REVIEW DATE:9:26:0:0
Here we are again, amigos. Crystal Lake. The most Godforsaken camp ground in America. And people just keep coming back! Myself included.
Oh, I knew going in that this one would be bad . . . just not this bad. I could get through part 2 because . . . well, because I knew it would lead to part 3. But, then, to get to part 3 and have it be . . . this . . . what a rip-off, man.
Now I can hear some of you in the audience shouting, Hey, asshole, you're watching a Friday the 13th movie, what did you expect. Well, shuddup, or no soup for you.
Just like last time, we start with A Recap. Whinney Girl Ginney (Amy Steel) meets up with the Frugal Ku Klux Klansman (Jason) and Mrs. Voorhees' desiccated head. Her manly man returns from the dead to help her, she stabs Jason through the shoulder (and maybe through the lung, too, I don't know) and they escape.
Afterward, we see Jason crawling, wounded out of his little hut in the woods. Zoom in on The Head and . . . whoa! Watch out, here comes the 3-D credit sequence! Run for your lives, the credits are attacking!
*ahem* Friday the 13th Part 3 marks the first movie reviewed here at AYTIWS that was unfortunate enough to be filmed in Obvious 3-D. Back in the 80s (and we know how much I love the 80s), 3-D became all the rage. In the 90s, however, as these 3-D movies came out on tape, it became obvious that 3-D does not work on the small screen. We'll talk about this effect later on.
Now, however, it's time to meet your victims. There's Chris (Dana Kimmell), who met Jason two years before and escaped him . . . somehow; Shelly, the Wimp (Larry Zerner), who will be your False Scare for the evening; Debra (Tracie Savage, yummy), who may or may not be pregnant; Andy (Jeffrey Rogers), the guy Deb is having sex with (despite the fact that she's already pregnant, maybe); Vera the Bitch (Catherine Parks); two Stupid Hippies; and, finally, Chris' suitor, Rick (Paul Kratka), who's one big hunk of man. It doesn't do him any good come fightin' time, but he does walk around shirtless once. Ladies, here's your only reason to watch this movie.
Plot? HAH! Chris and her buds are going up to her conveniently located farm house near Crystal Lake. Chris' family used it as a summer house until her little encounter. Apparently, while hiding in the woods in retaliation to her parents' anger (that'll show 'um), Chris encountered Jason. He dragged her along the ground for while before she blacked out. Somehow, she escaped.
Right.
Her friends all have sex and die (in Rick's and Shelly's cases, even wanting sex will kill you), like we know they will. From their first scene, we see them driving down the road in their van, doomed to die because they're smoking pot (or eating it in an attempt to hide it from the cops -- the American teen: smart, very smart). Rule #2: You can never drink or do drugs. Big no-no.
Acting? Sill rabbit, acting's for real movies. About the only actors here are Shelly and Rick . . . and Shelly's barely there. He sleepwalks his way through his role as the Designated Looser. You know, the guy who slaps on fake blood and hides in closets? The one who never gets any lovin' and still dies? These characters really make me sad, mostly because I used to be one of them. Hell, Shelly even has my old hair cut.
Rick, on the other hand, looks like an actual actor. He's believable, sympathetic, and, darn it, I was actually sorry to see him go. He gets the one good scene in the whole movie (when he helps Chris haul hay into the barn). He's obviously ten years older then anyone else in the cast, and can read his lines with emotion. So, of course, he dies.
But a bad movie isn't a Bad Movie without a bad script. Written by Martin Kitrosser, it makes Part 2 look like Dracula (no, not that Dracula). The big plot hole in all this is Jason himself. Before, Big-J killed everything in sight, on sight. Here he waits . . . and waits . . . and waits as the script tries to make something of itself and Steve Miner tries to make something of the script.
Yes, Steve Miner is back for another outing. Last time, he tried his damnedest to put some tension up on screen. But he didn't have much to work with. Here, he has even less. This script is even more formulaic then the last one. And, though some would argue that complaining about predictable killings is like complaining about anachronisms in Wild Wild West . . . hey, wait a second, people do that all the time!
Plus, Steve is saddled with the way he has to direct. Since this is a movie in Obvious 3-D there are many shots inserted just for the 3-D effect (Jason always stabs toward the camera, Andy really loves his yo-you, etc.,). Plus, in normal shots, the 3-D film overlays everything with a weird red/blue haze. It makes my eyes want to focus on something that just isn't in the movie.
Like, say, quality.
Gs (out of a possible five)
MOCK O' METER
