Weirdhouse Cinema: Jason X

it being our hundredth episode. I feel like these facts were significant robbed in your suggestion of Jason X for for today's episode, But I think it's an excellent choice. Not so much because I think it's like a great movie or one that I've I'm going to tell people they must go out and see, like I would say about Inframan or Ship of Monsters. There's some of the other ones we've we've looked at that are just you know, you just want to share that joy with the world.

It's not really in that category, but I think it will be fantastic fun to talk about. And I also think It's a great choice because it's a movie with a literal three word plot summary. What's the elevator pitch on Jason X. It's Jason in space? Right, it is known character in previously unexplored setting. Very Dracula goes west. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's looking back on it, it's easy to think this was a no brainer. Of course, Jason goes

into space. But another thing about this movie is that not only does the character known to us by by the point this movie came out go to a new location, the character is himself changed by the journey because this is the movie where Jason becomes a cyborg. One of the taglines featuring on posters for Jason X was evil

it's an upgrade. Yeah, it's um. I mean, there's so much fun in this movie because it is like a character from one genre stepping into another genre, bringing all of his own tropes with him, but then also encountering all the tropes of the genre that he is stepping into. Uh So, it's it's there's so many idea Like you can imagine that the writing process and the brainstorming process for this was was pretty rich with ideas. It's a

ten car pile up of genre cliches. Now, I thought, Rob, you you found the link to Roger Ebert's half star review of this film. It was not even a whole star for him, uh, and I thought it might be good bye by referencing some of the things he says about this He begins by quoting a line of dialogue from the film, which is this sucks on so many levels in the movie, literally referring to a whole pressure breach in a spaceship where characters are at the risk

of being sucked out into into the void. But Ebert goes on to say, quote rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself, Jason X sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness,

and aptness of thought. Only its title works. Now, I think that's that's maybe a little overly harsh, but I mean, I want to recognize that my my appreciation for this movie is an appreciation that is tempered by the context of my relationship with the rest of these movies and my knowledge of horror cliches. I'm not going to like defend Jason X deeply on its own terms. Or say well, no,

it's actually good. Yeah. Yeah, this this review actually gave me pause when I was revisiting this film as a potential Weirdhouse selection, because I look back and I saw, oh, gosh, half a star. I don't. As I've said before, I don't always agree with with Ebert's reviews. Sometimes I agree with them, you know, pretty wrongly. Sometimes we're on on different planets. And I was suspecting it might be the

case here. But I was like, maybe there's something I'm misremembering about this film, and I really need to go back and view it again. Before I even suggested Joe that we we cover it. Um. Yeah, I ended up disagreeing with Ebert on on a lot of this, But at the same time, I've got some kind of like you, I can't say I'm not going to defend Jason X on storytelling and character development or any of these other categories either beyond this, you know. Ebert notes that the

movie opened on the sixteenth anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown. Um, and then he says the movie is basically a rehash of Alien, where I think that's quite unfair. Only about a third of it is a rehash of Alien, and the other parts are transporting Friday thirteen tropes into space, and then the last third of it is a rehash of Aliens, the sequeled Alien. But you know this, so the Monster stalks crew members in in dark spaceship corridors, picks them off one by one. You can't see the

similarity except here, of course. The Monster is not an original design like the Xeno Morph, but the by the year two thousand one quite familiar figure of Jason Vorhe is a big lug in a hockey mask with a machete who just kills people for some reason. What are the strangest things about how people reacted to this movie when it came out? Uh? Is that I remember something. I was just in high school at the time, but I remember some people being like Jason in Space, Okay,

they've gone too far. That's just silly, you know, like as if there were an important core of realism and seriousness that the Friday thirteenth franchise had maintained up until this point, only to cast it aside by going going full edwood and allowing an undead revenant to board a rocket ship. I would say, not only is this premise untrue, I think sending Jason into space and turning him into a nanobot cyborg actually elevates the series in a hole, and I want to sort of explain how I mean

that in a roundabout way. But first I want to acknowledge, as we did in our previous episode on Jason Takes Manhattan. So this is our second film in the Friday the thirteenth franchise we've covered. Uh. Despite the fact that these movies are for the most part, I admit, quite poorly made by most measures, maybe apart from makeup effects in

in some installments like like the first one and so forth. Um. And despite the fact that they were nearly universally panned by critics, Friday was and is immensely popular up until

just recently. I think it was the highest grossing horror franchise in history, and I think for a while, certainly in the eighties and nineties in the United States, if you went up to a random person on the street and you said, think of a horror movie villain, I suspect the answer you would be most likely to get would not be Dracula or Frankenstein or even Pizzuo Zoo.

It would be Jason Vorhees. For some time, the hockey mask became the symbol of the horror genre, which is crazy, right if you're approaching this from a from a sports standpoint, right, Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean it's it's kind of weird that such a thing ended up in these movies to begin with. I mean,

this is just a piece of sports equipment. Yeah. So a film critic like Roger Ebert or any number of others might think of the Friday Thirteenth movies as uninteresting, predictable, or formulaic, kind of mindlessly violent and puerile, uh, just generally ranking low in I don't know, artistic innovation and stuff compared to a lot of other great spooky horror movies that that that do much better on those accounts, And in fact, I have no way to disagree with them.

But something about these movies kept audiences coming back. And as I think I also said in the Jason Takes Manhattan episode, I find the Friday the Thirteenth movies and movies like them kind of psychologically revealing, like in the same way that it is revealing when people tell you about their dreams. It's like you're peeling back some membrane that usually kind of filters your thoughts for maturity and uh, tastefulness before you share them with other people, and instead

you're just looking straight into the filmmaker's id. Now, when it comes to the predictable or formulaic nature of these movies, you can try to history where the series does sort of keep trying new things in a way, like in parts two through four, those are all in a way just pretty much the same. Jason is a mad slasher who it attacks a house full of misbehaving eighteen to twenty somethings. Uh. Then that that kind of gets played out, Uh,

they start switching up the formula. In part five, there is a twist where it's not Jason at all, but it's a copycat killer. In part six they really switch things up by introducing the soup or natural because it's only in part six that Jason now is a re animated corpse with powers that seem to include super strength in vulnerability and teleportation. In part seven they switch it up again. This is the one where they have Jason face off against a final girl with the power of telekinnsis,

So it's kind of Jason versus Carrie that it's pretty fun. Yeah. Part eight, which is the one we previously covered on the show, they try to switch it up by changing the location. So this is Jason Takes Manhattan, a movie that is mostly about a boat. They should have called it Jason Takes Boat. But then he has a few brief scenes in Vancouver, which and there's one where they

actually shot it in Times Square. Also a lot of fun, yes, And another piece of context outside of the uh, the fictional movie canon, sort of the real world context is that up until about part seven, the series was a money printing machine. You know, you could make a movie on the cheap for like two were three million dollars and then make twenty million dollars in ticket sales. But after part seven, box office returns started to become more disappointing.

I think Jason Takes Manhattan had a slightly uh more disappointing return, and that trend would continue with the next movie. So in part nine, Jason goes to Hell, things get really weird in a bad way. There's some plot about like there's like a little little rat snake demon that lives inside Jason and can jump into other people's mouths and possess them so they become Jason, but they just

look like whatever actor it's jumped into. Um. But like many people, I find Jason Goes to Hell just unwatchable, excruciatingly gross, unpleasant, hideous visuals, awful music, not really much redeeming at all, except for uh, some some brief but excellent weird vibes from the actor Steven Williams, who plays a bounty hunter on the trail of Jason Vorhees, which is a hilarious concept to be in with. Uh, but I also believe that he's the character who introduces the

concept of a magic dagger to the series canon. That one would be And I don't think I've ever watched Jason Goes to Hell and full but I've just seen like some clips that you've sent me. But like this one seems to be a case where the title really works, Like Jason goes to Hell. That that that sounds like a bold new direction. That sounds like Jason is venturing into the underworld, into the afterlife. They're gonna be demons.

