Jason X (2001)

Episode 433, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig. Here we are wrapping up what will be probably our final theme month of horror in space. Maybe, 

Craig: maybe. Oh, I’m sorry to cut you off for your longest one yet. I know you had that planned. 

Todd: That’s okay. In space, no one can hear you be stupid.

Craig: One of our friends, Neil, recommended another go to space movie. Cloverfield 

Todd: in space, I think. That’s true. And then somebody, somebody I think in tick, can’t remember the name. I believe on YouTube or Instagram, I’m not sure which, had said that we really missed the boat on Amityville in space. 

Craig: Oh God, no, I can’t.

I 

Todd: think I can’t either. I went and I looked at that and I was like, Oh my goodness. No, this is not, I mean, we do some pretty bad shit, but I don’t know if we’ve ever stooped to that level. Yeah, but 

Craig: the Cloverfield in space, that movie was polarizing and I actually liked it a little bit. So maybe, maybe someday, but not yet.

Because what we are finally getting to in our in space series is Jason in space. Yeah. And it’s Jason X from 2001. And when you announced this month, I was excited about it. And then we watched Critters and Leprechaun, 

Todd: and I was just, 

Craig: like, both of them just, like, ruined my whole weekend, like, ugh, so terrible, they’re so awful, I hate them so bad, now I have to get on the internet and talk about them.

Todd: Hellraiser redeemed it, I thought. I really liked Hellraiser Bloodline. 

Craig: Yeah, Pinhead in Space, I did too, I did too. And I’ve been telling you all along, like, I think you’re gonna like Jason X. If I remember it correctly, I think you’re gonna enjoy it, I think it’s fun. But I hadn’t seen it in a really long time, and when I had seen it The most recently it had only been in clips like Years ago when I still had cable, you know I would flip around and it would just be on on sci fi or something and I would catch You know 20 30 minutes of it or whatever and I Remembered thinking it was fun.

I haven’t watched it in its entirety since, God, who knows, probably since it came out and I think I saw this in the theater. Pretty sure. Yeah, 

Todd: you would have been in college. 

Craig: Maybe 2001. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No college. But this is something that I would have gone to with my dad. Freddy, Jason, you know, these things that have a long history.

I’m pretty sure I saw this in the theater with my dad. Don’t remember what my reaction to it was at the time. If I had to guess, I would guess that my reaction was probably kind of lukewarm at the time. 

Clip: Mm hmm. 

Craig: Going back and watching it now, I f ing loved it.

Todd: You’re coming at it from a different place now. You’re an older wife of Craig, I suppose. Yep. You’ve 

Craig: had I loved it. 

Todd: You’ve also had Leprechaun in space and Critters 4 in space, uh, in your past as well, 

Craig: which were so bad, which were so bad that I wanted to like harm myself. And then, and then, and it’s been, you know, like, I don’t remember.

I feel like you and I took a week off. It’s been a minute since I talked to you and we, we recorded those like back to back to back. And I, they were so bad that they just kind of made me angry. And then. Watching this one, I would honestly watching this one. I thought this is what all of them were trying to be right.

But this one got it right. 

Clip: Yeah, 

Craig: they 

Clip: kind of 

Craig: did 

Todd: because you know, this movie has a. bit of a storied history. It was in development. Well, I won’t say it was in development hell. Basically, Freddy versus Jason was in development hell for quite some time. And right. Sean Cunningham was really planning on that being the next in the franchise, but they just couldn’t get it going.

And I think six or seven years went by and eventually like, look, we just need to do another Jason movie. 

Craig: Yeah. I think that they were concerned about keeping him relevant. Like it. It had been a while since he’d been on the screen. So since he went to hell and you’re right, it was, yeah. Well, and that was a big departure and that was people were divided on that movie because in that movie, Jason became a body hopper, like, uh, whatever was inside him.

God, I haven’t seen it. No, it’s. Interesting. He, Jason is very He’s like a parasite. Yeah, he’s like a parasite and he jumps into different people and then these different people do his bidding. It was very polarizing, but they knew at the end, New Line, we could talk about the story of Friday the 13th for hours because it is so convoluted.

Yeah, it’s It’s 

Todd: long and storied, 

Craig: but basically Paramount was holding onto the rights forever, but they weren’t really particularly interested in the property. The same thing happened with Hellraiser, the studio that owned Hellraiser wasn’t particularly interested in the property, but they didn’t want to lose the rights to it, so they had to keep putting out movies every few years.

