Friday the 13th Part III is a 1982 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner, produced by Frank Mancuso Jr., and starring Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, and Richard Brooker. It is the sequel to Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and the third installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. Set directly after the events of the previous film, the plot follows Chris Higgins, a teenage girl (Kimmell), and her friends who go on a trip to a homestead near Crystal Lake where an injured Jason Voorhees (Brooker) has taken refuge until re-emerging for another killing spree. The film marks the first appearance of Jason's signature hockey mask, which has since become a trademark of both the character and the franchise, as well as an icon in American cinema and the horror genre.
The original storyline was supposed to focus on a post-traumatic Ginny Field from the prior installment. However, this concept was abandoned when actress Amy Steel declined to reprise her role. Martin Kitrosser, a script supervisor on the previous two films, co-wrote the screenplay with Carol Watson. Unlike the previous two installments, Friday the 13th Part III was filmed in California rather than the East Coast. Paramount shot the film in 3D, a choice suggested by Martin Sadoff, an associate of producer Frank Mancuso Jr. The 3D technology used in the film complicated the shooting process, which lasted several months in the spring of 1982.
Friday the 13th Part III was theatrically released in select theaters in 3D, and is the only film in the series to be released in that format. The film was intended to end the series as a trilogy; however, unlike many of its successors, the film did not include a moniker in its title to indicate it as such. The film was theatrically released on August 13, 1982, grossing $36.7 million at the US box office on a budget of $2.2 million, and received negative reviews from critics. It was the first film to remove E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial from the number-one box office spot and became the second highest-grossing horror film of 1982, behind Poltergeist. It has the third most attendance of the Friday the 13th franchise, with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold. A direct sequel, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, was released two years later.
Plot Shortly after being sliced with a machete by Ginny Field, a badly injured and unmasked Jason Voorhees goes to a lakefront store for a change of clothes. While there, he murders the store owner, Harold, and his wife, Edna. Meanwhile, Chris Higgins and her friends travel to Higgins Haven, her old home on Crystal Lake, for a summer trip. The gang includes pregnant Debbie, her boyfriend Andy, prankster Shelly, his blind date Vera (who does not reciprocate his feelings), and stoners Chuck and Chili. After running into a man named Abel, who warns them to turn back, the gang meets Chris' boyfriend, Rick, at their destination.
At a convenience store, Shelly and Vera get into a confrontation with three bikers Ali, Fox, and Loco. Shelly gets in the car and knocks down their motorcycles. While the car gets their front window broken with a chain, Shelly returns to knock down the bike again, impressing Vera. Later, the bikers show up at Higgins Haven, where they siphon gas out of the van and attempt to burn the barn down to get even. Jason, who has been hiding inside the barn, murders Fox and Loco each with a pitchfork before beating Ali unconscious. That night, Chris and Rick head out into the woods, where Chris reveals that she was attacked by a deformed man two years prior, which prompted her to leave Crystal Lake in the first place; the main reason that she returned was to confront her fears. Her overall memory of the incident is unclear.
Back at Higgins Haven, a rejected Shelly scares Vera with a hockey mask and then wanders into the barn; Jason emerges wearing Shelly's mask. Vera retrieves Shelly's wallet from under the dock, then is promptly shot in the eye with a speargun. Jason then enters the house and vertically slices a handstanding Andy in half with a machete. Debbie finishes her shower and rests on a hammock, where Jason thrusts a knife through her chest from beneath. When the power goes out in the house, Chuck goes downstairs to the basement only to be hurled into the fuse box and electrocuted. Chili finds Shelly bleeding to death from a slashed throat, believing it is a joke at first, and Jason impales her with a fire poker.
When Rick's car breaks down, Chris and Rick are forced to walk back to the house, only to find it in disarray. Rick steps outside to search the grounds, but Jason grabs him and crushes his skull with his bare hands, making one of his eyes pop out of its socket. Jason then attacks Chris, who narrowly escapes the house and tries to flee in her van. With the van running out of gas, Chris tries to use the van's reserve tank. However, she runs out of time and the wheel falls through the bridge, prompting Chris to enter the barn to hide, only for Jason to attack again. Inside the barn, Chris strikes Jason over the head with a shovel and hangs him. He regains consciousness and temporarily removes his mask to free himself from the noose, allowing Chris to recognize him as the same man who attacked her two years prior. An awoken Ali tries to attack Jason, but Jason quickly finishes him off. The distraction allows Chris to strike Jason in the head with an axe. He staggers momentarily towards her before finally collapsing. Exhausted, Chris pushes a canoe out into the lake and falls asleep.
Chris has a nightmare of an unmasked Jason running towards her from the house before disappearing, which then cuts to the decomposing body of Pamela Voorhees, with her head attached, emerging from the lake to pull her in. The following morning, the police arrive and escort a traumatized Chris away from Higgins Haven. Jason's body is shown to be still lying in the barn, seemingly dead.
