"Jason X" (2001) d/James Isaac

A glimpse across the almighty interwebz tubes will tell you that a lot of critics and Friday the 13th "purists" (Save yer blind fanboy backlash, I know where you're coming from. I, too, was thirteen once...) hate this entry, the tenth in the series,  for a myriad of  reasons, the most 
preeminent being how far from the franchise formula the movie deviated. If you're unfamiliar with said formula despite having read my previous nine F13th reviews,  it involves sex-starved teenaged morons poking around a certain lake where any number of murders have been committed by an indestructible deformed mongoloid zombie in a hockey goalie mask. That's just about it, in a nutshell. And, if  by chance you weren't paying attention at the outset of the review,  X means 'ten'. I'll let you think about that while we get to the syn-wop-sis.


"Now you've got the same range of facial expression as Keanu Reeves!", sez Jason (Kane Hodder).
In the future year of 2008 (when a horrible band named Coldplay would become inexplicably popular), the American government has finally captured the prolific maniac, Osam-uhh, Jason Voorhees (Hodder), holding him at a research facility built on Crystal Lake itself. Two years later (music's gotten worse, too), they decide upon freezing him to further study his inhuman cell regeneration rate when he busts the fuck loose like Janet's nipple at the Super Bowl, killing soldiers and David Cronenberg-in-a-cameo in inventively brutal ways before a young scientist named Rowan (Lexa Doig) lures the lumbering monster into a nearby cryogenic chamber, getting herself shanked and frozen in the process. Fast forward to the year 2455. The members of Coldplay are all finally dead. Unfortunately, so is Earth, whose polluted soil is visited upon by a field trip of students (from 'Earth Two', naturally) with their professor, who stumble upon the ruins of the research center and the frozen scientist and her giant hockey masked attacker, which they bring back to their ship for further inspection. Upon the 'Grendel' are a few more horny, stoned teenagers and a hot redheaded android with no nipples named Kay-Em14 (Lisa Ryder). You see where they're going here, don't you?


"No, no, I wanted  you to have nipples, Kay-Em14 (Lisa Ryder)! It's the vocal chords I wanted you to get rid of..."
The crew of misfits manages to thaw out both the young woman and Voorhees, who proceeds to plough through victims in his typically inventive and violent m.o. ( liquid nitro-frozen faces smashed into pieces on counter tops, skewering on giant screws, etc.), destroying two ships and forcing the survivors to take refuge on a rescue shuttle, until a weapon/skill updated Kay-Em finally blasts him into an unrecognizable pile of smoldering flesh. Of course, the corpse lands atop a medical station, which malfunctions, sending nanites out to repair the serial killer's remains, and wouldn't you just know it, the result is the new and improved muscle-laden cyborg Uber-Jason who punches Kay-Em's head off for her folly. After breaching the hull with his fist(!) which sucks one poor chick screaming out into space, the remaining crew create a virtual Crystal Lake, complete with topless bubbleheaded e-victims(!) to pacify the killer, while they repair the damage to their craft from the outside. A pantoon explosion hurls the chromed-out psycho through space at the survivors, but he is intercepted by the resilient sergeant-in-space suit, and both plummet into Earth Two's atmosphere and burn up. On the planet's surface, two teens watch a falling star, as the charred Uber-mask sinks to the bottom of the lake. Cue: Ki ki ki ma ma ma...


As absurd as it is, you gotta admit this is pretty cool.
So what, if anything, have we learned from all this? Apparently, Jason Voorhees should stay on present day Earth, slaughtering interchangeably stupid people in inventive ways on the same tract of land around the same lake, forevermore. And woe to James Isaac and company for injecting slightly new bloody, sexy life into the series, undervaluing itself through humor and cleverly acknowledging it's own many flaws, but mainly because they didn't do the exact same thing with the same exhausted material that the previous crews did. Except that, I actually dug it, and found myself more entertained with it than any F13th flick dating back to Part Six, giving it the respectable deuce for it's effort. Those of you who like your horror franchise flicks the same way that McDonald's processes the pink meat paste into McNuggets will disagree, no doubt...


"There's one or two things missing from this picture", said my hands.
 

