Uncle Don’s Views of Nil Repute

Like Franco, you’ve been told this guy was dead many, many times. But

there up on the screen, making more comebacks than Michael Jordan, was

our felonious friend, our murderous moron, that ingenious idiot Jason

Voorhees.

Having sprung into being 20 or so years ago as a mute purveyor of

morbid mayhem, here in his 10th life (exceeding the number allotted to

life) he’s that goofball in a hockey mask and ragged clothes desecrating

the silver screen in “Jason X.” The producers didn’t even bother to

attach the “Friday the Thirteenth” appellation to this incredibly asinine

installment.

Oh, just as certain as the sun rises, there will be a part 11. There

will always be dunderheads and droolers who need this type of cinematic

entertainment along with the like-minded editors who send such creatures

to review such drivel.

The music crescendos as the names of a plethora of never-weres,

not-gonna-bes and has-beens scrolls across the screen to be viewed by an

audience of less than a dozen.

Jason in no longer terrorizing nubile teenagers, he’s now after

knuckle-headed scientists. Guess what? You wanna know why Jason can’t

croak? You don’t? Well, I don’t care. I’m gonna tell you anyhow.

He can’t croak because he can regenerate dead and damaged tissue. Wow.

What a revelation. But somehow, by convenience or by contrivance, Jason

and this pretty good looking scientist babe are frozen solid for 450

years. Oh, and the scientist, allegedly born decades after this practice

stopped, has a smallpox vaccination on her arm.

Taken aboard a spaceship by a crew whose common characteristics are

bad acting and really ugly clothes -- in concert with marginal mood music

-- these two are defrosted like a couple of minute steaks with all sorts

of steam and stuff coming off them.

The crew dissects the clothes off the babe scientist. As for Jason,

he’s taken apart like a junior high science experiment. Oh, wait, he can

regenerate. He’s alive. Alive! And the crew, they’re dead. Dead! And me,

I’m bored. Bored! But the movie isn’t over. Jason still has a few of the

crew left to do.

Catching this bad boy isn’t rocket science, he’s been nailed in the

previous nine installments. Jason’s been electrocuted, gassed, drowned,

shot, hanged and cut into more pieces than a jigsaw puzzle. Want to make

this clown go away? Well, how about this for an epiphany -- Don’t make

any more sequels.

I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the remainder of the movie. Stop me

if you’ve heard this before. A space ship picks up a potentially

dangerous object from a dead planet and brings it on board. The thing

emerges and, while slinking through the ship, wipes out the crew one by

one. The head of the expedition wants the thing kept alive for the

potential profit-making potential. The plucky female scientist says kill

it.

The resident SWAT team is killed off one by one. The thing never

speaks, reasons or thinks. It just acts. The plucky scientist saves the

few remaining crew and kills the thing -- or does she?

Jason schleps around the space ship promulgating death and destruction

among the random bits of machinery that passes for a set in this movie.

Down dark hallways and up random passages, he stalks and is stalked. Like

a Ginzu knife, he slices and he dices as we are subjected to dialogue

like this: “Let’s go to work,” “It’s all over,” “I’ll meet you there.”

And that ubiquitous pair, “We don’t have time for this,” coupled with “I

can’t believe it.”

Jason’s finally caught and his appendages removed like the Black

Knight from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” But like the old man from

the same flick, he’s not dead yet. And unfortunately, neither is this

series. The ending, insulting even to those of us possessing at best an

ephemeral level of intelligence, is idiotic even by “Friday the

Thirteenth” standards.

Lamer than a three-legged dog, “Jason X” is.

“Jason X” is rated R for strong horror violence, language and some

sexuality.* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the

Daily Pilot. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected]