Friday the Thirteenth Part 3

Friday the Thirteenth Part 3 was a hugely successful slasher-cum-splatter flick that knocked E.T.'s wrinkled alien ass off the top of the box-office turdpile back around the time I was developing pubes. All of that is more information than you need obviously but, suffice it to say, it was the El Numero Uno monster rave-'em-up right behind the ill-starred, (even cursed, some say), Poltergeist, back in 1982.

I won't go into the story much because I don't think it matters, but, Jason (Richard Brooker) comes back (big surprise), and grabs some new duds (he was walking around in some Farmer John drawers and a cheap Elephant Man knock-off mask) after an opener where we're treated to the end of the last picture. The opener has a cool Creepshow severed head birthday cake thing going, but then we get to Ms. Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel) and her unlikely group of friends going to Camp Higgins or Higgins House or wherever, and everyone is yo-yo tossing in 3d, and they don't even snap, dig? And that's peculiar as you or I certainly would feel apprehensive after coming across some old fart knocker lying in the road (David Wiley), who babbles some Walt Gorney "Crazy Ralph" shit before holding out a 3d eyeball. Ewww. (Did I mention, by the way, that this film takes excruciating and laughable pains to remind everyone in the audience wearing annoying multicolored plastic glasses that this film is, most definitely, in THREE-FUCKIN'-DEE? Baseball bats, fists, pitchforks, and machetes, all rip-roaring out at a shocked audience. Does it improve the picture? You tell me.)

From Machete to Confetti

I hate to act as if any of these characters are anything more than underdeveloped stock puppets for a cheap stalk-and-slash flick, but Shelly (Larry Zerner) is one that somewhat stands out in a vaguely Arnold Horshack meets Evil Ed way. He's plump, has curly hair, and a vaguely Jewish mien, and he's addicted to pulling pranks wherein he's either a horror slasher or the victim (hatchet in the head, hockey mask, and heavy breathing, you get the picture). He and Vera, his wildly unthrilled "blind date" for this cinematic escapade, run afoul of some Troma-level bikers (Nick Savage, Gloria Charles, and Kevin O'Brien) who get their comeuppance not even midway through the picture. But one of them returns, but, poor bastard, even at the end, he doesn't fare very well.

We have a snuggly family funfest of gory mutilations and killings here: arrow in the eye, pitchfork in the gut, red-hot poker in the gut, hack-n-slash dismemberment. It's the Misfits' fabled "Book of Cruel" from their epic thrash punk doggerel "All Hell Breaks Loose." Jason works overtime, and here, for the first time, he has his trademark hockey mask.

The film "makes homage" to other, superior cinema: a shower scene is toyed with repeatedly, but, like a circling, winding snake, slithers back into the corner, and all we get are a shot of some pretty impressive soapy wet breasts. Later, we get a Shining visual reference and, for a moment, we think the masked killer is gonna pull off his mask and exclaim, "Here's Jason!" But, no dice (Just some slice-n-dice.)

So all these kids are killed in twisted ways because they all decided to go to a house uncomfortably close to the site of mass murder and then they meet some bikers, and the masked killer (who is very ugly and EC Comics zombie-like, or maybe a refugee from Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn) does masked killer shit. None of these people look as if they'd ever associate with each other in real life. The bikers are stock, the teens are stock, and the killings are stock. Now what of it?

It's all entertaining as all Hell. And, in the end, that's all that really matters. Isn't it?

(That and a shot of the juiciest set of boobies this side of Sunnyvale CA. Norman, is that you?)

Directed by Steve "House, Warlock" Miner, and produced by Frank "Micki and Ryan" Mancuso Jr., who created one of the greatest horror TV shows of the late 1980s. And can you guess what that series might be?

Friday The 13th Part 3 (1982) - Official Trailer

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