Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D Blu-ray Movie Review

Scream Factory via Shout! Factory has released the 1982 Horror franchise film 'Friday the 13th Part III' to Blu-ray with a fresh 4K scan and a pair of lossless soundtrack options. Several supplements are included as well, carrying over some of the extras from the old 2009 Paramount release and adding a few new ones (missing content has been transferred to the bonus discs in the larger collection). It's an excellent Blu-ray, well superior to the Paramount disc. It is currently only available in the exciting, and limited, Friday the 13th Collection which includes all 12 films featuring killer Jason Voorhees as well as two bonus discs.

Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Friday the 13th Part III's Blu-ray disc includes both a 2-D picture and a 3-D presentation. Paramount released the film years ago in anaglyph 3-D but Shout!'s disc offers an updated presentation to play on modern equipment and offer a superior viewing experience. And superior it is, mostly. The first few minutes recapping the end of the previous film are not in 3-D, but as soon as the film's title literally pushes out of the screen and settles right in front of the viewer's face (with some crosstalk effect), the audience knows it's in for a treat...until the rest of the titles don't extend beyond the screen's confines. There is a tremendous sense of depth to them, but no extra-screen pop. This is a known issue with the original run of discs and Shout! Factory is offering replacements; please click here for more information.

Overall depth is excellent. The spacial separation seen on the bedsheets hanging form the clothesline is of a high quality, as is the sense of tangible depth -- albeit a bit disproportionate -- inside as Harold's wife watches television, both making for, if nothing else, a really solid example of 3-D pushing the limits of the third dimension. The two gimmick shots in the section -- Harold pushing a pole toward the camera and his wife fiddling with the rabbit ears atop the TV -- work very well, even if the latter is a little too small to rally make a big impact. This whole stretch of the film enjoys some seriously fun exercises in dimensionality and all of them looks superb. Later, shots from inside the van place the viewer within it's rectangular back end. The separation between the teens and the broken windshield in chapter five is very obvious. General spacing inside structures and out and about even at night always impresses with minimal ghosting. Add that so many shots are designed to take advantage of depth and pop-out opportunities and the movie is a whole lot of fun in 3-D, even if it's a is fairly mundane Slasher.

Speaking of gimmicks, most all such shots look great. A man's hand extends from the screen and dangles an eyeball in front of the audience's face at the 22:19 mark. The yo-yo scene at the start of chapter six is nearly as effective as the previous. A pole sticks out of a corpse hanging in a barn in chapter six to terrific extra-screen effect, but the infamous "eyeball popping" scene is so brief as to lose its would-be effectiveness. But in total the 3-D work here is exemplary. Format fans starving for new content will be thrilled with the results.

The 2-D presentation is a mixed bag, obviously failing to take advantage of the various gimmick shots throughout the film but also struggling to find consistency in visual output. There are softer visuals and there are sharper visuals and the image fluctuates scene to scene, sometimes shot to shot, from pleasantly sharp, grainy, and filmic to fuzzy and flat. Look when Harold's nagging wife watches a news broadcast about the events from the second film about nine minutes into the movie. It's the first of countless examples intermixed with moments of near brilliant clarity and filmic aptitude. While even at its best it cannot match the first two films there are plenty of scenes that show firm but fine grain and sharp but effortless textures. It's quite interesting to watch the movie unfold and never quite settle on soft or sharp. When it's on it's a solid 4.0 on the scoring scale. When the softer scenes take over, it drops dramatically. Colors are all over the map, too, with the softer scenes struggling to find depth, tonal accuracy, and fine contrast while these are no particularly troublesome issues in the better scenes. There are no serious encode issues but the print does show static dirt at the 18-minute mark, again at 30:12, and at several other points thereafter.

It's worth noting that the image is more stable and crisp and consistent in 3-D. Shots and scenes that struggled for clarity and definition in 2-D are rendered much more crisply and more accurately in 3-D.

Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Friday the 13th: Part III's sound design comes across as dated regardless of whether one chooses to view the film with either the supplied DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono soundtrack or the more expansive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless presentation. There's a struggle for realism in both examples, but the 5.1 track does work the material with more grace, more finesse, more clarity, more lifelike presence and immersion. Music is the most obvious beneficiary of the 5.1 track's superiority, presenting the familiar refrains with more seamless front end space, low end depth (listen to the stringy finale around the 74 mark), and surround immersion while finding greater clarity to the classic "chh chh chh" sound, here hauntingly airy rather than flatter and staler in mono. Screams pierce with solid clarity and atmospheric support enjoys superior spacing and fidelity, though certainly neither track manages much in terms of real feelings for authenticity and immersion. Dialogue is center focused and clear enough in 5.1. In any category the mono track just can't keep up. Whether thinner music (check out the kill scenes with the hot poker around the 69 minute mark) or more shrilly effects (including wind in the final act), it's a technically inferior listen. But like the first two films in the series, why not watch twice, once with each?

Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Friday the 13th: Part III contains several supplements that were not included on the previous Paramount release. All of the extras form that disc do carry over, but some have been transferred to the bonus discs in the collection. New material is marked below. Please click here for coverage of the carryover content.

• NEW! Audio Commentary: Peter Bracke hosts Actors Larry Zerner, Paul Kratka, Richard Brooker and Dana Kimmell.
• Fresh Cuts: 3D Terror
• Lost Tales From Camp Blood -- Part III
• NEW! Vintage Fangoria Magazine Article: Accessible via PC BD drive.
• NEW! TV Spots (1080i upscaled, 4x3, 1:43 total runtime).
• NEW! Radio Spots (1080p, 1:34 total runtime): The ads play over a still image depicting Jason in the hockey mask.
• Theatrical Trailer
• NEW! Movie Stills Gallery (1080p, 5:59): Stills auto advance but can be skipped ahead and paused.
• NEW! Posters and Lobby Cards Gallery (1080p, 6:24): Images and ads from around the world.

Friday the 13th: Part III 3-D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Friday the 13th Part III is a lackluster Horror movie (even if it's the first appearance of the iconic hockey mask) made very good thanks to the superior 3-D workmanship which has received an overhaul with Shout! Factory's excellent new release. It's far superior to the old Paramount anaglyph version with the 3-D working extraordinarily well in most every shot. The 2-D presentation is hit or miss but the movie just isn't worth watching unless it's in 3-D. Add in a solid 5.1 lossless soundtrack and some new extras and this disc, as part of the larger collection, comes highly recommended.