Friday the 13th Part III

Shortly after being sliced with a machete by Ginny Field, a badly injured and unmasked Jason Voorhees goes to a lakefront store for a change of clothes. While there, he murders the store owner, Harold, and his wife, Edna. Meanwhile, Chris Higgins and her friends travel to Higgins Haven, her old home on Crystal Lake, for a summer trip. The gang includes pregnant Debbie, her boyfriend Andy, prankster Shelly, his blind date Vera (who does not reciprocate his feelings), and stoners Chuck and Chili. After running into a man named Abel, who warns them to turn back, the gang meets Chris' boyfriend, Rick, at their destination. At a convenience store, Shelly and Vera get into a confrontation with bikers Ali, Fox, and Loco. Shelly gets in the car and knocks down their motorcycles. While the car gets their front window broken with a chain, Shelly returns to knock down the bike again, impressing Vera. Later, the bikers show up at Higgins Haven, where they siphon gas out of the van and attempt to burn the barn down to get even. Jason, who has been hiding inside the barn, murders Fox and Loco each with a pitchfork before beating Ali unconscious. That night, Chris and Rick head out into the woods, where Chris reveals that she was attacked by a deformed man two years prior, which prompted her to leave Crystal Lake in the first place; the main reason that she returned was to confront her fears. Her overall memory of the incident is unclear. Back at Higgins Haven, a rejected Shelly scares Vera with a hockey mask and then wanders into the barn; Jason emerges wearing Shelly's mask. Vera retrieves Shelly's wallet from under the dock, then is promptly shot in the eye with a speargun. Jason then enters the house and slices a handstanding Andy with a machete. Debbie finishes her shower and rests on a hammock, where Jason thrusts a knife through her chest from beneath. When the power goes out in the house, Chuck goes downstairs to the basement only to be hurled into the fuse box and electrocuted. Chili finds Shelly bleeding to death from a slashed throat, believing it is a joke at first, and Jason impales her with a fire poker. When Rick's car breaks down, Chris and Rick are forced to walk back to the house, only to find it in disarray. Rick steps outside to search the grounds, but Jason grabs him and crushes his skull with his bare hands, making one of his eyes pop out of its socket. Jason then attacks Chris, who narrowly escapes the house and tries to flee in her van. With the van running out of gas, Chris tries to use the van's reserve tank. However, she runs out of time and the wheel falls through the bridge, prompting Chris to enter the barn to hide, only for Jason to attack again. Inside the barn, Chris strikes Jason over the head with a shovel and hangs him. He regains consciousness and temporarily removes his mask to free himself from the noose, allowing Chris to recognize him as the same man who attacked her two years prior. An awoken Ali tries to attack Jason, but Jason quickly finishes him off. The distraction allows Chris to strike Jason in the head with an axe. He staggers momentarily towards her before finally collapsing. Exhausted, Chris pushes a canoe out into the lake and falls asleep. Chris has a nightmare of an unmasked Jason running towards her from the house before disappearing, which then cuts to the decomposing body of Pamela Voorhees, with her head attached, emerging from the lake to pull her in. The following morning, the police arrive and escort a traumatized Chris away from Higgins Haven. Jason's body is shown to be still lying in the barn, seemingly dead. ==Cast==

Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees, Amy Steel as Ginny Field, John Furey as Paul Holt, and Steve Daskewisz as Jason from Part 2 appear in the film in archive footage and are credited for their "special appearance". ==Themes==

In his book Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (2004), the film scholar Jim Harper wrote extensively on the film's final girl character, Chris, who suffers from childhood trauma resulting from sexual assault, which leaves her unable to engage in intimate relationships, although there is no undisputed evidence of what has really happened to her. In the film, Chris' trauma stems from an attack she survived from Jason Voorhees, which leaves her "mentally scarred." According to Jim Harper's interpretation, in comparison to the final girl characters in other contemporaneous slasher films such as Halloween (1978) or A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Chris' failure to engage in sexual relations is a function of trauma as opposed to "repress[ion] or dysfunct[ion]." ==Production==

