Friday the 13th Part III is the third film in the
Friday the 13th series. The 1982 movie was the first film in the series to feature
Jason Voorhees wearing the hockey mask that has become his prominent trademark. The film was released theatrically in
3-D. Much like its sequel
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, this film was intended to end the series. Unlike its sequel and the later film,
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, this film did not include a moniker in its title to indicate as such.
Plot
Picking up one day after the events of
Friday the 13th Part 2, the horribly deformed serial killer
Jason Voorhees has survived his attack at the hands of Paul and Ginny and has migrated to a store where he steals new clothes; he then murders the store owners, Harold with a meat cleaver and Edna with a knitting needle, before moving on to a nearby lake front property named Higgins Haven.
At the same time, a girl named Chris, who was attacked by a mysterious, disfigured stranger in the woods near Crystal Lake two years earlier, returns to the property with her friends Debbie, Andy, Shelly, Vera, Chuck and Chili. On the road, they stop when they see an old man lying in the middle of the road named Abel, an inebriated, religious fanatic who found an eyeball (and other body parts) and construed it as an
omen from God, indicating that Chris and her friends turn back and not continue their journey; the kids, incredibly disgusted and frightened, drive away and later meet Chris' boyfriend Rick at their destination (Higgins Haven). Chris intends to face her fears; however, none of her friends know that an unmasked and reclusive Jason has taken refuge in the barn to recover from his battle wounds. At the convenience store, Shelly and Vera run into trouble with a bullying group of bikers, one of whom Shelly runs over his motorcycle with Rick's car after he punched through the window. The bikers make their way to Higgins Haven to even the score. However, they are murdered one by one by Jason before they can do any real damage - except for siphoning gas from Chris's van.
Rick becomes very stressed and angry when Shelly and Vera return with his car window knocked out and decides he has to go get away from everybody else for a while, but Chris perusades him to let her come along too. While Chris and Rick take a drive, Shelly is rejected by Vera because of his obsession with practical jokes and decides to search for Chuck and Chili in the barn. Jason slashes Shelly's throat and takes his hockey mask (off-screen). Now with a mask to cover his hideously deformed face, he then proceeds to murder the rest of the gang. He shoots Vera in the eye with a speargun. While Andy is handstand walking to get some
beer for him and Debbie, he looks up as Jason whacks him with a machete, splitting him in two. Debbie has a knife shoved through her chest while she rests on the hammock. Chuck enters the basement when the power seems to die and is thrown on a fusebox and electrocuted. Chili then gets impaled with a red hot fire poker.
When Chris and Rick return to find the place empty, they split up to find out what's going on. Rick is killed by Jason who squeezes his head until one of his eyeballs pops out. Jason then attacks Chris, chases her around the cabin, and the two exchange attacks until Chris leads Jason into the barn. She hides up in the loft and when Jason comes up to find her, she comes up from behind him, hits him in the back of the head with a shovel, and knocks him temporarily unconscious, long enough to place a
noose around his neck and roll him off outside the barn, hanging him. When Chris goes back down and opens the barn door, to her surprise, Jason has survived the hanging, showing his real face to Chris at which point she recognizes him as the man who attacked her two years earlier. As Jason proceeds to attack Chris, one of the bikers (Ali), who survived his attack earlier, attempts his revenge, but Jason cuts off his hand and Ali ultimately meets his end. While Jason is busy hacking up Ali, Chris picks up an axe and strikes Jason in the head, apparently killing him. Chris then wanders over to the lake and falls asleep in a canoe that drifts into the middle of the lake. The next morning, Chris wakes up and sees Jason unmasked and alive staring at her through an upstairs window in the house. When he spots her, he runs out to attack her but as Chris tries to escape, she is grabbed and taken into the water by a decomposing "
Pamela Voorhees". It is revealed that this was all a nightmare and at some point later, the police take a clearly mentally disturbed Chris off the property as the camera fades out on Jason's supposedly dead body.
Cast
Production
Some of the deaths were edited in order to avoid an "X" rating, including: Andy's death, which showed his right leg being cut off and his stomach being torn open; Vera's death was cut of bloodshed and her subsequent reaction (this was cut for supposedly looking "too real"); Edna's death was cut for excessive blood flow; Chili's impalement with the red-hot poker was cut of steaming blood hitting the floor; Debbie's original death showed blood spraying across her chest and face. The film was shot with the Arrivision "over and under" 3D camera, the same that was used with
Jaws 3-D.
Reception
The film opened in 1,079 theaters in 3D taking in $9,406,522 its opening weekend. Domestically, the film made $36,690,067,
[Box Office Mojo: Friday the 13th Part III] a greater figure than the $21,722,776 of the second film.
[Box Office Mojo: Friday the 13th Part 2]
3-D DVD Release
When originally released on Video and later on DVD the film was released in regular form.
The 3-D Version of the film was released on the Deluxe Edition DVD on February 3, 2009.
The Deluxe DVD and blu-ray disc includes:
The 2-D and 3-D version of the film and 2 pairs of blue and red 3-D glasses designed to look like Jason's mask.
Footnotes
Reflist
External links
Steve Miner
Friday the 13th
DEFAULTSORT:Friday The 13th Part 03
