Friday the 13th Part 3 was the first major production to make extensive use of the Louma Crane. This motion-controlled system utilized a dolly track and remote motion control to facilitate fluid camera movements and 360-degree panning.
DOUG WHITE, Special Makeup Effects:
I had been involved in makeup effects since the early 1970s. I had mentored under Bert Holmes and Tom Burman, and had just started my own company before Part 3 came along. I was actually working on this Canadian horror movie Deadly Eyes with Kenny Myers, who was the effects supervisor, and he was offered this job—we didn't know it was a Friday the 13th. But we went out to interview with the producers, and they said, "Here's the scenario. You're trapped on a farm, and think of everything there you could use to kill somebody. Come up with 10 examples." So we went to lunch, came up with ideas, then came back and handed it over to them. They said, "Okay, ignore what we just said. Here's the script and this is what we're going to do." Then we found out it was Friday the 13th Part 3, and in 3-D. Which actually helped us, because I had also just done this other 3-D movie called Parasite, with Demi Moore.
What was unusual was that when we started the show, we knew up front that they had actually already hired Stan Winston to sculpt Jason's makeup. We would have to do a head cast of Richard Brooker, then deliver that to Stan, who would sculpt it and get approval for it. Then we'd make a mold of that and run all the appliances, bring them back to Stan, and Stan would paint them. Apparently, Stan had also done some uncredited work on Friday the 13th Part 2, and was a friend of Steve Miner.
STEVE MINER:
Right after I graduated from college, I came out to Los Angeles with some friends of mine who were in a rock group. We were all staying in one apartment in Culver City, and next door to us was this crazy guy who wanted to be a stand-up comic; his only problem was that, when he got up on stage, he wasn't funny. His name was Stan Winston. We became very good friends, and just before I left for Colorado to become a ski bum, he told me that he had been accepted in the Walt Disney makeup training program, which thrilled me, because he's always been a very talented sculptor and artist. Then, the next I heard of him was when he won an Emmy for Miss Jane Pittman.
RICHARD BROOKER:
I don't know the complete story, but originally Stan Winston was doing Part 3, and I had to go to his studio for days and days. They did a plaster cast of my head. Stan was also the guy making the headpiece that I would have to wear. But by the time we started shooting, apparently somebody complained that Jason didn't look scary enough, so they brought in Doug White and his team to redesign the makeup.
Ultimately, there ended up being two different makeups for Jason. When we did the close-up stuff, there was something like 11 different appliances that they glued onto my face. That alone took six hours to apply. And for some of the scenes where you don't really see Jason, they had a "head mask" that was one big piece I could slip on and off, and that was hot as hell.
DOUG WHITE:
Stan wanted to do a new makeup technique on Jason because of the 3-D—I guess what you'd call a "pixilated" look, where the makeup was painted with all primary and secondary colors, and no mixing of anything else. But the producers and Steve Miner just weren't happy with it. But by then we were already shooting, and by the time it was decided that Jason's makeup needed to be resculpted Stan was no longer available. They also told me to ignore Carl Fullerton's Jason makeup from Part 2. They wanted a look closer to Tom Savini's work on the original film. So I had to blend the two together. And some footage had already been shot of Jason, so the back of the Jason head had to match Stan's, yet the rest of the head had to look like an older version of Tom's. To be honest, it would have been nice to have kept better continuity with Jason between Part 2 and Part 3, but at the same time the producers thought Carl's design was too far off base, largely because of the hair. As a child, Jason was completely bald, so they figured he should stay that way.
SANDI LOVE:
Jason's look was a collaborative effort. And not just for this film—of everyone that had lived with Jason before me, and had a feeling of what he should look like. My job was to interpret that emotional response visually. I felt that Jason represents the everyman, who goes ignored, so his work clothes should make him blend into the background. Jason had no color; he had only sadness, rage, and loneliness, and was without any say as to what happens to him. I think the new Jasons in later films are just mean and slicked up, with no heart. But I still believe that there are no mean characters—you just have to understand their motives. And it's these unresolved feelings that we all feel when in a difficult situation that allowed the incredible hulk inside of Jason to come out. So that's also why I also built up Richard Brooker a bit, and padded him to be bigger than normal.
PETRU POPESCU:
Usually in a screenplay you try to justify or analyze a killer by looking at biographical explanations for why things happen. These people grew up underprivileged; they were this and that—that is sociologically interesting. But that's not Friday the 13th. I personally don't think Jason is a character at all. The only characters in that movie are the ones having reactions to Jason. Jason's basically a pretext for that knife attack.
I was not familiar with the Friday films when I got the job, but I did see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—that was a brilliant inspiration. Put a mask on somebody like that, and only then can you showcase them as an unnameable evil. That's what I tried to do, and that's what I thought these movies were about.
Young, carefree visitors to Higgin's Haven.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
In Halloween, Michael Myers had a mask. That was certainly influential to the masking of Jason. But Part 2 had the bag. That was not good. Though I was actually not involved with the original decision to change the mask in Part 3. I just remember looking at tests of different masks and deciding on which one we should go with.