Who knows what else it's gonna contain. No, it's just another slasher movie, but like grosser and less funny than than previous ones. And most of the time Jason doesn't look like Jason. He just looks like somebody walking around and then they look in a mirror and it's Jason's reflection. Oh man, Like they couldn't even have the possessed individual have this, like this compulsion to put on a hockey mask or something not that I recall. So that one's

really bad. Um. But then come so here we're coming up on the tenth film in the franchise. Uh, any returns of started being not so good. Um not like the series ever had like real artistic integrity. But I think even from a critical appraisal point of view, like the movies are getting less good. Um. So the concept was relatively empty and vulgar to begin with, and attempts to vary the formula have been made, and the last movie is just this anti fun bucket of slop. So

what what are you going to do next? What are you gonna do? Where can you go from here? And I think you've got a couple of options, especially at the time this was made, because they're developing this in the late nineties. Uh, this is after Scream comes out. So one option you have is you could sort of do what Wes Craven did with Scream, do the movie equivalent of the mirror self recognition test and create a film that acknowledges or even satirizes the conventions of the

genre to which it belongs. But another option is to just spread the wings of absurdity and take flight. And Jason X does a little bit of the former, but more of the latter, And in doing so, I think, despite the fact that it's not actually a great movie, it performed a kind of retroactive benediction upon the earlier films, acknowledging that yes, these movies like have always been exactly

this ludicrous. Jason X made the earlier movies feel less violently sadistic and more like overt grand gueniall in camp. It is the space Buddies phase of the property. Uh you know. Jason X breathes this innocence back into the subject matter, kind of stupid innocence, and Friday Thirte becomes

what it was always meant to be. And personally, I think they should have kept going in this direction and made movies where Jason becomes Santa Claus like in the Tim Allen sense, he is caught by the Santa Claus and he's forced to become St. Nicholas and deliver presence, or he's drafted by the NFL according to Airbud style loopholes. But alas that is not what we got. I have to understand that the pitch meeting for for the or maybe not the pitch meeting, but the initial brainstorming for

Jason X involved a number of different concepts. I think that like they talked about doing like like Christal, like what if they did Jason in winter you know, like it's Crystal Lake camp, but it's winter time, so I don't know, Jasons to kill people with icicles or something. Uh, sounds pretty solid, But they didn't. They didn't do that,

and they started coming up with these crazier ideas. And part of the reason they ended up going with something futuristic was that they knew that Jason versus Freddie was more or less in the pipeline and that was going to be coming up more or less next so they didn't want to do anything that would get in the way of that. I don't know why you need to get too worried about that. Clearly, like logic film, the

film in the Friday the thirteenth series. Well, weirdly, I would say, so far the films actually did maintain basic continuity, like they all acknowledge the ones that had come before. Once you get Ason X, that kind of all goes out the window. And I think that may have been intentional. It may have been like, well, this one is going to get so absurd and go so far afield that audiences will no longer expect the films that follow to

maintain continuity with it. Yeah, like this is this is shooting so far ahead into the future that it doesn't matter what the next Can Friday that thirteenth movies consist of. But to your point, it's it seems kind of shocking that they didn't keep going. Uh in this vein with with Jason that we didn't get the Santa Claus of the NFL concept or something equally ridiculous. It's really a shame we we did not get that stuff. But I

should also note one last thing. Despite everything I've just said about my own opinions, Jason X was of course also panned by critics, not just Ebert but generally, and also did very poorly at the box office, so it did not save the franchise in terms of money returns. Uh. It was also released at a very weird time. It came out November two thousand one, which I don't know

who wanted to see a Jason movie. Then it's it's kind of weird to figure out where people stand on this movie, because on one hand, this is a movie that I had a favorable opinion of, uh and still have a favorable opinion of. I think it's a fun film. It's a film that has been recommended to us for Weird House before. People have written in and said you should do Jason X. And if we said we're gonna do a Friday the thirteenth, they're like, oh, is it Jason X. So um. You know it has its followers.

When I go on to letterbox dot com and I pull up our episode list of the different films that we've covered in Weird House, if I sort by popularity, it is the fifth most popular film that we've talked about.

And yet at the same time, you go somewhere like IMDb, and I know IMDb user ratings um and not not the gold standard perhaps, but it only has a four point four out of ten on there, So I guess enough people think it is bad or or actively dislike it, But it's hard to tell how much of that too is like it's a sort of so bad it's good sort of view of things, and even though they're giving it a low rating, they still have a higher opinion

of it. Well. I think it's the kind of movie where just the concept, like just the sheer force of the concept and the fact that this concept was followed through on to production and release is enough to take it like most of the way there, Like at that point, you're not super concerned, like, uh, you know, is the script really that clever, like or the actor is good. It's just kind of like it's Jason in space and

they actually made it. That's not just a joke. And the crazy thing about it is that it's the sort of concept where it could easily work better as a trailer than a movie, but because the energy, it might be hard to keep that energy up. But I feel like the movie does keep that energy up. They're able to actually keep you engaged with this ludicrous concept throughout the run. So, speaking of let's let's hear the trailer audio. You're gonna hear a lot of the snappier lines from

this film. In the trailer in the year, on a routine training mission, a team of students is about to discover a life form frozen in time. Wow, they're on their back. Pay for talcum power of the lab. You brought him on board. Everything's under control. Man, the hell is going on? Jason fourties, That's what's going on. He's an unstoppable killing machine. It's okay. He just wanted his back. How do we get off the ship? I don't know. Look, we're gonna be all right. What are you high? He's here.

You have got to get them out of there. He slappy. I think we're finally okay. What the hell is that? You've got to be kidding me? Oh wow, it's been modified. You guys might want to run, all right, and before we keep moving on here, I'm just gonna go ahead. Mentioned If you want to watch Jason X, you can watch it most places. You can buy it or stream it digitally pretty much anywhere. You can pick it up as a physical Blu ray or a d v D. Though I don't think it's received any kind of really

glowing um re release or anything. I don't to my knowledge, there haven't been any really crazy special editions of this film. Maybe I'm wrong and and maybe in the future will get something like that. Well, there's a there's a really good UM full full series disc pack of Fred screen Factory or shout Factory, whatever you call it. UM. But but yeah, I don't know if it has a standalone release of that type. Okay, yeah, I kind of forgot

about the elaborate Friday the thirteenth full series releases. Like, for example, the version of it I watched is the disc from that pack, and it begins with an optional introduction of Kane Hotter, the man who plays Jason. He says to the audience. Uh, he says, please enjoy the film as you watch it, or I will kill you. Well. Shall we get into the people involved in this film? All right? So at the top of the list here we have the director James Isaac. James Isaac lived as

a special fects guy. Isaac's work goes all the way back to three Return of the Jedi, on which he was a creature effects technician. He followed that up with helping to make the Grimlins in four as part of the creature crew, and subsequent special effects credits include five Enemy Mine, nine seven's House to the Second Story nineteen nineties. Look who's talking to Virtuosity and David Cronenberg's Existence in

nine Okay, here's the Cronenberg connection. We'll come back to that a couple of times as we moved down the cast list. But Virtuosity, isn't that the one that had oh, what's his name? It had Australian man Russell Crowe. Russell Crow strutting while staying alive plays on the soundtrack. Yeah, he's like a three D printed, the blue blooded super clone of all the serial killers ever, and Denzo Washington has to hunt him or something. I think I watched

it on TV many years ago. Well, um, Like, like you said, though, Isaac worked on Existence, but this wasn't the only time he worked with Cronenberg. He did creature effects on The Fly and eight six, and he was

project supervisor on his film Naked Lunch. Other special effects credits include eighty nine Deep Star six, directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who was the original Friday the Thirteenth director and a producer on Jason X. That was one of those nineteen eighty nine underwater peril or horror movies that we've talked

about on the show before. Uh. That is the one that I mainly recall for a scene where Miguel Ferrare uh jumps into an escape pod to get out of the deep sea base and then does rapid explosive decompression. Oh yeah, yeah, I watched this one on an airplane at one point, and I don't remember. I think I was kind of out of it when I watched it. But it has a big spacebug. And no it's not a space bug. It's it's a deep deep sea bug. But it has a big bug in it. They get attacked.

