DANA KIMMELL:
I vaguely remember when they came up with new ending, it seemed like an off-hand idea to do it. It was really spontaneous. Being dumped in the lake—it was supposed to be a quick one-take kind of a thing, because they didn't want to keep doing the hair and costumes and makeup over again. Of course, we ended up having to do it several times. I remember the woman who played the lady in the water. That poor gal! It was the wife of the assistant director, Peter Schindler. All she had on was that makeup suit and the water was just freezing.
"Oh, my goodness!" shudders Dana Kimmell of filming Part 3's climactic dream sequence. "Being dumped in the lake—it was supposed to be a quick one-take kind of a thing, because they didn't want to keep doing the hair and costumes and makeup over again. Of course, we ended up having to do it several times."
MICHAEL ZAGER, Composer:
Harry Manfredini's publisher was a mutual friend of mine, and the producers of Part 3 wanted to get a real contemporary-sounding opening and close to the movie. That's how I got involved. I had been co-leader of a band called Ten Wheel Drive, then I got into music production and I had a lot of very commercial hit records, producing for artists like Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson. That's the reason they hired me. Harry came over, and then I adapted the original theme and put my own thing to it. It was entirely written and recorded in an apartment over the course of a few days. And it was always going to be disco, because that kind of music was so popular at the time. We even did a 12-inch single release of it, a dance mix for the clubs. It actually did pretty well. Then we made up some name for our "group," which was called Hot Ice. I still have no idea what that was supposed to mean.
HARRY MANFREDINI, Composer:
While they were making Part 3, I was working on a Broadway musical at the time, one that ultimately took up most of my life for a couple of years. Steve Miner just said, "Don't worry about it—we'll just use the music from Part 1 and Part 2." So believe it or not, I have never seen all of Part 3. I did see the first reel, and the last, but nothing in the middle. The remainder of the picture was constructed by a music editor named Jack Tillar.
Now, as there was no score to Part 3, how does one make a soundtrack album? Well, I just strung together some pieces from the first and second Fridays into reasonably long suites, and put them into more listenable sequences. I also re-recorded them, because in the films, the music had to fight other sound effects—rain and wind, and dialogue and crickets and things. As for the disco theme song, I'm not sure if I would call it a "fabulous" idea, but it was an attempt to have a hit single utilizing some of the sounds from the score. As for that fictitious band name, well, I guess if the song was a hit, we could have gone on to do a series of disco film themes. Dancing to things like Psycho, Death of a Salesman…
Friday the 13 Part 3 opened on August 13, 1982, on 1,079 screens across the United States. By the end of its first three days, the film had grossed $9.4 million, a new record for the franchise. It also exhibited a stronger holdover than Part 2, assisted no doubt by the attraction of the 3-D gimmick. By the close of its run, Friday the 13th Part 3 had grossed $36.7 million domestically, selling more than 12.4 million tickets and, until the release of Freddy vs. Jason 21 years later, remained second only to the original Friday the 13th as the most attended installment in the series. Whether or not the film was an artistic success, even by the standards of a franchise horror film, was arguable. Critics certainly offered scant praise aside from a begrudging acknowledgement of the effectiveness of the film's three-dimensional effects. But there was no doubt that Part 3 had succeeded as a commercial entertainment and once again positioned Friday the 13th as the cinema's reigning horror series.
The prognosis was not quite so optimistic for 3-D itself, however. Before the format's digital resurgence by the turn of the millennium, Part 3 would prove to be the pinnacle of its '80s revival. A flurry of other 3-D films followed, including Universal's big-budget Jaws 3-D, MGM's Amityville 3-D and Paramount's own quickie follow-up, the Frank Mancuso, Jr.-produced The Man Who Wasn't There. But dwindling box office quickly killed any hope for a major comeback for the 3-D format at the time, and Paramount's ambitious plans for the process were dashed by a contentious lawsuit with the Marks Corporation. It all ended with a whimper, not a bang: by the close of 1983, any 3-D equipment still remaining in theaters was quietly dismantled and sold for scrap.
