Friday the 13th Part 3

A year after Friday the 13th Part 2, Steve Miner returned to helm the inventively-titled Friday the 13th Part 3, becoming the only person to direct more than one entry in the franchise.

The action picks up where the second film ended, as the ending of Part 2 is the beginning of Part 3.  After a few minutes, a disco version of Harry Manfredini's score rears its ugly head, and the opening credits appear, plunging us into the third dimension.  Oh yes, this sucker's in 3D, and the Deluxe Edition DVD and Blu Ray come equipped with two pairs of 3D glasses, so the home audience can experience the thrill of seeing joints, yo-yos, popcorn, TV antennas, and baseball bats shoved towards them in glorious shades of red and blue.   Far too much time is spent on this ridiculousness, including an extended scene in which two guys juggle, and the scariest effects are a rubber snake on a cord and an eyeball popping out at the screen.   When objects aren't being shoved at the camera, the glasses make the already drab picture even more murky and blurry, and if the glasses aren't worn, it negates the purpose of having said objects shoved at the camera.

This time, the setting is a farmhouse instead of a camp.   Jason's potential victims include a chick who experienced something terrible years earlier, a guy who walks around on his hands, some middle-aged stoners, and a chubby prankster.  There's also a biker gang made up of two guys and a girl, who decide to cause some mischief in the barn, where two of them run afoul of Jason.   Inexplicably, the other one apparently decides to hang out there until the climax.  By that point, Jason has a machete, so perhaps he was just waiting to ensure he'd get a cool death scene, as opposed to being ambushed while taking a dump.  Oh, and in addition to the machete, Jason dons his soon-to-be-trademark hockey mask for the first time.

Part 3 doesn't deviate from the formula established by the first two films: "teenagers" go to the woods, ignore the loony guy who warns them of their impending doom, have sex, do drugs, and are horribly killed.   Even the ending is a blatant rip-off of the first film's.  The film is also surprisingly light on the gore and nudity (most likely due to MPAA censorship), so unfortunately, unless you're a huge fan of 3D, Friday the 13th Part 3 really isn't all that exciting.