Is it a killer clam? I think do they? It's a It's all kind of a dream to me. It is some sort of killer mollusk from the depths. Um oh,

and Isaac also worked on es A Rachnophobia. I don't want to be unkind, but it's interesting to me that he did visual effects on all these movies with great visual effects um and apart from like one special effect that is very good and widely acknowledged as very good, I feel like the effects in Jason X are not great, and part of that maybe, I mean, there's obviously the digital problem, which Hubert was very vocal about there are

a number of digital effects in here. In fact, I think this is the first time in the Friday the Thirteenth series where we have some digital blood effects, which I know m film fans and gore hounds alike tend to dislike in their films. I would not consider myself a gorehound, but I do not enjoy that nonetheless, m Um. Isaac though, how did he become a director? Well, it's

a similar scenario that we've seen in other cases. There's a there was a film House three, the Horror Show said Lance Hendrickson and Brian James and it and the director's chair was vacated due to some reason or another, and so Isaac stepped up and directed the rest of the thing. And then he did Jason X. And he followed this up with just two films before his untimely death.

He did two thousands sixes skin Walkers. I think I saw a part of this one, and then two thousand eights Pig Hunt, which is I believe a killer or mutant pig movie. M oh, alongside the likes of that Russell mulkahe movie that's basically like Australian Jaws meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the Jaws part has a pig instead of a shark. Oh man, it's kind of it's still kind of alarming that we haven't done Russell Mkay film

yet on Weird House. We will, all right, Let's get to the screenplay credit, also an acting credit, because this guy also plays the character Dallas in this. It's Todd farmer Born. This was his first screenwriting credit and his first acting role, and he's gone into act and write in a string of horror movies, including the two thousand nine remake of My Bloody Valentine. He was also one of the writers on the two thousand eleven Nick Cage

film Drive Angry. I already mentioned uh some of the uh, the the other possibilities that came up, and these are for this film that Farmers mentioned in interviews. Another one that he mentions is Jason takes the Middle East was at least explored to some degree as a concept. I'm glad they did not go in that direction. I can't imagine. That sounds terrible, but also I guess it makes sense that around that time they were they were thinking of this.

But yeah, thankfully they did not go in that direction. But two ideas that they mentioned were Jason blade Runner and Jason Alien, which obviously it seems like some of the ideas from those two buckets ended up in this picture. Yes, this film has both a replicant and a monster loose on the spaceship. So yeah, the monster, of course is Kane Holder. Like we said, who plays Jason Vorhees and credit is playing Jason Vorhees slash uber Jason. Um, this is cyber Jason that you know, we get. I mean

he's in the trailer. You know what's going to happen. Uh, He's gonna be upgraded into some sort of half mechanical, cybernetic superman killer. But we we profiled Kane on the Jason Takes Manhattan episode. But yeah, basically born five stunt man turned stunt coordinator and actor, with the stunt acting credits going all the way back to the nineteen seventies. Um, he didn't start playing Jason until New Blood in but then subsequently appeared as him in three more Jason movies.

But before new Blood, he'd appeared as an actor in such films as House to an Alligator, playing the alligator uncredited. And he's done stunt work in The Hills Have Eyes Part two. He also did a leather face stunt work in TCM three, and he played Freddie's gloved hand at

the end of Jason Goes to Hell. So Jason is a non speaking role, but but Kane Hotter brings a lot of performative posture to the character, Like he really kind of signals Jason's inner life just in the way he sort of like heaves his chest as he breathes or turns his shoulders in his face. Oh yeah, absolutely, we we we talked about this is a good bit with Jason takes Manhattan, he has he has. It's it's easy to dismiss the man behind the mask and say,

well that's not important, but it is a great physical performance. Agreed. Our main protagonist are I guess she's kind of our final girl that this movie kind of flips the script enough that you don't really have the final girl scenario going on here. But uh, the character that that that hangs out the longest alongside Jason in this film is the character Rowan played by Lexi Dilick. Yeah, she's kind of different than than the standard Friday thirteenth final girl.

Um in that She's not like the the smart, well behaved youth among a bunch of party people. She instead is from literally a different century. Yeah. But in that I guess, because I guess one of the ideas and the other Jason films is the Good Girl. The Final Girl is also more traditional. She's not one of these new youth that are so problematic. And in this yes, she's very um traditional because she's from four hundred years ago,

that's right. Uh. And she's some kind of scientists. She's like the director of the Crystal Lake Research Facility, whatever that is. We never find out what her research specialty is other than maybe cryogenics. Yeah, so she ends up

essentially being our time traveling Final Girl. Lexidag a Canadian actor who started on on such TV shows as The Hidden Room and Tech War, but eventually went on to act on such shows as Earth Final Conflict, The Chris Isaac Show, and Dromedat hundred, Stargate SG One, Supernatural, Smallville,

and Continuum. She played Talia al gool on TV's Arrow, and she has a major role on The Chucky TV show, which I have not watched, but my friend Dave Streepy tells me that it is great and uh yeah, she's she saw it in this and I think correct me if I'm wrong, but she may be the first lead actor of Asian to send in a Friday the Thirteenth movie. So I don't know, but I agree she slid in this. I mean, no roles in this movie are really written with enough panache to like really give the actor is

anything to grab onto, But she does great with what's there? Yeah, I mean, if nothing else, it is the character that, at least for a while very much is the one warning everybody like you're doing what you still have Jason on the ship, etcetera. And so that energy propels her for a good, good bit of the run here. Yes, we also have a character by the name of Professor Lowe played by Jonathan Potts born ninety four. This is the sleazy professor that is lead this excursion to Old Earth.

Will explain all this that uh that ends up resurrecting Jason forties for for greed. I don't know why he's a professor. He doesn't do anything professor really. I think it was just like, you know, an excuse to have a cast full of eighteen to twenty four year olds as they're often are in these you know, in the Friday Thirteenth movies, are like the students, and so I guess, well, there should be a professor, but he what's he a professor of? He just seems to be like a grave

robber professor of earth studies. I believe Earth one study really is that it. He's an archaeologist but also sleeps back. Um. Now. Jonathan Potts himself again Canadian actor, has done a ton of TV, especially Canadian TV, over the years, including The Hitchhiker in eight nine. He was the voice of Link on the Legend of Zelda TV series. Okay, yeah, he was on Wait Forever, Hold on a second, there was a Legend of Zelda TV series. Yeah, apparently there was.