SANDI LOVE:
Many of the crew were Canadian, and hockey fans, and they would have these hockey parties all the time. Those brought us all together. And I believe the concept for the idea was that, like a hockey mask protects a goalie, so too was the hockey mask a way of Jason protecting himself.
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
Now, this was the big deal of the movie—what was Jason going to look like? There were discussions and all these conceptualizations. Although it is important to remember that, at the time, no one thought these movies would endure as long as they did, so Jason's mask was really still an aside. Anyway, there is a scene in the movie where Steve Miner plays a news reporter doing a segment on TV, and that was shot very early on. It was actually done at the Samsung building on Wilshire and La Brea. That is the birthplace of the hockey mask. Because while Steve was off doing that, he called for a makeup test to be done, to see what the monster was going to look like and to make sure the 3-D worked and all that.
Well, no one really wanted to do the makeup. So the late Marty Becker, who was heading the effects on the film, came and said, "Well, we don't have anything, so let's put a goalie mask on him." And I used to keep my big red hockey bag with me, and I pulled a mask out. It was a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask—it was white and had a big red stripe down the middle. It didn't ultimately look much like what end up in the film—they poked holes in it and changed the markings. Then Marty Becker's team made the molds, and Robb Wilson King made various versions of it.
The ironic thing is, it was never even meant to be a hockey mask in the first place. It was never going to be that.
CATHERINE PARKS
When they put the original makeup on Jason, and we all saw it—he was this monster-y, ghoulish looking-person. It didn't scare me at all. I think the hockey mask was sort of a second resort.
PETER SCHINDLER:
My recollection is that Steve Miner made the ultimate decision. I remember we shot a test with different masks, and that was the one Steve chose. It probably was everybody's idea and everybody wants the credit, but it was nobody in partic
ular.
DOUG WHITE:
Steve Miner saw the hockey mask and just loved it. And originally, we were just going to go with the old-fashioned hockey mask, but then I had built a fake Jason head and after we put the mask on it, we just said, "The mask looks awful small. We need to make it bigger." What you do to make something larger is put some VacuForm, which is a silicon ceramic fiber, over the original, which makes it bigger, then put another VacuForm over that, and so on. By the time we got to the third enlargement, I made a new mold of the mask so we could polish it up and expand it a little. And Terry Ballard, the technical advisor on the film, had already put the little red pieces on the face of the mask, which gave it that unique look. We ultimately made the masks not only for Part 3, but also The Final Chapter, because they wanted to get the old molds back.
ROBB WILSON KING:
There wasn't just one hockey mask. We made different sizes to accommodate the 3-D—we created some that were oversized, for different angles, and they were fitted to Richard Brooker's face. So it really was a group creation. I certainly can't claim the hockey mask. I don't think any one person can.
LARRY ZERNER:
It started as something my character would wear for a second. It just said in the script, "Jason wears a mask." Who knew it was going to be a trademark? There was no reference to go, "Oh, this mask is going to become the iconic horror symbol, along with Freddy's glove," or whatever. Although I was smart enough to ask, "Can I have the mask?" But they wouldn't give it to me.
Richard Brooker undergoes the transformation process into Jason Voorhees. "The worst thing about wearing the Jason makeup appliances was that we'd finish at six in the morning and everybody was tired and wanted to go home, so the makeup crew guys would rip it off my face like you wouldn't believe," remembers Brooker. "My face was just raw. I'd soak my skin in some sort of orange liquid to soften it up, then I'd go home and go to sleep, and then come back and do it all over again. After two weeks my skin was like sandpaper."
As with the previous two films in the series, Friday the 13th Part 3 would begin with a "prologue kill," a sequence before the main story begins, and usually not involving its lead characters, setting up that horror is about to return to the beleaguered community of Crystal Lake. This time, two owners of a local grocery store fall prey to the wrath of Jason Voorhees. These sequences, scheduled before the main cast were due to arrive, were the first to be shot on location in Newhall, California—only to have to be re-shot due to technical difficulties, the first sign that Part 3 would be no ordinary Friday the 13th.
As principal photography continued in earnest with the first few weeks of daylight shooting, the immense technical requirements of the production commanded every second of the filmmakers' attention—often to the detriment of everything and everyone else. It has been said that horror films are not an actor's medium and, in retrospect, many of the cast members of Part 3 recall their experiences on the film as a rueful resignation to the demands of the technology. A series of behind-the-scenes mishaps and outright bizarre occurrences also began to plague the production, leaving many in the cast and crew to wonder if "Friday the 13th" wasn't turning out to be a cursed day after all.
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
One of the first shots of the shoot was the first shot of the movie, right after the opening credits. And it was probably the most complicated 3-D shot of the entire film. It was kind of like a test. It was a long tracking shot starting outside of the convenience store. The shot started out at a distance so the convergences were more indifferent, so when we started coming down, the convergences changed, and so did the focus to the point where it hit the building and swung around, then it went down the row of sheets and then it re-racked and re-converged to see Jason, and the sheets were coming out, so there was a re-convergence of the sheets. It was enormously complicated.
