Synopsis: After
hearing a news report about a massacre at a lakeside camp, a middle-aged couple is
brutally murdered by a mysterious stranger…. Preparing for a weekend in the country,
Chris (Dana Kimmell), Debbie (Tracie Savage) and Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) collect their
friends Vera (Catherine Parks) and Shelly (Larry Zerner). Shelly, an aspiring actor,
annoys the other kids with his practical jokes. On the way to the farm owned by
Chris’s parents, the kids smoke dope supplied by Chuck (David Katims) and Chili
(Rachel Howard) – only to panic at the sound of a police siren. However, the cops are
on their way to the scene of the previous day’s killings. Distracted by the sight of
a body being placed in an ambulance, Chris nearly runs over a man lying in the road. The
kids jump out to see if he is all right, but flee in horror when he shows them what he is
holding: a human eyeball. At the farm, Chris takes her bag inside as the others run to the
lake. Someone grabs her suddenly and she cries out, but it is only her former boyfriend,
Rick (Paul Kratka). After showing the others their rooms, Chris joins Rick at the barn,
where he works at hauling hay into the loft. The two tentatively discuss their former
relationship until they are interrupted by a scream from the house. Chris runs inside and
upstairs, shrieking in horror as Shelly’s bloody corpse falls from a cupboard. The
other kids come running – and Andy reveals that it is all a joke by tickling the
"corpse". Disgusted and angry, the others storm off, with Shelly left trying to
apologise. Vera borrows Rick’s car to go into town, and Shelly begs to be allowed to
go with her. She finally agrees. In town, the two have an ugly encounter with three
bikers, which ends with the car’s windscreen being smashed. Shelly retaliates by
running over the gang leader’s motorcycle. The three track the kids to the farm,
where they drain the petrol from their van and plan to torch the barn in revenge. Fox
(Gloria Charles) enters the barn. Shortly afterwards, Loco (Kevin O’Brien) goes
looking for her – and finds her hanging from a wooden beam with a pitchfork through
her throat. An instant later, a second pitchfork is thrust through Loco’s chest.
Entering the barn, Ali (Nick Savage) finds the bodies, then finds himself confronted by
the killer. They struggle, and Ali is knocked to the ground and struck repeatedly in the
head…. As Chris remains nervous and unresponsive to his overtures, Rick becomes
impatient with her. Finally, Chris tells him the truth: that she came back home to test
herself; that two years earlier, when she fled the farm without warning, she had had been
attacked in the woods by a grotesque, inhuman-looking man armed with a knife – an
encounter from which she barely escaped with her life….
Comments: You know
what I like best about slasher films? I mean, other than their ruthless Darwinism?
They’re short. And even better, they’re so lacking in substance that they are really
easy to review. And so last weekend and this, I’ve been able to dash off a few pages
of writing, catch up my e-mail, do a little housework and mess around in the garden, and
yet still have enough time left over to nick down into the basement and tinker with
my secret army of remote-controlled, flesh-eating zombies, with which, one of these days,
when the time is ripe, I’m going to----
But I’ve said too much already.
Even as the laws of the Bad Film Universe
dictate that any film bearing the suffix "Part 4" shall be further subtitled In
Space, there was a brief period of time during the early eighties when the those same
laws obliged the third part of any franchise to be released in 3-D. Granted, this phase
only lasted for about ten minutes; but that was long enough for Friday The 13th
Part 3, Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, and
Rottweiler to be loosed upon an unsuspecting public. Look upon my works, oh ye Bad
Movie Watchers, and tremble! As with most 3-D films, the action in Friday The 13th
Part 3 is structured primarily around finding as many objects to toss towards the
camera, and hence the audience, as is physically possible. And again as with most 3-D
films, just about everything that isn’t concerned with something travelling
camera-wards is bland, uninteresting and sloppily put together. While Friday The 13th had the benefit of being the first
of its kind, as well as bonuses in the shape of Tom Savini’s effects and the identity
of its killer, and Part 2 had an interesting Final
Girl, a memorable "showdown" scene and a rare un-irritating cast, Part 3
is notable only for sheer idiocy of most of its 3-D effects, and for the presence of a
particular item of sporting wear. Mention this film to just about any horror watcher, and
the odds are the response you get will be, "Oh, that’s the one where Jason gets
his hockey mask!" (As I understand it, Jason’s mask was meant largely as a joke,
one perpetrated by a couple of hockey-mad Canadian crew-members. That such a throwaway
gesture should have come to sum up the Friday The 13th franchise as a
whole strikes me as oddly appropriate.) What they won’t say, I imagine, is
"Oh, that’s the one with the great acting – the clever plot – the
dazzling special effects – the unexpected twist ending!" And there’s a very
good reason for that. It’s because – in a word – this film reeks.
