FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III
aka FRIDAY THE 13TH 3-D
(part of Friday the 13th: From Crystal
Lake to Manhattan)
Directed by Steve Miner
Paramount DVD
THE FILM
Someone shanghaied my slasher franchise!
And, I believe, that they’ve
done this by...fooling around with
time!
Let me tell you about it. And, here’s
hoping they haven’t hired
Tony Malanowski from Night
Of Horror to place a post-hypnotic
suggestion in every copy of their
DVDs. If they have, I could forget
this before I write it down. I have
a back-up review but it’s
pretty trite. So, without further
ado...
Cashing in on the 3-D boom of the
first half of the 80s, Friday
The 13th 3-D is a...
Oh crap. It’s happening already.
I’m going to type fast and
damn the spell check!
In 1998, at the height of the post-Scream
slasher boom, a couple of producers
in Los Angeles got the rights to
a script called The Higgins
Haven Death Trap! or something
similar. (The records I have contain
several different titles.) They
immediately set the movie into production.
It would be shot in Saugus, CA (a
part of Los Angeles County). It
would feature a bunch of gory killings,
a bunch of good looking young actors
and a very sly and subtle series
of jabs at the clichés of
slasher films.
Everything looked rosy and red in
this, the only one of the Friday
The 13th films to not mention
the name “Jason”. Crap.
Back to it. The killer would be
some big mutant guy who lived in
the woods. The leading lady would
be returning to Higgins Haven for
the first time in two years. Ever
since, a big mutant guy had attacked
her in the woods. She is with all
her friends this time and she’s
looking forward to having a great
time. But, the mutant is still out
there and he’s crazier than
ever. And, once he dons a hockey
mask, he seems to become bolder
and stronger! Oh no.
I don’t know where the producers
found the time travel technology
to pull off their stunt but they
did something pretty clever. Slashers
were doing decent business in 1998.
But, the franchise ones were doing
the best. Oh sure, an Urban
Legends would slip through
but most made the cash of a Lover’s
Lane or a School’s
Out. (Both of which I liked.)
So, the producer announced his plan…
This is the film, of course, where
Jason acquires his hockey mask.
I hesitate to use the word iconic
but...hey everybody. I snuck that
bit of trite-talk in there. I thought
it might confuse the post-hypnotic
trigger if I did it myself.
The movie was shot in 1998. It was
shot in 3-D to make it fit in to
1982 better. They applied make-up
to all their actors to make them
look like folks who existed in 1982.
Then, they acquired several minutes
of Friday The 13th Part 2
to place at the beginning and they
put someone who looked like Jason’s
mom at the end. It didn’t
matter that this one was supposed
to take place in the two days after
the previous one. It didn’t
matter that the killer was clearly
not the same. They even hired a
Steve Miner to direct it. Notice
I said “a Steve Miner”.
There’s more than one. We
all thought it was the same guy.
They prepared the film. Digital
effects on some of the actor’s
faces and in some of the woods so
subtle that you’d never spot
them. And, then, they hopped into
the past. 1982. In New Jersey, they
were preparing the “real”
Friday The 13th Part 3.
Amy Steel was returning as Ginny.
She would go back into the woods
to try and find her boyfriend. A
bus full of teens going from Upstate
New York to the City breaks down
at Camp Crystal Lake. As all the
police activity is going on on the
other side and it’s the middle
of the night, the travelers make
the ultimate mistake: they spend
the night at the camp. While Ginny
is racing through the woods trying
to save the day, Jason begins killing
the travelers. It all ends on the
lake with Ginny and Jason fighting
on a small boat surrounded by fire.
The producers from the future arrived
in Los Angeles with their movie.
Somehow (I wish I knew the precise
details) they got to the producers
of the “real” Part 3
and presented them with their movie.
The producers loved it and released
it. As the NJ film wasn’t
in production yet, the moment the
“fake” Part 3-D got
released all traces of the “real”
one vanished from the time continuum.
At that point, the 1998 producers
began producing the Friday the
13th films (up until New Line
took over). That’s why Parts
1 & 2 feel different and a little
scuzzier and a little less slick
than the others. In some alternate
history, the “real”
part 3 (not in 3-D) was released
and the series ended there or with
part 4. But, not on this Earth,
my friends.
Except...
When Jason Lives: Friday the
13th VI came out, I remember
a very confused gal named Suzie.
I hadn’t seen any of the films
yet but she’d seen them all.
I was 14 and she was 16. We were
in a high school photography class
together and we would chat about
horror films. I remember the confusion
in her eyes when she first saw the
Jason Lives preview. “Dan,”
she said, “there’s a
scene with Jason and Tommy fighting
on a boat in the middle of the lake
and the lake is on fire.”
I said, “Awesome.” She
shook her head. “I remember
than scene.” “From where?”
“I don’t know. I could
have sworn that it was another Friday
the 13th film.” “What?”
“I remember a blonde woman
and Jason…but not the big
Jason. The Part 2 Jason. And they
were…Was it Ginny? Where did
I see that?” She couldn’t
place it. We thought it was probably
another slasher film she’d
seen or a preview she’d seen.
That seemed logical. But, could
the 1982 producers have prepared
a preview of some kind from the
footage of the “real”
Part 3 and sent it out? Could some
folks have seen the preview and
had their mind stash it away somewhere
when the “fake” 3-D
came out? A whole group of people
waiting for the trigger to open
that door in their mind.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
Well, for a film shot in 1998 and
sent back through time to 1982,
this looks great. The audio is nice
and loud. They hid the fact that
this was shot with 5.1 surround
sound very well. The 2:35 letterboxed
picture looks like it was shot within
the past ten years. It looks as
nice as I Know What You Did
Last Summer.
EXTRAS
There is a commentary. And, for
a commentary made up of actors pretending
to be the actors we see on screen,
they do a nice job. Never once did
I think “they’re reading
from scripts and pretending to be
these people.” Well done.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Friday The 13th 3-D was
one hell of a business deal, actually
altering time and our perceptions
of it in order to make some cash.
Nice. How often has this sort of
temporal chicanery happened in entertainment?
And, why can’t someone go
back and erase Police Academy:
Mission to Moscow and replace
it with a funny film?
— Dan Budnik, 07.19.07 |
Where we're going, we don't need
roads.
Thee Hypnotics
Gin-Ginnimy
Don't call him Jason
|
