A Ghoul Versus Friday The 13th Part III (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1!

Shelly's mopefest is interrupted by the sound of a twig breaking in the woods, so he goes off to investigate. OH HELL YEAH! You see what that's all about! His search takes him to the barn, that beautiful, beautiful place where dreams come true. We... cut away?! What, NO! DON'T YOU DARE, MOVIE! Don't rob of us of this moment! BOOOO! So we cut away to Vera, who suddenly remembers she still has Shelly's wallet on her after the incident back at the shop. She drops it into the lake, for some reason going into the water to retrieve it. Who freaking cares?! She sees a giant burly man in a hockey mask walking towards her, naturally assuming it's Shelly despite the fact he's a chubby little punk.

Vera does wise up after a few seconds and realizes it's not that waste of oxygen, asking who he is. Jason responds by raising the spear gun he's carrying and SHOOTS HER THROUGH THE EYE. Boom, headshot! At 57 minutes in, we now have our first OFFICIAL Jason kill of the franchise, hockey mask and all. So what made them decide on a hockey mask for his new look? Like some of the most iconic images in pop culture, it was 100% pure random chance. They knew he was going to wear a mask in this one, but until shooting began still hadn't figured out what kind. Martin Jay Sadoff, who supervised the film's stunning 3D sequences, just happened to have a bag full of hockey gear on him since he was a hardcore fan and I guess that's what being a hardcore hockey fan entails. They created a new sculpt of the goalie's mask, giving us the instantly recognizable one that we all know and love.

Jason goes into the house to kill Andy and Debbie, who just got done having sex to sign their death warrant. Debbie's death has always been disturbing to me, which I alluded to earlier. She is pregnant, so Jason just killed her unborn child along with her. I just feel in a movie with this light of a tone something that dark was completely uncalled for, especially since they do nothing to add gravity to her being pregnant outside of that one throwaway line in the van. If this had been in the first film it would have been fine, since that film was very dark and almost completely devoid of comedy. Here, it just really stands out in what is a very lighthearted story, even with people getting butchered.

With barely half an hour left and still four people alive, Jason better get his ass in gear. He starts by killing the power, which draws Chuck into the basement to “check the fusebox”. You do that, stoner boy. Chili waits upstairs, where she gets a visit from Fucking Shelly, who has his throat slashed open. Thanks to his constant dumbassery, she thinks he's just playing and ignores him while he bleeds to death. I FUCKING LOVE THIS SCENE. I want to marry this scene and have undead babies with it. Chuck gets the lights back on, just to turn around and see Jason, who throws him into the fusebox. This somehow electrocutes him, which... umm, I GUESS is possible? Chili is the next to go, getting a hot poker from the fireplace shoved through her chest. You cut that dead wood, Jason!

Chris and Rick, who have spent nearly the entire film off camera talking about whatever, finally come back to the movie as they return to the house. When they find it empty with no power, Rick goes outside to “check things out” like a genius and ends up getting his head crushed by Jason's bare hands. This scene is memorable for one of his eyes popping out of his head and flying towards the camera, which is admittedly a better use of 3D than anything you're going to see nowadays.

This transforms Chris into the Final Girl, and bloody hell am I not invested into her character. She's going to need ONE HELL of a performance here to top Ginny and her Chainsaw of Doom from the last movie, or even Alice throwing down with Mrs. Voorhees from the first. She starts doing the “finding the bodies of her dead friends one by one” spot around the house until Jason gives a middle finger to subtlety and throws Rick's corpse through the window at her. So this series isn't content with ripping off Halloween and Psycho wholesale, it needs to rip ITSELF off now? Seems legit.

Showing how smart she is, Chris dashes UPSTAIRS as Jason crawls in through the window after her. She locks herself in a closet, where she finds herself sitting next to Debbie's body, complete with a knife in the back of her neck. Chris grabs the knife and uses it to attack Jason as he hacks his way inside with an ax, but he dodges most of her swings because he's fast as he is strong now. She finally stabs him in the leg to bring him down, but like all of our other heroines chooses to run rather than, you know, kill him. She smashes out a window and climbs back down to the ground, waiting until Jason goes outside after her to smash him in the head with a wooden plank. Naturally, she doesn't KEEP smashing his head in, but chooses to go for the nearby van and speed away.

Ah, but it runs out of gas almost immediately thanks to the bikers! Jason catches up to her in no time, forcing her to leave through the passenger door and run towards the woods. Hahah, just kidding! She ducks into the barn, because she REALLY loves her confined spaces. He stalks her to the loft, where she brains him with a shovel and knocks him out. She then grabs the hay pulley and wraps the rope around his neck, proving even THIS DITZ can learn from her past mistakes! She shoves him out of the window and snaps his neck, climbing down to check on him. You'll never believe this, but he's STILL ALIVE! GASP! He briefly lifts off his mask to show her his face and confirm he's the man who attacked her two years ago... and left her alive despite having her unconscious? What, was he feeling EXTRA sporting that day or something?