Part 3 opens as Part 2 did, with a replay of the ending of the
previous installment. This is a Good Thing, as we get to see Ginny again. Yay, Ginny! The
pre-credit sequence runs almost as long here as it did in Part
2, taking us from Ginny’s discovery of Jason’s shack, through the
"Mommy" sequence and the slow motion machete action that should have ended the
series, and concluding with Paul helping Ginny from the shack. What we don’t
see is that idiotic false scare ending – I guess even Steve Miner finally recognised
its inherent dumbness. Instead, as Paul and Ginny limp away, we cut back inside the shack
to where Jason is lying on the floor, machete in, hood off. He begins to stir….
We then cut to the credits which, again as
per the norm, consist of red block letters zooming towards the audience. Less usual is the
music that accompanies them. It’s Friday The 13th Part 3, where disco
lives forever! Oh, yes indeed: someone decided that it would be a good idea to release
a dance version of the franchise’s famous score! After all, what could better
set the mood for a terrifying horror movie than two minutes of off-cuts from the
soundtrack of Thank God It’s Friday? That’s right – nothing.
So, all together now! – whomp whomp boom boom whacka whacka chick chick----
Now that we’re all good and terrified
– and having wasted five and a half minutes of the film’s running time
recapitulating Part 2 – the film-makers proceed to waste a further eight
and a half minutes (the film only runs ninety-six!) with The Adventures Of Harold And
Edna, a thoroughly uninteresting middle-aged couple (she nags, he’s
henpecked, ho, ho, ho!) who have the misfortune to live in the vicinity of Camp Crystal
Lake. This is where the 3-D effects kick in, and the first example doesn’t exactly
inspire us with confidence. As Edna screeches out the window at him, Harold replaces the
laundry pole he has inadvertently knocked down – with the end of the pole thrust into
the camera in the process. Wow! – a laundry pole! (Pardon my sarcasm.
I’ll come clean: a have a natural grudge against 3-D, being sufficiently visually
impaired never to have had the opportunity of actually experiencing it. [Of course, once I
take my glasses off and shake out my hair, I morph into a statuesque brunette with
twenty-twenty vision – but that’s another story….] For future reference,
all 3-D effects will be noted in this review as a square parenthetical interjection –
thus: [laundry pole!].) We then cut inside to where Edna is watching the news, and we
learn that this is the same day that the final scene of Part 2 occurred upon. As we
see footage of Ginny – yay, Ginny! – being loaded into an ambulance (a good
trick, as there were no cameramen present in that scene in the previous film), a helpful
voiceover fills us in. "The quiet little community of Crystal Lake" – ah!
– so that’s what that town is called! – "was shocked today with
reports of a grisly mass murder. Eight corpses have already been discovered in what is
being called the most brutal and heinous crime in local history." Well, yeah –
except for that little incident five years earlier, which they seem to have forgotten
about. We further learn that survivor Ginny is suffering "multiple stab wounds and
severe hysterical shock" and hear Jason Voorhees (who, by the way, is not called by
name at any point in this film) described as the "axe-wielding killer"! –
odd, since of all the weapons used by Jason so far, the axe has been conspicuously absent.
Perhaps Jason has a prejudice against it. You know – after that whole
"Alice" thing. Meanwhile, Harold is pottering about the couple’s general
store, giving us a protracted "potential victim behaves with ironic normalcy"
scene. We learn that Henpecked Harold consoles himself for the shortcomings of his
marriage by collecting cuddly animals. This scene contains a truly remarkable rabbit:
whether it’s actually dead, or merely heavily sedated, I’m not sure. Tragically,
however, Harold’s other pets have come to a sticky end, and we learn the reason why
when a [rattlesnake!] launches from their cage. Harold has barely recovered from the shock
when the audience hears an ominous chh chh chh chh sound; and an instant later
Harold gets a meat cleaver in the chest, his [dead body!] falling towards the camera.
We’ve already seen Edna hunting for her missing knitting needle. Moments later, she
finds it somewhat abruptly as the [knitting needle!] is thrust through her body. End
time-wasting opening sequence.
We cut now to the story proper, such as it
is, and I find myself obliged to make a confession. Regular readers will know that I have
upon numerous occasions complained about the total lack of characterisation to be found in
slasher films; that we rarely know anything about the potential victims other than their
names – and sometimes not even that. Well, Part 3 is different. It gives us
backstories to flesh out not one but two of its characters – and to be
perfectly honest, I found it unbearably irritating – much more so than the earlier
installments’ lack of backstory. I’m forced to conclude that one of the
reasons that slasher-makers refrain from including characterisation in their scripts is
that they’re really, really bad at it. In short – I learnt a valuable lesson
today; and you will never again hear me whinging about the absence of character detail in
a film of this type.