Screenplay Initially, one of the earlier drafts for Part III was Ginny Field (Amy Steel) from the previous film Friday the 13th Part 2 being sent to a psychiatric hospital and confined there. Suffering from the events of Part 2, she eventually finds out that Jason Voorhees survived from his wound and tracks her down to the hospital, murdering the staff and other patients at the hospital. Another proposed concept focused on Ginny who began learning self-defense and returned to college after surviving her ordeal in the previous film. After finding Paul Holt (John Furey)'s corpse inside her dormitory, she and Ted Bowen (Stu Charno) prepare to track down Voorhees and face him in a final confrontation. At the time, Steel turned down the role due to her involvement in other projects, resulting in significant script changes. Steel recalled: "They really wanted me for Part III. They didn't have a script, but they were just going to show me some sort of outline. Then my agents got involved, and I don't know if it was a money issue or a script issue, but I didn't do it." Screenwriter Ron Kurz, who had written Part 2, was offered to draft a screenplay, but also turned the project down. Casting Screenwriter Popescu said casting was based on looks rather than talent and recalled that his vision of the characters was at significant odds with the cast chosen by director Steve Miner. The house, barn, and lake featured in the film were all custom-built. The house remained on the ranch lot until it burnt down in 2006. Additional photography for the film's grocery store scenes took place at a small market in Green Valley, California. Because of the newness of the 3-D camera lenses, the shooting process was extensive, with the crew sometimes taking hours to set up a shot, and the cast performing multiple takes of scenes in order for the cinematographer to properly capture the 3-D effects. Actor Larry Zerner recalled that perfecting the 3-D effects often superseded the actors' performances: "It quickly became clear that most of the time, the performances didn't matter. When we were shooting the scene at the convenience store with the gang members and I had to throw a wallet at the camera, it was, "Hit the camera!" Then, after ten takes it was "Hit the camera, asshole!"" Actress Tracie Savage echoed this sentiment, stating that "it didn't matter how the lines were delivered." The decision to dress Jason Voorhees in his now-signature hockey mask occurred during a lighting check on set; the film's 3-D effects supervisor Martin Sadoff was a hockey fan, and supplied a Detroit Red Wings goaltender mask to Miner. Miner loved the mask, but during test shots found it was too small. Using a technique called VacuForm, makeup effects director Doug White enlarged the mask and created a new mold to work with. After White finished the molds, art director Terry Ballard placed new red triangles on the mask to give it a unique appearance. Holes were also punched into the mask, and the markings were altered, making it different from Sadoff's original template. There were two prosthetic face masks created for Richard Brooker to wear underneath the hockey mask: One mask was composed of approximately 11 different appliances, and took about six hours to apply to Brooker's face; this mask was used for scenes where the hockey mask was removed. In the scenes where the hockey mask is over the face, a simple head mask was created. This one piece mask would simply slip on over Brooker's head, exposing his face but not the rest of his head. The prosthetic masks worn by Booker were inspired by Tom Savini's original prosthetics used in the conclusion of the first film, in which young Jason makes his first appearance. ==Music==

The film's music was composed by Harry Manfredini, who previously composed the scores of the series' first two installments. A disco theme was also included in the film, co-written by Manfredini and Michael Zager, who shared a credit with a fictional band called Hot Ice. An additional double LP was released by Waxwork Records in 2015, along with other soundtracks in the series. The score was reissued on CD in 2017 alongside Part 2 as a 2-Disc set, using the same 2012 master. On October 10, 2023, La-La Land Records released an expanded edition titled "The Ultimate Cut", remastered from the original source tapes and featuring cues not heard or used in the final film, along with the extended version of the opening theme, titled "Rock Bottom". ==Release==

Theatrical Friday the 13th Part III was released theatrically in the United States on Friday, August 13, 1982. To promote the film, Paramount launched a $3 million marketing campaign. It was the first-ever 3-D film to receive a wide domestic release, opening on 1,079 screens in the United States. It was also released on CED VideoDisc, LaserDisc, and Betamax. The film was reissued by Paramount on VHS in the fall of 1988, and again on September 28, 1994. Paramount later issued a DVD edition, with the film presented only in standard 2-D form, on October 17, 2000. The 2-D version was subsequently included in a box set, titled From Crystal Lake to Manhattan, released in 2004, and featuring the first eight films in the series; this disc features an audio commentary track with several cast members, moderated by historian Peter Bracke. The 3-D version of the film was eventually released on DVD by Paramount in February 2009, and included two pairs of cyan and red 3-D glasses. In June of that year, a "Deluxe Edition" Blu-ray edition (which includes both the 2-D and 3-D versions) was released, also with two pairs of cyan and red 3-D glasses designed to look like Jason's mask. The film was included in a further three Blu-ray sets: Friday the 13th: The Complete Collection released in 2013, Friday the 13th: 8-Movie Collection in 2018 and Shout! Factory's Friday the 13th Collection: Deluxe Edition in 2020 with 4K scan of the original camera negative. ==Reception==

