Jason revives his wounds after Ginny Field put a machete through his left shoulder down to the chest. A group of college students hang out at a cabin near Crystal Lake during their vacation and Jason goes on a killing spree once again.
Blaine: “Friday the 13th” co-creator Sean Cunningham didn’t have a sequel in mind after the first movie because everyone was dead including the killer, Mrs. Voorhees. He couldn’t understand how there could be a sequel after Alice used a machete to chop Mrs. Voorhees’ head off. Paramount Pictures thought of her son, Jason Voorhees, being the killer in the next one. The creators had informed the executives at Paramount that Jason had drowned to his death when he was a kid, but Paramount felt they could change all that. They thought that Jason had found a way to survive, got to shore and had been living the rest of his life in the woods. Tom Savini, the man who created the death sequences for the first “Friday the 13th” movie, thought that was odd that Jason had been living in the woods for the past 35 years and not one person has seen him. “Friday the 13th Part II” was released a year after the first one and after Part II’s success at the box office Paramount Pictures wanted to proceed with another “Friday the 13th”. They were going to bring back Ginny Field, the final girl of “Friday the 13th Part II”, and have her in a mental hospital after dealing with Jason. Jason would want revenge against Ginny and track her down to the hospital she is in. They were going to call it “Friday the 13th meets Cuckoo’s Nest”. Amy Steel, the actress who played Ginny Field, had passed on the project because she wanted to do other things and she didn’t have time for it. So they didn’t go with the idea of Jason going after Ginny or being in a mental hospital. New writers were brought in to develop the script for the third installment to the “Friday the 13th” franchise. The thing the producers wanted the most for the third movie was for it to be shot in 3D so that when the audience saw it Jason would come right out at them.
Once again they looked for an ensemble of youthful actors to play the murdered victims. The final girl would be a brunette named Chris Higgins, played by Dana Kimmell. The producers saw Dana Kimmell in the horror film “Sweet Sixteen” and thought she would be perfect for the lead role in “Friday the 13th Part III”. She didn’t have to audition for the part. The other actors had no idea what kind of movie they were being interviewed for. They thought they were auditioning for a movie called “Crystal Japan”, but it wasn’t till after they were cast that they were informed it was a “Friday the 13th” movie. Director Steve Miner wanted Jason to be more taller and athletic. He had hired Richard Brooker to portray the character after seeing how tall he was. Richard Brooker would be in the makeup chair for six hours while the makeup department was turning him into Jason Voorhees. The problem was when they finished applying all the makeup on Richard it was lunch time and he could eat with that makeup on him. Richard’s food would be all mashed up and he would have to eat it by sucking the mashed food through a straw. Jason also needed a new look. He’s a mongoloid and in “Friday the 13th Part II" he covered his face up with a potato sack. They had to get rid of the sack because it reminded them too much of “The Elephant Man”. They needed Jason to wear something else over his face. They did a lot of designs for a mask he could wear and then finally they noticed one of the crew members had a hockey mask with him so they tried that. They thought the hockey mask was a great new look for Jason and that look stuck with Jason for the rest of the franchise.
The kids of this movie are unaware of the murders that have happened at the training camp. They don’t watch the news because they are too busy having fun instead of protecting themselves for whatever is out there. “Friday the 13th Part III” was the very first movie to have been shot with a 3D camera. It was a very difficult camera to use at the time because it had never been used before. It would take hours to set it up for a shot and the actors had to sit down and wait until then. What was difficult for the actors was to be in the right position in order to make the 3D look good. They shot some tests using the 3D camera while they were shooting the movie. They had to do several takes because a lot of the 3D shots weren’t that great.
Chris Higgins is the type of character who is very different from the other kids in the group she is with. She was almost molested two years earlier by a creepy guy and ever since then she has been keeping a very close eye of anything strange that goes on. That creepy man is later revealed to be Jason. Originally Jason was supposed to molest Chris in that flashback, but Dana Kimmel thought that might be taking things too far. Dana and director Steve Miner would argue about what Chris should be like. Dana wanted Chris to be someone who has a certain kind of purity to her. She also wanted Chris to be a very positive character and to be stronger than she looks.
One of the deaths in “Friday the 13th Part III” shows this guy doing a handstand. Then Jason shows up and cuts him in half from the crotch down to his waist. The whole body was a fake when Jason cuts it in half and it was shot from a low angle. The camera would be on the bottom of this glass floor that they had made just for that shot. I really like the head crush death scene. What happens is Chris can’t find her boyfriend. She calls his name, but he doesn’t answer and that’s because Jason is covering his mouth while holding him tightly. Chris goes back into the house and then Jason crushes the boyfriend’s head and his left eyeball pops out. The audience screamed when they saw that scene in 3D. I like it because it not only shows how strong Jason is, but it’s different from him stabbing someone with a sharp object.
There were two different endings that were shot. One would show Chris Higgins going up to the front door of the house after she puts an axe in Jason’s head in the middle of the night. It’s morning now and as she goes to that door Jason comes through it with a machete and decapitates her….of course it’s a dream. That ending never got added to the movie because they didn’t think it was that great. They came up with another dream sequence where Chris is on a boat in the lake, Jason is in the house, sees Chris through one of the windows, goes after her, but when she turns around he is gone. Then a corpse comes out of the river and pulls Chris down with her. That corpse is supposed to be Mrs. Voorhees. I would have gone with that decapitated ending instead of the corpse one because it reminds me of how the first “Friday the 13th” ended with young Jason rising up from the water and taking Alice down with him. Chris gets traumatized after encountering Jason for the second time and seeing the dead bodies of all of her friends. She is never seen again after that. “Friday the 13th Part III” became the highest grossing movie of 1982 thanks to it’s 3D effect. It beat other successful movies that came out that year such as Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” It also opened doors for future 3D movies.
My rating on “Friday the 13th Part III” is four and a half out of five stars.
