Friday the 13th Part III (1982) - Piece 1

No doubt out of the Friday the 13^th films that I have watched the most the last ten years, Part III (1982) has to be among the top three if not #1. It isn’t that it is the best but for whatever reason I find it so easy to watch and you’d think I would tire of it.

 There are certain things I guess that might explain why I can turn to it or pop it in the DVD player and watch it without much difficulty. You will never get me to admit that it is necessarily the best of the franchise but it has certainly climbed up the list since I watched it back in the early 90s (I do recall an Up All Night that I might have seen it on when I was a young teenager).

Brooker’s Jason does seem to have his fans, too. I don’t mind him, but I prefer Ted and Kane in the grand order of hockey-masked Voorhees. I really like the opening of the film before the next batch of victims is really introduced.

 I fast forward through the previous film’s footage, admittedly, because I’ve seen it and have further use for it. But I really liked how Joseph Zito continued from the film in the next one and how Part III (1982) gave us a follow-up to Part 2 (1981). There’s a brief but emphasized scene where Dana Kimmell’s Chris is driving her van with friends inside (including two stoners who appear to be older that the rest of them; how are they friends with Chris, these hippies from the previous decade?) smoking pot (the friends, not Chris) when police running their blue lights and sirens emerge and eventually pass her. The gang gobbles up in a panic all the marijuana but the police aren’t interested in their van…they are instead about to pull up to the camp counselor center cabins from Part 2. As the van drives past, Chris’ eyes hang on that scene as a body is carted to the paramedics’ ambulance. It is a nice touch.

As was this “hick” couple who run the local grocery/gas station not too far from that same camp counselor training center, as Miner’s voice comes across a news broadcast regarding “8 unnamed victims found, with more anticipated to be eventually located”.

These moments offer continuity as well as establish that these introduced characters in Part III will soon be just as effected by the same killer as Part 2. I also liked how Miner uses the broadcast to paint a muddled picture about the killer (still at large, Jason Voorhees) and his carnage.

When Miner replays the previous film’s end and shows Jason getting up off the floor, leaving his shack in the woods, it gives us that moment before the window break jump scare involving Ginny (and the missing Paul). Jason then takes interest in the hick couple, uses the sheets on the clothing line as “coverage” (always reminding me of Halloween (1978) and Michael looking up at Laurie Strode) while lurking about.

I really like Miner’s coverage of Jason as a perpetrator moving about the grounds as the couple go about the routine, the husband eating food from his store while the wife tends to the clothes, gripes at her man for eating bad food and allowing the rabbits to go loose, and knits in her living room as the broadcast informs about a body count both will soon join. But with Chris looking on at the cabin below as she drives to “Higgins Haven”, Miner reminds us of what happened and how this will not be the end of Jason’s violent activities.