MOVIE REVIEW: Jason X (2001)
It’s been over 20 years since I saw this in the theaters AND wrote this review; I’m reposting this pre-#MeToo review for the engagement. Enjoy!
Ever since I started watching “Hercules: the Legendary Journeys” in the Paramount Pictures’ “Action Pack”, I began to take more and more interest in the work of Sam Raimi after Army of Darkness. The director has a great body of work after the Evil Dead trilogy (looking at you, Cleopatra 2525) and hit the big time with 2002’s Spider-Man. While Spider-Man is great, my mind still remembers a time when the gods were cruel and plagued mankind with suffering and lands in turmoil cried out for heroes. Most lands preferred Lucy Lawless’ Xena, but I preferred Kevin Sorbo.
I don’t know if it’s just that he’s a pretty man or if chicks in the Hellenic Period were easy, but Mr. Sorbo has brought more babes to bed as Hercules than Captain Kirk in Star Trek. When Mr. Sorbo left the Greek world, he ended up in a world created by Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry called Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. There he’s Dylan Hunt, captain of the Commonwealth Fleet’s warship called the Andromeda Ascendant. He’s the only Commonwealth officer to exist after 300 years and he wants to rebuild the lost government with the help of his Rag-Tag Crew™. Two members of his new crew are the human pilot Beka Valentine (played by Lisa Ryder) and the ship’s android avatar that goes by the name “Rommie” (played by raging hotness Lexa Doig). I bring up these two characters from Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda to mark a coincidence in the casting of today’s reviewed movie, Jason X.
I’ll never know why people think they can just catch Jason (played by stunt master Kane Hodder), tie him up and be done with it: you can’t. The people who have him in custody are government types who are going to dispose of Jason (good idea) by driving him cross-country to a dumpsite (bad idea) and getting rid of him there. The doctor on staff for the transport of Jason is Dr. Rowen (Lexa Doig, “Continuum” [TV-SyFy], “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda” [TV-syndicated], “TekWar” [TV-CTV]), a woman highly opposed to giving Jason any chance to escape. The higher-ups on site say she has nothing to worry about; Jason’s in chains with A SINGLE GUARD watching him, he’s not going anywhere. They could not have been more wrong.
Sure enough, the single guard is killed and Jason goes on a rampage, killing many soldiers and chasing Dr. Rowen about. She tricks Jason into a cryogenic chamber to freeze him for 500 years, but he stabs Rowen through the cryotube and they both are frozen for 500 years. Over the years, mankind destroyed Earth and fled to space. A team of medical students is on a field trip to the dead planet Earth to see what they can find in its ruins. They stumble upon the facility that holds Jason and Dr. Rowen, taking both back to their spaceship in orbit. While Jason is put on a dissection slab, a machine that regenerates parts via nanotechnology revives Rowen in the ship’s sickbay. She wakes up and all she can talk about is Jason. The group of young, nubile and horny med students on the ship, including the introverted Tsunaron (Chuck Campbell, Strange Justice [1999], Angel Eyes [2001]) and his confused android KM-14 (Lisa Ryder, Blackheart [1998], City of Dark [1997]) tell her that the big guy they found with her is quite dead and he won’t be bothering anyone at all. They could not have been more wrong.
Shortly after dispatching one of the dissecting students with liquid nitrogen, Jason does his thing and kills teenagers having sex. Then he pulls an Alien and goes for the shadows. The man responsible for the field trip, medical professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts, “The Strain” [TV-FX], “People of Earth” [TV-TBS]), brought Space Marines to fill out the body count. These doomed and poorly disciplined soldiers follow Sgt. Brodski (Peter Mensah, Zack Snyder’s 300, The Devil Conspiracy [2022], Tears of the Sun [2003]), a badass soldier dude who knows how to relax. His troops don’t know how to act, so they get chopped up and Brodski gets injured trying to save them. Needless to say, the people on board are scared and have no way of beating Jason. Tsunaron and KM-14 are stuck somewhere and they come up with a plan to defeat the Voorhees menace: transform KM-14 into an elite fighting android unit, replete with deviant sex appeal and twin Desert Eagle pistols.
Things go from bad to worse after Jason is blown to bits by an enhanced KM-14: he lands on the medical regenerator. Since most of his body was blown away in a hail of gunfire that DIDN’T pierce the hull immediately, the regenerator had to make do with metallic parts. After moments of cutting back and forth between Jason’s carcass and the completion gauge, Jason is now a cyborg called “Uber-Jason”. As the ship starts to fall apart due to the damage caused by all the fighting, the remaining crew makes it over to the other side of the ship to execute a plan to hold Jason off. The plan is to use the ship’s holographic projector to make a fake Crystal Lake campsite and hold Jason there while they escape in an escape pod. The actresses playing the two holographic girls easily have the best lines in the movie, and delay Jason from pursuing the survivors. This scene alone is comedy gold.
Jason breaks free of the hologram and almost has his prey when Brodski shows up and faces off with Jason. This gives the survivors enough time to escape in an escape pod. Not to be discouraged by a life-or-death battle in space, Jason jumps and lands on the escape pod and tries to kill the survivors. Brodski’s there too and lunged after Jason, knocking him off and fighting him as they both fall into the nearby planet’s atmosphere. You’d think this was the end of Jason, the way Rowen, KM-14 and Tsunaron celebrated as if he was finally dead. They could not have been more wrong.
This movie sucked, yet held an immense entertainment factor. It’s not a great horror film or even a good B-movie; but it has to be one of the best comedies I’ve seen in a while.
CHOICE CUTS:
- Lexa Doig plays a human in Jason X and an android in Andromeda; Lisa Ryder plays an android in Jason X and a human in Andromeda. Weird.
- I was waiting for a cameo by Shamus Harper, Trance Gemini or Tyr Anaszasi at some point, but that’d be too much. Wayfinder (the Black guy) looked like a younger and not-so-buff Tyr — or Tyr’s cousin.
- Scenes between Tsunaron and KM-14 are groan inducing, but silly as hell. I’ll never know how this movie got a green light.
- I hope I never see Space Marines that incompetent ever again as long as I live. They were on screen for such a short time, I don’t think they had memorable names.
- Uber-Jason going to town on the two hologram girls. Priceless.
- Brodski saves the day, by going toe-to-toe with Uber-Jason and only dying when he rides Jason as they burn up in atmospheric re-entry. Brodski is dead; long live Brodski!
- Despite the title, Jason Voorhees does not convert to the Nation of Islam.
- PRICELESS QUOTES: As Tsunaron and his android KM-14 discuss their chances of survival against Jason, she calculates 12%. After he kisses the android their chances shoot up to 53% (by her calculation), prompting Tsunaron to ask “You want to go for a hundred?”
- PRICELESS QUOTES: Tsunaron wants to know why KM-14 wants boobs, and she answers “Because Janessa has them! I want some too!”
- The sound of the false nipples clanging to the floor was amazing timing.
- So Dr. Potts brought a collection of college students across inter-planetary space to a backwater wasteland, not even vetting them for their levels of responsibility? No wonder they all died so fast!
- Tsunaron was so introverted, he built a sex android that wanted to be more human for him. That’s damned good programming, but I have to ask: did humanity lose the technique to create moldable skin-mimicking materials in the future?
- CAMEO: David Cronenberg is in this movie.
- Shoutout to Kaye Penaflor and Tania Maro, the hologram camp victims: you two are some of the main reasons anyone remembers this film.
This movie did not need to be made, yet I am grateful that Hollywood makes movies for the lowest common denominator. Hell, I’d have to find a replacement hobby if they didn’t.
Originally published at http://gedren56.blogspot.com.