I don't remember it, but he he did the voice. He was also a voice on a Super Mario series. So I don't know if these were Japanese productions that were then exported maybe to the North American market, and then they've just been brought in. I mean that's probably what it was, right, Super Mario Super Show. He may have done that one. I think he's credited on that one. But mainly he's the voice of of Link on the

Legend of Zelda TV series Oki Doki. Yeah, but anyway, also such credits as Forever Night, the Canadian vampire series that maybe many of us probably remember. That one's big in my memory as like a thing I would watch on hotel cable when my family went on vacation. Yeah, it's one I remember as being like one of those shows that's on at strange times to watch TV when there's nothing else on, and you just find yourself watching part of Forever Night, but but not being drawn into

Forever Night. But also another show pretty much fits the same. Bill Kung through the legend continues. But he was in Due South, he was in Russell McKay's nine film Resurrection alongside Christopher Lambert. He was on Queer as Folk. He was in the two thousand ten film Devil, he was on the Strain. He was in Supernatural, Working Moms and The Coomy Rule. So I've not seen much of that, but I would like to see how this actor would be used in a Russell mukayy production. And this he

plays a greedy, sleazy professor. And I don't know if there's all that much to say about the part. Like like I said about Basically, none of the characters are all that interestingly written a right, and it's it's not an interesting performance either, Like he's I think it's safe to say he's done better in plenty of other places. Now, one character that is a fun addition to the lineup here is the cyborg k M fourteen played by Lisa Rider born nineteen seventy. Okay, now here, they're kind of

injecting something into the movie. This is something we never expected to see Jason versus a robot. It yeah, and and it's it's great that they went there. They didn't hold back there, Like we're putting Jason in the future on a spaceship, should we also have him, uh do battle with with an attractive female cyborg? And they said, yes, of course we should do that. Why why would we set this up if we're not going to give that

to the viewer. Also, I detect like once she goes into Jason battle mode, her character seems strongly at least aesthetically matrix influenced with like the gun play in the kung Fu and the outfit. That's right, this movie's post matrix anyway. Lisa Rider is a Canadian actor still very active but she also played a computer woman on TVs Andromeda and other TV credits include Earth Final Conflict, Forever Night, and The Strain. I hope they're going to be a

number of these titles that keep coming up. It's kind of the same scenario. I encountered a lot watching nineties episodes of the Outer Limits. Uh, you have this, this this talented pool of Canadian actors, but they appear in a lot of these different Canadian productions. Yeah, this is the thing that seems to be emerging as we look at all the people here. It's just Canada, Canada, Canada.

It's it's very Yeah, it's a very Canadian film. Um. It reminds me a lot of Outer Limits in many respects because Outer Limits was a series that was filmed in Canada, featured mostly Canadian actors, had often really good practical effects, but often uh, really underperforming digital effects. And uh and I would say to digital effects on some episodes, maybe many episodes of of Outer Limits when they really went for it, were worse than anything we see in

this film. Wow. But sometimes they also didn't lean as heavily on it and so forth. Okay, but so uh, this movie has not just a. I guess in switching it up, it doesn't have a final girl. It has more of a final boy. There's kind of a good boy who's like nice in contrast to all of the other young characters, right, would you say, yeah, yeah, we have Sunarin played by Chuck Campbell nine. He's he's a

robot technician. He's also the robot's boyfriend. He is he's the boyfriend of of k M fourteen and um and and he's I guess he's also the nerd character, Like he's the good boy nerd of the film, but not the kind of doomed nerd. I mean, there's two different kinds of nerds who show up in a Friday the Thirteenth ensemble. There is the nerd who you see as clearly marked for death by Jason, and then there's the kind of sweet nerd who will make it to the

end of credits. Yeah yeah, which I guess kind of It shows how the nerd character in cinema progresses over the years, where it's this this character of pure mockery, uh in pity becomes this character that is like I think from many fans, like we realize, oh, well that is us, and so that maybe this character should survive. We should focus on the survivability of this character as opposed to anything else. We got to flatter the audience, which is in this case a theater full of nerds. Yeah, yeah,

myself included. Though I did not get to see it on the big screen. I probably saw this on DVD, but at any right, campbell Um. His other TV credits include Stargate Atlantis, and he also had a small role as a customer I'm not sure which customer in John Carpenter's in the Mouth of Madness. Oh and then we have another fun member of the cast here. Peter Mensa plays Sergeant Broadski. This is our head space marine aboard the ships called the Grendel. If I'm the Grendel, Yes,

the Grendel, lead space machine on the Grendel. Sergeant broad Sky here space marine, space marine. Yes, what I say space machine. No, but he is a machine because he is he is quite a physical specimen. Uh. And I think a charismatic, fun performance like It's I feel like it's impossible to not like Peter Mensa in this movie. I agree totally. Once again, there's not a lot to this character on the page, Like basically for all the characters,

but Peter Mensa brings a lot to the role. He's He's just very charming um and delivers even lines that would be cringe e off the lips of another actor with with you know, a good sense of fun. Yeah. I think he's a solid action movie acting presence and uh and it is very likable in the film. Um he's a Ghandhian English actor who gamers will probably recognize for his voice and likeness as Zach Hammond in two thousand eights dead Space, the original Dead Space video game.

I don't think he's a part of the remake that they're putting out soon, but hey, he mince has been busy with other things because his TV credits include Earth Final Conflict, Highlander, The Raven that's the spinoff, um Star Trek Enterprise, Terminator, the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Uh, the Spartacas TV show or TV shows is a big one. He had a recurring character on those UM those series. Uh, let's see, he was on True Blood, Sweepy Hollow, the Agents of Shield. Um. On the film front, he was

in two thousands Bruiser, the George Romero film. Oh, and uh, a lot of people will remember him from two thousand six is three hundred, in which he played the Persian messenger who gets kicked down a well. This is of course the famous this is Spartat scene, bummer, how dare you kick Peter Mensa down in a well? As Sparta sucks? They maybe they felt bad about it, and that's why they brought him back for three hundred, Rise of an Empire, a movie that I watched like a minute of in

an airplane once. Oh. But he was also in two thousand eighth, Incredible Hole, two thousand nines, avatar Um. He was in the Scorpion King Colon Book of Lost Souls from two thousand eighteen and Snake Eyes from one So

he's been a very busy man over the years. He's got a great moment where the sleazy professor is trying to talk him into uh taking Jason alive, and uh, you know, he keeps offering him increasing sums of my me and then at one point he seems to acquiesced, like, okay, yeah, give me five hundred thousand dollars and we'll take Jason alive. And then he walks away to his grunts and says to them Okay, professor wants me to take him alive, so you know, after you blast him to pieces, put

one in his legs so it looks like we tried. Yeah, he's just he's just a good character. He has a good moral fiber. And correct me if I'm wrong in this, because your knowledge of the Jason movies farser passes my own. But I feel like this character, uh, the sergeant here is unlike anything Jason's gone up against before, Like this is a strong, physically capable and trained guy that he has to combat. Yeah, basically, well, I mean, so do do I want to discuss the details of Jason Goes

to Hell? So Jason Goes to Hell begins with Jason like getting blown up by a I don't know, military brigade, swat team or something. They like blow him to pieces, and then they take the pieces to uh coroner's office, I think, And then the corner like starts looking at his heart and then eats it and then becomes Jason. This is what I recall happening. So, I mean, he has faced real force before, but I think only in

that instance. Um, so, no, he he has never like done battle with a with a tough guy like Peter Mensa and so so this is pretty much new all right, Um, there's another character in this Gecko. Is Gecko a space

marine as well? I don't remember. Okay, See, she didn't stand out to me all that much in in previous viewings of the of the film, but she stood out this time because if you've spent any amount of time during the pandemic watching Canadian comedy series on Netflix like I have, then you will recognize Gecko, played by Amanda Bruegel as pastor Nina from Kim's Convenience and also as the character Sonia from Working Moms, another popular Canadian uh comedy that aired on Netflix here in the States. I

haven't seen either of those shows. Yeah, yeah, she's a she's a talented comedic actor. She didn't really get to do that in this film. She's just another space marine killed by Jason in this. But yeah, she's been in a ton of things. She's recent She recently played Rita Blue on thirty five episodes of The Handmad's Tale. She was on The Snow Pierce for TV series, which I watched, but I you know, I don't remember her from that

as much. Uh. She was on Orphan black and on the movie front, she was in Suicide Squad and she's going to be in Brandon Cronenberg's upcoming Infinity Pool among others. That's a movie title, not a not no, not yet, not just his infinity pool in his backyard. He yeah, he has it on that that website where you rent out your pools two people, and she's going to she's gonna rent it. It's it's exciting. Hey, but you just said the name Cronenberg and we've been talking about Canada NonStop.

