“I Have Warned Thee:” ‘Friday the 13th Part III’ and the Innocence of Ignorance

Friday the 13th Part 2 had been a gamble, even though it sounds like anything but. Sequels seem like a guarantee, after all, that’s why there are so many of them in the first place. If one thing proves to be successful, then it seems natural that more of that thing will only be even better. But sequels were not nearly as commonplace as they are today when Friday the 13th Part 2 was released in 1981. Jaws 2 and Superman II had preceded it and Halloween II would be released that very same year. They had certainly existed before it, but Friday the 13th Part 2 would truly kick off the boom of ’80s horror franchises, as well as cementing Friday the 13th as a nearly annual event. Still, while it had had its differences, the plot of Part 2 had been largely similar to that of the original: a group of camp counselors are picked off at Crystal Lake, one by one. Sure, this time it’s Jason doing the killing rather than Mrs. Voorhees, and sure, it’s a counselor training center rather than the actual camp, but those are minimal differences at best. That doesn’t mean that Part 2 didn’t stand on its own, even improve upon the foundations of the original, but it was still covering much of the same ground. In doing so, it set the tone and concept for the franchise. Isolated group of kids in the woods, facing off against a largely unseen killer.

Friday the 13th Part III wouldn’t venture far from those grounds either, but at the same time, it proved to become a sequel known for what it did differently, starting with its central gimmick: the fact that it was shot and released in 3D. Of course, it was far from the first 3D horror movie, that dated all the way back to the likes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and It: The Terror from Beyond Space. But at the time that Friday the 13th Part III was made, it was much more of a rarity, and had even become somewhat experimental, with the technology essentially being refined and revolutionized in people’s backyards. While the movie was a nightmare to shoot in that format, it paid off, and wound up setting a new standard for 3D, as well as kicking off something of a trend, with the third entries in the Jaws and Amityville franchises following on its heels and releasing in 3D as well.

If there’s one other major difference from the formula of the original that Friday the 13th is known for, it’s absolutely the fact that it introduces Jason’s signature hockey mask. This was more of a practical decision than anything else, no one involved seemed to think they were really on to something, it was simply that the burlap sack that Jason had previously worn would have been a nightmare to shoot in 3D, so a new mask was called for and the hockey mask just happened to be what was eventually decided on. It’s interesting how Friday the 13th differs from other horror franchises in this regard. Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, each introduces their central icon in their classic, signature appearance. But that’s not the case here. The concept we have of “classic” Friday the 13th is something that was introduced gradually over time. The original film laid the groundwork and gave us the backstory. The second introduced Jason as the killer and the third gave him the hockey mask, yet when we think of Friday the 13th, we always think of all three of those things together.

Still, if there is one thing that truly sets Friday the 13th Part III apart, it’s not any of the above features that people usually tend to bring up. It’s something much simpler: ignorance. While the kids in the original were largely oblivious to the camp’s history, the entire town knew all about and told them in increments about what had happened there. Everyone tried to warn them. The dark past of Crystal Lake lingered over both of the previous films. Even Ned, who took nothing seriously and didn’t seem to pay attention to anyone around him knew that “downtown the locals call this place ‘Camp Blood.’” And by and large, the cast of Friday the 13th Part III don’t really get that. When the warnings come, or when the backstory is given, it is way more vague than it had ever been in either of the first two entries. This is the only film in the entire saga in which Jason’s name — aside from the footage from Part 2 — is never uttered once, and that includes the movies in which he is not the killer or barely appears, and I think that is worth examining.

It starts with the location. Sure, it is still technically on Crystal Lake, but this is the first movie in the series not to be set at or around the camp, and amazingly, you can feel that as the viewer and see what a different it makes. Even though they can’t possibly be far from the site of Part 2’s massacre, it feels completely removed. That might have something to do with the filming locations as well. Both Friday the 13th and Part 2 were filmed on the East coast, in New Jersey and Connecticut, respectively. Part III is filmed in California and even though care is given to give the cars New Jersey license plates, it never once looks like it. It’s impossible to see it as anything but California, and the biggest change comes in the lake itself. This time, the lake is muddy, grimy, which only accentuates its creepiness but is a far cry from the idyllic waters glimpsed in the previous two movies. Interestingly, while Friday the 13th is bigger in scope, both in the central 3D gimmick as well as the literal wider frame of the aspect ratio, the action is much more limited than either of the first two. Instead of a whole camp to roam, this time the action is largely condensed to a single house and a barn. This distance feeds the ignorance of the characters — as they’re the first to be even a little removed from the camp — as well as the audience. This doesn’t look or feel like the Crystal Lake we’ve come to know, which makes the fact that the characters know nothing about that backstory much easier to buy into, because we’re not immediately recognizing it as the same place ourselves.

Before arriving at Higgins Haven, the group of friends find a drifter in the road, named Abel, who is clearly our replacement Crazy Ralph. Like Ralph before him, he’s a messenger of God who tries to warn our hapless teens away from danger. But Ralphs rants were tied to the exposition of what a bad place Crystal Lake was, and in Part 2 he makes it clear to the in-training counselors that he had “warned the others.” Without any ties to the larger narrative, it’s much easier to understand why the group would immediately dismiss Abel and not take his warnings seriously. One, he’s holding a human eyeball, about which he says “He wanted me to have this,” and it’s not clear exactly who he meant. He could very well be talking about Jason in that context, and it would be interesting to imagine that this man had a bit of a Renfield complex for Crystal Lake’s homegrown killer. He tells them to go back, but there’s no real warning, other than the promise of “I have warned thee.” There’s nothing remotely specific in his ranting and no reason to for the other characters to think they have anything to be afraid of other than this ranting old drifter holding a human eyeball, which they would certainly assume he either must have stolen from a corpse or from someone he killed himself.