Backstory #1 concerns Chris, who
automatically becomes Final Girl. (She is not otherwise qualified. Oh – except that
she has an androgynous name. But she’s called "Chrissie" most of the time,
so I don’t think it’s significant.) Her companions, Debbie and Andy, spend most
of their time snogging (and are thus Not Long For This World), and Chris reacts to this
with a kind of nervous laughter. When Andy asks, "What would a weekend in the country
be without sex?" (oh, you are so dead!), Debbie elbows him in the ribs to
indicate he’s said something tactless. Chris, however, immediately insists that,
"What happened to me at the lake happened a long time ago. I’m fine now,
really." (This is what I meant about them being really bad at backstory –
because that line seems to me to indicate something that is nothing like what actually
happened.) As this conversation is taking place, we see a knife-wielding maniac stalk up
to them and sink his weapon into Andy’s back. But – yuck, yuck, yuck!
– it’s just Shelly, Andy’s roommate. In Shelly (Backstory #2) we have a
cliché strangely absent from the franchise up to this point: The Loser. Expressing a
personal philosophy of "it’s better to be a jerk than to be nothing", and
convinced that no-one could like him for himself (and he’s not far wrong, to be
honest), Shelly indulges in a series of pranks meant to "get attention". Most of
these involve faking his own death. (If you think you see where this might be heading,
you’re quite right – and it’s one of the few scenes worth watching.)
Since Shelly is by definition single, the
other kids have felt obliged to rope in "a date" for him. The lucky girl is
Vera, who I hoped against all the available evidence would turn out to be Final Girl, as I
liked her a lot better than anyone else in the film (thus damning her with faint praise).
More potential victims are introduced when the kids see clouds of smoke billowing from
their van and run across to put out "the fire" – only to discover that the
source of the smoke is Chuck and Chili, who are in the back of the van puffing away on
their bongs. These two are easily twice as old as anyone else in the cast; and I can only
imagine they were included because the film-makers realised that the other thing missing
in the franchise to this point was "drug humour". Sigh. The drug humour in
question is present in quantity rather than quality. Copious amounts of marijuana are
observed, and [a joint!] is passed around. Significantly, Chris is the only one who
doesn’t indulge. Suddenly, a police siren is heard, and the kids (now using the term
loosely) panic, trying to dispose of the stash by swallowing it in handfuls. Yuck,
yuck, yuck! (None of them show any after-effects of this, BTW.) But the police car
zooms by them and pulls into the campsite where previous day’s (and previous
film’s) massacre took place. The main building is now considerably closer to the road
than it was the night before, so Chris gets a really good look at a body-bagged corpse
being lifted into an ambulance. Seeing her friend gazing at this grisly sight, Debbie
advises, "Don’t let your imagination run away with you." Oh, yeah –
it’s her imagination that she just saw a body being loaded into a meat wagon.
Now, let’s examine this scenario, shall we? Not only do none of the kids seem to know
what happened the night before (or at least, we assume not - granted, the characters in
these things are rarely a bunch of budding Einsteins, but still, you’d hope
they’d have enough of a purely animalistic sense of self-preservation not to wander
into a psycho killer’s hunting ground voluntarily), but a mass murder has just taken
place, the mass murderer is still on the loose, yet the area is wide open, not a
roadblock in sight, and only half a dozen cops are on the scene! When a film has to strain
credibility this far just to get its set-up in place, it bodes very, very ill for the
"story" to follow.
I should have mentioned that when the kids
drove into the town to pick up Vera, a boy was swinging a [baseball bat!] in the street.
Now as they travel towards their destination, we see a [fly-blown dead rabbit!] by the
road. Ah, the wonders of cinema! Chris is still preoccupied with what she saw at the
campsite, and nearly runs over an old coot who is, naturally enough, lying in the road.
The kids all pile out to see if he’s okay, and we soon gather that we are in the
presence of Crazy Ralph’s replacement. Not only does the individual ("Abel"
– he’s not verbally named) start spouting doom-laden warnings, but he waves
something at both the kids and the audience, causing Shelly to exclaim, "That’s
an [eyeball!]" (And just as well he told us, too, since what this brilliant
"effect" most resembles is a used Kleenex.) Horrified, the kids pile back into
the van and speed away, seeing no need whatsoever to report this incident to the police
back down the road….
