This week on the B movie docket is Jason X – 2001
Hello good people. And welcome to 50 B Movies: The Sequel. It’s bigger, better, and badder. The original 50 b Movies covered a wide range of B Movies. There was everything from Thankskilling 3 to The Void. Some films were funny. Some were unintentionally funny. And some were mainstream with far-out concepts like zombie tigers. All in all, it was a hell of a list.
Why make a sequel? Because narrowing down a list of 50 B Movies To See Before You Die was arduous. With so many movies to watch, one can never really know if the movie is good. Sure sometimes 5 minutes in, you know it is a real stinker. Other times it might take a half an hour before one realizes they will never get that half hour back to their life. Poof. Gone. But all in all there are many great B Movies that didn’t make the original list.
So welcome back if you are a LRM reader and welcome if it’s your first time here. Be forewarned we will be treading deep into the bush to pull these B Movies. We aren’t rehashing anyone’s previous 50 or 100 or 1000 B Movies list. Nope. So, prepare yourself for 50 B Movies To See Before You Die: The Sequel. Bigger. Better. Badder. Oooh yeah.
WEEK 15 – Jason X (2001)
The hockey mask-wearing monster we love to hate is going to space. Jason X opens with Jason Voorhees awaiting cryogenics. Someone plans to freeze the Crystal Lake killer. Never make any plans involving Jason. It’s always a bad idea. Jason is like Murphy’s Law. Just leave him out of your plans. The cast of this B movie features an evil scientist with big Bill Clinton-like hair.
Cheesy Plot
The Jason X plot involves cryogenically freezing Jason because he has regenerative abilities. But that’s as bad as Predator deciding autism will increase the survival of their species. I think it’s time we admit that the assassin Predator may have had alternative more nefarious plans with that Rory McKenna. Someone needs to call Chris Hansen quickly.
But Jason does what he does best and proves your plan is worthless when he pulls a switch-a-roo on the hapless guard. And folks, just like that many scientists are dwindled down to no scientists thanks to Jason and his machete. Initially, the movie opens in the not-too-distant future when Jason escapes. He’s dressed in tattered leather straps that look like something from the Yeezy runway. It’s so derelict!
A Future Without Sports
Some intrepid damsel in distress manages to lock him in a cryogenic chamber and herself by accident. So, both get frozen as microwavable chicken nuggets. It looks like it will be a long time before they are found and thawed. So, we get the obligatory scene where they are discovered, frozen, in the future, Captain America style.
Hockey will be outlawed in 2024 so have fun on the ice while you can. But even a frozen Jason isn’t safe to be around when he’s stiff as a stalagmite. He falls forward in a slight earthquake and slices a scientist’s arm clean off whilst still frozen. So, they take Jason and the female up to the main ship with plans on reviving the female. She was frozen for around four centuries. Why they would take Jason Voorhees on board anywhere is baffling. Who would thaw a frozen two hundred pounder wearing a dirty hockey mask, holding a machete? It feels like we are watching an episode of Stargate SG1 with Jason thrown in there.
Cheesy Generated Imagery
The CGI is not bad at all, for a horror movie made in 2001. There’s a scene where a lab worker removes a piece of rotten flesh from Jason’s eye and looks like she’s going to woof it down like a snack, but she doesn’t. Instead, she dips it in some futuristic dry ice.
Apparently, reanimation from a frozen state is not a big deal in the future. But one of the guys gives off some serious Burke from Aliens vibes as he and he alone realizes they have Jason Voorhees frozen. So he plans to sell the frozen serial killer Jason as a futuristic sideshow and make enough loot to buy a Sunseeker.
We see Jason unmasked. His face is every bit as disgusting as we’d imagined. Saying Voorhees has a face that only his mother could love is the understatement of the year.
Future Jason
There’s a male scientist that likes to wear lingerie while being tortured by a dominatrix student and he shouts “you pass”, which I can assume is for a test. So they have some odd arrangement there. Meanwhile, Jason is hitting room temperature like an old frozen hamburger on a summer balcony.