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
The shooting of the movie was probably the easiest part of the whole thing. The movie cost $2 million to make, but I would guess that the cost of actually getting the film into theaters at that time was about $10 million. People have always said Paramount was embarrassed by the Friday movies. But if anything, it was exactly the opposite. Paramount took Part 3 as a very serious project. And I give all the credit to Frank Mancuso, Sr. He stood by the movie. Because up until that time, 3-D movies had been released on a very limited basis. They'd make 50 prints and go to one city, and then they'd pull the 50 prints and go to another city. Frank Sr. said, "Screw it. We're going to put it in 2,000 screens across the country!"
Everybody at Paramount was saying that the first two Fridays were big, but not really big. I remember they gave me an initial gross estimate: "If we do a Part 3, we think it might make $6 million." And Paramount had what was called an "A" track and a "B" track as to how a film was released—multiplexes didn't really exist then the way they do now. So you always kind of knew where you were going to play. And we were going to be the "B" run. So we went about configuring and creating all the lenses. And then a month or two before the release, Frank goes, "No, we're going to open on the "A" track," which meant now we were going to play in all these 70mm houses—which meant another set of lens designs for the projection.
Frank Sr. really believed the moviegoing experience should be unique, and that you needed something special. He said, "How hard would it be to re-equip 2,000 theaters into 3-D?" It was really a major chore because we had to get silver screens installed in all of them. We actually ended up physically making the lenses for each specific theater—the idea would be that you'd have a flat lens, a scope lens and a 3-D lens in every movie house. That way once it was set-up, you wouldn't have to re-equip every time you showed something in 3-D.
Never-before-seen alternate ending. Although Part 3's original denouncement, now thought lost, remains unreleased in visual form, it can be read in Michael Avallone's official 1982 novelization of the film. This rare paperback movie tie-in, long out of print, remains a highly sought-after collectible on the online auction market.
FRANK MANCUSO, JR.:
In retrospect, I'd have to say that had Paramount known what it was they were going to have to go through in order to make this thing work, I doubt they would have done it. It was kind of a crazy idea to broad release a 3-D movie, because there wasn't any precedent. Initially, everybody thought it was going to just be a glasses issue, but the glasses were the least of it. We had to have each theater equip themselves with a silver screen and a viewing box that went in front of the lens and then they'd have to sync it all up. And we had to spend the money to create a 24-hour hotline, for calls like, "Why isn't my 3-D working?" It was a huge deal.
GEORGE HIVELY:
We were pushing like mad. It had a "hard" release date—meaning it had to open on an actual Friday the 13th. It's not like you could say, "Well, we'll go out a week later." You would lose the whole magic. There was so much to do from a post-production standpoint. There were a lot of opticals, all these dissolves and blow-ups, the kinds of things you have to do to every film, but being 3-D it overly complicated everything. I remember one shot, we had had gotten the eyes reversed, and when you looked at it on the screen, it was all converged backwards. You wanted to throw up. All those things had to be fixed.
GERALD FEIL:
A big problem was that projecting in 3-D required a silver screen. And this is what the distributors really hated, because they had to boost the light level
, and that increased their power bills and it shortened the longevity of their projector lamps. So most of them cheated on the light levels anyway. I used to go around to a lot of the theatres in L.A. and New York with a light meter. I'd hammer on the manager's door—"You've only got 12 foot candles—it's supposed to be 16!"
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
I found a Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon that was done in 3-D, in the vaults at Paramount. I wanted to tag that on before the main feature, but we got into a big fight about it. I we thought it would be great to put a 3-D Casper cartoon in front of a Friday the 13th movie! Steve Miner wanted to do it, too. But it was nixed by somebody in distribution.
