Friday the 13th Part III Alternate Endings

Friday the 13th Part III is the third instalment to the cult classic Friday the 13th movie series, and was originally intended to be the final installment of the series. It is notable for being the first entry in the series to have the famed character Jason Voorhees wear the hockey mask, a trademark that would last the whole series. The movie is also notable for having two alternate ending that never saw the light of day.

Alternate Ending #1
After killing Jason in the barn, our main heroine, Chris, pushes herself onto the middle of the lake in a canoe, where she falls asleep. The next morning she wakes up and hears Rick, one of her firends, calling for her from the cottage. She makes her way to the cottage to greet Rick, only to instead be ambushed by Jason, now unmasked and wheilding a machete, as he grabs Chris and decapitates her. The next scene shows Chris in the back of a police car, screaming frantically as the police try to comfort her. This sequence was filmed, but was never used, and was instead changed to where Mrs. Voorhees drags Chris under the lake. The reason why it was changed was because the creators felt that it would've been depressing to kill off the main heroine, regardless if this were a dream sequence or not.

Alternate Ending #2
This ending plays out similar to the official ending, with a few noticable differences. For one thing, Ali, one of the bikers in the movie, survives from his encounter with Jason, as he and Chris walk away from the now dead Jason. Also when the cops show up to survay the area, we see that Jason's body is missing, indicating that he's still alive. This ending was re-written in favor of the first alternate ending, which itself ended up getting replaced.

Evidence That These Endings Exist
Despite the first ending never seeing the light of day on any home video release, the ending was mentioned in the book titled "Crystal Lake Memories", which details the entire history of the Friday the 13th series. Still images also emerged on the internet, many of them appearing in the Crystal Lake Memories book. The other alternate ending was shown in the novelization of the movie.