Friday the 13th, Part III (1982)
d. Steve Miner, 95 minutes

Film Plot Summary

The second sequel film reprised the conclusion of Friday the 13th, Part 2 (1981), with camp counselor training assistant Ginny (Amy Steel) running through the woods to Jason Voorhees' (Steve Daskawitz) run-down, backwoods shack, where she saw Mrs. Voorhees' (Betsy Palmer) severed and mummified head on a makeshift altar. She was pursued by the grotesquely-deformed stalker-killer Jason wearing a pillow-case (with one eye-hole) on his head, and fooled him for a few moments by impersonating Mrs. Voorhees (in her foul-smelling sweater). After she delivered a decisive and deep blow to Jason's shoulder with a machete, he collapsed to the floor and she and boyfriend Paul (John Furey), believing him to be dead, fled together back to her cabin.

The opening credits jumped out in red 3-D letters over a shot of the mummified head of Mrs. Voorhees, and images of swirling smoke.

The evening of Saturday the 14th

Curlers-wearing wife Edna (Cheri Maugans) harshly complained to her husband Harold (Steve Susskind) for clumsily knocking down her single clothes-line pole support, and dirtying up some of the freshly-hung laundry. Harold owned a rural country market near Crystal Lake, a roadside Mom-and-Pop type store next to their living quarters. As Edna sat knitting, a TV newscaster (voice of director Steve Miner) reported on a "grisly mass murder scene" in the quiet community of Crystal Lake - the discovery of 8 corpses ("the most brutal and heinous crime in local history").

"Bodies were literally strewn over the 4-square-mile campground in the remote lake region. Ginny Field miraculously survived repeated attacks by the axe-wielding killer and was taken to a local hospital today."

Ginny was suffering from multiple stab wounds and severe hysterical shock. [Supposedly, she was the sole survivor, meaning that boyfriend Paul hadn't only disappeared, but died, although his fate was unknown in the previous film.] The reporter continued with unconfirmed reports "of cannibalism and sexual mutilation," and stated that the killer remained at large.

Upset by the news, the domineering Edna continued griping about her inconsiderate and lazy husband as she went out to the clothesline to gather dry laundry, while an unidentified figure (wearing a workshirt and jeans, presumably stolen from the line) watched her. Inside the store, Harold fed his pet fish Lionel, retrieved a pet rabbit from the produce section, and sampled foods from his own store shelves (peanuts from a jar, juice from a container, and a chocolate donut). The henpecked husband was further criticized by Edna for sneaking food.

Inside his wooden shed, Harold found a dead rabbit in his rabbit hutch, and a large timber rattlesnake lunged directly at him from inside the enclosure. He raced back inside to his living quarters and retreated to the combination storeroom/bathroom, suffering from diarrhea. He suspected a noise behind a dusty curtain, but found nothing. As he searched around and opened another door, a meat cleaver struck him, and was embedded deeply into his chest (# 1 death). When Edna heard something, she went to look for Harold and was spooked by a white rat. From behind, a hand grabbed her mouth, and her own previously-missing knitting needle was pierced into the back of her head (# 2 death), causing her to gag and slowly fall dead.

Sunday the 15th

Four teens arrived in a neighborhood in a Dodge RAM van:

• driver Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmel)
• good-looking Andy (Jeffrey Rogers)
• his sexy pregnant girlfriend Debbie (Tracie Savage)
• Andy's overweight, nerdy prankster roommate Shelly (Larry Zerner)

Shelly was wearing a clear-plastic mask and playfully brandishing a knife. The friends (not camp counselors this time) were all planning a weekend in the country. Chris assured them about a previous attack at the lake that she had experienced two years earlier: "What happened to me at the lake happened a long time ago. I'm fine, really. OK?"

The foursome stopped at the house across the street, to pick up Shelly's pretty blind date Vera (Catherine Parks), although Vera's mother Mrs. Sanchez (Perla Walter) was reluctant about her leaving. Smoke poured from Chris' van that was parked on the street, from the bong-smoking of two more hippie-like stoners inside:

• pothead Chuck (David Katims)
• his girlfriend Chili (Rachel Howard)

Chris had invited her six friends to be guests at her two-story lakeside summer house, a property called Higgins Haven. As they drove there, they had a false scare when followed by two police cruisers with blaring sirens and flashing lights, forcing them to destroy (and digest) the evidence of their joint-smoking and dope possession. When Chris pulled over, to their surprise, the vehicles zoomed by them.

