Friday the 13th - Part III

Once again, it is Friday the 13th.

Here's some thoughts on Friday the 13th - Part III (1982)

Friday the 13th - Part III is not as good as the previous two films in the series, but it does have some fun moments.  It is also more than notable for being the entry in which Jason first dons his iconic hockey mask.  At the very least, it has that going for it.

Note:  I did not watch the movie in 3D.  I have the DVD box set that comes with a pair of glasses, but I don't like watching those red/blue 3D movies at home, as generally they give me a headache and don't look very good.  If a theater around here ever showed this movie in 3D, I'd go check it out, but for now I'm sticking with the 2D.

This movie follows the basic Friday formula of young, horny people in an isolated place being stalked and killed one by one.  Making it a little different, these kids aren't camp counselors, they're just out for a weekend vacation, apparently in the direct vicinity of Crystal Lake (if they said that they were on Crystal Lake, I missed it, but I assumed they were).

The movie picks up directly after the events of the second film, opening with a recap of some of the action at the end of Part 2.  After that we get a kinda long opening scene where Jason kills this weird married couple and during that we hear some news reports about the events from the previous movie, which means that basically Jason is now a wanted fugitive.  And what is he doing immediately after his previous massacre?  He's out there starting himself another massacre.  This Jason guy, he's nothing if not productive and singularly focused.

By the way, Jason is back to his non-mulleted, mongoloid look from his cameo in the first film.  Gone are his bag-head and overalls.  Now he's a work shirt and pants kind of guy.  He's also now taller, bigger, and more muscular.  When he gets the hockey mask from prankster Shelly, it really brings the whole look together.

The characters in this movie are all pretty stupid, and by that I mean that they're not very interesting (also, yeah, a few of them aren't very bright).  In fact, this might be the worst overall cast in a Friday the 13th movie (I'll have to verify this, but I feel confident in it) as the acting ranges from mediocre to really bad.  The pair of stoners, Chuck and Chili, are maybe my favorite bad actors in the movie (because of course they are) and easily the best moment of bad acting is when Chili is flailing through the house and screaming "oh my god, Shelly's dead!"

One unique thing:  one of the couples (Debbie and Andy) are newly pregnant and (spoiler) they do not survive the movie.  It seems like that should be a ballsy thing for a horror movie to do, but no, it's not really made a big deal of and it's only mentioned a couple times onscreen.  Plus, it's not like Jason stabs her through the stomach or anything (because that would've been extreme).

Also, I should note that the pregnant chick shows the most skin out of the girls in the movie.

More notes:

The best kill in the movie is the "handstand" kill.  It's maybe one of the best kills in the entire series.

The barn, where a surprising amount of action takes place, is very well lit, especially at night.  I've never seen a barn with so much light in it.

During this movie we see, not one, but two guys sitting on the toilet (and I don't think either of them wiped.  Ewwww!)

Proof that these characters are stupid:  two different people get "dripped on" (one blood, the other water) and both of their reactions are "where's that coming from?"  Um, hello?  It's coming from above you!  Sheesh!

The opening theme/end credits music is stupid funky and oh so 80s.  It's somehow perfect.  The score in the movie however seems to just be recycled stuff from the first two movies.  Oh, Harry Manfredini, you genius..

The director again is Steve Miner.  This would be his last Friday movie and his last movie-movie until 1986's House.

Chris, the Final Girl of the movie, has a backstory where she had a previous encounter with Jason some months (years?) back while lost in the woods.  Her story ends with her blacking out and reawaking at home, but this minor plot point is never revisited and the sole purpose of this backstory seems to be to add extra weight (or maybe believability) to Chris' going mad-crazy at the end of the movie.

Speaking of the end of the movie, they try to re-do the shock surprise ending of the first Friday, but to much, much less effect.  First off, it's telegraphed a mile away.  Second, it looks kinda of chintzy and the slo-mo really lets you get a good look at it.  Thirdly, "it" is Pamela Voorhees as a rotting corpse popping up out of the water with her head somehow mysteriously reattached.  I gotta say. . .it's kind of stupid.

Things that poke out at you in 3D (presumably):  snake, fists, yo-yo, baseball bat, spear, eyeball (x2), apples, pitchfork, popcorn, red-hot poker, and the handles of various kill implements.

I used the word stupid a lot in this review.  Seems that could be interpreted as mean or cruel, but I mean it in a fun way, as in "this is stupid fun."  I am a fan of these movies overall and even a middle-of-the-road entry like Part III is still an entertaining watch and, yes, a stupid good time.  Happy Friday the 13th.

Friday the 13th - Part 2

Hey.  It's still Friday the 13th.

Here's some random thoughts on Friday the 13th - Part 2 (1981).

First off, I love the opening title shot where the Friday the 13th logo explodes and is replaced by the Part 2.  Exploding credits are awesome.

