Welcome to 2026's 31 Days of Heistoween, a daily dose of spooky icons, spine-tingling oddities, and — most harrowing of all — memes. Check back every day from now through October 31 for each daily entry!
Every generation or so since the 1950s, a new home video technology comes along which threatens the supremacy of Hollywood as the chief purveyor of filmed entertainment. Whenever this happens — with TV in the 1950s, home video in the late '70s, and Netflix/streaming in the mid 2000s — movie studios respond by thinking up a bunch of gimmicks to help keep the movie-going experience unique. Some (wider, more expansive, screens) made sense/were good improvements and some (Smell-O-Vision) were downright bizarre. But ol' reliable, the one the studios come back to again and again, is 3D.
And so it was that the third Friday the 13th movie went into production during the second great 3D wave, as Betamax and VHS battled it out for the right to be America's only deliverer of movies-in-homes, and emerged as both a 3D classic, packed with goofy-ass "it's coming out of the screen!" 3D moments and one of the better and most significant Friday the 13th films. But not all 3D shots are created equal, so here is the absolutely definitive* ranking of all the 3D gimmicks in Friday the 13th Part 3(...D).
*definitely not definitive; what is or isn't a 3D shot is occasionally difficult to sus out when watching on Paramount+ w/o 3D glasses, so I may have missed a few.
#35 - Baseball bat
The 3D gimmicks in this movie can largely be grouped into three categories: "boring and rote," "at least they were trying to do something," and "fun, unexpected or over-the-top."
The "boring and rote" ones, which populate the bottom of this ranking, are mostly stuff like the shot of a group of kids playing baseball in the street as our main non-Jason characters meet up to head out of town, and the barrel of the bat the one of the kids is holding briefly sticks out of the screen.
#34 - The rabbit ears of a TV antenna
Friday the 13th Part 3 opens with a reprise of the previous film (in which Final Girl Ginny peels the sweater off the decaying corpse of Jason's mom and cosplays as Mrs. Voorhees in order to distract Jason long enough to stick a machete in his shoulder and escape), followed by a sequence that is, essentially, about Jason stealing some clothes from the clothesline of a couple who own a general store. But because its Jason, random killing ensues.
Before we get to that though, there's a shot of Mrs. General Store adjusting her TV antenna (kids, back in the old days, our enormous TVs needed antennas to pickup the broadcast signals floating through the air; if it stormed or even was just cloudy, sometimes there was no TV), which of course wanders out of the screen.
#33-#32 - A swinging hay bale & 3D door handle
In a departure from the previous two films, the plot of Friday the 13th Part 3 involves a group of young adults going to hang out for the weekend at the main character's family's cabin (which happens to be on Crystal Lake) vs. a bunch of horny counselors at the aptly-named Camp Blood (it was also not in Northern California vs. New York, with the "lake" entirely man made, and it...shows).
There's a barn on the property of this wooded cabin, and it is the setting of numerous kills and 3D shots, including a hay bale swinging out of the upper loft on a rope and a handle to one of the (thankfully empty) animal stalls that looks like a sideways L just so there's an element that can stick out of the screen when a character uses it.
#31 - #30 - A joint and a wallet
Another popular excuse to use 3D in this movie is the "let's punch up an otherwise innocuous scene by breaking the third dimension!" And so we get things like "Cheech & Chong stand-ins Chuck and Chili pass a joint" and "Shelly tosses his wallet to Vera at a gas station" flying at us.
#29 - Biker chick climbs a ladder
There's a weird subplot in this film involving a trio of bikers who harass Shelly and Vera at the aforementioned gas station, which culminates in Shelly (accidentally) backing into all their bikes with his car. In revenge for this affront, they follow him back to the cabin, steal the gas out of the gang's Scooby-Doo van, then get lured into the Murder Barn and killed by Jason.
I'm not sure what kind of lesson all of that is intending to impart, but as part of the buildup to the first of the Barn Kills, the female member of the three person biker gang climbs a ladder into the hayloft, and we get the first of several "camera is shooting down as an actor moves up" shots.
#28 - Axe in Jason's head
This is like the baseball one, except better since it involves an axe stuck in Jason's head (he gets better).
#27 - A clothesline pole
By contrast, the moment when the general store owner messes up the clothesline by knocking out one of the poles holding up the line, leading to him lifting it into place while shoving one end out over the heads of the theater audience, is pretty boring. But it is the first overt 3D gimmick in the film, so it ranks a notch higher.
