Friday the 13th: Part 3 has a lighter, goofier tone than the previous two entries in the series. Jason is still, of course, out and about killing teenagers or rather the teenagers-at-heart, but the film seems to have almost forgotten all about him. According to the Internet Movie Database, this is the only film in the series where his name is never mentioned (save for the clips from Friday the 13th: Part 2). I know that it sounds awfully pointless to complain that the film views Jason as nothing more than a killing machine, but in contrast with the other two films in the series it becomes a valid criticism. Friday the 13th: Part 3 shortchanges us of the Jason mythology, and that is an almost unthinkable offense. A review on the DVD Verdict website complains about the overuse of POV-of-the-killer shots in the film. I honestly cannot remember seeing any of them, except of course when characters throw stuff into the screen to exploit the film's original 3-D effect. (Which I cannot imagine could be anything remotely decent. When an object is pushed in front of the screen, the background goes completely out of focus.) Jason's presence is typically handled through the VICTIMS' point-of-view; they see some sort of figure in the distance. It doesn't seem to work as well. In addition to this, the "ki ki ki ch ch ch” sound effects seem to be missing. These effects were, of course, meant to draw us into the schizophrenic mind of Jason/Mother. The omission of these elements sends a clear message; this isn't as much Jason's show any more.

The film doesn't get off to a very good start. The prologue is simply a reprise of the ending of Friday the 13th: Part 2. They try to tie things in a little by showing the last survivor being taken away on a broadcast of the evening news, but we realize that it's all highly unnecessary and they are just trying to pad out the film a little. The opening sequence has the titles zooming towards us. It looks like very cheap video editing. The effect is compounded by a disco synthesizer score, which is admittedly pretty groovy, but is still a disco synthesizer score. Have they given up all pretenses of being serious?

Jason's first two victims are a grocery store owner who regularly sneaks snacks from his own store from his domineering wife. He also sneaks pet animals, like snakes and rabbits. The wife, her hair wrapped around curlers, looks younger than she should be. The message, I think, may be that these characters should have been killed by Jason years ago when they were still horny teenagers. I can't imagine that the two characters still have sex. The wife suppresses her husband’s appetite for food, saying that the doctor told him he shouldn't eat so much. She refuses pleasure for pleasure's sake, pushing the reasoning onto an unchallenged, nearly unknowable authority. Her religiosity is in a sense not really a fully developed sense of morality, and following that she lacks a fully developed sense of spirituality or humanity. This goes back to my original observation that the victims in the Friday the 13th films do not die because there is some sort of karmic force punishing them for their heedless hedonism, but because they do not have lives that are worth being protected. It depresses me to imagine the victims of Friday the 13th not dying, and growing up to become the storeowner and wife and mistakenly thinking that they have grown past their sex-and-pot teenage years instead of simply trading off for a different sort of vapid idiocy.

I suppose that all of this is not entirely without value in a Friday the 13th film, but these characters are obviously gag characters and don't have much to do with the rest of the film. It's my duty to report that this is more padding and more unwanted silliness. The "rest of the film" involves six teens-at-heart and two hippies for a vacation out in the woods. This is the first film where they aren't camp counselors, and a brief study of the other films show that Jason has spent much more of his career not killing camp counselors than killing them. The most interesting character is Shelly, a chubby loser with a "jewfro.” He plays lots of practical jokes where he pretends that he has been murdered, or he sneaks up on his friends dressed as some sort of killer. He wants to fit in with everyone else, and hopefully get some from a blind date that his roommate set him up with.

Shelly's presence isn't entirely unwelcome. He doesn't have the cookie-cutter appearance of the other characters, who I often found to be highly indistinguishable, and this alienation is used to score a very specific thematic resonance. One of Shelly's pranks incorporates the use of a goalie's hockey mask. This mask turns out to be, you guessed it, taken from him by Jason and has now become Jason's trademark. The next seven films in the series feature the hockey mask in their poster art. Jason, of course, wears it throughout the rest of the series. In a film where the characters can't even be bothered to utter his name, it's curious that Jason adopts this little memento of one of his kills to be his trademark throughout the rest of his life (and thereafter).

The outcast Shelly has used the mask for a dual purpose, to hide his hated appearance, and to incorporate himself into the lives of the people who he feels exist outside of him. We can imagine that the mask serves a similar purpose for Jason. I remarked in my review of Friday the 13th: Part 2 that the killings lean towards the sexual through the use of piercing weapons. While I believe that the purpose of this was mostly to produce a more pleasingly misogynistic murder and nihilistic tone, I haven't read these scenes as to have any real thematic significance. Mostly so I could continue to support my belief that the murders are not directly motivated by sex.