What what what? What? What's going on here? Oh? Well, yes, David Cronenberg himself shows up playing Dr Wimmer or Dr Wimmer. I can't remember how they pronounced, you know, if they say his character's name, I don't even recall it because it's just David Cronenberg on screen and the character I think is David Cronenberg. Yeah, this is David Cronenberg, the legendary Canadian director born three. We talked all about David Cronenberg the director last week on our Scanners episode, but

this week we're talking about David Cronenberg the actor. And did he end up in this I'm not sure, but I mean it is Canadian and he just shows up at the beginning to say it's almost as if he got wind this film was being made near his house, and he was like, I would like to be skewered by Jason. I mean it. It does seem to be

the Isaac connection here, the connection to the director. But but yeah, it's It's interesting to look at Cronenberg's acting credentials over the years, because, as is often the case with directors, you do find him cameoing in his own works as early as seventy five Shivers. He also did a cameo in John Landis five film Into the Night, but his first er role in another director's film was his fun turn is Dr Philip K. Decker and Clive Barker's dark fantasy horror film Night Breed. He's super creepy

in that. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that that really put him more on the radar for everyone else. They're like, oh, Cronenberg is like he can he can actually act. He has a nice screen presence and and uh, and I thought, yeah, I think that film Night Breed is a very interesting one to sort of hee's apart and figure out it has a lot of I think a lot of strong things going for it that have been appreciated over the years. It's a It's Barker's um adaptation of his own novella Cabal.

But yeah, Cronenberg has a great role in that is this uh this uh, this doctor that seems to be very much on the side of our troubled protagonist but then turns out to be a um a psychopath. Yeah, he's uh incredibly unsettling in that movie. He does a kind of soft spoken performance that's I guess how Cronenberg

actually talks in life as well, but it's it's effectively unsettling. Um. And oh hey, we we got another Cronenberg connection, right a character actor we talked about in last week's episode on Scanners. Oh yeah, Yeah, that's right. Robert A. Silverman um is in this one playing Dieter Perez uh Silverman born ninety three. Uh. Like we said last week, guess the Cronenberg regular another Canadian actor. He played the scanner artist and Scanners who makes the big head sculpture that

he goes inside to talk to the main character in. Yeah, he plays a great weirdo. This film is no exception, but his part is essentially a zoom call from bed he's he's he's almost literally phoning it in in a modern sense, though they clearly had to set this up to get the zoom experience in two thousand and one. And then, finally, the music in this film is by

The score is by Harry Manfordini. Three. You know, when we watch Jason Takes Manhattan, I think we, or at least I d of bemoaned the fact that fred Moland did the music instead of Harry Manfredini, who scored the original Friday the Thirteenth score and also created that excellent uh Friday the Thirteenth Part three song that was a legit disco hito uh And we're like, oh, why couldn't

man Fordini be on board for this one? Well, man from Deeedy did compose the score for Jason X, and from from from my cast, it ranges from forgettably mediocre and serviceable to just actively annoying. I think I can say it without feeling bad because he's had a lot of success in other ways and and done great stuff. The music in this movie is awful, just terrible. Yeah, yeah again, that bit from the score for part three is amazing and this is not okay, You're ready to

talk about the plot. Let's do it because it's a Friday. The third movie, same thing came up in Jason Takes Manhattan. We're not going to do every scene in this movie. A lot of it is formulaic slasher stuff, but we're going to talk about the set up and then some broad themes and interesting things that stick out. So the opening credits play over what seems to be a vision of Dante's Inferno that they're suggesting some kind of demonic

cavern deep in the earth. It's full of spires and mountains, gloomy clouds and castle ramparts, and everything is dark and dank and bursting with fire. And this is a particular kind of murky, ugly two thousand one c g I a look that I very much associate with horror movies and video games of the early to mid two thousands.

Think of c g I environments where everything is kind of muddled and muddy and hard to see, and that the dominant colors are like brown and orange, and there are modeled texture mats over everything, modeled like m O T T L ed uh. And so I think of like Silent Hill or Resident Evil, for do you know, what I mean with these these animated textures. Yeah, definitely on the Silent Hill front night. I spent a lot of time in the in the Silent Hill game, so

I know exactly what you're talking about. And here I think it might be useful to refer back to Roger Ebert's review to see to what extent we agree or disagree with his comments. So Ebert writes about the effects in this movie. He says, quote. With Star Wars Episode two, Attack of the Clones opening in mid May, there's been a lot of talk lately about how good computer generated special effects have become. I was, I was like, what citation needed? But then I remember people used to talk

about the Star Wars prequels this way. I mean, no, I'm not trying to knock on the Star Wars prequels again. They have their detractors and their defenders, and and their their pluses and minuses to them. But I think one of the things I do not love about the Star Wars prequels is the kind of uh weightlessness of the c g I and frorements in them. Yeah. Yeah, there's certainly plenty of things that that still hold up well

on those films. But there are some some areas that could use a fresh code of digital paint if such a thing were possible. Yeah. But but Ebert goes on on the basis of the effects in Jason X and the much more entertaining Scorpion King. Okay, we can also chat about how bad they are getting referring to computer generated effects. Perhaps audiences do not require realistic illusions, but simply the illusion of realistic illusions. Shabby special effects can

have their own charm. And you know what, that took an interesting turn. And I agree with that last sentence in multiple ways, because I often not only enjoy, but especially seek out a certain kind of artful non realistic practical effect. Non realistic practical effects as their own art form, and I think you can appreciate them the same way you would appreciate like the design of a theater set. So if you go to see a play with good sets, usually the set is not going to conform to strict realism.

It's not like tricking you into thinking that that's a real tree. Instead, it will lightly suggest a location in an esthetically pleasing way. And non realistic special effects in movies can be pleasing even if you wouldn't mistake them for like real footage of whatever phenomenon they're attempting to suggest. The effects in Jason X have a totally different kind of charm. They're certainly not realistic looking exactly. I mean, they're those you know, two thousand one era c g

I effects. Uh, there's there's one notable exception that looks pretty convincing. They are definitely not beautiful again, except for maybe one exception in a perverse way. Instead, they are pleasing, and I would say exactly the same way that it is pleasing to look at tasteless but elaborately dirt tattoos. Like imagine a guy with a full back Shrek tattoo. That's kind of what the effects in this movie are like.