I think Jason Goes to Hell was the first one that was done by New Line. At the very end of Jason Goes to Hell. Because New Line did it, I think, they were able to have Freddy’s glove come up out of the ground and pull the mask down into the ground, Jason’s mask. Yeah, 

Todd: to tease the Freddy vs. Jason. 

Craig: Right, to tease the Freddy vs.

Jason, but they couldn’t get Freddy vs. Jason off the ground. There were a bunch of different scripts over, you know, a decade, and they just couldn’t get it off the ground. Like you said they decided to do this one, but they thought we can’t with Freddy vs. Jason like we know that’s coming. 

Clip: Yeah, 

Craig: we can’t mess with it So let’s set it way in the future.

So Then it doesn’t matter. And I also think that that’s brilliant. I’ve mentioned it before with the other movies that we talked about, set it way in the future, then it doesn’t matter. Like you can continue making sequels that happened before this. And this one works in that way too. 

Todd: I also saw that they were batting around a lot of different ideas, like, uh, Jason, uh, goes up north, he was gonna be in the snow, hell freezes over or something, NASCAR, they basically, Todd Farmer wrote the script.

I know, can you believe that? What would that be? Jason, like, drives around in a circle, slashing people as he goes by? Like, I just don’t see how that would work. But they said nothing was literally off the table, and Todd Farmer, the guy who had been, like, basically a script doctor for quite some time for Sean Cunningham, just, uh, doctoring up scripts, writing spec scripts, whatever he did, this was his big chance at writing a movie.

He, they, he gave it to him and said, go to town with it. And apparently he had a lot of fun putting it together. He finally pitched them on In Space, they thought it was a great idea. 

Craig: Well, they were, they were hesitant, because space is where These franchises go to die. Yeah, it’s where 

Todd: they 

Craig: jump the shark.

Yeah, they specifically thought of Critters and Leprechaun and Hellraiser, which had all come out before this, I believe, but they thought No. Let’s do it. We’ve got a good idea. Let’s throw a big budget at it. Three times the budget of any other, of the most expensive Friday the 13th that it happened. Three times that budget.

Oh yeah. Let’s throw it at it and see what happens. And I’m sure that budget has a lot to do with it. I don’t know, budget certainly has a lot to do with it. But this In my very humble podcaster opinion is the best Friday the 13th movie. I just think it’s great in contention with Freddie versus Jason, but I don’t know.

This might even be more fun than that. I don’t know. 

Todd: I think you’re more qualified to speak on that. I did try to do a Jason marathon for one crazy October around Halloween time, and I just kind of had to give up around the fifth one, I think. They’re all the same. They are so all the same. And so, you know, there is just a formula and they are just cheap, like they are put out cheaply.

Very cheap. Three million, you know, and then they go off and they make gold. Because I think because people want the formula, you know, they just want to see it. And to me, Jason is all about creative kills, and A bit of suspense. 

Craig: Creative, 

Todd: I 

Craig: guess, but in 

Todd: They’re 

Craig: not that creative, I’m just No, in the earlier movies, he had his machete, he’s always had his machete.

And then other things that you would find around a camp, like a bow and arrow, or a kitchen knife. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: I like the Jason movies. I really do. They, they are the perfect, back when I had cable networks like USA and Sci Fi would always without fail on Friday the 13th run. Marathons of the movies and I loved that I could put that on all day I could 

Todd: yeah 

Craig: go about my day doing whatever I was doing and Friday the 13th was just on in the background and I haven’t I Couldn’t tell you, you know, like I’ve seen all those kills.

I couldn’t tell you what movie they were from right here 

Todd: You know, it’s all the same. It’s all the same. There’s no like, uh, great, great stories in any of them. No memorable characters in any of them. It’s, it’s just the same thing over and over again. It’s like junk food. Yeah, it’s junk food. You know, you can pop it in and it goes down easy, you know.

And so, for that, I can appreciate them. But, you know, one of the hallmarks of the series I think of is that there’s at least A bit of suspense. There’s that moment where the camper goes out by themselves and you’re like, no, don’t do that. Or that moment when they’re skinny dipping and then suddenly you see a POV from the bushes and you’re just kind of wondering when it’s going to happen and the music and the, you know, comes in.

And so I felt like this movie deviated from that a little bit because. It was in space and I don’t know what to say, like, no, I didn’t dislike this movie at all. Honestly, this is one of my favorites that we’ve done this month. This one, I really liked Hellraiser 2. I, I kind of actually put that a notch or two above this, but they’re really different kinds of movies.

So it’s really hard to compare the two. This one, as I was saying, Todd Farmer really just wanted to have a lot of. fun with it. He wanted to be jokey. He had a quirky sense of humor apparently in the original script and what ended up happening, and he played Dallas in this movie by the way, what ended up happening throughout the process is it just got torn apart.