GERALD FEIL:
Fans always ask me how in the world did we manage to track through all of those blowing bed sheets and laundry, and make that all work? That was perhaps not the most spectacular effect but it was the biggest challenge. We had to build a trellis across a highway to track this enormous crane, with motion control that, at that time, was not highly evolved. It was a very, very difficult shot to make, but worth it in the end.
ROBB WILSON KING:
We loved our clothesline. And we placed it perfectly, so you always have the house behind it. I know that shot played an important part in setting the tone for the entire shoot.
STEVE SUSSKIND:
The first time we did that shot, they explained to me that the camera would do a long tracking shot of the convenience store, a pan and so forth, and the camera would be right behind me. And it was timed so as I walked out of the store and into the yard, I'd knock over a pole that was holding up the clothesline. Then I would pick up the pole and aim its back end right into the camera. Well, we did a run-through and got it on the first take. It was great. Then we had to reshoot the whole opening of the movie. And not just the whole sequence with the pole, but the stuff in the grocery store, too. They said there was a problem with convergence on the 3-D lenses.
Then, for whatever reason, I don't know if the marks were changed or what, but I could not nail the pole this time. Every time, it was just off left or off right or too high or too low. Finally, out of frustration—and you see it in the film—when I pick up the pole, I cheat and look behind me, to make sure I'm aiming it at the lens. And, of course, that's the one they used in the film.
LARRY ZERNER:
The first thing any of us main cast shot was the scene at the convenience store, with the bikers. But they had a problem with the camera. I'm not really sure what it was, but they hadn't really tested the 3-D so we had to redo everything. That was a big excise from the movie—in the original script, that whole sequence with the gang members at the store was supposed to be much longer. After I knock over the motorcycles, there's this whole chase scene. Catherine Parks was supposed to be driving, and I was supposed to take a champagne bottle and pop it like a gun. Then it hits the gang members and they fly off their bikes. But it got cut for budgetary reasons.
I also remember that I had never driven a car with a stick shift before. So when I'd get behind the wheel, the whole crew would say, "Larry's driving—clear the set!"
Andy up the middle: Jeffrey Rogers' death remains one of the most audience-pleasing kills in Part 3.
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
Frank Mancuso, Sr. had come out to the set very early on, when we were shooting the sequence where the kids go into the grocery store. We're all set and ready to go, and Gerald Feil turns to his assistant Steve Slocomb and says, "Load camera one." And Steve replies, "You've got the film." Gerald says, "No, I told you to pick up the film." And Steve goes, "No, I told you to pick up the film." We've got all of the Paramount brass here and they forgot to bring the film. We had to have it brought in by helicopter. And this was like the second or third day of shooting!
ROBB WILSON KING:
We were plagued. Making this thing was as scary as being in it. Every minute we had something that was weird, that wasn't quite right. For a while we had something terrorizing the set but we didn't know what it was—the lake was man-made, and you'd see footprints in the sand of you just can't imagine what. And lots of snakes. Then things went missing. We felt like the set was haunted. Although the ironic thing was that the hockey mask never went missing—I imagine that would have been the first thing any ghosts would have wanted.
PETER SCHINDLER:
I believe in karma, and Friday the 13th—it is a pretty evil story. It was a strange show to do. There was a lot of bad luck, and not a day went by that we didn't have a major production problem of some sort. One Monday, Steve Miner and I returned to the set and walked into the lodge, and there was this hum. I thought, "Jeez, was there a light left on in here over the weekend?" Then a bee goes by. We don't think about it. More humming. We get closer to the wall and discovered that, over the weekend, what seemed lik
e a million bees had made hives in the house. And that was the day where Dana and Tracie are supposed to walk in the lodge and have this conversation. But now we couldn't use the lodge because we had to bring in an exterminator, nor could we afford another day of shooting. So in the finished film, they are walking outside, in a field. That was a completely spur of the moment decision.
ROBB WILSON KING:
The lake was a big one—how do we build it, and how do we keep water in it? It was about 300 feet long, and we designed it in such a way that we created an inlet, like a beach, and then it appeared to bend inward and then go out into infinity. So we made sure there was an infinity line, and built a little scenic island out there to make it look right. It looks pretty real. The water itself is only about 12 feet deep, so we could have the camera guys go underneath easily. But we tried to line it with a couple materials but that didn't work and it ended up leaking all the time. It would go down three or four feet, and you could see the plastic lining showing. So we had to empty the whole thing again, and spend the money and use asphalt. Steve Miner was really helpful in pushing for the money for that.
GERALD FEIL:
The lake itself was built forced-perspective, because we simply didn't have the luxury of a real lake. That's the reason those scenes are only shot from one angle.
ROBB WILSON KING:
We hired a mason to build this fireplace as part of the lodge set—it was huge. As a celebration for finishing the set, we lit our first fire in there, and we started getting smoked out. We couldn't breathe. Well, apparently, the mason hadn't gotten his last check, so he put a piece of glass in the funnel. If we hadn't lit the fireplace until actual shooting, it would have been devastating. Eventually, we threw a rock down the chimney and broke the glass. I learned from that experience that you have to pay your bills on time.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 24
