Halloween Marathon: Jason X (2001)

A major thanks has to go out to my boyfriend for pushing me forward when this franchise headed down the ridiculous road.  After Jason Goes to Hell, I really wanted to just stop.  However, on Saturday night, after that horrible movie, my boyfriend popped in the next one: Jason X.  Jason already could be all supernatural and body snatching and all that. Its not so hard to believe that its zoomed forward in time and invading space. It really isn’t at this point.  Anything that can happen as far as I’m concerned with this franchise.  Just depends who decides to take it on.

With that thought in my mind, I watched Jason X, still holding on to a little glimmer of hope that it can be okay.

Director: James Isaac

Cast: Kane Hodder, Lexa Doig, Jonathan Potts, Lisa Ryder, Peter Mensah, Melody Johnson, David Cronenberg

Jason Voorhees is captured and there is dispute as to how to be rid of him.  Some want to risk the chances of him escaping so that they could learn from his regenerative genes and others, like Rowen (Lexa Doig) just want to put him into cryogenic status so that he would be frozen forever.  After a mishaps, Rowen and Jason both are frozen until 2455, when a group of astronauts discover their bodies and bring them aboard their ship to defrost them.  Although Rowen warns the professor of the dangerous Jason Voorhees and that he isn’t truly dead, it is too late when Jason wakes up and starts to brutally attack everyone in this new environment.

I can’t believe I need to refer to the last one right now because I really don’t want to. Jason Goes to Hell insinuates that Freddy Kreuger helped pull him into hell.  Its puzzling that Freddy vs. Jason only happens after this movie.  I guess it could be since we’ve obviously jumped into the future.  Goodness knows when he was captured and brought to that lab.  The continuity is yet not there.  Regardless, Jason is in space now.  Funny enough, that last one’s ugly weird alien baby looking thing doesn’t occur and he regenerates into a metal uber Jason (as IMDB calls him).

We’re heading into the millenium so technology should look better but it doesn’t really for some parts.  This one has a lot of cheesy dialogue.  It seems 2455 and 1980 really didn’t make a lot of difference when it came to the level of campy and cheese that it was all about.  At least that part was kept in this.  Other than that, there’s acting and sex (plus weird sex-ish scenes).

To be fair, its not as bad as Jason Goes to Hell (sorry E!).  Its a tad lame and the story is full of predictable deaths and just really silly characters.  Nothing really makes sense as to what happens but its more eventful than the last one and you know what, despite saying that its campy and cheesy, it was pretty acceptable.

At this point, the movies are feeling like the layout is extremely familiar and the deaths are more and more easy to predict.  Jason doesn’t really develop much except the scenario he is in changes.  The first 7 stayed rather true to the whole Crystal Lake thing but after he decides to head to new territory in Manhattan and now he’s in space, there really isn’t much else to feel the continuity.  I mean, you’d have guessed after the last one, we’d be heading for some Freddy and Jason fun but that comes after this one.

Its pretty interesting because I think starting at this one, they start talking about the kill count for Jason Voorhees.  I think they said 83 in this one.  I’m guessing its a random number because there’s sections in between of his life that we don’t get to see because I can’t seem to count anything close to that number in my head.  Or is there?

I’m straying away from the main point.  Jason X is not a bad entry even though its campy and cheesy and the premise is completely out there.  Anything is better after Jason Goes to Hell.  What can I say?  There’s only going up after absolute crap, right?

Have you seen Jason X? Did you enjoy it? What did you think of the whole space premise?

Halloween Marathon: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

This weekend was extremely efficient and I’ll be on track to get them all reviewed before Halloween arrives 🙂

Next up, its Part 9 of Friday the 13th franchise with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. It was released a few years after the rather destructive Part 8.  I’m a bit worried about how this one will go but I tried to be extremely objective with this.  With expectations as low as mine, I really don’t know how it could be bad.

Director: Adam Marcus

Cast: Steven Freeman, Kari Keegan, Kane Hodder, Steven Williams, Steven Culp, Erin Gray, Rusty Schwimmer, Richard Grant

A special FBI task force is sent in to trap Jason Voorhees and blows him up to pieces.  Picking up the remains, they believe that he is dead except he is not.  Coming back from the dead, he can now morph into whoever he “kills”. As he tries to trace back his path to find other blood-related Voorhees, the secret of what can really kill him is revealed.

