Friday the 13th Part III

Did You Know?

• Betsy Palmer, Amy Steel, John Furey, and Steve Daskewisz appear in archive footage and are credited for their special appearance.
• The film's disco theme, co-written by Harry Manfredini and Michael Zager, was credited to a fictional band called Hot Ice and became popular at disco and gay clubs.
• Film scholar Carol Clover notes that the film has historically been cited as one of the most violent of the series, with a total of fourteen murder sequences.

Plot

Shortly after being wounded by Ginny Field, a badly injured Jason Voorhees kills a store owner and his wife. Meanwhile, Chris Higgins and her friends—including pregnant Debbie, her boyfriend Andy, prankster Shelly, his blind date Vera, and stoners Chuck and Chili—travel to Higgins Haven on Crystal Lake for a summer trip. After a confrontation with bikers at a convenience store, the bikers later arrive at the house to siphon gas and attempt arson.

Jason, hiding in the barn, kills two bikers with a pitchfork and beats another unconscious. Chris and her boyfriend Rick go into the woods, where she reveals she was attacked by a deformed man two years earlier and returned to face her fears. Shelly, rejected by Vera, scares her with a hockey mask before wandering into the barn; Jason takes the mask and kills Vera with a speargun. Jason then kills Andy with a machete, stabs Debbie through a hammock, electrocutes Chuck, and impales Chili with a fire poker.

Production

Early drafts for Part III centered on Ginny Field from the previous film, but actress Amy Steel declined to reprise the role, leading to significant script changes. Screenwriter Ron Kurz also turned down the project, so Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson were hired to write the screenplay; Kitrosser had been a script supervisor on the first two films. Paramount later brought in Petru Popescu to make the script more sinister, though he went uncredited.

The script called for Jason to wear a mask, replacing the bag he wore in Part 2, which became a trademark. Casting was based on looks, according to Popescu. Dana Kimmell was cast as Chris after director Steve Miner saw her in another slasher film. Tracie Savage was offered the role of Debbie through her agent, and Larry Zerner was discovered while walking down a street.

British stuntman Richard Brooker was cast as Jason. The film was shot in California rather than the East Coast, and the 3-D technology complicated the several-month shoot in spring 1982.

Release

Friday the 13th Part III was released theatrically in the United States on August 13, 1982, with a $3 million marketing campaign. It was the first 3-D film to receive a wide domestic release, opening on 1,079 screens, of which 813 were 3-D capable; drive-in theaters could not accommodate the format. A seven-week conversion process costing $2 million allowed non-3-D theaters to screen the film. International releases followed later in 1982 and into 1983. The film was first released on VHS in 1983, with subsequent VHS reissues in 1988 and 1994. A DVD edition in 2000 presented the film only in 2-D, and the 3-D version was released on DVD in 2009. The film was later included in Blu-ray box sets in 2013, 2018, and 2020, the last featuring a 4K scan of the original camera negative.

Reception

The film grossed $9,406,522 in its opening weekend, breaking the opening horror film record set by the original Friday the 13th. Domestically, it earned $36.7 million, ranking 21st among top-grossing films of 1982. As of 2020, it is the fourth highest-grossing film in the series and the third best in ticket sales, with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of B-. Critics gave negative reviews overall. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the acting as an improvement over predecessors and called Miner's use of 3-D innovative and professional, though she criticized the derivative plot. She noted the film devoted time to 3-D gimmicks such as yo-yos and popcorn, and felt the film was superior to the prior two installments.