6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 3.9 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Jason, a hockey mask-wearing serial murderer, wages a diabolical killing spree at a summer camp.
Starring: Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage, Jeffrey Rogers, Catherine ParksHorror | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 MVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
BDInfo verified from disc
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Blu-ray 3D
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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'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'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 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.
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.
1982
1982
1982
1982
Remastered
1982
1981
Limited Edition
1980
1988
Limited Edition
2009
1985
1986
1984
1989
2013
2003
2014
1993
2018
2009
2019
Collector's Edition
1981
2011
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2018
2019