Paramount Pictures | 1982 | 95 mins | Rated R
Friday the 13th: Part 3 – 3-D has made its way to Blu-ray!
Paramount was ecstatic. The low-budget slasher flick Friday the 13th had been a surprise hit and its sequel had done solid business as well. However, the tide seemed to be turning against them. The MPAA was cracking down on horror films and the public was becoming more concerned about what effect violence in the movies might have on America’s impressionable youth. Sensing it might be time to wrap up the Friday saga, the third film was intended to end the series. And just to make things a little more interesting, the film was released theatrically in 3-D.
It’s just a few hours after Ginny was carted off in an ambulance. All of her counselor friends have been hacked to death and Jason Voorhees is still on the loose. Since I watched the first three Friday the 13th films in a short space of time, the first thing I noticed in Part 3 was how much Jason had changed. How has this once average-sized guy bulked up so much, lost his hair and grown a foot taller?
Anyway, Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell) has cloudy memories of a close escape from a maniacal killer two years earlier but comes back to Crystal Lake with a group of her friends confident that there’s safety in numbers. Besides, there not going to the site of the campground but rather an area called Higgins Haven. They are headed to a cabin that belongs to Chris’ parents. Chris’ old boyfriend Rick (Paul Kratka), who promises he’ll stay close, is waiting for her at the cabin. Joining Chris on the trip are her friends Debbie (Tracie Savage), Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), Shelly (Larry Zerner), Vera (Catherine Parks), Chuck (David Katims) and Chili (Rachel Howard). On the road they meet Abel (David Wiley), a drunken religious fanatic who found an eyeball (and other body parts) and kept it as proof of God. Slightly spooked, the group drives on to their destination.
Friday the 13th: Part 3 is the first film where Jason dons the hockey mask we know today. He takes it from practical joker Shelly, who used it earlier in the film to scare one of his friends. Sadly for the crew at the cabin, Jason has a score to settle with Chris and since their all there, they’ll all have to pay the price. Director Steve Miner (the only person to direct more than one film in the Friday the 13th franchise), provides the series with some of its best kills. One character gets cut in half from groin to torso, while another takes a long distance spear gunshot to the eyeball. Miner also manages to create a good deal of build up and tension between each death.
Despite those positives, Friday the 13th: Part 3 is mired in the similarities of its two predecessors. Many of the characters are similar to ones that appeared in the previous films and the 3-D gimmick is just that, a gimmick. The filmmakers throw a yo-yo, apples or popping popcorn trick directly at the lens. Yippee! Talk about distracting. Oh, and the acting is still terrible.
This dual-layer Blu-ray disc includes both the 3-D and flat versions of the film, both of which are encoded with AVC and together take up most of the space on the disc.
There’s nothing particularly high definition about the exceptionally soft and grainy recap from part II but the 2.39:1 image improves dramatically from the first frame of new footage. It still looks like a low-budget slasher flick but clarity and detail are both pretty decent, there are plenty of shots where it’s clear this is a Blu-ray transfer and its palette and black levels are good. The video’s still a bit soft, especially in more expansive shots and the finale in particular is extremely grainy and muddy. There’s plenty of dirt and hair in this transfer but the bulk of it looks like it dates back to the original photography.
The 3D cut leans on red-and-blue anaglyph glasses and two Friday the 13th-themed cardboard glasses have been tucked inside this set. The impact really varies from one shot to the next. Some stretches sport a pretty convincing sense of depth, but there’s some really horrific ghosting, and some shots that are clearly supposed to leap out — like the yo-yo that’s zipping straight at the camera — are blurry and poorly defined. The opening titles aren’t in 3D in either cut even though they’re very clearly designed to pop out. It’s not perfect by any stretch, but Friday the 13th: Part 3 screams out to be watched in 3D, and I’d rather suffer through some bungled effects than watch in 2D.
Friday the 13th: Part 3 includes its original monaural soundtrack — presented here in a 224kbps Dolby Digital track — but it’s awfully shrill compared to the 24-bit Dolby TrueHD 5.1 remix. The lossless audio doesn’t really take all that many liberties with the original sound design, though. The surrounds are reserved primarily for atmosphere — crickets, chirping birds, and the howl of the wind — as well as to reinforce the instantly recognizable score. There’s a scare in the basement that gets a little extra punch to it thanks to the rear channels, but otherwise, there isn’t much directionality from the surrounds. Overall, it’s much cleaner and more natural than the tinny mono mix.
Also included are monaural dubs in French and Spanish. Subtitles are offered in English (traditional and SDH), French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Friday the 13th: Part 3 includes a few special features:
• Fresh Cuts: 3D Terror (13 min.; HD): This retrospective covers one of the alternate backdrops considered for Friday the 13th Part III, why this sequel got the nod to be filmed in 3D and the toll that extra dimension took on this grueling shoot, the several different endings that were tossed around and a box office run so successful that Paramount ran out of 3D glasses.
• Legacy of the Mask (10 min.; HD): This featurette covers the evolution of Jason’s appearance from the first flick through his jaunt to Manhattan. The hockey mask — introduced here in Part III — gets most of the attention, from the design and fabrication of the original masks to how it transformed over the course of the series.
• Slasher Films: Going for the Jugular (7 min.; HD): Featuring several Friday alums along with The Shape and The Candyman themselves, this featurette delves into the elements that define an effective slasher flick and what it is about these movies that keep drawing in hordes of teenagers.
• Lost Tales from Camp Blood: Part III (5 min.; HD): Another installment in the fan-made series — set to Harry Manfredini’s iconic score — doesn’t amount to much more than some schlub skulking around a bloody house, getting stabbed in the back by Jason, and clawing his way through a hallway and into the den.
• Trailer (2 min.; HD): Last up is a theatrical trailer that’s encoded in high-def but doesn’t look like it.
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