As of today, I’m only one away from completing the entire Friday the 13th franchise.  Its hard to imagine how the last one I have to see or any other movie will have that crap factor more than this one.   Look, I thought Jason Takes Manhattan was bad.  I really just wanted to write “WTF This is crap” and end this review there.  This one doesn’t deserve the attention and time spent to even put this post together.

So, for the sake of everyone, I’ll just do this in point form of why it doesn’t work:

– No continuity.  

Jason takes Manhattan ended where he was ruined by toxic waste and gone back to his child form. However, he is very much a grown and menacing man that Kane Hodder portrays him as.  So it just took back what Jason Takes Manhattan did.  Last I check, this franchise wasn’t rehashed till that last movie in 2000s.

– Supernatural body invasion stupidity

There are no words to describe how disgusting these scenes are to watch.  Its literally revolting…too revolting and yet so pointless.  What has this franchise turned into? WTF!

– Extremely low budget

None of the Friday the 13th flicks are high budget.  But this one owns up to it because it just feels like there was no money put into it at all.  The effects were bad, the acting was bad, everything was sloppy.  It was so messy.

I’m going to fume over how this wasted my time on a weekend that I could’ve used it for other or better movies.  Still, I watched this whole thing.  Word of advice: DON’T watch this for dinner.  I did that and I ended up not really eating much after the first scene and the following ones after that also.  It was pointlessly disgusting.  Probably as disgusting as it is crappy.

I get wanting to put an origins story on this but seriously, it was pretty ridiculous.  Oh right, and that ending.  Dragged into the ground..to hell, I presume. And that alien looking thingamabob at the end sequence.  WTF!!!

Its a short write-up because it really doesn’t deserve more of my time than this. I have no good words for this one.  If Shitfest was going on right now, this would be a worthy one for it.

Onto the next one! Let’s hope it gets better, right?

Thoughts on Jason Goes to Hell?

Halloween Marathon: Friday the 13th Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Moving right along, I’m starting to think this franchise is going to go downhill when I saw the name: Jason Takes Manhattan.  There is going to be a lot of ever weirder and harder to believe stuff than telekinetic powers and rising from the dead. Anyways, I really have nothing else to say about this so lets check it out 😉

Director: Rob Hedden

Cast: Jensen Daggett, Tiffany Paulsen, Todd Caldecott, Kane Hodder, Barbara Bingham, Peter Mark Richman, Kelly Hu

A small cruise ship carrying a graduating class leaves for Manhattan for their grad trip.  Jason ends up hanging on and boarding this ship unknowingly.  While one of the girls, Rennie that decided to go.  Rennie is raised by her uncle and has a profound fear of water because she believes that some little kid tried to drown her (or she saw drown) when she was young. Jason slowly goes after them one by one.  Question is: who will survive this?

Okay, confession time.  I was nodding off halfway through this one and then only caught glimpses of the ending portion.  I have a general idea of what happens but the first half wasn’t good enough to make me want to redo this.

Because of that confession, maybe some facts aren’t complete.  Thats okay because there are no spoilers.  Except Jason Takes Manhattan is false because by the time I was nodding off, they were just getting on a boat (I guess this is kind of a spoiler) and escaping the cruise ship.  Relentless as Jason is, of course, he follows them and they, by some odd chance, land in Manhattan.  This one has SO MANY plot holes.  The acting, especially with Uncle Charles, was just an unexplicable amount of bad.  I think I rolled my eyes so much and laughed at the movie and that probably was why I was so tired.

Jason is played by the same dude, a pretty menacing man called Kane Hodder.  The only continuity of this is here.  BUT, somehow sitting in the bottom of the lake after the last one, instead of rotting more, (if thats possible anymore for him), he acquired gloves.  Thats just the start of it not making any sense whatsoever.  Let me point out that I usually get sold on plot holes easily but seriously, this one was just so out there.  I mean, apparently humans are flammable.  Not exactly sure thats possible unless our veins are pumped with gasoline suddenly.  Some teen gets thrown on the electric board and he went on fire immediately.  This director apparently likes fire going off for no logical reason.  And then, the kid I mentioned up there that drowned or tried to drown Rennie was apparently Jason but he’s not disfigured anymore.  Question marks are floating around my head.  And the “final kill” for Jason is kind of laughable. I mean, the effects are really even worse than the previous ones and those are older.  I think my boyfriend had it spot-on: low budget.