He unties the rope from his incredibly strong neck and comes at her with a machete. Chris, pretty much out of options at this point, goes with “fall to the ground and cower in fear”. Tsk tsk tsk. Suddenly, ALI appears out of nowhere and grabs Jason. WHAT? He survived a Jason hack attack?! Geez, get this guy his own slasher franchise STAT. Jason slices off his hand and begins initiate Hack Attack 2: The Rehackening when Chris sees an ax in the corner and stealths her way towards it. She takes it firmly in her hands and plants it DIRECTLY into Jason's forehead, which he finally succumbs to and collapses to the ground.

Chris wanders out to the lake, where a canoe JUST HAPPENS to be. Huh, this feels a bit familiar. She gets in the canoe for a nice little post-murder nap, just like some other girl in a movie I saw one time. She wakes up in the morning, the film throwing a couple of cheap jump scares her way in the form of a tree branch hitting her canoe and a bird flying past her. She then looks into the house, seeing a maskless Jason watching her from the window. He runs out after her, but then vanishes after he steps outside. Oh, she probably just hallucinated that after all the psychological trauma she just suffered. I guess she's safe and sound after- GAH! MRS. VOORHEES FUCKING LEAPS OUT OF THE LAKE AND DRAGS HER UNDER!

We cut to later, where the police are all over the farm. They talk about how Chris is the only survivor, dismissing her claim there's a “lady in the lake” as her being bugged out of her damn mind. They escort her into a cruiser, the poor woman confirming their suspicions by alternating between crying and laughing. Or maybe it's all supposed to be crying, she's not exactly the best actress I've ever seen. The car drives off as the camera pans over to the barn, where Jason's ax-encrusted body still lies. What, the cops didn't at least put a sheet over it? His body shockingly doesn't move as the camera cuts to that lake, because if they're going to copy the ending of the last movie they might as well put the final cherry on top.

Cue the credits.

How in the blue hell would Chris even KNOW about Mrs. Voorhees? Did she watch the opening to this movie or something? The first film perfectly set up its ending jump scare, as it told us Jason had drowned in the lake prior. Mrs. Voorhees was never once mentioned in this movie to any of the characters, not to mention she had never been in the lake... and was missing her head. That pretty much sums up the entire movie: slapped together with no thought put into anything. I mean sure, they were making these once a year and didn't have a lot of time to write a hyper detailed plot, but THAT'S what they went with? A cheap jump scare we all knew was coming?

This is the first film in the series that began the march towards what the series did best: making audiences more or less root for Jason as he cut his way through a gang of idiots you WANTED to see meet his machete. The first two films, while boasting a huge cast of morons, still had you on the side of the victims because they were relatively decent people. With the advent of Fucking Shelly though, the door was opened for Jason to be this awesome killing machine taking out despicable characters through highly inventive kills. A killing machine with the coolest mask EVER. It only gets better from here, folks!

That, along with Shelly's death, is about the only thing the film had going for it though. This was a horribly boring story that didn't pick up any steam right until the very end, and that was way too short to be anything. The cast was beyond dull, giving us the first Final Girl of the series that was a total flop. She was hardly in this thing at all, and when she was, she proved to be very ineffective. Yeah, she leveled up the last few minutes but it was a case of too little, too late. Her actress, Dana Kimmell, had virtually no presence as she basically just said her lines and called it good. Tracie Savage, who played poor Debbie, should have been the Final Girl because she was bursting with charisma and outshone everyone in her limited screen time thanks to owning a personality.

I would only give this a recommendation to hardcore fans, and that's mainly to the elements that were introduced here and not the story itself. Everyone else I'd give this a strong recommendation to avoid, there's just nothing here to keep you interested. Unless you wanna see Fucking Shelly die in one of the most poetically perfect deaths ever filmed, that just might be worth the price of admission by itself. Let's get a wrap up on this courtesy of the Massacre Meter!

1. How Many People Did The Villain Kill In This One?

Another disputed number, some people say 12 while others say 13. I am in the 13 camp, as I count Debbie's unborn baby as the thirteen kill.

2. What Was The Coolest Kill?

Vera getting a spear through her FACE. That was brutal!

3. What Was The Lamest Kill?

Chuck getting thrown into the fuse box and magically electrocuted... somehow. I still don't understand how that even works.

4. Did The Best Character Die?

Unfortunately, Debbie met the business end of Jason's blade and the whole movie suffered because of it.

5. Did The Worst Character Die?

HELL YEAH! Suck it Shelly, I hope that blade was dull as a butter knife!

6. How Did The Villain Die In This One?

Ax to the head, gets 'em every time!

7. How Competent Was The Final Girl?

Not very, she did get creative with how she killed Jason but the rest of the time she kept doing stupid shit like running into confined spaces and not taking the chance to stop Jason once and for all.