Halloween may have opened the door to the slasher films of the ’80s, but it was Friday the 13th that set the table upon which these ripoff films would feast. It took some time for the franchise to find its voice, and when it did it devolved into self parody over the span of only a few movies. There is a sweet spot in the series, and it is noticeable.
Here, now, is the definitive ranking of the Friday the 13th franchise, scrutinized and analyzed and… who am I kidding, I just watched these things and ranked them based on what I liked. And along the way, I added a few tidbits of information where it was warranted. Enjoy… or get mad. It’s up to you.
6Friday the 13th, Part 3 (1982)
This third entry should get its due for birthing the hockey mask, which was added on a lark from a member of production who had hockey gear with them. It doesn’t make sense in the context of the story, as Jason spends the majority of this oddly meandering third film inside a barn recovering from catching a machete in the shoulder at the end of Part 2.
Paramount, sensing they needed to spruce up things, jumped on the 3-D craze which had just started to take off in Hollywood. The gimmicks are everywhere, and even in 2-D it’s fun to see a harpoon shoot at the screen, or a yo-yo drop in your face, or a wallet fly into the audience… or an eyeball pop out of a socket. The group of teens is a little more eclectic and unique than the group in Part 2 (they were basically cutouts of the teens from the first one), never mind that the stoner character here looks like he’s in hid mid-40s. There is also a strange showdown with an African American biker gang in the first act.
The kills are also more creative, mostly because of the 3-D, so there is at least more here to like than what audiences got in the second film. It’s just odd that so much of the central plot, as meandering as it is, has Jason inside a horse barn for an hour of the film’s 95 minutes.