"Jason Goes to Hell:The Final Friday"(1993)d/Adam Marcus

After covering the eight previous films in the Friday the 13th series, tonight, we hit rock bottom like Paul of KISS's immortalized chick, who knows she oughta treat him good, yet never treats him like she should.Only a lot farther down than that.With the mushroom cloud of total fucking failure, as deposited into the atmosphere by Jason Takes Manhattan(1989) still hanging off the air five years later like a soggy Bukwas on a tanning bed of spent mushroom compost, New Line Cinema's supernatural re-imagining of Paramount's slasher king for yet another 'final' movie; a ham-fisted, boring segue into the horror nerd's nocturnal emission come true that would come from the studio a decade later in the form of Freddy vs. Jason, that won't really appeal to hardcore Jason fanatics(the iconic goalie-masked zombie is mostly unaccounted for here, even delivering a breviloquent bit o'uncharacteristic Jason dialogue, too, and the film is woefully deficient in empty-headed, sex-starved teenaged camp counselors, as well... what gives, Cunningham), and despite some skillful murders provided by the ever-stellar KNB troupe, doesn't offer much entertainment to the average genrephile either.I'm not knocking the producers for trying to steer the whole enervated mess into an overdue new direction, I'm questioning why nobody involved blew the whistle along the way, and said, out loud, "Dudes, this seriously sucks, everyone's gonna hate the fuck out of it.Let's start over...". Rivalling 'Manhattan' in suck-itude should be no easy task, but Marcus and Co. make it look effortless here, even serving up an embarrassing moment of hellish denouement geared towards eight year old wrasslin' fans involving that other iconic horror character with the bad complexion, corny wisecracks, foppish hat, and ugly sweater.

"Jumpin' Jeezus!This is some mellow hickory smoked BBQ sauce, I'll tell you THAT, Jack!"
After Jason Voorhees(Kane Hodder) unwittingly walks into an undercover F.B.I. sting in Crystal Lake where he's pumped full o' lead, then grenaded into pulpy smithereens(I guess the wire tap wasn't working, fellas?), his disembodied, black heart hypnotizes a black morgue attendant(Richard Gant) into taking a big nasty bite out of it, and thus, transferring Jason's evil essence into the soul brother, who takes it upon himself to murder his assistant(after he foolishly refers to Jason's pieces on the morgue table as “a faggoty, blown-up fuck.”) and two F.B.I. agents(one of which is Kane Hodder, in a cameo, minus the prosthetic retard-zombie head and hockey mask), before embarking on a journey to Crystal Lake, where he adds Alexis, Deborah, and Luke(they came camping here with the sole intent to fuck and do drugs "now that Jason's dead"...He's not dead, you fools, he's just gone black these days.) to his burgeoning list of victims with a scalpel, and, more spectacularly, shanking Debbie in the labonza with a tent spike, then ripping her in half, mid-tent sex, and stomping her boyfriend's head in, for good measure.Then, after smashing Josh's(Andrew Bloch) partner's dome in a car door, he kidnaps the deputy, straps him bare-assed to a living room table, lathers him up with shaving cream, shaves him down, then plants a passionate one on the helpless lawman's yap, earling some oily black slug down his throat for his troubles.I was already feeling queasy, having to watch the man-on-man shaving action, but thanks anyway, guys.Now, according to national tv celeb/bounty hunter/black cowboy, Creighton Duke(Steven Williams), Jason can only be truly killed by a blood relative, and it just so happens that his never-before mentioned half-sister Diana(Erin Gray, wtf are you doing here...), her daughter, Jessica(Kari Keegan), and her infant daughter, are all within walking distance of shaved cop-Jason, who can also be reborn into his original form through the same blood relative.What the fuck's with all this hocus pocus shit anyway?