The world premiere was held at the Esquire Theatre in Boston, this old vaudeville house downtown. The movie was due to be screened for the press at 9 a.m. the next morning. There was a guy who was V.P. of Paramount Distribution at that time. He said, "Whatever you do, it's got to be on that screen at nine in the morning!" Well, it turns out the lenses at this theater could only handle about 20 minutes of light before they burned out. So here was this gorgeous theater, and we were up in the projection booth in the middle of the night, sledgehammering holes in the booth so the light could get down to the screen. They ended up billing Paramount like $100,000 to rebuild the wall in the theater.
A few days later, I got a call from Frank Sr. at 11:30 a.m. on the Friday it opened. He goes, "Two screens." I said, "Two screens what? Only two screens are up and running?" And he said, "No, we only lost two screens on the East Coast to technical problems." Then he told me the movie made its money back—"It's already in the black!" It had sold out every single showing on the East Coast from the minute it opened. The movie was a hit before the first matinee ever unspooled on the West Coast. And we ran out of glasses all over the place on the first weekend. It was incredible.
LARRY ZERNER:
The film actually opened the same day as Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And Fast Times was #7 at the box office and we were #1. For a week, Sean Penn was worried. And for two months, I was famous.
There was a crew screening at the Tiffany theatre two days before the movie came out. It wasn't even a premiere—nothing with press or anything like that. And there were like 20 people there. That was the first time I saw it and it was kind of weird. Then I went opening night in Westwood with my friends. It was sold out, and the crowd was yelling and screaming. They were really into it. And a lot of people had never seen a 3-D movie before. It looked great, and people were really reacting to it.
DANA KIMMELL:
I took my whole family to a theater in Westwood—on my father's birthday, actually. Although that whole time is like a blur to me because I was planning a wedding at the same time this was happening. Four weeks after the movie came out, I got married.
From left: Domestic one-sheet; Japanese one-sheet; and Danish one-sheet.
ROBB WILSON KING:
I loved the credits—it's my favorite thing in the movie! It was a beautiful moment, as they seemed to come out of the screen and right at the audience. Especially since I have three names, so it was this big mouthful coming at you.
STEVE SUSSKIND:
I remember the first time I saw the movie at the premiere. I came in, got my glasses on, sat down, and the credits start to roll. All the names are popping out, and I'm thinking, "Any second now, I'm going to see…Steve Susskind!" Well, that didn't happen—all I got was a listing in the end credits as "Harold." I was so bummed.
CHERI MAUGANS:
I took some good friends to see the cast and crew screening. Afterward, they didn't know what to say to me. They didn't get it, and they couldn't get why I would do something like that. And that was the only time I saw it in a theater. I missed the experience of seeing it with an audience. Though I did go down to Hollywood Blvd. where it was playing and I took pictures of it on the marquee. Eventually, my mom went to see with my family, and the kids would sit in the theater and chant "Kill, kill, kill!" when I died. I know that my grandmother was pretty upset.
I can't understand the appeal of it really. I think it's a little unsettling personally. I did not have any moral problems with it, and I wasn't ashamed or embarrassed by anything you saw. But it is weird.
NICK SAVAGE:
I saw it with an audience, on a double bill with a movie called The Mutilator. My niece and nephew demanded I take them to see it. They were screaming and hollering, along with the whole audience. I had more fun watching them than I did watching the movie.
PETRU POPESCU:
I saw a screening with my agent. After it was over, he leaned over to me and said, "You don't want your name on the credits of something like this." So I took my name off it. I did not stay with the genre myself anyway, probably because at the time my main agenda was to be able to get back to my career as an author. These things were just somehow secondary.
DAVID KATIMS:
I remember after the screening going back and talking to Steve Miner and Frank Mancuso, Jr. I don't know how I had the balls to say it, but I said, "This is crap." And they said, "You know what, this is Friday the 13th Part 3 and it's in 3-D. Those two things are going to make this a hit." And they were right. They knew the game much better than I did. The writing and the acting didn't matter at all.