The kids arrive at their destination, a farm
called "Higgins Haven", which they enter by crossing a rickety wooden bridge
that is given a meaningful close-up. When they pull up, everyone but Chris goes running to
the lake, while she carries her bag inside. This isolates her to set up a false scare as
someone grabs her. It’s her former boyfriend, Rick, who having frightened her half to
death, starts kissing her, then acts surprised when she shoves him away and is clearly
ticked off with him. Of course, having been made justifiably angry, Chris (being A Girl)
then apologises for it, excusing her behaviour with a few more hints about her backstory.
Rick takes this as a come-on and tries to kiss her again, to which Chris responds with a
plea for him to "slow down!" "Well, okay," Rick replies, "but I
can only take so many cold showers!" I mean, jeez! – they’ve been together
almost five minutes and they haven’t had sex yet! How long does she expect a
guy to wait? After a brief interlude in which Chris shows Debbie and Andy their room, we
cross to the barn, where Rick is hauling [bales of hay!] into the loft. He accompanies his
actions with a panting speech about how much he’d like to have sex right now,
it being almost ten minutes, yada-yada. This is (thankfully) broken up by an
agonised scream from the house. Chris goes rushing inside and upstairs, the others
converging in her wake; and hearing A Mysterious Noise from a closet, she pulls open the
doors – and [Shelly!] falls out, a hatchet buried in his forehead. For a moment there
is mass panic, until Andy, well-versed in the ways of Shelly, destroys the illusion by
tickling the "corpse". Shelly then stands there dumbfounded by the discovery
that the other kids don’t find his attempt at humour hysterically funny. Various
opprobrious terms are tossed around, before Vera asks to borrow Rick’s car,
announcing her intention of going into town for supplies. As she sets out, Shelly dashes
after her, begging to be allowed to go with her - and away from his justly irate
companions. Vera ignores this request and drives off – only to take pity on him and
stop the car a moment later. Vera, you see, is a nice person. That her niceness ultimately
stands her in no good stead whatsoever is less, I think, an intended commentary on the
unjustness of the world than it is an illustration of the fundamentally misanthropic
nature of the slasher film.
In town, Vera goes to pay for her purchases,
only to be told "no food stamps". This stops her in her tracks (!?), and she has
to ask Shelly for his wallet, which he tosses to her. It is intercepted, however, by one
of three members of a motorcycle gang who just happen to be in the store. These three are
in the story for no reason other than to pad out the running time a bit more, and to
provide some more cannon fodder. If we excuse this painfully blatant demonstration of hack
film-making at all, it is only because two of the three are, unexpectedly, black –
including the gang leader. Let’s face it: slasher films on the whole are
embarrassingly whitebread. This mystifying convention is well illustrated by the first two
franchise entries. Friday The 13th is 100% Caucasian; while Part 2
gives us Token Black Guy and Token Asian Girl, but does not include them amongst the
victims. What is this about? Some kind of weird, reverse discrimination?
There’s no actual reason why black people – or Asian people – or people who
are pink with purple polka-dots – or Mark, the paraplegic character from Part 2,
for that matter - shouldn’t die at the hands of a cinematic psycho killer, but
they hardly ever do. By including these two characters in such an offhand manner, the
makers of Part 3 almost manage to do something interesting. Almost. Unfortunately,
the gang members are even more stereotyped than the kids. The two men monster Shelly,
while the woman withholds the wallet from Vera until she makes her "say please".
When she and Shelly finally escape, Vera is so angry and upset that she asks Shelly to
drive. He responds by backing over the gang members’ motorcycles. This leads to some
more "effects" (and the discovery that Rick’s car has ordinary glass in its
windows) as a chain is smashed through [the windshield!] and [a window!]. Shelly drives
off in a panic, then decides he’s been a coward long enough and deliberately runs
over the gang leader’s motorcycle. And if you think this action might have
Consequences, go to the head of the class.
Back at the farm, Andy is playing with a
[yo-yo!] when Shelly and Vera drive up. As Rick stares in dismay, Shelly chooses to brag
about his exploit, and Vera good-naturedly backs him up. Rick is about to storm off in a
huff, but Chris convinces him to stay with her. The two drive off somewhere or other.
Debbie and Andy go swimming. Through these scenes, we get numerous POV shots and chh
chh chh chh stings, but this is a cheat, as the lurkers are the gang members. Seeing
the coast clear, they drain the petrol from the van and prepare to torch the barn with it.
Fox (the woman) goes in first, looking around until she trips and almost lands on a
[five-pronged pitchfork!]. Someone throws hay on Fox from the loft, and she [climbs up the
ladder!] to see who it is…. Shortly afterwards, Loco (the Token White Guy) goes
looking for Fox. He finds her, all right: she’s dangling from a wooden strut with a
pitchfork through her throat, the [handle!] jutting forward. Loco has no chance to react.