Shortly later, they rubber-necked at the rural country store and saw the reason for the police vehicles. The body bags of the two Crystal Lake storeowners were being loaded into an ambulance at the crime scene. Debbie cautioned Chris: "Don't let your imagination run away with you." On a dirt road, they passed the remains of a dead rabbit, and then screeched to an abrupt halt before the outstretched figure of a man dangerously lying across the road. He was identified as a whiskered and elderly Abel (David Wiley), a crazy, inebriated, homeless Bible-spouting fanatic who showed them a slimy, detached eyeball that he had found. He added: "There were other parts of the body." He interpreted the detached body part as a warning for them to turn back: "Look upon this omen and go back from whence ye came! I have warned thee!" The group cringed in disgust, returned to their van, and drove off.

At the rustic two-story Higgins Haven cabin (after crossing a creaky, feeble wood-planked bridge), an unidentifiable plaid-shirted figure watched their arrival from the living room. As Chris entered the front door, a hand reached out to grab her throat and pull her aside - it was her local boyfriend Rick (Paul Kratka), pouncing on her for a kiss. Uptight about everything, she recalled how her last visit to her family's country home was two years earlier, and she requested that he slow down while she faced her past fears: "Let me get to know this place again." He replied: "There's only so many cold showers I can take." When they went to get the bags in the van, Shelly was hiding inside, reluctant to go skinny-dipping with the others: "I'm not skinny enough," he explained.

Chris offered her bedroom to Debbie for the weekend, although her friend was curious: "Where's the bed?" Both Andy and Debbie learned that there was only a netted hammock - not well suited for love-making. A little later, screams brought the group up a spiral staircase to a second-story bedroom, where Chris found Shelly in an armoire with an axe embedded in his bloody forehead -- it was another of his annoying pranks to garner attention. He claimed: "It was just a joke," maddening Chili who called him an "asshole." Chris confided in Debbie that ever since she had arrived, there were strange happenings: "I've been seeing things and hearing things."

Although disdainful of her blind-date partner Shelly, Vera let him join her in a borrowed vehicle - Rick's yellow VW Beetle - to drive to a local convenience store. There, they were immediately harassed by a leather-clad, boots-wearing trio from a local motorcycle gang:

• red bandana-wearing black woman Fox (Gloria Charles) with skin-tight leather pants
• greasy cigarette-smoking, leather-jacketed Loco (Kevin O'Brien) with a silver-dagger earring
• bald, tall, strapping African-American Ali (Nick Savage)

After being bullied, Shelly backed up Rick's car into the group's parked bikes, leaving them in a heap. Enraged, gang-member Ali retaliated by smashing out their windshield with a heavy metal chain, and punched through the driver's side window, as Shelly ran over another of the bike's tires (impressing Vera with his heroism), and then sped off.

Andy practiced with a yo-yo above Debbie's face (to demonstrate the film's full 3-D effect), as Shelly returned in the damaged car, explaining to Rick that they had a "slight misunderstanding" with a motorcycle gang. Upset about everything, Rick told Chris that it was "a little more than he had bargained for," and proposed leaving to get "away from here," but he softened and permitted her to accompany him as they drove off. An unidentified figure peered at them from the shadows of the partially-open barn door. Bikini-clad Debbie proposed taking a private swim in the lake with Andy.

Meanwhile, the two male bikers, who had trailed them "to even the score," siphoned gas from Chris' van into a couple of gas cans. The third member of the group, Fox, went to the barn to prepare to set it on fire, and became fascinated by its contents: dusty horse saddles, an old canteen, the second floor hayloft, and a swinging rope on a block and tackle apparatus, etc. Loco discovered her swinging Tarzan-like on the rope from the upper loft opening - but after her fourth swing, she wasn't hanging onto the rope anymore. He found Fox dead -- hanging in mid-air from a wooden beam in the upper barn rafters, pinned there by a pitchfork through her neck (# 3 death) (off-screen). As he turned, a pitchfork was thrust into his stomach (# 4 death). Loco reached around and felt the sharp pronged teeth of the pitchfork extending out of his back, and then grabbed the handle in front before slowly falling to his knees and collapsing. The body of Loco rolled onto Ali when he looked up into the hayloft, crashing them both to the barn floor. Ali grabbed a machete and attempted to fight off an unknown figure that also jumped down from the hayloft, but was bludgeoned and knocked unconscious with four swings of a large plumber's monkey wrench to his face. [Note: Ali survived, although later, he suffered the final, # 12 death in the film - see below.]

When Debbie and Andy returned from swimming in the lake, he was anxious for a "little roll in the hay" in the barn, but she declined: "Go play with yourself." He reconsidered and joined her as she turned toward the house. During private time together with Rick, and away from her friends, Chris was feeling vulnerable about her previous traumatic experience at the lake: "The quiet can fool you. It fooled me," but she had returned "to prove something" to herself: "To prove I'm stronger than I think I am." Frustrated by her, he asked how to break through the barrier between them. She revealed what had happened to her a few years earlier so he would understand. After their last date (when they made love for the first time?) and she arrived home late, she engaged in a big fight with her parents and her mother slapped her for the first time.