This F.B.I. agent is through being Kane-n fodder for the system.
Eh, no matter.Josh/Jason hasn't been paying attention to it, either, or else he'd have possessed Diana instead of killing her and pinning it on her daughter Jessica's ex, Steven(John D. LeMay), who gets the skinny on the Jason mythos via some broken digits while jailed next to Duke.Diana's current beau, Robert(Steven Culp), is a smarmtastic reporter for American Casefiles, a show that happens to be exploiting the current Jason sitch for ratings, and he's surprised by an escaped Steven at the Voorhees house, as he's mapping out his latest exploitation stunt with Diana's stolen cadaver, an episode called "Secrets of the Voorhees House Revealed"(I'd tell you that the Necronomicon from the 'Evil Dead' series makes a cameo here, but you'll be snoring too loudly by this point in the film to notice, trust me).Josh/Jason breaks in and puckers up to Robert, his previous incarnation melting into a blecch-puddle afterwards, then attempts to transfer into Jessica, only to be thwarted at the last second by her persistent ex.The former couple rush to the diner where Jessica's friend, Vicki(Allison Smith), has been tending to the baby for her, but Robert/Jason makes the scene, whacking the gun-toting owners and BBQ skewering Vicki while he's at it.Meanwhile, Duke has Jessica's baby and an enchanted dagger, plus two vs. immortal homicidal mongoloids, waiting at the Voorhees' digs, where all sorts of The Hidden(1986)-inspired body switching takes place before Jason's heart becomes an embryonic demon that crawls up Diana's corpse's asshole(!), allowing Kane Hodder to finally clock six more quality minutes in his classic Jason getup, as he's reborn for the finale.Jessica manages to sink the magical dagger into Voorhees' chest, unleashing the souls of all the desperate actors who took Friday the 13th gigs to keep their electricity turned on, as some demonic prop-hands explode out of the earth to methodically pull the hulking fiend down to H-E-double hockey sticks.Walking off into the sunset, Steven, Jessica, and baby make three, but a dog shows up to dig Jason's goalie mask out of the dirt, only to have Freddy Krueger's razor-gloved hand appear and snatch it up, pulling it down into the abyss amidst his trademark corny laughter...

Sadly, reaching for that last white Power Ranger off of the Wal-Mart shelf on Christmas eve was the last mistake he ever made.
"Ayyyy-yo, Cunningham, conference in my office!", as that jukebox-beating rascal, Fonzie, used to say: Jason doesn't go to Hell, he sends the audience there, instead, ninety-one minutes' worth, by my calculations.It's not even the 'Final Friday' either, as the title also suggests, as that day probably won't arrive until people finally decide to stop spending dough at the theaters for this paint-by-numbers shit or somebody pops a cap in Ice Cube, one or the other.Jason X(2001) would follow, enraging many of the braindead mooks who were intent on seeing Freddy and Jason square off in their gimmicky 2003 feature, complete with Vegas pre-fight weigh-ins and press conferences.You'll have to stay tuned to see how either of those movies rate with me.I'll get around to them eventually, I'm sure.As for this particular turd...fucking GOOSE EGGS, baby.

"Pffffffffffffftttttt...", went the Cheez-Whiz can, finally empty at last.

"Friday the 13th Pt. VII:The New Blood"(1988)d/John Carl Buechler

When last we left the lucrative-but-erratic Friday the 13th series and their indestructible murder-minded mongo in the iconic goalie mask, they'd just laid the time-tested tongue-in-cheek sixth installment on us, turning Mr. Voorhees into a homicidal zombie via lightning rod to the uproarious rapture of Jason-junkies worldwide.With renewed popularity abound, they handed the next installment over to John Carl Buechler, the man in the director's chair on movies like The Dungeonmaster(1984), Troll(1986), and Cellar Dweller(1988), as well as special effects technician on Ghoulies(1985), Troll(1986), and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie(1987), who'll probably be remembered for putting stuntman/actor/juggalo(!) Kane Hodder behind the mask for the first time after working with him on Prison a year earlier, a role he'd reprise four times to date.Hodder, in turn, would allow himself to burn controlledly on camera for something like forty seconds straight in the production, setting an impressive stunt record that stood for years in the industry.As was the case with most of the movies in the series, the censors were merciless to Buechler's entry, excising much of the gut-busting, eye-piercing, head-pulping effects that the director had lined up for audiences in part seven, leaving a mostly bloodless, incoherent mess in their wake.To any discombobulating fans inexplicably championing this entry out there, rest easy.I'm not gonna call Pt. VII the worst movie of the series(Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) or even the second worst(Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), but third worst isn't at all outside the realm of distinct possibility here, while respectfully recognizing the epic levels of suck generated by Friday the 13th Part III in 3D, of which I've still got the original special goggles you can still catch a whiff off of.Onward.

