Hi-hi-hi, ha-ha-ha! It’s Burl, here to
review yet another entry in the ever-present saga of Jason and the pokings, the
choppings, and the novelty killings! This is the third one, the 3-D one of
course, and not much loved, I think! As with the Star Trek movies, this series suffers a bit from Odd Sequel Out
syndrome, where the even numbered entries are more beloved than the odds! So,
admitting the possibility of predjudice with that syndrome in mind, this
installment has always seemed to me a bit of a valley between Part 2 and Part 4! But,
ha ha, it’s certainly better than Part 5!
After replaying the climax of its
predecessor, as though viewers required a detailed reminder of exactly what
occurred in the previous film so they could progress through the new narrative
without fear of bafflement, we meet the most miserable storekeeper couple in
the world: a shrewish scold of a wife, and the fishfood-eating droopy-dog husband who, by his childish behavior, makes it impossible for her to operate
any other way! There’s a bit of not-bad cat-and-mouse with the laundry hanging
on the lines, and then these doughty citizens are sliced and poked! Then,
finally, it’s on to the main body of the picture!
Dana Kimmell from Sweet Sixteen plays the weedy main girl, who has suffered through
an earlier Jason attack but survived it somehow! Jason’s need to complete any
task once begun means he’ll soon be after her and her terrible friends as they
spend the weekend in a remote country house! Her boyfriend, who knows of her
traumas, jumps out and scares her anyway, and then acts like a complete prig
the rest of the time, at least until his head is squished and his eyeball
shoots out into the audience, ha ha!
(Yes, you’re not allowed to forget the
movies was shot in 3-D for long! Not just body parts and sharp tools are thrust
into the lens, but baseball bats, yo-yos, juggling balls, joints, and dudes
sitting on toilets, of which last this picture has no deficiency!)
Only slightly more tolerable than the
boyfriend is Shelley, the tubby jokester of the gang! His inappropriate and
ill-timed japes fill much of the picture’s running time or so it seems! There’s
a stoner couple, with the man an eerie simulacrum of Tommy Chong! There’s a
likeable Latina, and a blandly sexy couple unremarkable except that they always
want to have sex with each other, and, in the rare moments when not talking
about, preparing to, or actually making love, the fellow juggles and handwalks!
Ha ha, your handwalking days are
over, you showoff! And then there are special guests: a small motorcycle gang
which takes a disliking to Shelley, and later makes the scene to get mild
revenge on him for one of his earlier merry jests! All fall before Jason like
wheat before the thresh, ha ha!
The sets in this movie fascinate me for
some reason! They seem not to have been quite finished; there’s a stagebound
unreality that makes it seem like a Lars von Trier warehouse experiment, with
the sets just lines painted on the floor! The store at the beginning and the main
house in which most of the murderin’ takes place look to be made of sheets of
varnished plywood that have been leaned up against each other like an amateur’s
house of cards! Ha ha, and the movie itself fascinates me a little! For me it's the one with the
most mystique attached to it, which stems from the time a friend’s younger brother went to see it
as part of a birthday party outing! This ten year-old’s retelling of the story
and breathless descriptions of the murder scenes were more successful in selling the
movie than the advertising was! (Though Jason’s knife poking
through that curtain is a creepy image, at least to me!)
But the movie really isn’t very good! The
direction is off and on, and the camera and lighting needs of 3-D make it sort
of strange-looking, and the script tries to gin up drama with pranks and
self-abnegation! It’s the only one of the Friday
the 13th movies shot at a 2.35:1 ratio, and I like that; and there are some
fun Special Makeup Effects; and there are some scenes where Jason is scary; and
it’s of interest to historians of this sort of thing in that it’s the picture
in which Jason acquires his famous hockey mask, stolen from Shelley no less!
But that’s not much to hang a hat on, and so in the end I can give Friday the 13th part 3
only one backup fuel tank!
No comments:
Post a Comment