Our killer is nearby, armed with a second pitchfork which, in a distinctly Andy
Milligan-like moment, he thrusts through Loco’s chest and [out the other side!].
(Also Milligan-esque is the fact that Jason’s pitchfork has five prongs on the way
in, but only four on the way out!!) Loco stands there for a while with the
[pitchfork handle!] waving around, then finally collapses. Completing the ritual, Ali (the
Main Man) goes looking for his minions, only to be jumped and – in a moment that
seems completely out of place in a slasher film – bashed repeatedly in the head.
Elsewhere (Rick’s place?), Rick and
Chris are having a D&M. Rick complains about the state of their relationship. After
all, it is now almost one hour, yada-yada. "You’ve put this barrier
up between us!" Rick grumps. Uh, I think they’re called "underpants".
Back at the farm, Andy and Shelly are having a competition juggling [apples!] and
[oranges!]. Bored, Debbie breaks it up by suggesting to Andy that there are other things
he could be doing with his hands. The two depart. Vera pokes the fire, giving a good view
of [her butt!] to both Shelly and the audience. Shelly observes that the two of them have
"gotten to know each other" and that he "really likes her", so
he was wondering if…? "I don’t think so," replies Vera without
hesitation, although not unkindly. She then escapes the awkward moment by "getting
some air". Meanwhile, Debbie and Andy are figuring out how to have sex in a hammock.
(Oh, you are so-oo-oo dead!)
Finally, Chris gets around to telling Rick
her Tragic Story. (An observation: on two or three occasions, Chris has complained to
Debbie that "Rick doesn’t understand" how she feels about coming back to
the farm, that he’s not being "sympathetic" enough. We now discover that
the reason he doesn’t "understand" is that she hasn’t told him what
happened!! Yikes, girl - !) It turns out that two years earlier, Chris got home late
after a date with Rick and had a huge fight with her parents, which ended with her mother
slapping her face. Chris’s response was to run away into the woods, intending to
spend the night there and worry her parents sick. (Nice girl.) But suddenly – he
was there! A man – "grotesque, almost inhuman" – armed with a knife.
He attacked her, and as she was being dragged away, she blacked out – only to wake up
in her own bed, with no idea of how she came to be there. (No, and nor has anyone else
– least of all Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson.) Her parents behaved as if it never
happened – "but it did! It did!" Yes, but what did? Again,
the inference here is one of sexual assault, but they never actually say so; and such an
act would be distinctly out of character for your common or garden slasher film psycho.
Anyway – Chris’s tale is cut short when the car lights that have been
illuminating the scene die. Sure enough, Rick finds the car battery dead and tells Chris
they’ll have to walk, reassuring her that he knows a short-cut. This
"short-cut" turns out to be of extraordinary length, as this is the
film-makers’ way of getting their Final Girl out of the firing-line while the
killings proper start. We then waste several minutes with Chuck and Chili (who have been
comatose since arrival, and are no more interesting once awake) before we cut to Vera,
still "getting some air" on the end of the dock. Suddenly, someone in the water
grabs her ankle. Some screaming and struggling later, the "attacker" is revealed
to be Shelly (surprise!), who emerges from the water wearing a wet-suit (!) and a hockey
mask (!!) and carrying a spear-gun (!!!). He is also roaring with laughter at
his "joke". Vera finally loses her temper with him and explains that if he wants
people to actually like him, he should probably consider NOT ACTING LIKE A COMPLETE
DICKHEAD. You know – just occasionally. Shelly has a fit of whimpering (this
is the "being a jerk" vs "being nothing" scene), and the amazingly
kind and patient Vera tries to boost the little creep’s self-esteem. (She’s a
better woman than I am. If he’d done that to me, I’d’ve stuck him with his
own spear-gun.) However, any consolatory speech from a girl to a guy that doesn’t
include the line "Yes, I will have sex with you" is obviously destined
for failure; and Shelly stalks off in a fit of the sulks that lasts until he hears a
Mysterious Noise from the barn and goes to investigate…. Back on the dock, Vera
realises that she still has Shelly’s wallet from that afternoon. She opens it, and
looks thoughtfully at the picture of Shelly and his mother. (Let’s see – only
child – elderly mother – no father present – jeez, could they possibly
have carried this stereotype any further!?) Overcome by a compassionate impulse (Vera, no!!),
Vera gets up and turns towards the house (NOOO!!!!), but accidentally drops the
wallet in the water. Circling around the shore to get the wallet back, Vera stops when she
sees a hockey-masked figure lurking in the distance. (And cinematic history is
made….) Recognising after a moment that this time it isn’t Shelly, Vera
demands to know who it is. Jason’s response is to raise the spear-gun and fire. The
[spear!] hits Vera in the eye and she falls back into the water, dead.