See the senseless siren somniferously slain and shivved to a sapling.
We meet ten year old Tina as she bears audio witness to her alcoholic father slapping her mother up like a favorite smack vein, as the psychological damage of said dysfunctional event proves to be a catalyst for the young girl's intrinsic psychokinetic powers, also sending her mother-denting dad to an icy death at the bottom of the Crystal Lake drink in the process.Four years later, with her mother(Susan Blu) and doctor(Terry Kiser) springing her teenaged guilt-laden ass from the nut house and revisiting the scene of the crime, Dr. Crews secretly hopes to harness Tina(Lar Park Lincoln)'s mental abilities and exploit them by keeping the teen's stress levels through the friggin' roof.On vacation right next door is an eighties Benetton ad's worth of stupid kids:There's the glasses-grilled wallflower Maddy(Diana Barrows), blonde sex kitten Robin, Eddie the sci-fi dork, David the burnout, Russell the prep and his girlfriend Sandra, Ben and Kate, the token pair o' dark skins, Melissa(Susan Jennifer Sullivan) the upper crust snotbag, Michael the birthday boy and Nick, his cousin-who's-got-the-hots-for-Tina-next-door.Ya know, while an emotionally overwrought psychic is focusing her powerful mind on the lake in attempt to ressurrect her dead father, I hope she doesn't inadvertently free Jason Voorhees, who's been chained to a boulder in the murky depths, instead.Wouldn't you know it?Tina tries to explain her mentalist faux pas to her mother and doctor, but naturally, neither of those motherfuckers are buying a yarn like that.Making up for lost time, Jason's folly quickly turns to homicide.Michael and his girl get tent spiked the fuck up, while nearby campers Dan and Judy get neck snapped/ beaten repeatedly against a tree in a sleeping bag, respectively.Carrie Wh-, uhhh, Tina doubts her own sanity after having bloody visions of the murders when she sends Dr. Crews to investigate, unaware that the shrink is busy covering up evidence, concerned only with his coming fame and fortune.

"Wake up!WAKE UP!You're gonna miss out on my flapjacks n' scrapple breakfast!"
Meanwhile Jason feeds Russell an axe, drowns Sandra naked, and when Maddy gussies herself up for some of David's attention, she gains Jason's instead, and he nails her wrists to a tree and gives her an extra mouth with a sickle for her troubles.Ben gets his domepiece smooshed, while Kate gets a noisemaker shoved headlong into her skull via the eyesocket.David gets shanked in the labonza and is relieved of his dome while Hockey-puss chucks Robin out an upstairs window.Tina and Nick are busy doing 'couple things', discovering bodies in the woods together, while Crews is bravely using the girl's mother as a human shield, eating tree saw-administered gut-splatter death himself, for his treachery.Tina stumbles upon her mother's lifeless form, then the neighbors' remains, and, to add insult to injury, Jason himself.The zombified mongoloid gets himself well clobbered by Tina's mind-driven items, including a porch(!!), but the net-minding psycho proves more difficult to dispatch than that, axing Melissa in her snobby mush, before the girl can mentally hurl the brute into the cellar, where she redirects furnace flame to ignite the gasoline she's just doused him with and set him ablaze like so many shut-off notices in Smith-tips' Bonfire of Irresponsibility.Of course to a reanimated maniac like Voorhees, this is a mere momentary setback, and he proceeds to KTFO Nick when Tina somehow manages to resurrect her dead father from the lake(!!!), and the waterlogged drunken wifebeater binds Jason in his chains and pulls him back into watery slumber, just in the nick of time.Tina later boasts of her latest quality Dad-time to Nick as they're both sped off in an ambulance.A hockey mask, broken in half, is found at the crime scene...

Lar Park Lincoln!Audiences loved her in this and House II:The Second Story(1987) aaaand uh...
This was the first Friday the 13th that I skipped out on seeing in the theaters, probably due to the impending waves of pleasure my teenaged lungs would have gotten out of the three packs of smokes I could have gotten with the ticket price, had I not gone.No-brainer, really, even back then.This would be Buechler's only Friday, as he moved on to helm Ghoulies III:Ghoulies Go To College(1991) next, seriously.Terry Kiser would follow his effort here with his career-defining turn as a partying cadaver in Weekend at Bernie's(not to be confused with the later Queers album) a year later.You may not have known that he also lent his image to Mannequin Two:On the Move(1991), but you do now.Most of the rest of the cast you could probably shell out mere sawbucks for signed 8" x 10"s and insincere Polaroids with, at the nearest obligatory horror con, if you wanted to.Hodder would portray Jason in the eighth, ninth, and tenth movies in the series, as well as roles in 2007's limp Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield and Hatchet(2006)/Hatchet II(2011)'s Victor Crowley character(I've only seen the first thus far, with no great desire to catch the sequel in the near future, though Danielle Harris sure is swell to gander at).As far as Part VII goes, it's not likely to convert you into a Friday nut, but it probably won't send you running for: a)bucket b)box of tissues or c)nearest handgun with a clip fulla vengeance either.Sure, it sucks, but you knew that going in.It gets stamped with a single Wop of indifference.Flip a Wednesday evening coin.

"Whattaya mean you want your three fifty back?!!?"