In Part 2, Jason had already become a campfire story. People would sit around and tell the grim local history like they were telling stories of Cropsey, or recounting the classic tale of “The Hook.” Every single character in that movie knew who Jason was, they just didn’t believe in him. Here, it is the complete opposite. Absolutely no one knows who Jason is. No one knows anything about him, or Mrs. Voorhees, or the town’s history as a whole. They have no ties to it, they don’t tease each other about it, they are the first group of kids in this franchise who truly think they are going to have a good time without a single warning or doubt hanging over them, even if all they had to do to be informed is turn on the local news.

There is, of course, one exception to this in our heroine, Chris. This is her family’s camp, and so she already has a closer tie to the central mythology than the others just by being the only one of them to have a strong connection to the lake itself. Her knowledge, of course, goes deeper than that. While it is teased out at first, it’s eventually revealed that even though this seems to be a weekend of fun in the woods, the purpose of it is actually for Chris to return to a source of significant personal trauma so that she can attempt to put it behind her and move on with her life. The trauma she speaks of is the fact that she was once attacked by a hideous man in the woods. A man that we of course know to be Jason. This is fascinating when taking into account the movie’s approach to backstory as a whole. Because this is a much closer connection with the killer than either of the previous two heroines had, and yet Chris still remains more ignorant of the overall story than either of them. Alice at least knew something about the camp’s past, certainly knew that it had earned the nickname “Camp Blood.” Ginny was legitimately, psychologically fascinated by Jason, and it was her knowledge of him and his connection to his mother that gave her the upper hand in their final confrontation. Here, Chris only realizes that the masked man who killed her friends is the same man who attacked her in the woods until the movie’s final moments, and never learns that he is Jason Voorhees.

Chris’s backstory is also something that has remained hotly debated among fans for some time, as it has some ugly connotations, as many have speculated that Jason may have sexually assaulted her. But that doesn’t really gel with the way she tells the story, and it’s hard to tell if it was even meant to be implied. When she describes the story, she is alone in the woods having just had a fight with her parents, and Jason attacks her with a knife, but that’s all she ever really says she does. While her blacking out could be a natural response to an assault, of course, the description of going after someone with a knife is very much on brand for Jason. When Chris wakes up in her bedroom, she is fully clothed, she never gives any indication that her clothes were torn or anything. While many note that it’s uncharacteristic of Jason to leave someone alive after attacking them, to try and knife someone and not go through with it, that would certainly still ring true if he had sexually assaulted her. It doesn’t make sense in just about any context, but at least if it’s a mystery, it’s a much more interesting mystery to think that for his own unknowable reasons, Jason decided not to kill her, and when they met again, he had clearly changed his mind.

Still, whatever the case, this shared backstory gives Chris a very personal connection to Jason as he is literally the trauma she is trying to overcome, even though she does not have a clue who he is. It’s easy to assume that Jason would have forgotten her as well, and for the bulk of the running time that seems to be the case. He doesn’t seem to discern from her over any of the others. However, that’s clearly not true as evidenced by their final confrontation, when Jason very knowingly lifts up his mask so that Chris can identify his face and know exactly who he is. The irony here, is that it gives the frightened heroine that final push to reach for an axe and bury it in his mask. He had the upper hand only seconds before that, causing her to break into a defeated screaming frenzy as she realized that even hanging the killer from the barn had not ended him. Once she saw his face, that rage clicked into place, she said, “it’s you” and as soon as her ignorance of him was stripped away, she had everything she needed to knock him down.

Jason himself, as different as the movie might be, feels like a direct continuation of the character seen in the previous film, even if his look might now be completely different. (After all, in addition to getting a new mask, he lost all of his hair) He’s better at sneaking around than he had been in Part 2, but there are moments when that trial-and-error nature and general energy seem very much the same. This is best evidenced when Jason searches the barn for Chris and cannot find her, causing him to throw what is, for all intents and purposes, an enormous tantrum. He tears up the barn looking for her, he throws boxes and chairs and destroys things and just lashes out wildly. Ironically enough, though, as much as it is a moment of pure rage, it humanizes him. There’s something almost childish about it, which stands very much in line with how Jason had been depicted in Part 2.

Despite the sex, drugs, hinted at teenage pregnancy and general entitled, attention seeking antics of Shelly, the cast of Friday the 13th Part III are truly innocent in that they are totally ignorant of their surroundings. They’re never given a reason to suspect that they might be in way over their head and very reasonably assume that they’re going to have a fun weekend together without being killed, the way most college students in America do. Jason uses this to his advantage, whether he knows it or not, by being able to lurk around the barn and the surrounding woods without anyone feeling the need to glance over their shoulder because of a scary local story that may or may not be true. These are the things that set Friday the 13th Part III apart from the others, but at the same time, they are the things that ultimately make it so interesting.