Cast
Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees, Amy Steel as Ginny Field, John Furey as Paul Holt, and Steve Daskewisz as Jason from Part 2 appear in the film in archive footage and are credited for their "special appearance".
Themes In his book Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (2004), the film scholar Jim Harper wrote extensively on the film's final girl character, Chris, who suffers from childhood trauma resulting from sexual assault, which leaves her unable to engage in intimate relationships, although there is no undisputed evidence of what has really happened to her. In the film, Chris' trauma stems from an attack she survived from Jason Voorhees, which leaves her "mentally scarred." According to Jim Harper's interpretation, in comparison to the final girl characters in other contemporaneous slasher films such as Halloween (1978) or A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Chris' failure to engage in sexual relations is a function of trauma as opposed to "repress[ion] or dysfunct[ion]."
Production Screenplay Initially, one of the earlier drafts for Part III was Ginny Field (Amy Steel) from the previous film Friday the 13th Part 2 being sent to a psychiatric hospital and confined there. Suffering from the events of Part 2, she eventually finds out that Jason Voorhees survived from his wound and tracks her down to the hospital, murdering the staff and other patients at the hospital. Another proposed concept focused on Ginny who began learning self-defense and returned to college after surviving her ordeal in the previous film. After finding Paul Holt (John Furey)'s corpse inside her dormitory, she and Ted Bowen (Stu Charno) prepare to track down Voorhees and face him in a final confrontation. At the time, Steel turned down the role due to her involvement in other projects, resulting in significant script changes. Steel recalled: "They really wanted me for Part III. They didn't have a script, but they were just going to show me some sort of outline. Then my agents got involved, and I don't know if it was a money issue or a script issue, but I didn't do it."
Screenwriter Ron Kurz, who had written Part 2, was offered to draft a screenplay, but also turned the project down. Husband-and-wife screenwriting duo Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson instead were hired to write the screenplay for Part III, completing the first draft. Kitrosser had served as a script supervisor on the previous two films. Paramount subsequently brought in Petru Popescu to alter the screenplay and make it "more sinister and menacing." Though the final filmed version of the script contained significant contributions from Popescu, he remained uncredited.
The script for Part III called for Jason to wear a mask to cover his face, having worn a bag over his head in Part 2; this mask would become a trademark for the character, and one instantly recognizable in popular culture in the years to come.
Casting Screenwriter Popescu said casting was based on looks rather than talent and recalled that his vision of the characters was at significant odds with the cast chosen by director Steve Miner. Dana Kimmel was cast in the lead role of Chris Higgins after Miner had become aware of her involvement in Sweet Sixteen, another slasher film she had appeared in with Bo Hopkins and Susan Strasberg. Tracie Savage, who had previously worked as a child actor, was offered the role of Debbie Klein through her agent. Larry Zerner was discovered by casting directors while walking along a street and was offered the role of Shelly. For the role of Jason Voorhees, Miner cast British stuntman Richard Brooker.
3D development Georgetown Productions, who had produced the previous two installments in the Friday the 13th series, was initially involved in the pre-production of Part III, agreeing with distributor Paramount Pictures to shoot the film with 3D cameras, making it the first Paramount film produced in 3D since Jivaro in 1954. The decision to shoot the film in 3D was suggested by Martin Jay Sadoff, who had a working relationship with the film's producer, Frank Mancuso Jr.
Paramount leased two 3-Depix cameras from the photography company Marks Polarized Corporation to shoot the film. Simultaneously, Paramount executive Al Lo Presti was researching current 3D camera technology with the intention of developing a 3D lens to be owned and used exclusively by Paramount. The technology used to shoot the film in 3D was developed at a cost of approximately $15 million. According to Sadoff, director Miner and producer Mancuso "didn't give a shit about the 3-D because they were under such a tight schedule. They had to get this film made and, to make matters worse, Paramount told us they wouldn't release the film if the 3-D effects looked stupid. It was a very stressful situation and the whole thing went on right up to the end of filming."
According to a September 1982 issue of Forbes magazine, Sirius II Corp. owner Gale Weaver visited the set of Friday the 13th Part III, reportedly over producer Mancuso's worries that faulty projection lenses at cinemas would prevent the film from having a wide theatrical release. Over a two-week period, Weaver developed a prototype lens that would be adaptable to "almost all theater projectors"; Paramount subsequently awarded Sirius II Corp. $1 million to manufacture the lenses, which would be used in projection—to the exclusion of Marks projection lenses. Marks Polarized Corporation subsequently filed a $25 million lawsuit against Paramount, alleging that the studio was "monopolizing the marketing of 3-D exhibition materials, as well as providing deductions to theaters choosing to lease projection lenses directly from Paramount." Paramount ultimately agreed to credit Marks Polarized Corporation onscreen with the statement: "Filmed utilizing the Marks 3-Depix® Converter," but the company was denied an injunction that would have required Paramount to change its equipment.
Filming