Also, I know not everyone is a fan, but I love the baghead-Jason look.  The scene where he is first revealed is one of the best, it's creepy and believable, which makes it more creepy.  The baghead look is obviously indebted to The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976), which in turn is based on a true story.  Long story short:  bagheads are creepy.

After the massive success of the first film, this sequel was rushed into production and released a little less than a year after the original.  The budget was twice as big and directing now was Steve Miner, from a script by Ron Kurz.

There's some nice handheld tracking and stalker shots, especially during the pre-credits opening with Annie, the Final Girl from the first film.  This is Miner's directorial debut and he does a good job building tension and scares and I would say that overall this is a more polished looking movie than the first one.

Also in comparing it to the original, there is only one offscreen kill in Part 2, which is an improvement, but the kills are mostly only pretty okay, with the special effects being serviceable if maybe unremarkable.  The best effects are the machete to the face of Mark the wheelchair guy and the double kill with the spear that directly follows that.  Both kills were liberally borrowed from Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood (1971), a film that Sean S. Cunningham was inspired by while making the original film.

The special effects this go-around were done by Carl Fullerton, as Tom Savini decided to skip this installment and do The Burning (1981) instead, later returning to the Friday series for the 4th installment.  Fullerton would go on to work on Goodfellas (1990) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The timeline of this Part 2 is weird to me, and the origin of Jason seems to be slightly convoluted, which might be putting it lightly.  Supposedly he drowned as a young boy in the lake back in 1957, resulting in his mother Pamela Voorhees killing a couple of kids in 1958, plus setting some fires and poisoning the water supply in the interval 21 years, before in 1979 (on June 13th, a Friday, Jason's birthday) killing all the people in the first Friday the 13th movie, before getting decapitated herself.

The legend goes that Jason saw his mother killed and is now stalking the woods around the old Camp Crystal Lake...  Buuuuut, if he was alive living in the woods, why didn't Pamela know this?  She had gone mad after the death of her mongoloid child, and it turns out that, oh yeah, he wasn't even dead and was hiding in the woods for 20+ years, teaching himself survival skills and building a fort... what a crappy son.

To make the timeline a little more fun, this movie takes place "5 years after the events of Camp Crystal Lake," which would mean this 1981 movie takes place in 1984.  It's a future movie.

Ginny (Amy Steel) is a strong, smart, and capable Final Girl.  Admittedly she does pee herself while hiding under a bed when a rat runs by her face, but in the very next moment she's using a chainsaw against Jason and smashes a chair over his back, wrestling-style.  Like I said, strong and capable.  She is without a doubt one of the better Final Girls in the Friday series, and may even be able to lay claim to being the best.  Let's be honest, Ginny rocks!

Another great shocker ending (and man, the Friday movies sure do love their slow-motion don't they?) and it's awesome, even though the final Jason makeup has a half mullet, which is weird...

Trailer time, more counting fun:


Other stuff:

Crazy Ralph the doomsayer pops up again in this one, but he's less of a red herring and more of a special guest star.

Harry Manfredini provides the score again, and this one is less inspired by Herrmann's Psycho (1960) while still having a classic feel to it.  The "ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma" effect is still what makes it a Friday the 13th movie.


The 2nd protagonist is Paul (John Furey), who proves himself to be the ineffectual type against Jason, getting his ass handed to him two times.

The guy on the left fights Jason twice and lives to tell about it while the guy on the right gets really drunk and stays in town and avoids the slaughter.  You wouldn't think that by looking at either of them.

The practical joker character shows up again in this one, embodied by the gangly and goofy Ted (Stu Charno), but the movie does a disservice by not killing him.  He's a rare instance of a featured character in a Friday film that manages to avoid the carnage.  In fact, the front half of the movie is loaded with counselors (they're attending a "counselor training" session that Paul and Ginny are giving) but right before the storm hits, about a dozen of them head to town to drink at the local bar.

Most of them aren't seen again in the movie, and not in a "they were never seen again" ominous kind of way, just in a, "your presence isn't needed for this movie" kind of way.  I think Friday Part 2 misses the boat by not having a higher body count than the first film (they both have 10) and waylaying this group of counselors-in-training.

Check out Jason's thumb here.  Looks like he smashed it in a car door.  Ouch!

Normally I would go deep into production history and cast bios of these movies, but instead I'm going to refer you to two books for all your Friday the 13th needs:  Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th by Peter M. Bracke, published by Titan Books, which is chock full of interviews, and Making Friday the 13th: The Legend of Camp Blood by David Grove from the fine folks over at FAB Press.  I'm reading Grove's book right now, it is fantastic.  Both books are excellent are contain a wealth of information and interviews, pretty much everything you need to know in regards to the Friday the 13th movies.  Check 'em out.