With his book Sackhead: The Definitive Retrospective on Friday the 13th Part 2, author R.G. Henning dug into his personal favorite entry in the Friday the 13th franchise – and with his follow-up Jason 3D: A Comprehensive Exposé on Friday the 13th Part 3, he digs into my personal favorite of the bunch, the third film, the one where slasher Jason Voorhees finally gets his iconic look by acquiring a hockey mask in the midst of his latest killing spree.
Henning took the same approach to writing Jason 3D as he did with Sackhead, giving background information on the making of the film and then examining it through chapters that are focused on each of the characters. There are novelization sections in which the events of the film are recounted through the specific perspective of a character (or characters, if they happen to be grouped together in a chapter), and those are followed by sections in which we’re given information on the actors who brought these people to life, including quotes from interviews.
Jason, heroine Chris, victims Rick (played by Paul Kratka, who wrote a foreword for this book), Shelly, Vera, Andy and Debbie, Chuck and Chili; Ali, Loco, and Fox; Harold and Edna, they all get chapters to devoted to them. So does director Steve Miner, who also directed the previous film in the franchise (and was an associate producer on the original film). Henning may not hold Part 3 up on the same level as Part 2, but throughout this book’s 254 pages he shows that he has a lot of appreciation for this sequel as well – and since Part 3 is my favorite, I really enjoyed seeing it celebrated in this way.
There are also sections called "Asked & Answered," where Henning covers common questions about things like Jason’s hockey mask and appearance, how much ground the killer had to cover to travel from the setting of Part 2 to the location where Part 3 takes place, a questionable hallucination, and more. I wasn’t always 100% on board with the answers / theories that are presented, but it was fun to see these things being covered nonetheless.
If you’re a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise, and of the early films in particular, Henning’s books make great, entertaining additions to your collection. Henning’s fandom is built around the entries that depict Jason as a human slasher rather than a zombie, demon, or space explorer, which narrows it down to the first four films and the 2009 reboot... and leaves the door open for the idea that he may someday write about Friday the 13th (1980), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, and/or Friday the 13th (2009) as well. I would love to see him cover any or all of those – and strongly believe that the ‘09 film is in desperate need of book coverage, since it hadn’t been made yet when Peter M. Bracke’s Crystal Lake Memories, which covers all of the other films, was published. Henning doesn’t have any plans for those books at the moment... but we live in hope. And in the meantime, we can continue enhancing our celebration of Friday the 13ths part 2 and 3 with Sackhead and Jason 3D.
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