John's Horror Banana-nanza Episode Three : Friday the 13th 3-D

Oh, the wonders of gimmicks.

Jason is not dead after the last episode, which we know because he crashed through the window, right? No, in the beginning of this one, he grabs his machete, crawls out the door and for no particular reason other than to get some new clothes, he kills some store owners and heads for an old barn. This one, filmed in 3-D, has objects thrown and shoved in the viewer’s face from the get-go. A laundry pole, a needle, and a snake are just a few things at the beginning.

Heading to the same barn as Jason are a group of the stupidest kids you'll ever want to meet. A pregnant girl, a curly haired fat prankster, a stuck up Spanish girl, a guy who appears to be auditioning for the circus, two 40-something stoners, and apparently some girl who had (ahem) an experience with Jason way back, named Chris. Why do I remember her name? Well, it’s very obvious from the get-go that she will survive.

There's also a biker “gang” that acts more like local bus stop bullies. They follow some of the kids to the cabin, and with a plan to light the barn on fire, get killed off. It becomes obvious that if you stay out of the barn, Jason has no interest in you. At least, until he gets his hockey mask from the prankster. Then he feels confident enough to shoot spears at us in 3-D.

Through a lengthy, poorly acted exposition, we learn that Chris was, well, probably raped by Jason as a kid. A Jason dressed in the same clothes he stole for this movie, and without the hair that he must have cut off for this movie. This is where it was pretty much set in stone that Jason would never ever have the same look from movie to movie, as he looks completely removed from his wild mountain man look of the previous film, even though it was directed by the same director, Steve Miner.

At one point, Stan Winston was in charge of the makeup for thismovie. I wonder what happened, because the effects are definitely lacking.

We learn a few things in this film. For instance, if you touch a breaker box hard enough, you'll catch on fire. Also, in these movies, an outhouse is always a bad place to be. You can't go to the bathroom in these movies or you will die. Just hold it until the killer is "dead".

I’m gonna spoil the ending, because I can’t spoil it more than the writers already did. Chris kills Jason twice, once by hanging and once with an axe to the head. Then she paddles out to the middle of a pond, which I’m not sure why. Jason appears maskless in a window, but then he disappears, and then, his mom’s rotted corpse, complete with reattached head, pulls her under the water. Except she dreamt all of that. What???

The original ending had her head cut off in the final shot by Jason. It just seems to me that despite being the highest grossing episode of the franchise until “Freddy vs. Jason”, it’s just a movie with tons of failed potential. Luckily, the series took a serious upswing one movie later.

1. So...what happened to Chris?

2. How (and why) did Jason find the time to plant all the bodies all over the place, like in the ceiling and hanging from a tree...and posted to a piece of wood in the barn?

3. Are those bikers really scary? And does burning down the barn really go tat-for-tat when your bike gets ran over?

4. Does Jason remember that he's supposed to be getting revenge on the kids who didn't watch him when he drowned? Or the counselors who killed his mom? Moreover...does he care?