"Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D"(1982)d/Steve Miner

To fully enjoy my culled screenshots for this review,you're gonna need you a pair of old school anaglyph(red and blue)3D glasses,which,upon wearing,the entry's cheesiness will jump out of the monitor at ya...or not.If not,then you'll kinda get the feeling most of the audience did back in 1982,myself included,with the new,(not-so)improved stereovision 3D process of the seventies and eighties.Well,at least the black-lensed glasses were cooler-looking.Riding the wave of 3D resurgence that surfaced in the early eighties with titles like Comin at Ya!,Parasite,Jaws3D,Amityville 3D,and re-releases of fare like House of Wax,and Flesh for Frankenstein,Miner and company returned to send off their unexpected cash cow with a low-budgeted bang,complete with the illusion of depth perception,until the box office draw dwarfed the take for the previous picture,ensuring yet another final Friday movie two years later,until...yeah,you can see the pattern here.Other than the gimmicky 3D,which I always enjoyed as a kid,no matter how awful the movie was,headaches and eye strain excluded,I can't say there's all that much to dig about this one.Granted,the stunning Tracie Savage is on board here at her "dishiest"(sorry,boys,no 3D),and this flick boasts of the historic moment when Jason first met goalie mask,but overall,this effort feels a lot lazier than usual.The gore and Jason makeup effects look pretty bad,Manfredini's disco/funk/retro main theme is equally horrendous(I can imagine that side-ponytailed black chick on Solid Gold popping and locking to this),and well,then there's Shelly(Larry "That's an EYEBALL!" Zerner),far and away,the most pathetically fat and annnoying character to ever be vanquished by a Voorhees on the silver screen.Not my least favorite Friday film,but certainly in the bottom five of the series.

The mayhem maven of Higgins Haven;Ali(Nick Savage)-1,Van Window-0.
We pick up where Pt. Two left off,sorta.Jason,with Ginny's machete still cleaved in his shoulder,gets up,brushes himself off,and somewhere between Two's end credits and Three's opening sequence has managed to lose the Nuge-esque retard half-mane and his hillbilly getup,and score himself a nice clean workshirt and khaki pants.He immediately sets upon a storekeeper who shoplifts his own stuff and cuddles bunnies,and the castrating bitch he's married to.Mercy killing,no doubt.A news reporter(Miner himself)relates that Ginny has survived her attacks and the police are on the look out for a killer.Dear Mr. Movie Motivation,are you trying to tell me that Jason completely changed his look(minus the fuckface,of course)to throw the cops off his trail?Chris(Dana Kimmel) is rounding up a gaggle of walking stereotypes she calls friends to accompany her on a weekend van-trip(everything's better in a van,isn't it?)to her parents' summer home,exorcising the bitter memories of an attack in the surrounding woods two years ago by...Jason?Okay,so two years ago,you're telling me via sloppy flashback that when Jason was in grungy mountain mongoloid-mode,he attacks a girl,but is rocking the cleanly bald hydro-head and work outfit(so much thought went into this labour of love,as you can see)and not only did she survive,but she's coming back for more with a van full of cartoonish disposables?A stoner couple that's a throwback to the mid-seventies,an attractive hispanic girl with a temper,a horny young guy and his pregnant girlfriend,and of course,there's Shelly,the fat,awkward,self-deprecating wallflower with the Jew-fro and a bag of pranks and gags.Kill them now,Jason.Kill every one of them now,please.I beseech you!

I surmise that Rick(Paul Kratka)'s demise is nigh as one of his eyes flies through the sky.
First they encounter Abel,this year's model of Crazy Ralph,only more biblical and with more disembodied eyes in his pocket.When they arrive at Higgins Haven,they're met by Chris' boyfriend,Rick,while Jason,who's already there in the barn,shows impeccable timing.Shelly and hot tamale Vera go to the store,but are harrassed by the most unlikely biker gang to grace the screen in ages(one looks punk,and the other two look,well,pretty 80's coked out Rick James-esque,bitch).After a flaccid rumble that ends with Shelly driving over one of their parked motorcycles(someone's always doing that to bikers in the movies,ever notice?),the bikers descend upon the summer home,only to get snuffed by Jason in the barn.When Chris and Rick catch up by going for a leisurely ride,Jason finally exits the barn and puts the rest of these clowns out of their misery.He cuts Shelly's throat,donning the hapless fat loser's goalie mask,then fires a spear across the dock into Vera's open ojo.Inside,Andy and Debbie(Savage)have just hammock-fucked(!),and while he handstands his way to the fridge for beer,Jason splits him in half with a machete like an atom of jackoff-ogen.Debbie eats knifeblade from under the hammock a la Kevin Bacon in the original.He smashes Chuck the burned-out Tommy Chong lookalike into the fuse box and electrocutes him.Chuck's altitude-enhanced other half,Chili takes a red hot poker to the labonza.When Chris and Rick return to an empty house,she sends him out to look around for everyone,but all he finds(in the best moment of the movie,really)is head-squashing,eye-popping death at the hands of that guy in the hockey mask.He chases her around until she leads him into the barn,and after unsuccessfully hanging him,he lifts his mask,revealing himself as her previous attacker.Before he can further terrorize his new favorite,a half-dead Ali the biker springs up to get his hand lopped off,then takes an axe to the misshapen domepiece from Chris while he's preoccupied hacking the bejeezus out of the lifeless soul-roller.She climbs into a canoe and falls asleep in it as it drifts out to the middle of the lake.Whe she awakens,she is terrified to see a bloodied,unmasked Jason alive in a window of the house staring out at her.As he rushes out to attack her once again,the decaying corpse of Mrs. Voorhees springs up from the depths behind her,dragging her under.When the police haul her off,she's clearly lost her marbles in a state of perma-crackers.Jason lies in the barn,with the axe jutting out of his head.Is he dead?If not,what combination of surprise-dunking Voorhees family member plus canoe on the lake will they dream up for the finale of Part Four?You'll have to stay tuned to find out...