#26 - Title and opening credits
Here's a fun, if expected, one. The end of the prologue comes when the camera zooms in on the desiccated head of Mrs. Voorhees in Jason's hovel/shrine and the name of the movie flies out of her eyes IN 3D! Then the rest of the credits follow suit, flying off the screen like the credits in Superman but with more 3D.
#25 - Meat cleaver to the chest
Most of the kills in this movie (rightly) involve a 3D effect. The first is when Jason kills the general store owner (after stealing his still-drying pants) via a meat cleaver to the best, which we get to watch from the perspective of the chest as Jason swings it towards us.
#24-22 - Axes and machetes
Bladed tools are the weapons of choice throughout this movie, and almost every time they show up, we get a brief "sharp end moves off the screen" shot.
#21 - Severed Hand
In the big final kill-a-thon (taking place in the Murder Barn, of course) one of the bikers (Ali) suddenly pops up, less dead than we'd previously been led to believe, to attack Jason as he closes in on Final Girl Chris. His moment of heroism simply leads to him having his hand swiftly severed by Jason in a moment that should have been one of the movie's signature 3D effects, but goes by way too quickly to properly appreciate (I'm guessing the practical effect was difficult to pull off well so they breezed through it as fast as possible).
Oh, and after he loses his hand, Jason shoves a machete into his neck to kill him, but that happens safely in the second dimension.
#20 - Rat on a board
A subcategory of the 3D effects in the movie is "make an animal pop out." This one, in which a rat appears on a conveniently-horizontal board, is the least of them.
#19 - Dropping onto Jason
The inverse of the "biker chic climbs up a ladder" is the moment when Chris, hanging from the rafters of the Barn of Death, drops down onto Jason from above, and the camera shoots her falling towards the audience.
#18 - Dangling Dead Arm
The randomly-pregnant Debbie learns her boyfriend Andy has run afoul of Jason when, as she curls up, post-coitus, with a copy of Fangoria magazine (featuring an article on the original F13's makeup man, Tom Savini) in their shared hammock, only to have blood drip from above onto her magazine. Looking up, Andy's dead arm lazily lolls down from the rafters, and out of the screen.
#17 - Fist through the window
Remember Ali, the biker whose hand gets cut off? Well, in a bit of foreshadowing (probably not really) he executes the best 3D effect of all the bikers when, after Shelley has mowed down their bikes, he wraps his fist (the same one he'll later lose to Jason) in chains then punches straight through the window of Shelly's VW beetle, and into our hearts.
#16 - Knife throwing Jason
In a desperate bid to escape from Jason, Chris manages to get ahold of a knife and jabs it into Jason's leg. Jason, at this point in the franchise, wasn't quote the unstoppable killing machine he would become (he has a more Michael Myers-ish level of pain tolerance), and it slows him down for a moment. But as Chris runs away, Jason, like a badass, pulls the knife out then throws it at Chris — and the audience.
#15 - Axe in the head followed by Frankenstein grab
Remember the shot of the axe handle sticking out of Jason's head? Well, that lands in his skull thanks to a one-two 3D punch, in which Chris swings it into his head from Jason's POV, then the camera quickly cuts to show Chris' POV as both the handle, and Jason's outstretched arms reach out for her, Frankenstein-style.
#14 - Dead skunk
In addition to the Murder Barn, there's also a utility shed near the cabin, where the power breakers and whatnot are. When a storm/Jason cuts power, Chili heads there to check things out, where he's attacked by...the 3D corpse of a skunk.
#13 - #12 Chekhov's Fireplace Poker
As soon as someone started poking at the first with a metal poker, it instantly became Chekhov's Fireplace Poker in two ways: you know that sucker is going get a 3D glowup, and you know Jason is going to kill someone with it (in 3D).
Sure enough, both things happen.
#11 - Knife through the chest
Mere moments after discovering dead Andy's dangling arm of death, Debbie gets hers via a conviently-stealthy Jason sneaking into the room and slipping beneath the hammock, in order to shove a knife up through her back, with the tip protruding out of her chest and into 3D.
#10 - Popping Popcorn
True to their nature as stoners, Chuck and Chili get the munchies shortly before the kill-tastic climax kicks into gear, and so we are gifted with the utterly gratuitous overhead shot of popcorn popping out of a pot on the stove, the first — but not the best — of the "let's do something just for the 3D of it!" moments on this list.
#9 - Snake in the rabbit hutch
Mr. General Store has a thing for rabbits (there's a surprising amount of character development given to these two randos who are just in the movie to give it some quick opening kills); he keeps several in a hutch in the garage and seems to let at least one of them hang out in the store like a bodega cat. When he goes to return said bunny to said hutch, he discovers the other rabbits are all dead, either because of Jason or the snake that lunges at him, in 3D, from inside the hutch.
