Most characters don’t make it out alive in horror movies. Some survive until the final reel if they’re lucky, while others become bodies on the slab before the titles have even run! They are sacrifices for us bloodthirsty fans, but there’s more to them than that. They have wants never met. Stories never properly finished. In Always the Final Kill, Never the Final Girl, writer Matt Konopka digs up these poor souls lost under the shadow of heroes to give them the proper attention they deserve.
I bet if I asked, most of you would raise your machetes for Shelly (Larry Zerner) as your favorite character in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III not named Jason Voorhees. I get it. I was an outcast growing up. A lot of us were. Of course we connect to the buttery muffin that is this shy, mask-wearing, horror-loving doofus. I always did. But, and I’m sure you’ll want to squeeze my eyeballs out for this, Shelly isn’t the character that most deserves our sympathy. It’s Vera (Catherine Parks).
Go back to that moment where Vera and Shelly have been left alone in the cabin, all of the other horny teens off summoning Jason with sweaty sexcapades. A crackling fire fills the swelling silence. They meet each other with awkward smiles. The budding romance that both their friends and the audience have been hoping for just moments from coming to fruition. Then Shelly opens his mouth to profess his “like” for Vera, and she gently, politely, turns him down. I’m with Shelly up to this point, my heart aching for his…until he turns around and calls Vera a “bitch”. I don’t know if she hears him. She doesn’t have to. Vera and countless other women have been in this position before. They’ve heard worse. Experienced worse.
The relationship between these two is just a part of FRIDAY III’s overarching theme which slashes into the dangers of a man denied. When a man hears the word “no”, there’s always the potential for them to become the darker versions of themselves, the man behind the mask. It’s no coincidence that this is the one and only FRIDAY which implicates Jason as a rapist during his past attack on Chris (Dana Kimmell). “The quiet can fool you,” she says of the woods. Chris knows. Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who pose the most threat. Shelly’s a quiet one.
Now I’m not saying Shelly is some kind of monster, but he’s not innocent, either. Why do we give him a pass for his behavior? Better yet, why do we ignore Vera’s pain? Shelly’s upset. So what? I was the king of getting my heart sliced and diced by crushes in school. But resorting to anger towards someone who turns you down is worthy of a face to face with ole Jason. Women should be allowed to reject men without fear of that anger. When it comes to dates. When it comes to sex. When it comes to hearing the word “no”, men need to stop being such whiny piss babies about it.
Shelly is piss babies.
Pressure is forced on Vera from the second the title launches out of Pamela’s decapitated head in glorious 3D. Blind dates typically have about a twenty-five percent success rate (zero, in my case). Blind dates in which the guy shows up carrying a plastic knife while wearing a mask that would unnerve our favorite summer camp killer? Well, that’s just science. We’re all horror kids here. We get that Shelly’s just being his harmless self. But Vera is a minority woman in early 80s racist America, with a mother who (rightly) is afraid of her running off with a bunch of white kids to a cabin on a death lake. Can’t blame her for having her guard up.
We don’t get to know a lot about Vera, but there’s a sense that she’s had to develop a shield against the world she lives in. When the cops pull up behind the smoke-filled van, it’s not the resident potheads who suggest destroying the evidence, it’s Vera. My guess is she’s had her fair share of run ins with cops harassing her and understands well the potential consequences if a non-white girl like her is caught with possession. Same thing at the market. The cashier assumes Vera is going to pay in food stamps (not so subtle racism). And then she’s targeted by a trio of dipshit crooks on the hunt for easy prey. Through it all though, Vera forces an “eat my shit” grin and doesn’t allow the situation to get out of control (Shelly does that for her). She’s been here before, that place where she has to be careful with her words for fear of violence in a society that’s hostile towards her.
It’s about time we, as the audience, took Vera’s side.
Especially once you consider the fact that Vera fills every inch of the screen with a scent of sweetness. She’s no “bitch”. She’s the nicest person in the whole damn movie! Everyone cuts Shelly down. Everyone. They have no problem needling every facet of his personality. Know who doesn’t? Vera. She takes an interest in Shelly’s “whole world”, aka, his makeup kit. He can’t walk on his hands like Andy (Jeffrey Rogers) or lift bales of hay with muscle-bound Rick (Paul Kratka), but Vera tries to make Shelly feel good about what he can do. “Shelly made them see the error of their ways,” she says of the bikers. Unlike his closest friends, Vera empathizes with the flawed human under the mask who is struggling to express himself. She says as much after he scares her for the millionth time, attacking her with a damn spear gun moments after she turned him down, assuring him that yes, she likes him, but no, he doesn’t have to be an asshole! “That’ll teach you a valuable lesson,” says Shelly. “A beautiful girl like you should never go out in the dark alone”. One last sexist comment. One last red flag.
Parks projects a swelling sadness within Vera as she sits at the edge of that lonely dock. Friend or lover, Vera is another woman denied friendship by a man who sees her as worth nothing more than a vehicle to bang his brains out. All of which makes her death so much more heartrending. Vera isn’t just the first to die at the hands of a hockey-masked Jason (a moment in FRIDAY history legendary in its own right), but she dies not knowing for sure if it’s Shelly behind that mask or not. Her final moments are spent in fear of a guy who she has said the dreaded “no” to, met with a brutal betrayal for that exact thing, as far as she knows. Jason has killed a whole lot of campers, but Vera is one of his most tragic victims.
Actor Larry Zerner is a delightful human and has earned the respect of the FRIDAY fandom, but it’s high time we give Catherine Parks the same attention. Critics of the FRIDAY franchise always like to decry these films as not having “characters”, but bodies lined up for Jason’s slaughter. Vera says otherwise. Like the sparkling water of Camp Crystal Lake, there’s more to her underneath the surface. Highlighted by Parks’ endearing performance, she’s a kind, understanding soul who saw a friend in Shelly. All she wanted was that friend.
Vera’s real death in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III is a harpoon to the heart.
Preferred pronouns: He/him
Tags: Always the Final Kill Never the Final Girl, Camp Crystal Lake, Catherine Parks, Dana Kimmell, Friday the 13th Part 3, Jason Voorhees, Paul Kratka, Rachel Howard, Richard Brooker, Steve Miner
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