The Bad Movies I Love #5 Jason X

He just wants his machete back!” – Dieter Perez

For most people, 2001 is the year the world changed. And let’s not beat around the bush it was. In 2001 we were all knocked on our asses and I fear things will never be the same again. I mean seriously who thought it was a good idea for Jason Voorhees to become the lovechild of James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven?

What, you thought I was talking about 9-11?

Why the hell would I do that?

For me, 2001 was the year the most batshit, awesome, crazy horror movie ever came out—Jason X.

Jason X is the tenth installment in the Friday the 13th film series and stars Kane Hodder in his fourth and final appearance as the undead, mass murderer Jason Voorhees. Let’s tell the truth and shame devil. My paternal grandma used that term all the time, and I will NEVER tire of it. This movie is all about the indomitable Kane Hodder. I’ve met Mr. Hodder at a few different geek and horror-centric conventions over the years, and the man is just great. He treats his fans like friends and has a laugh that could light up a room.

I’m not saying I’ve had a crush on him since I first met him, but I’m not NOT saying it either.

Jason X was only able to be made because of the struggle to get Freddy Vs. Jason made. With production of the eventual record-breaking film stuck in the quagmire (Giggity) New Line Cinema needed to capitalize on the franchise they’d bought from Paramount years before.

Our hero Jason Voorhees is finally captured by a United States government who got their shit together and realized he could not be killed. About damn time. I mean seriously how many times does he have to come back and kill a dozen dumbasses before that becomes obvious? For some reason, he’s incarcerated at the Crystal Lake Research Facility. Why is there a government high-tech research complex in Crystal Lake? Why is this a thing and can I get a job there?

The movie opens in 2010 with a government scientist who decides the best way to contain him is to place Jason in frozen stasis. Considering there have been after several failed attempts to kill Jason since his capture, I actually think this is a really good idea—if you can’t kill him then contain him. Treat his zombie ass like North Korea, but maybe not let him get a nuclear weapon—that’s foreshadowing by the way. Of course, the military fucks it all up because they want to the secret to his perpetual cellular regeneration.

PAUSE!

Why are the military always portrayed as a bunch of thick-headed, over confident, neandertal idiots in sci-fi/horror movies? Yes, I can think of exceptions to this, World War Z and Cloverfield spring to mind. But by and large, you get assholes like these and the idiot Americans in 28 Weeks Later.

Unpause.

The soldiers try to take Jason from the facility but end up accidentally releasing him. Panic ensues and only one of the Crystal Lake personal, Rowan played by the amazing Lexa Doig, manages to keep her head. Slaughter and chaos envelopes the building climax with Rowan managing to get Jason into the cryo pod. He punctures the fluid reserve and both of them are thrust into suspended animation.

We then jump the timeline, and many would say one massive shark later, 445 years. It’s now 2455, and the Earth has become too polluted to support life. So, we are informed in vague and somewhat irritating ways that the human race has moved to a new planet named Earth-Two.

Can the creators of the mid 90s television show EARTH 2 sue?

We join the spaceship Grendel and the members of an academic mission from Earth-Two to explore and catalog the ruins on Earth. A group of university students enters the abandoned yet still powered Crystal Lake Research Complex, and they find the pod still containing the bodies of Rowan and Jason. So, of course, our future geniuses decide to take them back up with the rest of the relics they’d gathered on the surface.

Using nanotechnology, the intrepid explorers reanimate Rowan repairing all the cellular damage and returning her to perfect health. The nanobot scenes are pretty damn cool. Jason is pronounced unrevivable, and they leave his corpsicle in the spaceships morgue. The financial backer of the expedition, Dieter Perez, realizes who they’ve recovered and determines he could make a pretty penny selling the remains to the right collector.

The only thing worse than the military in sci-fi/horror movies is the egomaniacal billionaire.

While we enjoy the obligatory Friday the 13th sex scene, Jason reanimates and kills Adrienne the science student working in the morgue. And boils and ghouls her death is fucking amazeballs, easily my favorite Jason kill ever. Jason grabs her by the back of the head and plunges her face into a basin filled with liquid nitrogen. We see from an underwater POV her screams stop and her head freeze solid in a matter of seconds. This is followed by Jason pulling her head out and smashing it into a thousand pieces.

BAM!!!

After this awesomeness, Jason takes a giant knife from the morgue and heads out to play skeeball, I mean hunt humans. I think Jason Vorhees and Bender Bending Rodriguez would have been best friends. His first dust-up is with the couple having sex where he kills one and the other gets away. After that he heads to the ships’ virtual reality game room, we must not call it a Holo-Deck precious or the Trekkers will gets us, where he slaughters a group of space marines and students playing an action adventure shooter game.

Apparently, a man can’t get his HALO on with Jason chopping his head off in the future.

The Grendel attempts to dock at the space station Solaris, but Jason hacks the pilot to death. With no pilot at the helm, the Grendel plows right through the station destroying it and damaging half of the Grendel and sends it careening through space. In the chaos, Jason reclaims his machete from the crew and leaves the substitute weapon on the ground.

With the ship damaged the survivors decide it’s time to get the fuck off and head for the shuttle. But Jason has a different idea of how things should go down. Jason picks them off one at a time as they prepare to leave which results in one of the terrified survivors trying to launch the shuttle before it’s ready. The shuttle crashes into the Grendel’s hull and explodes leaving the remaining survivors stranded.

Then we get the the greatest, what the fuck? batshit moment in Friday the 13th history.

On board, the Grendel is a robotic grad student and his creation KM-14. KM is female, and it’s pretty clear her creator fucks her regularly. Also, she has no nipples. No reason to mention that other than because it’s kinda fascinating when he tries to giver her artificial nipple attachments. KM gets upgraded to a military robot while Jason is slaughtering the passengers and crew and what we get is a Jason Vs. Robot throwdown. KM legit kicks Jason’s ass as she blows bits and pieces off his body with her advanced weapons and overpowers him with her robot attributes.

Not since Rosey have I wanted to fuck a robot so bad… STOP SHAMMING ME!!!

With Jason out of commission, the survivors send a distress signal which is answered. In preparation for the rescue, they start setting charges to separate the crippled sections of the Grendel. While they are working, the damaged medical bay uses its nanobots to reanimate Jason. Not only do the little robots bring Jason back to consciousness they make him exponentially stronger. As my grandfather said, “I love it because they made Jason the Terminator.” I can’t say I disagree.

Jason kicks KM’s ass by knocking her head right off her shoulders, and he moves to kill the remaining survivors. But at the last minute, one of the survivors uses one of the charges to blow up the corridor giving the survivors a few seconds of breathing room. They use the time to create a solid holographic simulation of classic Crystal Lake to distract Jason. Unfortunately, Jason sees through it and continues toward the now trapped survivors. But they’ve bought enough time for the rest of the charges to be set, and the ship is separated. One survivor uses his EVA suit to divert Jason and the two of them plunge into the atmosphere of Earth Two.

The final shot of the movie is from the perspective of the ground side on Earth-Two, which is apparently a paradise. We see two teens beside a lake who observe what they believe is a falling star as Jason’s charred mask sinks to the bottom of the lake.

I don’t care what anyone says, I love this movie. It’s a alls to the wall rollercoaster ride of fun, and I highly recommend it to horror and science fiction fans alike.