It's like, I'm not saying it's like beautiful, but it's also kind of not something I want to stop looking at. It's interesting because I definitely went into this film with that Ebert review and his critique of the special effects in the forefront of my mind, and so I was ready to hate on them. But for the most part, I did not have that experience with him. I think part of it, and I very much agree with with

with with abridge. General take on effects here, I think the thing is that a lot of these special effects that we see and Jason next, the purely digital effects are of spaceships moving through space, and in that it's detached enough from human interaction that it can look a little uh raw, It can look a little rough by our modern standpoint, and it doesn't really um throw me

out of the experience of watching the movie. Likewise, there's a scene where we see a couple of big alien looking monsters in this and then we realized pretty quickly that they are simulations on like a hollow deck environment, and therefore we're like, Okay, well, of course they don't look realistic. This is a simulation, and so that distance makes sense. Yeah, they look kind of like an ugly computer game. And in fact I didn't mind that scene

at all. I kind of like that. Yeah. So yeah, I guess by and large, it would be different if there was an actual digital thing, like if Jason were digital, that would be like it's it's hard to imagine just how ugly this movie would be if for some illogical reason they're like, we don't need Kane Hoder, We're going to simulate Jason virtually, Like, imagine all the things we can do now if he's a pure digital effect, and yeah,

it's that that would be horrible. Well I feel like that even that, if done right, could succeed on the Shrek Tattoo level, but not not so much on the other levels. Yeah, I you know, you get into I guess the pure digital effects, you get into the weightlessness problem, like how is it interact with the environment? How are

people interacting with that? And I mean that's a problem even in really well done digital effects movies or not, maybe not a problem, but it's it's, for instance, very noticeable if you go back and watch the Harry Potter films, like watch the films with Adobe, the Elf in Adobe being a digital effect, watch how other actors interact with that character, or or more particularly, watch how Gary Oldman acts opposite the house Elf versus everyone else, Like Oldman

brings that character to life in a way, uh that no one else in the in the films, for the most part, is able to do. And it's due to just how talented Oldman was, talented in a way you cannot expect of just an average performer. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, like Gary Oldman, I'm sure you could just put opposite a brick wall and have him imagine that that wall is giving a performance

for him to react to. Right, But you give any actor, say a rubber snake to wrestle with, and they're probably gonna do something that you can get into, Like there's a certain physical reality there that even if they're only going you know, half energy on it, you can still appreciate. Yeah, it's a bride of the monster. Bell will go see wrestling with the octopus arms. Yeah, and we know it's not a real octopus arm, but it's like it's being touched.

It's physical. We can see it, and therefore the it's easier for us to buy. It's not that you look at it and say that looks real. It's that you look at it and say I like that. Yeah, you look at it, and you go on on another level, this is truth, what I'm seeing, what I am observing experiencing his truth. Okay, But anyway, so you start with this like sort of hideous c g I environment and you zoom out to reveal that this like fire blasting

hell cavern is actually the inside of Jason's head. It was like the it was like the sort of the veins in or the arteries whatever those are in in Jason's eyeball. And uh So for the credit sequence, we see Jason is restrained in the laboratory and scientists are looming over him with hypodermic needles. They're doing jason Ology. And this is the beginning premise of the film that you know they're doing studies on him. I guess it's

never established how he was captured. Yeah, yeah, they mentioned that they have tried multiple ways to kill him, and I didn't cross check the ways they mentioned with how they actually kill him in other films, so, as far as I know, those were all within a laboratory setting. Yeah, I think that when she's talking, when the main character in this movie is talking about how he was captured and that they tried to destroy him, that's all off screen.

That's not like what happened in the movies before. So there's a new scene, big dark room with Jason on a raised platform. He's like secured by locks, and um we see text on the screen and the terminator font saying Crystal Lake Research Facility subject to Jason Vorhees status awaiting cryogenic suspension, and Jason's just staring the floor expressionless. You can see his one of his eyes through the hockey mask. But then, oh, is that I'm going to

drift up and look at somebody. There's a guard nearby. I don't know that. This opening is just really like out of nowhere and throws you straight into this absurd situation. And I like that. Yeah, this whole opening could be a short film of and and it would it would still be richly amusing. Um. I get a big kick out of a research facility being established at Crystal Lake to properly study the localized phenomenon that is Jason Vorhees.

It's kind of like if they established the Elm Street sweep Studies lab or the hadden Field Gunshot Survivability Workshop. You know, yes, yes, Uh, it's it's a good concept. So we see Jason there, like his his eye locks on the bumbling guard and then kind of squints like like he's like, I'm gonna get you. And the guard gets creeped out and throws a blanket over Jason. Uh. And then next thing, Oh, here comes von Kronenberg. I

mean just here he is. Uh, he's walking down a corridor, a shiny corridor with a platoon of military dudes, and a lady pops into frame. This is Dr Rowan. Her last name, according to Wikipedia is La Fontane. They just call her Rowan in the movie, but Dr Rowan Lafontaine. This is Alexa Doeg And she she asks David Cronenberg, Hey, you know what are you doing. He says he's going to take the specimen. And she says, wait, you can't do that that the cryd stasis facility isn't ready yet.

And David Cronenberg is like, well, we're not going to freeze him. I want him soft. I'm taking him to Scranton, which was a real laugh out loud moment for us. I think he says, to the Scranton facility. So what's at the Scranton facility. Well, they are going to study Jason Vorhees regeneration ability. Think of all the medical advances we could unlock if we turn regular sick people into Jason Vorhees is. Now there's a whole movie concept they

just leave right there on the table. Now Rowan objects to this because this would involve I guess he's just taking Jason down the highway in a truck or something, and she says, I'm moving him over open country or she asks are you willing to risk the deaths of innocent civilians for your research? And David says yes, but he, you know, he assures her, he's like, look, don't worry about it. I've got a bunch of unnamed military grunts with me, so it's impossible for anything to go wrong. Yeah,

He's like, don't worry about it. He's he's already not your problem anymore. Yeah, I'm surrounded by extras. How could you imagine something bad could happen? So anyway, David Cronenberg and all his buddies going to to get the meat, and they go into the big room and there's the figure covered in a blanket, just like Jason was when we saw him last. But oh reveal they pulled the blanket off and it's the guard, not Jason. Jason jumps up out of nowhere. He massacres all the military dudes.

He throws a spear through David Cronenberg's stomach. Rowan observes this carnage, and then there's a chase, and she cleverly tricks Jason into the cryogenic freezing chamber, which, by the way, she just said was not ready yet, so I don't know when it got ready. Um, But she like tricks him in there, slams the door on him, and initiates the freezing sequence, so she won right movie over. Yeah, Like I say, if they'd ended it right here, this would have been a pretty fun little Jason gets frozen

short film. But nope, Jason uh takes his machete and stabs through the wall of the freezer and so he kind of pokes her with the machete and she's like and falls over injured. But then the I guess the cold air or the freezer gas starts gushing out of the chamber through the machete hole into the room, and then another door locks to contain the leak. So Jason gets frozen, and then Rowan gets frozen as well. They're both frozen, and then seemingly the whole Owl facility is

just abandoned for the duration of life on Earth. Yeah, nobody ever checks to see what happened in there, because we cut two hundreds of years later and we get a copy of the opening scene in Aliens Deep Salvage Team prize into the facility to check it out, except it's not a deep salvage team. It's a professor and a group of college students and a robot or cyborg named KM, and so they come in looking around at everything, and they're consulting the robot. KM has information on everything,

so they're like, what's this. You know, they're consulting her about the make and model of the cryogenic freezer in the room, and I noticed continuity error because she says that this uh freezer was manufactured in the year but later in the movie they say that the movie is taking place, it's in the year and she says that is four hundred and fifty five years after she was frozen, so they say that the freezer was manufactured ten years after she was frozen. Okay, well, yeah, that's that's wrong.

