Shrugging most of it off, she gets reacquainted with an old flame, Rick, who is a working hand already on the campsite. Shelly pulls a mean trick that frightens everybody, including the likes of Chris, who we see he has struck a nerve with. It seems there is a backstory with her about an incident that happened two years prior at this very place, and this is her first time back since. However, we are not told what exactly the incident that occurred was.

As Shelly and his "blind date" Annie make a run to the convenient store, they encounter a small town gang who bully them, and Shelly decides to strike back. He runs over one of their motorcycles as the dude is trying to start it, not before he hops off at the last second. They drive off as the dude yells that they "won't get away with this, gotdammit." Uh, antecedent, anyone? As they bring Rick's Volkswagen back, he is upset that the windshield is smashed in and wants to leave, as he only came up here for Chris' sake, but as he puts it, "this is a little more than [he] bargained for." She convinces him to stay, and they take a drive. Little does anyone know or see the figure lurking in the shadows of the barn near the lake...

As two from the group take off down a secluded cove to skinny-dip, the biker gang from the convenient store reappear near the parked VW bus. They attempt to siphon their gas tank to even the score. As the biker woman from the trio isn't really into stealing their gas, she sees the barn door ajar and heads for it. She then CLOSES THE DOOR behind her and LOCKS IT...from the inside! I swear - these films, at least the earlier ones, are full of stupid people doing the most retarded things. I can't help but roll my eyes during these moments. As the shadowy figure is still in the barn, it doesn't take long for the stupid b[beep]tch to get killed. The other biker dude with the unlit cigarette always hanging out of his mouth when he talks is the second to go, trailing into the barn after the biker lady to dump the gas. 2 bikers down, 1 to go. The biker leader, Ali, is at last dead meat when he finds his friends' corpses and Jason jumps from the top into a horse area. Quickly grabbing a nearby machete (there's always something nearby), he leaps in after the killer screaming about how he's a dead man. He didn't know how right he had it. They square off for about two seconds, until Jason dodges his move and knocks him unconscious with a lead pipe to the head. He then continuously mashes his head with it until it's hamburger (off-screen, of course).

The next scenes show Chris telling her story to Rick. It seems that she used to live up here with her parents, and after an argument about curfew one night that ended up with her mother slapping her across the face, she took off into the woods. It was raining but she found a dry spot under a tree. She must have fallen asleep because she woke up in the middle of the night to approaching footsteps. Suddenly there was the sound of snapping twigs behind her, and as she looked back, she saw a mask-less Jason with a blade ready to slice and dice her. In her ensuing struggle with the hideous killer, she blacked out. The next morning she woke up in her bed and doesn't remember what the f happened. Sounds like some laced LSD if you ask me. Anyways, the dumb idiots left the lights on in his VW, so they must walk back to camp.

As everyone is either having sex or passed out, the toker...Chong-look-alike...hippie goes out in the night to find the outhouse. As he lights a joint on the john, Jason starts messing with him, shaking the outhouse. He pulls up his drawers and exits the shack to see the figure in the distance entering the dark barn. Thinking it's Shelly pulling another stunt, he laughs it off and then bumps into his woman who wants to have some fun of her own. She wants to get Shelly back for all his stupid pranks, and they both follow the figure inside the barn. However, they don't find him so they leave.

Next we see that prankster Shelly with a handheld harpoon and a 1950's Detroit Red Wings NFL hockey goalie mask, terrorizing Annie while she is sitting on the dock. He grabs her foot while under the water of the lake to scare her. They then trade some forgettable conversation about why he pulls pranks, and he says because she wouldn't like him if he was just plain old himself. Give me a break. Are we supposed to feel pity on this loser? So he walks off and they are each left alone.

Shelly walks to the barn where he looks in the window and thinks he sees Chuck and Chili, the hippie stoners. Although we know that the hippies were just looking for Shelly, and walked off for the night, Shelly walks in oblivious. We had seen Jason taunt Chuck by walking inside the barn from a far distance and fooled him, as he thought it was Shelly. So Jason must have been taunting Shelly here. Unfortunately, we, the audience, do not see his perspective.

Annie thinks she hears a twig snap and turns around, dropping Shelly's wallet she was looking at in the lake. As she goes to walk in the lake to get it, Jason appears out of the barn wearing the symbolic goalie mask and the harpoon. Annie thinks he is Shelly, and informs him of the dropped wallet and that now, she's got it. No need to worry. However, as he moves closer and walks out on the docks, she realizes he is built and at least 7 feet tall. Shelly was a fat, chubby dude. When she inquires who he is, Jason shoots her in the eye with the harpoon. Moving on, he looks up and sees the light on in the cabin.

As Deb and Andy finish having intercourse in a hammock (!), she goes to take a shower as Jason slowly enters the cabin and starts his way upstairs. As he slaughters Andy pretty flagrantly, Deb is still taking a shower as this maniacal lunatic is lingering just outside the bathroom door. Hmm, this reminds me of another scene with another Psycho that was in another movie.

As she is stabbed through the neck in the hammock Kevin Bacon-style, right when she sees her boyfriend all twisted up in the rafters, the scene switches. We next see Chris and Rick walking back and the hippies making popcorn and trying to fix the blown lights. Chuck fixes them then gets killed by Jason. The Chili chick runs around screaming like a freaking moron as she realizes Shelly is dead, and runs upstairs to find Debbie's and Andy's corpses. She then gets stabbed through the naval with a fire-hot firewood poker.

Two to go.

As Rick looks around and Chris cleans up the mess left by the hippies, he comes back down and says that everyone has gone and left. As he goes outside to look around, Jason grabs ahold of him as Chris washes her hands and hurries to catch up. Seeing no one, she hurries back inside, and Rick's fate is sealed. As she shuts the door, Jason lifts Rick up by his head and violently squishes it, popping his eyeball off to the screen.

Chris being the last one, she looks for everyone, discovers weird things, runs off to find Rick, has dead corpses appear all around her (as is what usually happens to the last victim), and crunches against the wall which is directly between two big-ass windows. Since I've already written how I feel about that, I'll skip it. Of course, Rick's body comes hurdling through the window to the left as she screams her head off hysterically. She brings down an entire library of books down on the ax-wielder, and slowly (?) makes her way towards a closet, thinking she is tricking the maniacal Jason.

He doesn't fall for it.

As she freaks out when Jason tries to bolt down the door, she grabs the knife out of Deb and jabs it into Jason. He utters and backs away as she swings it at him offensively. She jams it in his leg. Then she falls out a window, finds a van, drives it, tries to run down Jason, runs out of gas, and gets stuck on the bridge. It begins sinking off the bridge just as Jason catches up and starts choking her through the window. She gets away, and a chase pursues.

The end scene is in the barn, where she has hidden. Jason angrily knocks a bunch of crap over, desperately looking to kill her. As she knocks him down and ties the rope to his neck, she drops him over the edge off the opening from the top of the barn, which would break any normal person's neck. Instead, when she gets free from the locked barn, she sees Jason hung, but still alive. She doesn't know how until he lifts the mask and shows her his real face. The one she saw when she was younger. "You," she says. Then the black guy appears and Jason chops off his hand and hacks him up. While he does this, Chris grabs the nearby (of course) axe and slams it sideways into his head.

The very last scene shows Chris freaking out in a canoe, similar to Alice in the first one, this time hallucinating Mrs. Voorhees jump out of the lake to snatch her. We then see Jason still lying in the barn, seemingly still dead.

*****

Afterthoughts:

Jason is shown taunting his victims. If he taunts them, he may also be setting the traps to capture or lure them as well. I can't see any sign of continuity errors in this one.