Fox(Gloria Charles)gets forked up.
For some blatant and tragic examples of why you shouldn't huff butane on a regular basis,check out the user reviews of this on bloody-disgusting.com,where in some cases,"user" is to be taken quite literally.Dana Kimmel actually sunk lower the next year in Chuck Norris' borefest Lone Wolf McQuade(1983),before eventually bowing out of movies altogether,taking the moral high ground and speaking out against R rated movies.Too late,sister,you were in "Friday the 13th Pt 3 in 3D",ferchrissakes.The lovely Tracie Savage,who earlier had a recurring role on tv's Little House on the Prairie,ended up becoming a high profile news anchor,covering the famous OJ Simpson and Heidi Fleiss trials.Zerner is now an entertainment lawyer with a penchant for television game shows.At least he isn't Shelly anymore.The following year,the 3D phenomena was again temporarily laid to rest with the particularly awful third Jaws movie,which I also endured in the theater.Two years later,Friday the 13th Part Four was released,also titled "The Final Chapter",bringing back FX Whiz Tom Savini to violently off his own twisted creation,but you can see how well that worked out.We'll return to Crystal Lake for more entries at a later date,but frankly,I'm all Ki!Ki!Ki! Ma!Ma!Ma!'ed out at the moment.Next up,another (better)slasher in the same vein...

Voorhees(Richard Brooker),a jolly good fellow.Yeah,sorry.

"Friday the 13th Part Two"(1981)d/Steve Miner

Impressive poster art,you guys went all out.Is that Frazetta?
The summer of 1981 was a pretty good time to be a kid like me.Me and the boys spent endless hours and dollars(from this huge-schnozzed kid,who will remain nameless here,that stole beaucoup bucks from his own granny just to make friends with everybody)at arcades like Davey's Mine and Aladdin's on classic video games,I had just experienced my first winning season as a Lions fan,mainly on account of the legs of Heisman winner,Billy Sims,and we were all unplugging the jukebox,doing ourselves a collective favour.Best of all,it was the summer of horror movies galore,and the American Theater was mere blocks away.It seemed like every week there was a new slasher being served up,and multiple times every week we all paid to see the latest gloriously grotesque feature,only getting kicked the fuck out a few times in the process.Tonight's entry was on our must-see list,after thoroughly enjoying the living shit out of Maestro Savini's horrendous handiwork in the first film...
"Main Entry: 1for·mu·la
Pronunciation: \ˈfȯr-myə-lə\
Function: noun
4 : a customary or set form or method allowing little room for originality"
To say the producers rigidly stuck to the formula for commercial success early on in this series,is like saying Jayne Mansfield had two assets she'll always be remembered for.If you can overlook minor aspects like plotline or continuity,you'll be entertained for the better part of an hour and a half by several diversely idiotic teenaged camp counselors who overlook the fact that they're partying with booze and drugs and having wanton sex ridiculously close to where it all started(and continues to continue,over and over again,at least until the box office profits dry up).In the first sequel to Friday the 13th,director Steve Miner takes the reigns of the franchise,which it seems,was already on auto-pilot,and pushes wheelbarrows of money to the bank for Paramount Pictures,taking the joke ending of the first film,and creating a lucrative franchise around him,which is currently on the SECOND Friday the 13th Pt. 2,scheduled for release in 2013.Now that's some scary shit,right there.