"To punish them," Chris ran into the woods to stay out all night, so that her parents would worry and be "sorry for what they did." Her narration became a voice-over, as the scene became a partial flashback. She fell asleep under an oak tree, was startled by footsteps and a cracking noise caused by a "hideous-looking man - he was so grotesque, he was almost inhuman." She was attacked with his knife, which was kicked away, but he pursued her as she screamed and yelled. She was dragged along the ground, and then blacked out: "I don't know what happened after that." (Was she raped?) When she finally woke up, she was in her own bed, and her parents never spoke about it. They acted as if the whole thing never happened (did they not believe her?). However, she couldn't forget the horrible face of the mysterious, disfigured attacker.

Back at the cabin, Vera rejected trickster Shelly's half-spoken sexual proposition when they were left alone, and went outside for air, while he stoked the fire. Upstairs, Andy and Debbie were negotiating how to "do it" in the hammock (Debbie: "I think you can figure something out"), as she removed her upper garment. He stared at her breasts: "I'll think of something." A dark hulking frame appeared on the outside porch, and lurked through the front window at Shelly. While Chuck and Chili were by the outdoor outhouse, they thought they saw Shelly duck into the barn, but when they followed, they found no-one there (although a figure watched them leave).

Vera had taken a stroll to the lake's wooden dock, where she dangled her feet above the water. [The man-made lake looked nothing like the one from the first two films.] She was spooked by an arm grabbing her leg from under the water - she harshly scolded Shelly for frightening her ("Why do you do these stupid things?") when he rose out of the water in a scuba suit, wearing a white plastic hockey mask and carrying a spear-gun. Although he claimed he was teaching her "a valuable lesson" about never going out in the dark alone, she wasn't impressed and called him a jerk. Dejected and feeling like a "nothing," Shelly wandered into the barn to look for Chuck and Chili - and then disappeared. (Shelly's throat was slashed, and his hockey mask and spear-gun were taken - (# 5 death) (off-screen) - he died later, see below).

At the dock, Vera was approached by the figure on the nearby pier, who was wearing Shelly's white hockey-mask (to cover his hideous face) and carrying the spear-gun (at first she thought it was another of Shelly's tricks). As she retrieved Shelly's wallet that she had dropped in the water, he held the spear-gun at eye level, and shot her in her left eye with a spear-gun arrow (# 6 death), penetrating into her skull - she died half-submerged in the lake.

Upstairs in the house, Andy and Debbie had just finished making love ("That was the best one yet..Was it you, me, or the hammock?"). As Debbie took a shower behind a sheer plastic curtain, Andy was walking on his hands in the hallway to get some "brew" for them, when he saw the hockey-masked figure in front of him, who threateningly raised a thick-bladed machete above him. Andy was split in half (from his groin to his torso) with the machete (# 7 death) and his mangled corpse was wrapped around the rafters. The killer entered the bedroom after Debbie had bathed. She was lying on the hammock reading a Fangoria Magazine (she browsed an article about make-up genius Tom Savini, and began reading another article about "25 Years With Godzilla"). Blood splattered from Andy's body above her onto the magazine page, and then a hand grabbed Debbie's head from beneath the hammock and forced her head back, as a carving knife was thrust through her back, piercing through her chest in the front (# 8 death). [Her body was then hidden in the hallway closet.]

Fixing popcorn on the stove in the kitchen, Chuck was asked about the source of screaming that his girlfriend Chili had heard in the house. He quipped: "It's probably Debbie having an orgasm" - and then asked her: "How come you never scream when we have sex?," to which she replied: "Give me something to scream about." When the power went out, Chuck proceeded barefooted (through water puddles) in the cellar to investigate the source of the power outage at the fuse box. At about the same time, Shelly staggered into the doorway with his throat slashed (see earlier assault), and died in front of Chili ((# 5 death)). Thinking it was a "nice makeup job," she non-chalantly snapped at him: "Stop foolin' around, man!"

After Chuck flipped the cellar switch and restored power, the hockey-masked figure threw him backwards into the opened power box where he was electrocuted (# 9 death), causing the lights to blink on and off. Chili screamed when she realized Shelly was really dead and it wasn't one of his ruses, intensified when she found the murdered couple upstairs in the bedroom. In the living room, the unidentified figure impaled Chili in the stomach with a sizzling, red-hot fire poker (# 10 death), frying her skin where it penetrated. The killer carried her body elsewhere. [Both dope-smokers Chuck and Chili literally 'smoked' during their demises.]

Chris and Rick had been walking back to the house through the woods, after his VW vehicle wouldn't start due to a dead battery. When they entered the empty, darkened and unusually quiet house, they found burning popcorn on the stove. Rick went outside, where he was grabbed and gagged on the porch by the killer. He was murdered when his skull was squeezed and crushed between the bare hands of the serial killer - he was lifted off the ground, and the pressure on his head caused his left eyeball to pop out of its socket (# 11 death).

