#9 - Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
(dir. Steve Miner)
This third installment in the series picks up immediately after the previous film ends, and provides yet another flashback sequence (which may have been helpful when seeing these films in the theater, but gets annoying when watching them all back-to-back). Once we get a recap of what happened to Ginny, the movie introduces an entirely new cast of characters, a group of teens headed up to a remote lake house for the weekend. Guess what lake the house is on.
There seems to be a lot of contention among Friday fans over how good this film is. Some rank it as one of the best films of the franchise, while others think it is the absolute worst. I can see why - there are some excellent things about this one, and also some terrible things. On the plus side, Jason finally gets his iconic hockey mask, and it looks fantastic. Chris is probably the best final girl so far, able to go toe-to-toe with Jason and even take him down (at least until the next movie). There are also some nice looking sets, especially the inside of the lake house, which I thought looked way better than the sparse cabins of the previous two films.
On the negative side, this was released as a 3D movie and it's full of really bad and ridiculous shots that serve no purpose other than to show this off, all of which look terrible in 2D. A few of the things that "pop out" towards the audience in this film: a pitchfork, a harpoon, a hot poker, two eyeballs (from different people), some popcorn, two guys juggling balls for some reason, a yo-yo, and a hilariously fake snake. The wires controlling these props are usually super visible, too. Some of the acting is real bad. Shelly is also kind of a terrible character who can't resist being a total asshole to everyone for no reason.
I'll have to wait until I watch the rest of the series before I rank this one, but I think it's too uneven to really be one of the best - or maybe I'm just underestimating how bad some of the later ones will be.
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