I'm I'm disappointed that Jason X didn't do it. It's an ath that right here. Let's open up the freezer. They do, and it's Jason in a raised machete pose. I guess he froze like that. They say humanoid but organic composition unclear, and then they're like, what's that on his face? And this will begin a trend of future

jokes in the movie. There's a lot of just jokes about like, oh, the future is very far from now, so they say, well, this is facial armor used in a sport that was outlawed in so as of this year, we've only got like another year or two left of hockey all right, strapped in for that. But there are a lot of jokes like this in the movie. It's like at one point, um uh, Alexa Doeg says, uh, you never forget this. It's just like riding a bike,

and one of the characters says, what's a bike? Yeah, yeah, they it's a fun it's a fun trope to to use in your cryogenic time travel film. So anyway, they discover Jason, and they discover Roman, both of them, and they realized that she can be thought out. Um oh, and also one of the student guys gets his arm chopped off when ice Jason tips over and falls on him machete first, which is a pretty hilarious moment. Yeah,

it's a great moment. And uh, I like how they they're establish they've already alluded to this with the whole you can't carry Jason cross country, the idea that that Jason is so dangerous that he's still extremely dangerous and potentially lethal even while he's completely inert, like he can just fall over and kill people, right. And fortunately for the the guy, this is the twenty five century, so like his arms off now. But there's nano medicine on

board the ship that can easily repair a severed arm. Uh, the nanobox will heal all and they do. Yeah, we just pour a little gray goo on there and it'll do its work. So they bring Rowan and Jason, both frozen on board the spaceship and they blast off. Oh and by the way, on the on the way out, we see that the Earth in this timeline is now a horrible waste land and humans are now based on a planet called Earth. To Earth kind of looks similar to the inside of Jason's head. It's like in the

hundreds of years since then, Earth became Jason's soul. It's you know, stormy brown and orange c g I desert. Oh and also Earth orbit is just thick with space junk. It kind of mirrors what you were talking about with the Friday the Thirteenth franchise, though, like everything has just been just been written to death. We just completely drained it of all its resources and and and enjoyment and life, and this is what we're left with. We've got to have a new beginning on Earth too, and Jason X

is kind of that Earth too for the franchise. Yeah, okay, I can see that. Uh So, anyway, there's a bunch of cliche ridden chatter from the various characters who we meet as the as the students and the frozen people come back on the ship. And you've got the three sort of buckets of characters, Like it's not just the students. You have the Space College students, who are you know, your standard Friday thirteenth type characters. But then you also

have Space Truckers and Space Marines. Yeah, and I guess the Space Truckers they kind of they're like the Space and Guild of this of this this world, this universe. They control movement between the worlds. They've got a monopoly on it. Uh You've got the Space Marines, they've got to protect these the Earth to interest when you go to the lawless world of Earth one. And then yeah, the Space College students that it's the college that's paying

for this whole thing. This is a journey of exploration. This Jason Retrieval was done with grant money. Yeah yeah, part of again, part of the Earth one Studies program. Well, anyway, all of these buckets of characters, again, they behave pretty much exactly as horror conventions dictate. I'm not gonna pretend there's a lot of originality here. It's sort of, you know, it's be horror movies by the books, except it's in a kind of funny way, smashing several very different be

horror genres into one movie. So you've got kind of an alien clone with the Space Truckers, You've got an Aliens clone with the Space Marines, and then you've just got straight up Friday thirteen. Yeah. And there are a lot of characters in this, and I I I do. We didn't have time to really mention them all, and for some of them, Jason X is probably their most

notable picture. But again, a lot of Canadian actors and I think most most of the most of them did pretty good with what they had to work with in Jason X. Yeah, so we're almost done with the set up here, but we've got Jason. They bring him and he's lying on an operating table throwing out in the ship's laboratory just drip and slime for the floor while while Rowan is revived from cryosleep by the nanobots, which they the ants, and she wakes up, she's instantly lucid.

They tell her it's the five and she says, uh, that's over four hundred years in the future. Well, she's she's in shock, She's in shock. Yeah. There is a scene where the greedy, scheming Professor gets on a video call with Robert Silverman, the guy from Scanners. Uh and uh, Silverman's I think he's playing like like a fence or something like a guy who will market a stolen artifacts for the Professor that he loots from twenty one century Earth.

And so the Professor is like, I've got a gold mine, and Silverman says, a box of DVDs is not a gold mine. I can't move them, suggesting that he's been repeatedly showing up with DVDs recovered from from the dead Earth. Uh. And I don't know exactly how to interpret this line. Is it like, oh, is this, you know, like old media that people want to watch, or is it more like this would be a valuable artifact the way we would regard like medieval manu script today. Mm hmmm, oh yeah, yeah.

Are they watching their cinemas or or is it just the the physical artifact like kind of like a Jerry or something, you know, the cinemas. Yes, I was thinking of overdrawn at the memory bank. Is it like DVDs are illegal in the future and people seek them out from older Yeah, and it's so like is it kind of like a Jerry McGuire situation, where like the vast majority of the CDs are just one or two different pictures. It's whatever was mass produced off of a particular blockbuster.

I want these movies from two thousand one. Get me a copy of Domestic Disturbance starring John Travolta. Yeah. I guess The joke here, though, is that DVDs were still really hot and in two thousand and one and didn't start declining until years later. I guess mhm. But anyway, the professor is like, Nope, not DVDs. I've got a couple of frozen people from more than four hundred years ago,

and Silverman is unimpressed. Apparently, this future timeline is just flood with people who have been reanimated from hundreds of years earlier Rowan now is going to be the oldest ever revived. But that's just not interesting to Silverman. Yeah, how's he gonna make any money after that? But then he looks at the file. He's like, wait a second, this other one you recovered, that's Jason Vorhees. He killed nearly two hundred people and simply disappeared without a trace.

He could be worth a fortune to the right buyer. Why, I don't know, but the greedy professor he wants money, so he's he's going to get the money by selling Jason's like this, this slimy hockey mask guy to somebody even that that presents possibilities that could have been their own movie, like a collector of of strange and grotesque things from the Old Earth. They want to, you know, to put put Jason Vorhees on display, uh in their in their mansion and their Earth to mansion, Like that

would be a whole movie right there. Or you could go back on that whole regeneration lab thing, like oh yeah, people on Earth two they want to live forever. They've been working on it. They've got those nanobots. But nothing beats good old fashioned supernatural immortality. That's true, and we could learn how to harness that supernatural immortality for ourselves. We could make Jason nanobots. What if Jason became a

swarm of nanobots? That would be there? You go, Oh, I'm glad they did not go in that direction purely for the effects, because that is exactly the the the full digital Jason that we did not want to see. That would be the scorpion King Jason that that the effects department here was not ready for and the viewers were not ready for either. Okay, here, I think we're just gonna uh skip more lightly over some of the other things that happened in the film. One thing we

got to discuss is a particular gory special effect. Because while the effects and Jason X are not generally considered a highlight of the series, not generally considered all that great, there is one notable exception. The first space youth that Jason kills after waking up. Uh. This is a scene that even Roger Ebert seems impressed by. And this is

the the frozen face scene. Yeah, this is a quality kill, to be sure, and I think we we probably referenced this one in our stuff to boll your Mind episode on freezing and shattering organic materials. But basically what happens here, it's like when Jason first wakes up, he grabs a lady and he like shoves her face into liquid nitrogen and then smashes her head like an ice cube. Yeah, it's gross and effective, but also not too bloody by virtue of all the blood being frozen. Right. Yes, it's

it's it's cuboid instead of instead of liquidity. Yeah. Yeah, a new territory for Jason trying new things. Right after that, there is what I thought is actually a genuinely quite funny moment where Jason goes to the tray next to the operating table in this lab where he's throwing out and you see, I guess he's looking at you think he's looking at like scalpels or whatever, and then he

picks up a surgical chetty. Okay, um. Next thing the level of self awareness of this movie, So Jason X is not a fully self aware of parody like you know, the Scream movies or Cabin in the Woods or something where the characters would openly talk about the tropes and acknowledge them and sort of critique them. But It is the first movie in the Friday Thirteenth series that has partial elements of this kind, and this did come out