However, the parallel with Shelly seems to suggest that the Jason killings may be some attempt towards intimacy. Given that Shelly could be a reference to Mary Shelly, and Shelly is arguably to Jason as Mary Shelly is to Frankenstein: the author, perhaps these murders are the only way that the creature can communicate with the rest of the world. We can imagine that Jason has been without his mother for so long that these murders represent the extent as to which he is able to maintain contact with her. Or perhaps he acts out of compulsion and frustration. The only way that any of these characters could possibly recognize him in any extent is if he is out to kill them. Recognition, rather than vengeance, may be what both Jason and Mother had been wanting all along. In that same vein, both Shelly and Jason force the characters to face the sort of ugliness in their being that everyone else wants to ignore. Shelly almost revels in his gawkiness as Jason revels in his lunking monstrosity. This aspect is admittedly invaluable and reflects well on Friday the 13th: Part 3's contribution to the series.

There is an interesting added subtext to the meaning of Jason, and thematically why he is killing. The heroine mentions that she ran away from home after her mother had hit her. She slept in the woods when Jason attacked her. When she woke up she was in the hospital. Her parents never mentioned anything about what happened ever again. Her attack by Jason is then meant to parallel the attack by her parents. Both entities trying to restrain her freedom as an adult through physical means. Similarly, both entities have their very existence denied by most of the rest of the characters.

This may be one of the first times that a character in a Friday the 13th film is given enough of a background for their encounter with Jason to amount to something substantial. At the end of the film, she tries to hang Jason on a makeshift noose. In order to free himself of the rope, he lifts his mask and slips through. She sees his face and recognizes him as her attacker. We are then to believe that she has something invested in defeating Jason. Not only is she fighting for her life, she is fighting the threat that her domineering parents have put onto her. She is liberating herself as an adult and as a woman. I fear that this aspect is not completely effective. The relationship seems to be grossly underdeveloped as we are not given very much insight as to just what being an adult means to her, or really why her mother slapped her. It's curious that the filmmakers tried at all.

In the where-are-they-now department, the actor who played Shelly, Larry Zerner, now works at Kirsch and Mitchell practicing entertainment law! While in the where-are-they-now department, actress Tracie Savage who plays "Debbie" in the film, is an Emmy-award winning news anchor for Channel 4 News in Los Angeles. She was the chief field reporter for the O.J. Simpson trial! This was interesting to me because Savage seems especially bad in this film, even according to Friday the 13th standards. She is the only character who has sex in the film (and almost shows some nudity in doing so and in taking a hot shower afterwards) but although she calls the encounter "the best one yet," she doesn't seem at all winded or exhausted from the experience. Or maybe (slaps forehead), that's the entire point. It's hard to adequately access the acting in these films because the actors are never really given characters to play or things to do. But Savage makes you realize how much better other Friday the 13th veterans were in actually portraying the aftermath of an allegedly earth-shattering orgasm.

The Debbie character says that she is pregnant, but Savage seems to almost forget this in her portrayal. Seriously though, I think that this may be the entire point. After sex her boyfriend offers to get her a beer. She agrees but then later decides that she doesn't want one. I suspect that the character actually FORGOT that she was pregnant, but then suddenly remembered while pontificating on it a little. Debbie does not seem to possess any sort of fear or excitement about being pregnant. She treats it very stunningly in an entirely nonchalant manner. When she is murdered, we are not shocked because of the humanity that the pregnancy has lent her character, but because of the lack of humanity the pregnancy has lent her character. It could be said that Jason is just cutting to the chase. What chance could that kid have to develop beyond Friday the 13th victim when the environment that it is born in is so hollow and soulless?

The hippies in the film blend in pretty well with the other characters, although I don't remember their existence ever really being explained. They look old enough to have attended Woodstock. Early in the film, smoke comes pouring out of the gang's van. They run to it thinking that it's on fire, but of course it's just those wacky hippies breathing in a bong. Yuk yuk! There's more stoner humor in the film shortly after when the cops are driving behind them with their sirens blazing. Thinking that they have been had, everyone tries to eat their stash. It turns out that the cops are just going to the scene of a gruesome slaying. The gang collectively "awww"s when they realize that they had to eat all that pot for nothing, while showing that they are relieved that they weren't caught. The facile irony behind the idea that this killer that they are shrugging off can do more harm thasome officers looking for a pot bust, nonetheless suggests an air of superiority towards the shallow priorities of its victims. They have an extremely limited perspective towards the world, and view the police as an institution that serves no other purpose but to spoil their party.

