Throughout the slasher heyday of the seventies and eighties, three films of the era rose above the rest to become lucrative franchises: Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. All three have spawned several sequels, and round by round, I’ll examine each series’ parallel films and determine which one knocks the other two out. Whichever series has the most “points” at the end of the nine rounds wins. (Read Round 1 here and Round 2 here.)

Round 3(D): Breaking and Building Boundaries…

Trilogies are, indeed, a rarity in the horror field. Even though we all know that you can barely count the number of sequels on two hands, at one brief point, all these series were trilogies. Both Friday the 13th and Nightmare sequels begin to carve out the path that their successors would soon follow. Conversely, the Halloween series allows for a completely left-field story to be told under the franchise name. Does originality pay off for Halloween 3 or do the Friday and Nightmare films benefit by getting a head start by establishing their mythos sooner?

Friday the 13th Part 3 was released in August of 1982 to Friday fans waiting for another go-around of Camp Crystal Lake’s bloody ferris wheel. Part 3(D!) consciously decides to take itself a lot less seriously than either of the previous entries: something immediately apparent from the ultra-funky theme played over the opening credits that shoot enthusiastically out at the audience. The 3D not only solidified and embraced the care-free fun with which the series has always been identified, but it also added, for a lack of a better term, a lot of ‘cheese.’ The characters, which include pot-smoking hippies, a hot couple bent on having sexy time, a chunky fellow with a fro and a biker gang, all dive head-first into self-parody. It’s safe to say that Richard Brooker, the stuntman who portrayed Jason, was far and away the best actor in the film. (Mr. Brooker unfortunately passed away just a few weeks ago.) The uses of 3D are about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Each instance shatters the film’s fourth wall but it doesn’t appear that director, Steve Miner, much cared. In fact, the self-referential nature of a character reading Fangoria as she dies from an elaborate SPFX set piece is one of the earliest self-referential “in-jokes” that would later saturate the genre upon Scream’s release in the late nineties.

For whatever reason (perhaps the makers of The Town That Dreaded Sundown threatened to sue), Jason thankfully abandoned the potato sack after only one film and opted for something a bit more striking: a hockey mask. As seen in the scene when the Shaggy-like character goes down in the basement to “check things out,” the back-lit psycho-goalie towers over his cartoon victim in what is one of Jason’s first truly iconic images. The backwoods mutant persona starts to give way to the modern, hulking, and immortal monster that we all know and love today.

As Friday the 13th Part 2 did, Part 3 further solidified the Friday the 13th dogma: Jason will keep coming back no matter how dead you think he is; all characters other than the protagonist and their love interest (or sibling-like character) are going to die one by one in ever-increasingly creative ways; and whenever we run out creative deaths, there will be gimmicks to take up the slack.

Halloween 3 was once regarded as the undisputed black sheep of the series. This deliciously over-the-top film represents the original idea of the Halloween series laid out by John Carpenter and Debra Hill in the late seventies. Each entry would focus on a completely different story but only with the subject of Halloween to tie them together. It still sounds like a brilliant anthology idea but since Halloween 2 continued the Michael Myers storyline (because of the first’s financial success), audiences naturally assumed that part 3 would somehow continue that story despite the fact that Loomis shot out Michael’s eyes and blew up the two of them in an explosion that no one, not even the boogeyman, could survive.

Similarly to the producers of Nightmare 2 being oblivious to Freddy’s audience draw power, the filmmakers behind Halloween 3 didn’t realize Michael’s. They banked off the success of the first two by using the series name and it ended up backfiring tremendously. Audiences were confused. Confusion led to anger. Anger led to revulsion. Part 3 was despised for about 15–20 years just for being different. I don’t think most people actually hated the film, I think they hated the fact that they felt swindled.

It’s easy to see why some are off put by this odd-concoction of ingredients to begin with: a story right out of The Twilight Zone; a horror franchise and crew featuring a new writer/director that still feels unsure of himself at the ship’s helm. Tommy Lee Wallace, the film’s captain, had been both production designer and editor on Halloween and The Fog. After turning down the job of directing Halloween II because of the derivative nature of the script, he jumped at the opportunity to write and direct something original while his buddy Carpenter looked on in a godfather/producer role.