after Scream went mainstream. With these observations about horror movies, for example, the sort of implied punitive morality of many slasher movies, where characters seem to be punished for uh, for trivial sins like premarital sex or drug use. And this this is openly discussed by characters in Scream, But then in Jason X we see this knowledge kind of incorporated as a knowing parody. Like you see Jason become their their cuts where he's like in Ray, aged and

powered up for violence. When characters break one of these slasher rules of conduct, when they like drink or engage in brutally cringe e sex scenes awful. But here this reaction of Jason's has not done implicitly as it is in earlier movies, but explicitly I think for intentional comedy. I think here they are poking fun at the previous movies in this series. Yeah, yeah, I think so. There's

a certain amount of self awareness to the picture. And then then they also go for sort of broader comedy other places in the picture plenty of times with mixed results. Like there's a nice moment where Mins's characters, the sergeant Um initially seems to be killed by Jason. Jason stabs him through it like stabs him I think from behind, like drew a wall through his chest. And Sergeant Brodsky here says it's going to take more than a poke

in the ribs to put down this old dog. And then Jason stabs him through the chest again and he goes, yeah, that ought to do it. That seemingly dies. Yeah, that was good though. Actually he comes back after that. But but that line was good enough that I actually thought that was probably a Peter Mensa improv. Yeah, it might have been. There's also a scene on the other end

of the spectrum. There's this scene uh that we can refer to tastefully as k M fourteen wants Nipples to Um, where she's talking with her boyfriend the techy about how she wishes to have nipples like other uh female members of the crew. And it seems like it's it's not an actually funny scene. The comedy falls flat, and it seems at first like it's going to be super cringe e In establishing the relationship between the Thimbott and the technician.

But then it actually lands in this sort of like sweeter area where it's it's made clear that their relationship is not exploitive. It's not like a purely physical relationship, but it is um it's it's very consensual and very genuine in these this robot and this nerd love each other. It seems like true love. Yeah, Okay, one more thing

this movie does get into is virtual reality. I think this is one area where the movie actually stumbled across a really good idea, one that had the potential to be much more interesting and funny than it was, though it's used for some good moments Jason interacting with essentially the hollow Deck from Star Trek. What happens when you

put an unstoppable undead monster into a virtual environment. Yeah, they they bust this out, and it's kind of thought provoking, like how long could they have contained Jason Vordhees with more preparation. They end up throwing it together as a as as like a stalling tactic. Uh so they can try and escape. But but what if they had actually prepared for Like what if this had been the plan upon thawing and out. And then also, what are the ethics of creating a never ending kill sim to contain

an undying killer? Well, I mean, if he actually doesn't hurt anybody, I would say the ethics are good compared to him getting loose and hurting people. Right, So, well, it depends, I guess, on the NPCs. And that's sim right, getting into territory of disgust on stuff to blow your mind before, are like, oh, we like or the holograms conscious? Yeah? Or they on what level? Are they feeling pain? I

don't know. But then again, if it's preventing Jason from killing hundreds of people in the real world, then I don't know. I guess I didn't take it as implying that the holograms were conscious, but that would be its own kind of horror movie. I guess. Oh, we have created a like a literal digitally created hell. Yeah, it's a This is often called the Jason X problem in philosophy.

I imagine some of you out there have studied it, But I do think, I mean like that you could have made a whole like interesting horror movie out of an idea like this, like monster versus illusion. Yeah, I mean, it really almost kind of creates a you could have. It's kind of like a Jurassic Park scenario because obviously that's where you'd have to go in such a film,

is that something would break the illusion. The illusion would break down in the monster, would the Jason or whatever you have in there would bust loose and you'd have to somehow subdue them again. I mean, it does kind of deal with the nature of Jason that gets discussed, which is that like, you can't destroy Jason. He always comes back, but you can like freeze him for a period of time, like you can do things to sort of prevent him from acting, but you can never destroy him. Yeah,

you can. You can move him closer to a massive black hole. That that would be I guess the thing to do. Yeah, one last thing before we finish up Uber Jason. I mean they're in the trailer. It's the advertised Jason is of course going to get swarmed by nanobots after he's been uh taken out a commission by k M. The robots. She does some like gunfo on him and then blows him up sort of, and then the nano bots in the medical bay, aren't they sweet?

Aren't they helpful? They just restore him and make him better than ever, and even I guess like doubly invulnerable. He's more invulnerable than he's ever been before. Yeah, they I guess the way to read this is the nano bots are trying to do what they normally do, repair damaged, injured human being. But this is not a human being. His physiology is weird, his flesh is weird. He's like an undead thing, and they don't really seem to know how to handle this, so they end up building Uber Jason.

Like even his hockey mask is like weirdly incorporated into his his head in a way that that I think really works. But it's like computer air here processing error. Uh, we think we've healed him, and this is the results. This is one of these like AI alignment problems. Yeah, all you did was programmed me to help people, So

I helped Jason. So yeah, the basic structure of the film, yeah, ends up being Jason thaws out, rampages, is killed, nanobots restore him to Uber Jason form, and then battles everyone again.

And finally we get down to the survivors, uh, making a break for it, And we also get this great scene where Jason is flying through space at the essentially the escape hot but then here comes Mensa, here comes Sergeant Brodsky, and essentially like supplexes Jason Vorhees through the atmosphere of Earth two, and they seemingly burn up as

they fall through the atmosphere to this new world. And then they appear as a shooting star going through the night sky and we see like some camp counselors on Earth to being like, oh wow, it's beautiful, let's go over check it out. Yeah, so we're left with this weird and I think it totally works. It's a nice moment at the end where it's like Earth two was a new start. It was we put behind all of our our awfulness from Earth one. But what have we done.

We've gone out and we've brought Jason Vorhees to Earth, to a planet that is clearly not ready for him, and thus concludes the tale of Jason X. Yeah. Yeah, we and and like you said, we this film was not successful enough in in any way for there to be a proper follow up to Jason X, not that we needed one. Jason X delivers on all its promise.

It does everything it's set out to do seemingly um but Ebert even in his review, he's like, people are probably gonna love it, and we're probably gonna get Jason X two, but we didn't get that this is all we have. Yeah, he was even lamenting while imagining that audiences would eat this up that uh, it would not be called Jason eleven, it would be called Jason X two or Adjason X Part two. I think he said, Oh, man,

I signed me up. I would have seen it. I mean, it's kind of like the counterintuitive ordering of like the Rambo movies, doesn't it go like First Blood, first Blood Part two, Rambo, then Rambo three, then Rambo. Yeah. So yeah, I feel like they could have done X part two and it might have been good, But I don't know if they could do it now. Like, like the alchemy

of something like this has to be just right. You have to have just the right balance, and and they managed to deliver on that for the most part with Jason X. If you make Jason X Part two and you go too serious or you go too silly with it, and it would just all fall apart. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it is an artifact, much like a case of DVDs discovered by by grave robbers from the year two thousand one. It is an artifact of a previous time that we should study and understand. All right, well, help us to

study and understand this artifact. If you out there have thoughts on Jason X in its place in the Friday the Thirteenth film franchise, if you have memories of seeing it for the first time on DVD, on VHS or in the theater itself. I always love a good uh theater viewing account right in let us know we would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that we're primarily a science podcast. Here it stuff to blow your mind.

But every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, we set aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a weird film like Jason X. And I mentioned letter Boxed earlier. If you go to letterbox dot com is L E T T E R B O x D dot com you can look us up weird how This is our user name, and we have an ongoing list there of all the films all one hundred now that we have featured on Weird House Cinema.

Huge thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to share something interesting, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.