So far, its sounding pretty negative.  In the heart of finding something redeemable, the picture up there on the right should be someone you recognize.  At least, I did.  Thats Kelly Hu, in a much younger role in a really meh movie but if you don’t recognize her, she is also in one of the shows I am currently obsessed with.  ARROW 🙂 She’s China White *gasp*. Still, she was one of the sillier kills and  not all that logical.  Hey, its the role, not her, right?

Overall, Jason Takes Manhattan was pretty blah. I’m pretty sure I won’t see this again. Definitely my least favorite of the franchise so far.  If its going down in quality in such an exponential pace, I’m a little worried about what’ll happen in the next one.  I really do.  Plot holes, ridiculous acting, illogical effect: this one has it all.  I really hope that it gets better because with that ending, I have no idea how it’ll continue.  Even the ending made no sense….

Time to end this review and move on to the next movie…

Thoughts on Jason Takes Manhattan? Anyone like this? If you do, please enlighten me on what made you like it? 

Halloween Marathon: Friday the 13th The New Blood (1988)

A lot of you didn’t fail me when you told me that Part 6 was one of the best movies in Friday the 13th.  Apparently, its supposed to fall apart of this one also? Excuse me when I’m trying to not think about that.  Especially when my boyfriend couldn’t even remember if he liked this one or not.

Still, fingers crossed that it’ll be decent.  I already don’t hold particularly high expectations as this was done almost the same years as I’ve been alive.

Director: John Carl Buechler

Cast: Lar Park-Lincoln, Kevin Spirtas, Susan Jennifer Sullivan, Susan Blu, Terry Kiser, Heidi Kozak, Kane Hodder

Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln) returns to her childhood summer home with her mother and her psychiatrist where she believes she caused the death of her father because of her uncontrolled telekinesis when she was a little girl.  Next door, the house is rented by a group of young adults/teens (or whatever age group they are) want to throw a surprise party for a guy that never shows up (and you know why already, right?). Tina has these fits as she’s undergoing therapy and mistakenly uses it to release the dormant Jason Voorhees trapped since the previous movie.  Coming back rotten and even more supernatural than the last one, he continues his killing spree as he chases and tries to kill everyone. Will Tina’s telekinesis be enough to fight against Jason?

The New Blood started off a little weird and sketchy if I’m being honest.  Then it kind of has some bad acting, which is okay because its pretty much expected after six movies (and even during those ones).  The whole telekinetic thing was really a completely funky tangent to use.  There were also some technicalities that didn’t really make sense like the ending.  Still, I can’t help but think that this was still pretty entertaining.

Jason keeps a lot of good details.  I mean, he’s been rotting at the bottom of Crystal Lake so he shows obvious signs of that from the tattered clothes and rotting hands and you can even see the exposed bones.  Then if you remember the ending of the last one where he has the motor chop his face or neck (or somewhere around there), the mask carries on with that.  On top of that, Jason Voorhees is a freaking supernatural zombie to the max now and he actually is a pretty menacing size.

Despite not totally buying the whole telekinetic business and the ending was really stretching it, the process of watching this was pretty good.  The kills are pretty cool, the characters are alright and you know what really made me realize how I was pulled into this? When a character totally pissed me off (the dude up there) and I kept cheering on for Jason to show up and chop him up.  Sounds mean? If you’ve seen this, you know he truly does deserve it.

Overall, Part 7 isn’t quite as impressive as how I felt about Part 2, 4, 6 but its still a relatively good one.  The telekinesis thing really ended up working out and the main character(although she was pretty stupid and made some pretty stupid choices) was pretty good.  Her out of control powers gave this a special twist.  The entertaining factor can definitely be found in bits and part of this one and it was a lot better than I expected.  All this is a plus to this series.  I’m going to accept decent viewing experience to be good at this point because the expectations are starting to waiver a little.

Have you seen Part 7 The New Blood? I really think the appreciation for this one could go both ways so did you like it or not?