Well, I’ve gotta say it: Vera has been
saved from A Fate Worse Than Death….
Jason – now masked for perpetuity –
looks thoughtfully up at the house. A light shows in a single window – that of the
room where Debbie and Andy have just had sex….
This entire film is horribly slow-paced and
draggy, but nowhere is this more evident than in the following sequence, where it takes
about four times as long to dispose of Debbie and Andy than it should. I’ll try to be
brief. After Doing It, Andy celebrates the occasion by walking around on his hands, a feat
he demonstrated for us earlier. While he’s doing so, Debbie takes a shower and gives
patient viewers a look at her boobs. We get a couple of false scares, and finally a real
one. As Andy hand-walks down the corridor, Jason looms up, lifts his machete, and strikes
downwards. Yeeeeooowwwwwcccchhhh!!!! Andy’s [partially bisected body!] then falls
towards the camera, how explicitly varying from print to print. (Mine was fairly
discreet.) Naturally, all of a room away, Debbie hears nothing unusual (and I must say,
Andy displays remarkable stoicism – not one peep out of him!). She continues to talk
to Andy, but upon getting no response, thinks nothing of it. Robed up, she finally leaves
the bathroom and hops back into the hammock. Here we get a brief scene that’s
actually enjoyable, as Debbie flicks through an issue of Fangoria, passing over an
article on "Tom Savini, New Master Of Magical Makeup" for one on
"Twenty-Five Years With Godzilla". Attagirl! Suddenly, blood (very watery
blood) drips onto the magazine. Astonishingly, Debbie’s reaction is not a legitimate
shriek or a dash from the room, but a mildly irritated, "Where’s that
coming from?" The next moment, she is grabbed from beneath the hammock and run
through with a knife; while a pan up shows us Andy’s body lying in the overhead
rafters.
Why, yes! – now that you mention it,
that entire sequence is logistically impossible! Just like the total absence of
spilt blood (and stray viscera) in the area between the corridor and the rafters. And then
there’s the little matter of how a rather large, hockey-masked psycho killer could
possibly hide under a hammock!!??
In the kitchen, Chuck is making [popcorn!]
when the lights go out. Chili sends him into the basement, telling him there’s
nothing to be afraid of. (That’s what she thinks! – chh chh chh
chh….) As Chuck leaves, the side door swings open and Shelly staggers in with his
throat cut. In a moment that almost makes this film worth watching, Chili deadpans
"Nice makeup job" and goes back to minding the popcorn, leaving Shelly to bleed
to death. Yes!! Meanwhile, after a bit more time-wasting (including a Spring-Loaded
Stuffed Skunk), Chuck ends up getting shoved into the fuse-box and electrocuted.
Eventually, Chili realises that Shelly is, in fact, dead and goes tearing upstairs
screaming for Andy and Debbie. She finds them too (offscreen), and rushes back downstairs
to encounter a [red-hot poker!], which is plunged sizzling through her body.
All of the minor characters thus disposed of,
Chris and Rick (remember them?) stagger out of their "short-cut". What timing!
They find something blocking the door, and Chris smells something burning. (An
"eeww!!" opportunity is lost when these two phenomena turn out to be caused by a
chair and Chuck’s popcorn, respectively.) They force their way in and Rick comments
that, "The lights aren’t working." Which is odd, since they clearly were
when the two walked up to the house. When no-one answers their calls, Rick – in
time-honoured tradition – decides to "go out and look around". Chris, of
course, responds with "Wait! I’m coming with you!" but by the time
she’s lit her lamp and stepped outside, Rick has disappeared. In fact, he’s just
around the corner, pinioned and silenced by Jason, who proceeds to take Rick’s head
in his hands and crush his skull – with the result that his [eyeball!] is
popped directly into the camera.
You know, I’m usually quite susceptible
to "eye" violence – but that’s just silly….