Insert your own "impaling Marta Kober" joke,dripping with innuendo,here.I've made too many over the years already.
Two months after Alice(Adrienne King)managed to survive the vicious onslaught at Camp Crystal Lake,she eats temple-inserted icepick death from an unknown assailant.Five years later,Paul(John Furey)tells a group of stupid kids around a campfire who've gathered for "counselor training" a short walk away from the original site of Camp Blood,the terrible tale of Mrs. Voorhees' deceased mongoloid son,Jason Voorhees,who,apparently,after fatally drowning,climbed right out of Crystal Lake alive,dried himself off,and built a shack in the woods for himself,where he's survived for two decades,undetected by society altogether,mere yards away,now poised to take revenge against all camp counselors,both for his mother's beheading and letting his ass drown as a child.Just then,unfunny jerkoff,Ted jumps out in a rubber mask and loincloth with a spear and scares them all.That's a pretty good joke,guys.Oh wait,that's also the premise to this movie?I guess it's feasible if you also buy a now-hulking murderous retard standing idly by in the woods,watching somebody cleave his mommy's domepiece off her shoulders without tagging himself in and effing one young girl who's nearly in shock right the eff up,like he was about to do hundreds of times over afterwards.And the same hydrocephallic horror icon figuring out where Alice has relocated herself,then walked there(unnoticed,mind you) just to snuff her candle.I don't know if I can swallow all of...wait a sec,is that the delicious and talented Marta Kober in a bikini top?You know,the whole damned thing just got more feasible to me.Local bicycling loony,Crazy Ralph gets garrotted from behind a tree(unlike Captain Kidd,who was gibbetted).A cop in pursuit of a sackheaded oaf crossing the road eats cranially inflicted claw hammer death in Jay-Jay's mid-woods shit shack.Then the counselors-to-be,shagged,fagged,and fashed from all the strenuous training(translation:looking for Camp Blood,boogieing,jogging in the woods,swimming,and a crucial bbq...I'd be crying "Uncle!" over here,myself),decide to do a little bit of battery recharging in town,in the form of getting shitface knackered at the pub,while several vict...errr,kids stay behind to enjoy some marijuana and intercourse instead.Terry the hardbody goes skinny-dipping in the lake,while Scott the pompous douchebag steals her clothes,inadvertantly getting himself caught in an Apache foothold trap(!) in the process.Okay,so Jason the deformed mongoloid set that?Just checking.

Mark(Tom McBride),about to get fucked,instead,gets fucked.
Anyway,Scott gets an extra mouth on his neck,free of charge,and Terry joins him when she discovers his lifeless body upside down,swaying to and fro in the moonlight.Sandra(Kober)and Jeff,ill from prolonged dopesmoking and boogieing,retire upstairs to try pushing each other to the hospital while naked in bed.They get shishka-fucked through the mattress by Ted's trusty spear.Vickie the charity fuck,about to give Mark the crippled arm wrestler a piece of pity-pussy,gets stabbed up in Psycho(1960)-fashion,while her wheeled sex interest eats machete face-bissection before rolling down the stairs.Paul returns from the bar with Ginny the new Final Girl,and discover the bloody shennanigans unfolding at the camp.Paul gets attacked by the sackheaded oaf in bib overalls(where'd he get those?),and Ginny discovers Crazy Ralph's cadaver,then jumps out the fuckin' window.The homicidal John Merrick lookalike gives chase through the woods,when she stumbles across his craptastic abode,littered with his bloody trophies,and a candle-lit altar to his dead mother,with her severed,rotting head as the centerpiece.Ginny throws on Mrs. V's bloody,moldy sweater and tries to dupe the deformed maniac into thinking she has returned to him,but he spots the head with his good eye,still on the altar.Paul shows up,struggles with the burlapped bastard,Ginny picks up a stray machete and plants it in the masked monster's shoulder,apparently doing him in.Back at the cabin,the ugly fuck mirrors the trick ending of the first movie only on land this time,crashing through a window in slow-mo,grabbing a screaming Ginny.As she's being gurneyed into an ambulance,was it a terrible dream?Where's Paul?Did they really try and pass this off as a serious attempt at a different movie?

Jason(Warrington Gillette)loves giving those surprise hugs,doesn't he?
If you put cardboard cut out maskies of the first film's cast over the faces of the cast of the second film,it probably wouldn't make for any more of a cookie cutter feel here.Not that I mind,really,it is what it is.Miner does an adequate job injecting plenty of jump scares and tense moments throughout,and quite a few paens to Bava and Hitchcock as well.Sadly,most of Carl Fullerton's excellent gore effects work remains missing from all dvd releases thus far,including the latest special edition(interestingly,most of the other films have either restored gore or a deleted scenes feature).How many more discs are we gonna have to buy of this thing before we get the fully intact bloody payoff already,Paramount?You could probably meet most of the cast at upcoming horror conventions if you sell off some of your 3 3/4" action figure collection as a budget for the weekend.Just sayin'.Of note,the fantastic Betsy Palmer payed her light bill with a memorable return cameo here,whereas the delicious and talented Marta Kober seems to have fallen off the radar sometime in the nineties after scoring roles in fare like Rad and Slumber Party Massacre 3.Come back,Marta,my adolescent fantasies just aren't the same without you,baby.

From "What's My Line?" to "Where's my Atlas vertebra?".You've come a long way,Betsy Palmer.