Wallace’s sophomore screenplay ranges from brilliant and chilling to garbled and confusing. Why does our protagonist abandon his kids and ex-wife to go on a trip with a barely “old enough” floozy? Why does our female protagonist come across as little more than just that: a floozy? Why, exactly, is our antagonist carrying out this horrific plot? None of these questions are ever answered satisfactorily. The film would’ve been an easily forgotten b-movie if it weren’t for the timeless themes that it invokes: the necessary distrust of the establishment and the inherent danger of technology — ideas that are much more relevant in today’s society than in 1982.

distrust of the establishment and the inherent danger of technology — ideas that are much more relevant in today’s society than in 1982.

The film’s biggest strength comes from the one-two punch it delivers. It distracts you with its campy humor and off-beat adventure only to kick your teeth in when all is revealed. The last third of the film is a relentless, unapologetic nightmare from which we cannot awaken. If the ending says everything you need to know about a film, the haunting final frames aren’t shaken easily.

Nightmare On Elm Street and its immediate sequel were very much about teen isolation and the chasm between themselves and their elders. Each nightmare was a battle in which Freddy had to be faced alone. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors breaks that secluded mentality and focuses around the idea that kids can enter “group dreams” in order to fight their scar-faced demons together. While the concept is a rather logical progression in the series lore, it belies much of the fear that Freddy has over people: knowing that you have to face a razor-fingered maniac alone when you drift asleep is terrifying — being able to face him with your pals isn’t as so.

I say this not to rag on the film but rather point out its biggest, inherent problem. Having said that, the writers (including the undeniably talented Frank Darabont) beautifully expounded on that idea and had a lot of fun with it by giving all the kids their own quirky “dream powers.” Nightmare 3 represents the series tipping point regarding Freddy’s on-screen presence. With each sequel, Robert Englund was given incremental increases in screen time because that’s who the producers thought people were really lining up to see. In the original, he manages to make his indelible mark in just eight minutes of screen time. In the third, Freddy debuts his first gleeful one-liner with the almost self-referential phrase, “Welcome to primetime, bitch!”

For the most part, the protagonists are still very much the focal point. I say for the most part because every now and then, Robert Englund slips into an odd, anti-hero role. Heather Langenkamp reprises her role as Nancy Thompson wonderfully while at the same time not overshadowing the “younger” characters to whom the torch is being passed. Anytime she’s on screen, it really makes me just want to sit down and watch the original. I don’t know if that’s a positive or negative aspect of this film but, regardless, their scenes together are still some of the best that the film offers.

With audience’s fear in Freddy diminishing, the film had to fill that hole with (like the aforementioned Friday and Halloween films) some humor. It creates an odd juxtaposition when you establish that the problems our teen protagonists are facing (self-mutilation, drug addiction, gangs, etc) are real-life dangers and you see them casually dispatched with ironic one-liners almost seems insulting. No wonder people started to root for Freddy after a while.

Friday 3 feels like a series with one more step to go. Every now and then, the potential shines through, but, too often, the film is muddled by its gaudy style, flagrant 3D gags and atrocious acting (even for a slasher film). Nightmare 3 suffers from similar style ailments. It’s caught between two different worlds: one where Freddy is the pent up dark karma of the suburban underbelly and the other where he’s telling standup and decapitating hecklers at the local comedy club. Tonally, it’s off. Halloween 3 is the path not taken. It offers us a small glimpse at what might have become a fantastic anthology series based on most every horror fan’s favorite holiday. The plot is just as off-the-wall as it sounds but when you throw in a great sci-fi twist, splashes of horror and the producing crew of the previous Halloween films, you got yourself an eccentric, oft-misunderstood gem. Watch the magic pumpkin.

WINNER: Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Up next… Round 4: Life/Death/Resurrection (A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers)