Friday The 13th Part 3

The announcement of a new 13th, one that will go back to the series' roots, made me anxious to watch the third entry of the series last night. It's has always been my fave of the entire series. It still creeps the fuck out of me, particularly those flashbacks of Chris running away from an unmasked Jason in the woods, and the final scene of Jason looking out the window and running toward the lake (even if it was her imagination).

What the film succeeds in is creating the feeling of loneliness and unbridled atmosphere. Once Chris' friends are offed, she's all alone on the camp ground, with gusting winds, dimmed lights, and a body count brought back from hiding. The dude who plays Jason doesn't hold back. The history between him and Chris only adds to the tension, and he makes sure that she's aware of just who it is under that hockey mask.

When Corey Feldman is the best thing you can say about a film, or the one thing you remember the most, the blood is already written on the wall.

And an obvious inspiration for Mini-Me.

All of this talk about THE FINAL CHAPTER made me put that one in my player tonight. It's probably the one film in the series that gets the least amount of airings on cable TV. My guess is the nudity level is too much for the censors to play around with. I dunno. It's one of the stronger films in the series, and the gore is at its best. But I just don't feel the same weariness and terror that the third one so deftly creates. Plus the cast in the third is tough to beat when you're talking socially inept, dysfunctional, and sexually frustrated.

To be fair, I was gonna refer to the film as such, but since I haven't experienced the film in true 3-D, it just wouldn't be accurate.

I am old enough to have seen FREDDY'S DEAD in 3-D in a theater. I gave away my 3-D glasses to someone on the school bus. I wonder how much those are worth today?

I don't give a fuck about continuity. I know I don't watch these films in order, and when it comes to the horror genre, continuity means very little to me.

The series' biggest continuity snafu occurred before Part 3, anyway. The Jason we see in Part 1 resembles a deformed child. Then in Part 2, when he kills Alice in her home, and which takes place about a mere month later from the events in the original film, he's suddenly tall, overbearing, and physically capable.

It's crossed my mind about that final sequence in Part 1 being a dream, but I was never entirely sure. Alice asks those police officials about the remains of the boy's body in the lake where they saved her, so the film's vagueness makes it sound like Jason's physicality was very similar to that of the boy in the hazy image projected at the end of the film.

Even so, like I said before, the continuity in these films is a moot issue for me.

EDIT: I put in JASON LIVES in my player last night, too. For pure black comedy, it's the best of the series.

In Part 2 the camp counselor pretty much says the same thing (with the exception of the bit about Jason's dad, of course) when he's trying to scare the kids around the campfire. From watching only Part 1, you'd be led to believe that he died of the drowning. Even in JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, the Jason drowning because he didn't know how to swim theme plays an integral plot point in the film (whatever plot these films can muster up, that is).

Speaking of JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, I had to put that one in my player last night (I pretty much watched the entire series in a few nights without having any intention to do so...still a fun series to wade through). What's upsetting is that it had the potential to be the best of the series by far, and it's all thrown away by the confines of a boring ship (and I'm aware that budget constraints were the reason the majority of the film takes place on the ship, but then why use such a misleading title?). Once they reach Manhattan, the menace isn't what it could be--too much time spent in alley ways, subways, and sewers. I wanted to see a genuine Jason rampage on Manhattan. Also, Jason's ability to appear and disappear while tracking distance in the wink of an eye is just too unbelievably hokey for any ounce of tension to creep through. I mean, I know the previous films weren't exactly realistic in how Jason was always able to reach his victims with just simple walking, but this film takes it to an entirely new level when he's appearing in FRONT of his victims with no consideration of time and space whatsoever.