The filmmakers introduce a biker gang in the film, which teases Shelly and his date when they're buying groceries at the town market. Shelly accidentally knocks down their motorcycles when pulling out, and so one of the gangsters breaks in their window. This pushes Shelly over the edge, motivating him to turn around and smash their motorcycles for good. When this scene was played in the Mystery Science Theater non-classic Girl in Gold Boots, it was to help establish, to some degree, the protagonist's lawlessness and fearlessness. That is very much the point in Friday the 13th: Part 3, I think. Shelly doesn't look nearly as much of a wimp when he runs over the motorcycle, and doing so greatly softens his date's view of him. Outside of character exposition, the scene didn't serve much of a point in Girl with Gold Boots, as it is never mentioned again. In Friday the 13th: Part 3, it's folded into the plot. The gang needs revenge for the crime, and so they siphon out all the gas from their victims' car and intend to burn down their barn, I think. A car without gas proves to be a menace when you are trying to get away from a crazed slasher.

The costumes of Friday the 13th: Part 3's biker gang are so heavily contrived that the gang seems to become a knowingly artificial construction. They are all in leather and have skulls silk-screened onto their shirts. One biker is seen constantly smoking a cigarette. When he is murdered, he gasps and the cigarette falls from his lips soaked in blood. This kill is almost complimented by the one where the stoner hippy is electrocuted and fumes rise from his corpse. His girlfriend is killed with a hot poker, and again, more fumes. They died, unfortunately, literally smoking. Gags like this seem to be more at home at a Mel Brooks/Keenan Ivory Wayans-like parody. I am not entirely without affection for the distance and hatred that those filmmakers have for their targets that they find through their sarcastic satire. But the Friday the 13th films are a more delicate species, one where the distance seems more subtle and direct and I think more poignant. I better prefer an in-joke like where the surviving character falls asleep in a canoe, just like the last two actresses in the last two films, and get attacked by not young Jason, not older Jason, but by Jason's mother clad in sweater, who should have had her head cut off. That scene manages to work on its own level and on a higher one, unlike those other two.

Still, the smoking gags used in the film are still funnier and more subtle than most of Brooks and Wayans' jokes, even if they are in the same breed. While I think that Friday the 13th: Part 3 is one of the lesser Friday the 13th films; it doesn't stray too far off the beaten path. As different as the film is, it manages to remain very much the same. In a way, I would like to recommend it as a guilty pleasure for Friday fans, if you can detect what I mean without interpreting that statement as doublespeak. I think that is quite telling that for as many people who feel that this is one of the least, there are as many who feel it's one of the best. It probably depends mostly on why you are watching a Friday the 13th movie in the first place.

The kills in Friday the 13th: Part 3, including the ones that I have mentioned, are among the more memorable in the series. There are a few more gag murders. Jason squeezes one victim's head until his eyeball pops out towards the camera, and the effect is amusing if obviously fake. One character is walking on his hands when Jason slices him down the middle with his machete. One of the most disturbing murders is the execution of Shelly's date. Shelly had just scared her, and told her that he has to pull pranks on her, because otherwise nobody would like him. She tells him that he's wrong and she does like him. He goes away, and she sighs. She picks up his wallet and looks through it, seeing a picture of him and his mother. She smiles; Shelly really is OK. She then accidentally drops his wallet into the water (an obvious sexual symbol) that she is wading in. While she tries to get it, she sees a guy with a hockey mask. She thinks that it's Shelly, but on a second glance realizes that it's a stranger. Abruptly the stranger raises a spear gun and fires one into her eye socket.

What is so interesting about the scene is that a real relationship was being hinted at here. We half want the two to get together. Jason doesn't allow them that sort of relief, because he doesn't even care. The more that you care about these characters, the more absurd you realize the idea of caring for them is. Why make plans, why look or think of love, when you exist for nothing more than to be gutted like an animal. This girl's entire existence doesn’t have much more value then that of a used tissue. The thought is frightening and sort of tragic. And that is basically the backbone of the Friday the 13th experience.