Box office The film grossed $9,406,522 in its opening weekend and broke the opening horror film record held by Friday the 13th (1980). Domestically, the film made a total of $36.7 million. As of 2020, it still stands as the fourth highest-grossing film in the Friday the 13th series and the third best selling in ticket sales; with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold, it is surpassed only by the 1980 original with 14,778,700 tickets and Freddy vs. Jason with 13,701,900 tickets. The film also stands as the tenth highest-grossing R-rated film of 1982, the second-highest grossing horror film of 1982, and the sixth largest box office opening of 1982. While criticizing the plot for being derivative, in a mixed review for The New York Times, film critic Janet Maslin praised the acting of Kimmell, Savage, Jeffrey Rogers, and Catherine Parks, in which she called a major improvement to the acting in the predecessors, and wrote that Miner's use of 3-D filmmaking was innovative and the most professional effort when compared to other films released at the time, stating: "As in each of the other recent 3-D movies, of which this is easily the most professional, there is a lot of time devoted to trying out the gimmick. Titles loom toward you. Yo-yos spin. Popcorn bounces. Snakes dart toward the camera and strike. Eventually, the novelty wears off, and what remains is the now-familiar spectacle of nice, dumb kids being lopped, chopped and perforated." She also felt the film was superior to the prior two films in the series. Richard Schickel of Time magazine wrote: "Maybe all sequels should be made in 3-D... It is all so gruesome that horror turns to humor and fun comes from the appreciation of being cleverly conned by Steve Miner. The way the eyeball of one of Jason's victims pops out of his skull and seems to sail over the audience's head is alone worth buying a ticket and putting on funny glasses." Gene Siskel praised the film's "impressive" 3-D effects, particularly in the opening credits, also noting its slowburn approach, as the "heavy-duty slaughter doesn't come until one hour into the film," but criticized it for "lingering over the impending deaths of the young women, who are stalked by the camera so we find ourselves in the revolting position of stalking them too." The entertainment-trade magazine Variety provided a general consensus, stating, "Friday the 13th was dreadful and took in more than $17 million. Friday the 13th Part 2 was just as bad and took in more than $10 million. Friday the 13th Part 3 is terrible, too." The magazine added, "There are some dandy 3-D sequences, however, of a yo-yo going up and down and popcorn popping." Similarly, TV Guide awarded the film one out of five stars, writing that it "exploits precisely the same formula plot as its predecessors, though the gore is a bit deemphasized, with the special-effects crew concentrating on the nicely done 3-D depth work for a change. It's still trash, however, and also made a ridiculous amount of money." Ted Mahar of The Oregonian felt that the film's 3-D effects were a gimmick that compromised the film's integrity, describing it as "a machine-tooled industrial product made to precise specifications, according to a formula derived from observation and experience, for an absolutely dependable consumer." Accolades The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: • 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains: • Jason Voorhees – Nominated Villain Legacy Friday the 13th Part III has been most noted for its introduction of villain Jason's hockey mask disguise, which was replicated in the following numerous sequels and became an iconic image in American cinema and the horror genre. Film scholar Carol Clover notes that the film has historically been cited as one of the most violent of the series, with a total of fourteen murder sequences. For his appearance in the film, Jason Voorhees was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains as one of the Top 50 Villains. Meslow cites the film's 3-D effects as paving the way for later horror films which also used the technique. ==Novelizations==

The film was novelized twice. The first adaptation was written by Michael Avallone and published in 1982 to coincide with the release of the film, while the second was published in 1988 by Signet. The latter novelization was written by Simon Hawke, who had previously written novelizations for the first, second, and sixth installments in the series. ==Notes==