Does Jason give off pheromones that make people act stupid and horny? Because it happens in every Jason entry and here too. And he always takes advantage of the opportune lovemaking time to spread some love using his trademark machete.
Memorable Kills
Wakes up, physically assaults a scientist, sticks her face in cryo ice she previously placed his eye into and then shatters said face against counter. Selects tools, kill, kill, kill, now, now, now, or at least that’s what I heard. Jason is alive in the future, stalking the ship’s crew.
He stabs a guy as he opens the door, and then he takes the guy away somewhere off camera. There’s a lot of anticipation about what will happen to him since he’s being chaperoned around the ship by Jason. There’s a girl that I mistook for The Predator’s Olivia Munn, instead, it was actress Lexa Doig.
Two crew-members are doing some VR Solarbabies thing fighting a monster alien that Jason wrecks. He walks right into their simulation and starts killing them. Then the VR drops, and they get killed in real life by Jason. One guy has his back broken after Jason pulls a wrestling move on him. The other guy gets his head bashed into a wall by Jason.
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Next up is a hippy-looking engineer in the future wearing a monocle, and a Hell’s Angel-inspired vest. He narrowly evades a strike from Jason when the crew smashes him with a hail of bullets. But when the smoke settles, Jason has pulled a Batman and vanished in the smoke and confusion.
Some dude tries martial arts moves on Jason and is impaled within ten seconds. Yes! You read it right. Karate on Jason. Satisfied with defeating the Judo Master, Jason quickly slices a woman named Gecko’s throat open.
Man, I want to see ‘Jason Takes Victorian England’. He took Manhattan in Jason Takes Manhattan, so why not? But why stop there? Have him take Miami, Portland, Ontario, Australia even. Have him kill kangaroos and Crocodile Dundee.
Cheesy Dialogue
Jason stabs him through the ribs. His response – it’ll take more than a poke in the ribs to take down this old dog. Jason responds non-verbally with another stab through the ribs. Before dying, the man responds “yeah that ought to do it.” That is some good B movie writing.
The slimy entrepreneur tries to reason with Jason. He gives Jason back his machete before exclaiming to the others “guys it’s okay, he just wanted his machete back”. He is referencing Jason. And he is about as naive as that guy on She-Hulk thinking he was dating the real Megan Thee Stallion. Jason does not negotiate or do friendly. He has one mode. Kill mode.
The Crystal Lake Effect
Apparently making out increases your chance of survival according to the android. Maybe Jason’s aura triggers some primeval response to reproduce since you’re about to die. It’s the only way I can get my head around why an android would say that making out increases the statistical rate of survival whilst being hunted by Jason
Jason 2.0
Now the part of Jason X where they add an extra slice of cheese onto this B Movie. Jason gets a futuristic upgrade. But first, the crew upgrades the android with some big &&* Cable like X Man gun, and she goes all Trinity on Jason like he was mocking Neo. She uses her machine gun to shoot his arm clean off. She even blows a third of his rotten head off. The movie should end there, right?
Nope. The now twice-dead Jason gets upgraded in a mishap and it’s as much of a change as Shredder taking Ooze. He is now shiny and chrome. He chokes Olivia Munn, throws Lawrence Tate, and punches the android’s head off.
Jason is Unkillable
The ship’s crew bands together to hunt Jason down. So now it’s essentially Aliens but with Jason. The rest is future cyborg Jason killing people. The highlight is the crystal lake VR they trap Jason within, they create some beer-drinking pot-smoking chicks to distract him. Jason is in heaven.
Man after getting frozen, awaken, killed, and reborn, this is pure nostalgia for Voorhees. Two hot chicks are topless and promiscuous. He promptly uses a sleeping bag to beat them both out of the rest of the movie. In the end, the crew found it better to save an android head over a black guy. No wait, the black guy saves the day like the Rocketeer. But can Jason survive atmospheric reentry? Find out in the Jason X sequel. Jason Does Neo Tokyo.
