Review: Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 3 on Paramount DVD

So bad it’s good, or so bad it’s mind-numbing? You decide.

Friday the 13th Part 3Even though only one day has passed between Friday the 13th Part 2 and this third offering in the franchise, the entire world has changed. The horny teenagers all seem like banal, plastic, eager-to-please refugees from a sitcom, desperately hoping with their every line of dialogue for a canned laugh. When they venture into town in an ostentatious bright yellow Volkswagen bug, they’re harangued by lazy, good-for-nothing hick storekeepers who don’t accept food stamps, thank you, and by motorcycle gang members who seem like they belong in the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

Everything seems like a hasty caricature, painted in the gauche bright colors that we associate with 1980s excess. Even our resident monster has morphed, not unlike John Rambo’s transformation from grim lone wolf in First Blood to steroid-pumped, patriotic American avenger of the Rambo sequels. Lumbering, deformed maniac Jason Voorhees (Richard Brooker) has gone from a scrawny little mutant farm boy in overalls into a hulking goon, shaved completely bald and looking like a former convict-turned-gas-station attendant.

Shot in such a way to capitalize on the brief fad of Reagan-era 3D movies, there’s less memorable POV shots from the killer and more images from the perspective of the victims, as Jason shoots spear guns directly at us, jumps through windows and over furniture toward the screen, and squeezes one victim’s heads until their eyeballs pop out of their sockets and hurtle through the air. At any given opportunity, the victims similarly overcompensate toward the lens with juggling acts, dangling yo-yos, and athletic handstands.

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But easily the weirdest moment is the long, talky sequence where the film’s prim heroine, Chris (Dana Kimmell), shares a secret with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Rick (Paul Kratka). One night after a fight with her parents that ended with an unforgivable slap in the face, she punished them by fleeing into the deep, dark woods. Once there, she encountered a grotesque, almost inhuman man (guess who?), and if this macabre power-ballad-style monologue weren’t enough, Friday the 13th Part 3 cuts to a rape-fantasy flashback where our final girl crawls through weeds as Jason clutches at her leg. The scene plays out like a fairy tale on a therapist’s couch. Who knew that the characters in lowest-common-denominator pulp horror would find themselves saddled with Freudian hang-ups?

Image/Sound

Don’t bother trying to watch the 3D version with the accompanying set of red-and-blue glasses. The transfer is unwatchable in its murkiness. Stick to the 2D version, which is cleaner than the deluxe editions of the first two films. The audio tracks are perfectly modulated and clear.

Extras

For a deluxe edition, there’s not much here in the way of special features. In addition to a free pair of 3D glasses, there’s a theatrical trailer with gleefully lurid, ominously-voiced narration (“You can’t stop him.you can’t fight him.Jason will come to you!”)

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Overall

How do you like grooving to the cheesy synthesizer dance beats that open and close the film? Or the nuanced dialogue: “Well, first we take our clothes off, then you get on top of me or I can get on top of you.” “I know how to do it, but I mean.in a hammock?” So bad it’s good, or so bad it’s mind-numbing? You decide.

Score: 
 Cast: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage, Jeffrey Rogers, Richard Brooker  Director: Steve Miner  Screenwriter: Martin Kitrosser, Carol Watson  Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment  Running Time: 95 min  Rating: R  Year: 1982  Release Date: February 3, 2009  Buy: Video

Jeremiah Kipp

Jeremiah Kipp is a New York City based writer, producer and director with over ten years experience creating narrative and commercial films.

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