Upstairs, sole-surviving Chris found an overflowing bathtub filled with bloodied clothing, and then fled to the barn to locate Rick. As she approached, the roped and hanging body of Loco dropped in front of her, causing her to scream and scurry back to the cabin, while buffeted by an intense windstorm. She searched to no avail for Rick, until his bloodied body was heaved through the living room window from the outside.

Chris engaged in a monumental battle of wits and stamina against the hockey-masked killer, who carried an axe and chased her throughout the cabin. She slashed at him with the carving knife that killed Debbie, wounding him in the hand and thigh, dumped a large bookcase filled with books on top of him, and clobbered him over the head with a thick wooden fire-log. She drove away in her van, but it stalled (ran out of gas) on the wooden bridge, and the weight of the van caused the wood planks to crumble and snap. In the barn, she hid in the hayloft, and was able to strike him with a shovel on the back of his head, knocking him unconscious. Although she placed the block and tackle rope noose around his neck, suspended him in mid-air, rolled him out of the hayloft window, and hanged him, he didn't die!

As he was hanging in front of her at the barn door, he unmasked himself, and she recognized him as her mutant tormentor from two years earlier: "It's you!" She appeared doomed, and shrieked as he lowered himself from the noose and approached with his machete, but she was saved when biker Ali, who had survived from the brutal bludgeoning with a monkey-wrench, grabbed him from behind: "Get off of her!" -- but the maniacal killer turned and sliced off Ali's right hand with his machete and then finished him off by repeatedly hacking at him (# 12 death) (off-screen). Chris hit the machete-wielding masked killer in the forehead with an axe (killing him?), slicing through his plastic mask and cracking it. He fell to the barn floor, apparently "dead." [Important Note: Although 'Jason' appeared to be dead, he was resurrected in the next sequel.] Chris wandered over to the lake, where she entered a canoe.

Monday, the 16th

By the next morning, the canoe had drifted from the shore (still within view of the cabin), and she had fallen asleep. She was startled and shrieked as she awakened, and then saw the bloody-faced killer (unmasked), alive and staring back at her from a second-story window. As she hysterically screamed: "No, No!", she attempted to paddle away, and he began to chase toward her - although he abruptly disappeared. Suddenly, she suffered the climactic 'jump-out-of-the-water' experience (the same "boo-moment" scare-ending dream sequence of the original film), as a decomposed Mrs. Voorhees (Jason's mother) (now with her head attached to her body) emerged from the water and dragged her into the lake from the canoe.

The film ended as two police officers discussed the case at the Higgins Haven cabin. Chris was found to be "the only one left alive" (all seven of her friends had been murdered, plus three motorcycle gang members) and she had "flipped out." She was obviously psychotic and mentally disturbed, and had dreamt the nightmarish experience ("That poor kid's been through hell") about a "lady in the lake." She sobbed uncontrollably, suffering from a nervous breakdown, as she was driven away from the property in the Sheriff's patrol car.

The camera tracked over to the open barn door and then slowly tracked forward for a closer look at the body of the masked killer lying there - with the axe still embedded in his forehead. The last image was the peaceful surface of the lake, before a fade to black.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

A tongue-in-cheek slasher film, with a production budget of approximately $2.5 million, and box-office gross revenues of $36.7 million (domestic).

This segment of the long-running series was originally projected and released in gimmicky 3D in 1982 - with the tagline: "A New Dimension in Terror...There will be nowhere to hide. We dare you to try." Lots of scenes were obviously set-ups for 3-D effects (a passed joint in the van, the yo-yo and juggling scenes, the rattlesnake strike, the pitchfork, the spear-gun arrow, the machete, popcorn popping, a red-hot fire poker, a gouged eyeball popping out, a thrown carving knife, a flying duck, etc.). The horror film featured many varied and gruesome kills (that were shortened to avoid an "X" rating).

It was also the first film to feature the killer "Jason" in his signature plastic, grimy hockey mask (a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask) - previously in the second film, he covered his face with a one-eyed pillow-case. However, the name "Jason" was never used in the film (except for the recap at the beginning).

The film's only minor nudity came from a shower scene, with actress Tracie Savage, who later became a TV news-anchor in Los Angeles, and whose revealing role in the film became a topic of conversation during the highly-publicized 1994 O.J. Simpson trial (when she was called to testify about her confidential news sources) and the Heidi Fleiss trial in the mid-1990s.

This was the first film in the franchise to be released on a Friday the 13th.

Body Count: 12 (all committed by 'Jason'). Although 'Jason' appeared to be dead, he was resurrected in the next sequel.