Friday the 13th Part III

Friday the 13th Part III is a 1982 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner, produced by Frank Mancuso Jr., and starring Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, and Richard Brooker. It is the sequel to Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and the third installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. Set directly after the events of the previous films, the plot follows a teenage girl (Kimmell) and her friends who go on a trip to a house near Crystal Lake where a wounded Jason Voorhees (Brooker) has taken refuge until reemerging for another killing spree. The film marks the first appearance of Jason's signature hockey mask, which has since become a trademark of both the character and the franchise, as well as an icon in American cinema and the horror genre in general.

The original storyline was supposed to focus on a post-traumatic Ginny Field who began learning self-defense and returned to college after surviving her ordeal in the previous film. After finding Paul's corpse inside her dormitory, she prepares to track down Voorhees and face him in a final confrontation. However, this concept was abandoned when Amy Steel declined to reprise her role.

Friday the 13th Part III was theatrically released in 3D, and is the only film in the series to be released in that format. The film was intended to end the series as a trilogy; however, unlike many of its successors, the film did not include a moniker in its title to indicate it as such. The film was theatrically released on August 13, 1982, grossing $36.7 million at the US box office on a budget of $2.2 million, and received negative reviews from critics. It was the first film to remove E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial from the number-one box office spot and became the second highest-grossing horror film of 1982, behind Poltergeist. It has the third most attendance of the Friday the 13th franchise, with approximately 11,762,400 tickets sold. A direct sequel, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, was released two years later.