It's the best of the "Surprise! Animal!" moments because you can very much see the wire tied around the (presumably stuffed) snake's head used to pull it towards the camera.
#8 - Arrow through the neck
Jason's second kill of the movie comes when he stabs an arrow through the back of Mrs. General Store, only to have the tip of of the arrow come out her throat. It's an effective table-setter for what's to come, in terms of kills and effects.
#7 - Yo-yo
In the second "only cuz it's 3D" action, shortly after arriving at their weekend getaway, Debbie proceeds to soak up some sun while sunbathing outside the cabin (on the dirt driveway...) as Andy, standing above her on the cabin's porch, plays with his yo-yo (not a euphemism), dropping it down near Debbie's face and then back up, down and up, as the camera shoots the whole thing from Debbie's perspective, thereby creating a perfect 3D yo-yo effect.
#6 - Upside down kill
Andy, who may or may not be a jester of some sort(?), spends more time than you'd expect in this movie doing a walking handstand. In the end, that all seems to have been in service of setting up his big death scene, in which we see Jason kill him from Andy's standing-on-his-hands, upside-down perspective, creating the 3D effect of Jason reaching down at the audience as he slaughters Debbie's maybe-baby daddy.
#5 - Crazy Guy with a 3D Eyeball
In the grand tradition of the crazy guy in town who tries to warn the teens to stay away but gets ignored cuz he's some combo of crazy and living an atypical lifestyle, this movie has a hobo-esque man whom the main characters almost run over cuz he's sleeping in the road. When he wakes up, he shows them his prized possession: a (3D) eyeball.
#4 - Pitchfork belly
So the third biker, after the lady and Ali the handless window-puncher, is Loco. He meets his end when Jason runs him through with a pitchfork in the Murder Barn. Does he proceed to walk towards the camera, with the tines of the pitchfork protruding from his stomach at the camera?
You bet your ass he does!
#3 - Juggling
Taking Andy's yo-yo up a notch, this sequence involves Andy AND Shelly competing in a juggling competition to see who whiffs it first (these guys are clearly the coolest). Of course, this comes via repeated overhead shots of the pair tossing round fruit at the camera. But what really puts it over the top is the way the whole thing is shot like it's the greatest damn sequence to ever be put on film. As far as at least someone involved in the movie was concerned, this was the film's signature 3D shot.
#2 - Popping Eyeball
In reality, the film's signature 3D shot is actually when Jason kills Final Girl Chris' quasi-boyfriend Rick (who seems way too old to be involved with her and spends most of the movie saying the exposition the movie has already shown the audience i.e. walking into a dark room and saying, "the lights are off," like no shit buddy) by crushing his skull with enough force to cause one of his eyeballs to pop out and fly at the screen. It's the kind of thing 3D technology was invented to enable.
#1 - Spear Gun Jason
But that's not the #1 ranked 3D effect on this list, because there's one more that edges it out. Roughly halfway through the movie, Shelly pulls an ill-advised and frankly bizarre prank on Vera, the woman he's spent the movie thus far (unsuccessfully) trying to woo. As Vera sits with her foot dangling off the dock on Crystal Lake, something reaches up out of the water and grabs it, causing her to scream and run. At which point a figure emerges from the water holding a (loaded) spear gun, wearing a wet suit and a hockey goalie mask.
This is not Jason, but in fact Shelly, who somehow felt this (along with an earlier "prank" in which he pretended to be dead) would win him the affections of Vera. After she (rightly) lays into him, he sadly walks away, and then Vera drops Shelly's wallet into the lake accidentally (he tossed it to her in an earlier 3D scene). For some reason she feels bad about this, and walks into the lake to retrieve it.
At which point a figure bearing the spear gun and the goalie mask appears on the shore. Vera thinks it's Shelly being a dumb-ass again, which, fair, but this time it IS Jason, who proceeds to fire the spear gun at Vera. The resulting 3D shot is legitimately impressive, as the spear crosses a significant portion of the set, flying from background to foreground at the camera.
But in addition to the technical achievement, it earns the #1 spot because after putting that goalie mask on, Jason won't take it off for much of the rest of his long cinematic life. The spear gun kill, while a legitimately good piece of 3D work, stands above all for also being the first time Jason as most know him — hulking, silent, and wearing the iconic hockey mask — appeared on screen.
Come knock on our door tomorrow for even more 31 Days of Heistoween treats.
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