I don't imagine any of us really feel like this was the crowning glory of our talent. I hope not. And I would include Steve Miner in there, absolutely. He has gone on to do some better work, but I would not have called him a great director at that time. And I think even he would tell you that a good film is 90 percent casting. It really is. For instance, you get someone like Larry Zerner, who I think was an excellent choice. He's very likable as this pudgy little character—that was all casting. I thought Tracie Savage was fairly wooden in her performance. I mean, I certainly liked Tracie, but I can remember her sitting and watching the screening with her mother and her mom leaning over and saying something about her daughter's performance. But I would have said Paul Kratka was the worst. Without question. I thought he was horrible.
TRACIE SAVAGE:
We all probably feel the same way. I had pretty much retired from acting after 18 years. I wasn't really serious when I did this movie. I was a student and my focuses were elsewhere. So when I watch the movie now, I kind of laugh at my own performance. I just think, "Oh, god!"
LARRY ZERNER:
There are parts that I cringe at and there are parts I think are pretty good. As the film went on, I got better. The first scene where I come out of the van—I really hate myself there. I'm really bad. I didn't know what I was doing. I wish I could do that again. But my last scene where I have it out with Vera, I like that.
From left: Turkish video cover; orignal Friday the 13th Part 3 soundtrack LP; Michael Avallone's official 1982 novelization of the film.
PAUL KRATKA:
I thought it was pretty scary the first time I watched it back in 1982. Now, it's so corny. There was a screening at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles a few years back, and I brought my wife and daughter and her friend. We just thought it was hilarious, and most people around us were laughing as much as we were. It's turned into this very camp experience. Yet underneath that is an extremely creative and complicated technical achievement. This was a landmark production in that respect.
RICHARD BROOKER:
Horror movies are much more hi-tech now. So to look at this today, it's funny. In 1982, it didn't look funny.
GEORGE HIVELY:
It was a different time. If you go back and look at some of the films that were done in the 1930s and '40s and look at the editorial styles, they are much more lethargic. Then along came television, and because the original television commercials were a minute long the advertisers kept saying "We've got to be able to cram this into less space because I want to buy less time." Then the 30-second spot was born. Chop, chop, chop. Then that led to the MTV era.
I think that the simplicity of a movie like Part 3—what audiences today might perceive as a slown
ess—that was by design all along. There is nothing really particularly unusual or spectacular about the film. I think Steve Miner got a script, looked at it, read it, made whatever changes he wanted to make and he had it pretty well lined up how he wanted to shoot it. I also think we were kind of holding on shots longer than you would otherwise to get the 3-D effect. And, yes, maybe we could have cut it faster. But that would not have gone over with the audience anyway, because the audience didn't have that MTV mindset then.
PETER SCHINDLER:
You can't out-guess technology. I finished a very successful 3-D show in Part 3 to take another successful show, Jaws 3-D, with the idea of great dreams. I thought it was really becoming an art form, and if I could jump in on this I would become the "Dean of 3-D" and I would have worked forever. But it never happened. I still don't regret it, though, because I learned a lot.
MARTIN JAY SADOFF:
Even though Paramount had never really wanted to get into the manufacturing of 3-D lenses, it got them into trouble in the end because they were sued for anti-trust. And they lost, because you can't make a movie using your own process to show it. But it was a no-win situation. If you had gone out without making your own lenses, the quality of your film would have altered from theater to theater.
I really believed that Part 3 was going to lead to something great, that next there would be a Steven Spielberg film in 3-D. But after the anti-trust lawsuit, Paramount decided to recall all the lenses from the theaters. That was the beginning of the end of 3-D.
Original 1982 trade ad heralding Friday the 13th Part 3's stellar box office grosses. Placed by Paramount Pictures in Daily Variety, dated Tuesday, August 24, 1982. Though the studio was often accused of being unsupportive of—or being downright embarrassed by—the Friday the 13th series, Paramount would routinely trumpet their box office performance in the industry trades.
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 28