The film’s final phase starts rather
slowly, with Chris discovering an overflowing bathtub full of bloody clothing. She dashes
outside, and the white biker’s body drops from a tree on cue. (How do they do
that!?) So she runs back in, and as the inevitable storm builds, spends what feels like
ten minutes shutting doors and windows (one of which is obviously being opened and closed
by a hidden crew-member). But someone is outside….and suddenly Rick’s body is
tossed through a window. Jason follows it, axe in hand (ah!), and at last it is the
Final Girl sequence. And I’m obliged to lighten up a bit, since it is actually pretty
good, if totally lacking the psychological interest of Part 2’s ending. Chris
runs upstairs (of course) and tips a bookcase over, the [books!] hitting Jason. She locks
herself in a closet which – surprise! – contains Debbie’s body. As Jason
hacks his way in (a ridiculously protracted scene, since the "door" is patently
balsa and cardboard!), Chris steels herself and pulls the knife from her friend’s
corpse. As Jason sticks a hand through to unlock the door (why didn’t he just break
the lock?), Chris stabs him, provoking a howl of pain from the formally mute psycho. As
Jason backs away, Chris goes on the attack, slashing at him wildly (she misses, but
at least she’s trying), and finally stabs him in the thigh. And then, having both
disarmed and severely injured him – she runs away AND leaves the knife there!
Aaarrgghh!! (I suppose you’d call it the Psycho Killer’s Death Battle
Exemption.)
Not surprisingly, Jason comes after Chris
with that very knife, and she is obliged to smash a window and climb out. Jason grabs her
but her jacket rips. Deciding to fight, Chris picks up an enormous (papier-mâché)
hunk of wood and when Jason emerges, knocks him down with it. So – does she hit him
again and stave his head in? She does not. (PKDBE #2) She runs for the van and tries to
get away. In the film’s one display of actual plotting, the van runs out of gas on
the rickety bridge (the bikers drained it, remember?). Chris hits the emergency supply
switch and the van starts again – only to have its back wheel plunge through
the bridge. Jason then attacks, grabbing Chris through an open window. She manages to wind
up the window, trapping Jason by both arms, and escapes out the other door. Jason frees
himself by [headbutting the glass!] and pursues her to the barn. As he does so, we notice
that his leg injury seems to have inexplicably disappeared.
Chris did bar the door, but Jason merely tugs
it open a little from outside and lifts the bar aside. Once inside, however, he really
bars it. Unable to locate Chris, who is hanging from a beam above him, Jason
bad-temperedly smashes and knocks things over, finally standing directly below Chris who
[drops onto him!]. Chris runs for the door but can’t move the bar, and makes a dash
up into the hayloft as Jason comes after her with a machete. Arming herself with a shovel,
Chris hides until the last moment, then again clobbers Jason in the head. As he
lies unconscious, does she split his skull with the shovel? Or cleave him with his own
machete? She does not. (Nowhere do we get a clearer illustration than here of the law that
dictates that psychos may only be killed actively if they are attacking.)
Instead, Chris wraps the ropes of the pulley system around Jason’s neck and pushes
him off the edge of the loft, hanging him. She then makes her weary way to the door and
bashes it open – only to find Jason on the other side!! WHAT THE
%$&#!!!???
Look – I’m not going to even try
to figure that one out, okay?
As Chris backs away in horrified disbelief
(as well she might), Jason lifts his mask to give her a brief look at his face, revealing
that (duh!) he was the "grotesque, inhuman" person who attacked her two years
earlier. As Jason closes in with his [machete!] – the supposedly dead gang leader
suddenly appears! (So that’s why he was only bashed in the skull a dozen
times! If slasher films have taught us anything, it’s that that kind of thing simply doesn’t
work!) Ali intervenes on Chris’s behalf, and gets his [hand lopped off!] for his
trouble. Jason then finishes him off, properly this time, by hacking him to pieces.
While he’s preoccupied, Chris takes possession of a handy axe. Does she hit Jason in
the back of the head? She does not. She waits until he turns – and then sinks the axe
into his forehead. Seemingly unperturbed, Jason still closes in on Chris, the [axe
handle!] waving about – and eventually collapses….
This time Chris does get away and, driven by
some mysterious Final Girl instinct, wanders down to the lake, climbs into a canoe, and
drifts away. The night passes, and Chris wakes with a cry in broad daylight. Suddenly, the
canoe hits something – but it’s just a log. Then something flies past
– but it’s just a duck. Chris looks back at the house – and sees Jason, sans
mask, watching her from a window. She shrieks, and the next instant sees him at the doors.
Paddling frantically away, Chris glances back and finds the house just as it was before.
She sits there, frightened and confused, until – to the surprise of no-one who has
suffered this far into the franchise – a hideous figure launches itself from the lake
and drags Chris into the water. From the pullover, we gather that this is intended to be
Pamela Voorhees, even though her head is back on her shoulders. Given the total lack of
connection between the two women – the name "Voorhees" hasn’t
even been mentioned here, remember – I can only say again - WHAT THE %$&#!!!???
We get the usual fade to white, and come back
from it to find one cop observing to another, "Looks like she’s the only
survivor." The other replies, "What was that about a lady in the lake?"
