Friday the 13th Part III

Friday the 13th Part III (or 3-D) (1982)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Directed by: Steve Miner

Starring: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage, Larry Zerner, Richard Brooker

From: Paramount

I decided to keep it simple last night by watching once again the 3-D version of this film. A few years ago it was finally released in that format, and even though you have to watch it with the old-school red and blue lens and it likely will screw up your vision for a few minutes afterwards, if you watch the DVD version upconverted on a Blu-Ray player, it’s not so bad; on a regular DVD player, it’s not so good but upconverted, it’s not that bad, although it is inconsistent. I hear the Blu-Ray version isn’t much better in terms of image.

Anyhow, this is a movie I’ve always enjoyed despite itself. It’s a typical Jason movie, meaning bad acting, goofy moments, implausible things, and yet at least in this case it was a fun time. If only I could see this one day on the big screen… as for the plot, it doesn’t really matter. A bunch of young people, including a girl with baggage (Kimmell), a Latina lady, a chubby nerd (Zerner), a blatant ripoff of Tommy Chong, and more end up at a rural house on Crystal Lake. Jason acquires his hockey mask and raises hell, unleashing bloody kills that use the 3-D format rather well. The movie is technically poor but in this case it don’t matter.

From the tremendously goofy and yet great theme song to the movie (an extended version can be found on YouTube) to the near-constant reminders that the film is indeed in 3-D-quite often, there are gags where stuff is hurled towards the screen-I can’t help but enjoy this. I mean, there is a trio of bikers who you see for a short amount of time, and they appear to be there only to kill time, but again I can’t hate. If only all of the movies in the series could have been like this, and if only the poor-quality movie from ’09 could have been like this too.

There are also usually some nice kills to see, which is good. I wish that the original X-rated print would have been saved for future generations like us to view, but lack of foresight ruins a lot of things, including that. But anyhow, you can go look and laugh at the fact that there’s a Wiki for this series, and you can check out the page for this movie, if you wish.

I’ll be back Wednesday night.