(You know, somehow I have a hard time believing that anyone connected with this film has
even heard of Raymond Chandler – let alone Alfred Tennyson.) Chris is then led
from the house to a police car, and from her condition we surmise that she is on her way
to The Nut Hatch. As the car drives away, there is a pan to the barn, and we find Jason
lying just where Chris left him the night before. The camera moves in, and we wait for
something – a movement – a twitch. But no. Not this time. Not yet….
Whew! Well, I can only hope that this review
isn’t as dreary to read as it was to write! This is really a terrible movie. Granted,
I didn’t do it any favours by watching it back to back with Part 2, a film
which in contrast I found to be a surprisingly painless experience; nor by making it the
third slasher film I've watched in the last month (putting me about three films over my
usual yearly quota), which just highlighted Part 3's numbingly formulaic nature
even further. Even so--- That I didn’t find Part 2 all that difficult to watch
perhaps proves that it takes only a small sign of effort – a dash of imagination, an
original character touch – to make me think kindly of even the least promising of
films. This, however, was a struggle right from the opening credits. Unlike its
predecessor, Part 3 is filled with unlikeable characters (except for Vera –
poor Vera!). And it’s so slow – and there is so much padding!
– minutes and minutes of it at a time! This film is only ten minutes longer than Part
2, but it feels almost twice as long. The 3-D effects are wholly uninspiring,
particularly in light of the time spent in setting them up (they may have worked on the
big screen, of course); and the presence of so many blatantly unnecessary, cannon fodder
characters – whose presence they don’t even try to justify - is
thoroughly annoying. The film’s continuity – internal and external –
is also shocking. Hairstyles change from shot to shot; objects move by themselves;
jewellery appears and disappears. Most noticeable of all, the injuries dished out to Jason
by Chris vanish only minutes after their infliction! And speaking of Jason –
he’s played by a different actor here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that he
changes height and weight between films; but that his hair seems have fallen out overnight
is a bit of a worry! Another Jason-based error is his wardrobe: when Chris flashes back to
"two years ago", he is wearing exactly what we see him in throughout the story
proper. (Also, he has no hair there, and should have.) And then there’s the big one:
although Ginny dealt a blow with a machete at the end of Part 2 that almost severed
Jason’s left arm, by Part 3 – that is, the next day – the wound has
miraculously healed.
Perhaps the most puzzling thing about Part
3 is the Chris/Jason backstory, which fails to make sense on any level. It is hard to
know what the inclusion of this subplot was intended to achieve. It is not, after all, as
if Chris emerges from the traumatic encounter with any knowledge of Jason that she can
later use as a weapon. Nor does she "escape" from him (at least, not actively),
which might have provoked Jason into hunting her down at another time. When the two
encounter each other, it is as accidental the second time as it was the first.
There’s no resonance to any of it. The only thing that this plot thread ultimately
adds to the film, with Chris repeatedly almost telling her story, and then actually
telling it, is still more padding.
Part 3’s most
distinguishing feature, however, is its total dearth of imagination. Even at this early
stage in the franchise, the film-makers had clearly run out of ideas (not that there were
all that many to start with). Once again, a group of teenagers is stranded in the country
on a dark and stormy night. Complete murders – the post-coital blade from beneath,
the spear through the eye – are lifted from the earlier films and replayed in their
entirety; while it’s hard to imagine that by this time there was anyone who didn’t
see the "lake shock" scene coming. The only thing at all "original"
about any of this is that they keep managing to come up with a final scene
"scare" that is even dumber and more inexplicable than the one in the film
before. Looked at from one angle, the cynicism inherent in all of this is simply
staggering. And yet--- The film cost $4 million; it made over $36 million –
and that’s just in the US cinemas. In the face of figures such as these, it is not
surprising that horror film fans are so often treated with contempt. When dross is this
profitable, why would anyone bother to put the necessary time and effort into making a
quality product? The problem is that horror fans are eternally loyal, and eternally
optimistic. While it’s true that some of them probably wouldn’t recognise a good
film if it leapt out of their popcorn and bisected them with a machete, the rest of us,
against all the odds, keep waiting…and hoping….and watching….and – paying
our money….
Footnote #1: A skeleton of
sorts…. I’m told that Tracie Savage (Debbie) is now an LA-based, award-winning
TV reporter (hmm….wonder if they showed clips of this at the presentation
ceremonies?), who has gained a degree of notoriety in recent years by testifying at both
the Heidi Fleiss and O. J. Simpson trials.
Footnote #2: I’m sure a
great many of you will be relieved to know that I have now exhausted my current supply of Amityville
films, Howling films and Friday The 13th films – although I
sincerely doubt that you’re as relieved as I am. Hang in there, gang! –
only one more stinky week to go….
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