His original script got rewritten like a hundred times and to the point where they were shooting this movie without a finalized script. There were times when they were in the middle of a scene and the director would say, what do you guys were rewriting things. And this, after having had a really long rehearsal time going into it.

I think they rehearsed for like half a year. It was a big process of frustration for everybody involved. And everyone involved in the production has something to say about how They were a little disappointed in how that original script that they were really enthusiastic about in the beginning just got meddled with so much, but still enjoyed the process of shooting the movie and enjoyed the ability to contribute to it, because that’s one thing that the director, Jim Isaacs, really did actually do, and that was allow them a lot of Creativity and input in the film and some might say a little too much.

Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a little bit of the behind the scenes stuff. I read it would be interesting to see because Todd Farmer was like, you know, the humor that ends up in the movie was just a little bit cornier than his sensibility. Yeah, yeah, anyway, but yeah, this is what we have and this is what we’re talking about.

Craig: Yeah, from what I’ve read, a a and I’ve watched some interviews and things, there are documentaries, there’s like a six hour documentary, remind me the title, I don’t remember. Well, 

Todd: there’s a, there’s a book, uh, maybe the documentary comes off the book, Crystal Lake Memories is a pretty thicc. Thick kind of coffee table book that just right just interviews everybody involved in every single production It’s a wonderful book and it’s a lot of fun If you’re a fan of this series, it goes into greater detail than anything you could imagine, right?

and the e version of it goes even deeper because it it strips out a lot of the photos and Because it can be as long as it wants the writer put in a whole bunch of stuff that he had to take out of The original edition so you should catch it on eve in the e version if you Don’t mind not seeing all the beautiful pictures and you want to hear more depth stories and stuff.

Craig: I didn’t know that it was a book. There is a filmed documentary of the same. name and and tons of interviews and it sounds like everybody who is involved in this had a Wonderful time like it just seemed like they had a great time. You’re right. They said the original script was darker Okay, fine at some point this came right after the grand Success of scream.

And so there were a lot of rewrites that pushed it more into meta comedy. Like we’re very self aware of the situation in the movie that we’re in, and we’re going to be cracking jokes. I have no idea what the original. I agree with you. I would like to see what the original vision was for it. I love what it is.

I actually think that this was the absolute right direction to go. Jason has been around forever. His Mythos is known. 

Todd: Yeah. Let’s Shoot him off into space and just play with him. 

Craig: Yeah, and let’s be a little bit self referential. Let’s throw in some jokes. I loved it. Sure. You know, it’s a cast of mostly young people, but it doesn’t feel exactly like the same formula.

Todd: No. It feels more like a more modern update in a way, right? A lot of very good looking young people in very slick circumstances. 

Craig: Yes. I think the thing that I liked the most about this movie is that it is a perfectly serviceable sci fi space movie with Jason. Like, like, yeah, it just, it just works for me.

Like, I wish that I could have said that about any of the movies that we’ve watched up until now, but this one just works for me. Freeze Jason in time in 2008, and then wake him up on a space station where only one person knows what he’s actually capable of. And of course everybody else. Isn’t concerned, you know, this is some weirdo Cryogenic space thing that we are not even trying to bring back to life Like they’re not concerned and then it does become a chop up the people Movie.

Yeah, it’s not different I wish that horror franchises could find a different formula than just Put our villain in space and make him the Alien. Yeah The xenomorph that’s that’s the word I was trying to come up with just just put our villain in space and make him And I understand it. I feel like it’s budgetary.

We have to do it on a ship because we can’t do it on an entire alien planet. That would be far too expensive. So we confine it to a confined space for budgetary reasons. I get it. And so I get why all of these movies kind of feel the same way in that way. For whatever reason. It just for me worked with Jason.

I just believed that Jason woke up in this environment and kept on going about his business. 

Todd: That’s true. And I think that’s evidenced by the fact that he just kind of pops out and hacks somebody I mean, it’s it’s what he does in the other movies Well, but we’re not even we were 

Craig: 20 minutes in and we haven’t even started talking about the plot But one of the things that I love about it is, you know, Jason in the early part of the movie gets cryogenically Frozen and then he kind of starts to thaw out when he gets rescued 400 years later or whatever, but it’s only when young people, young, unmarried people start that he sits up right in bed like, Oh no, no, not on my watch.

Todd: They did throw that in there. And we have a bunch of young people. These are. What, students on a class trip? Is that what this is? I can’t, couldn’t quite figure it out. But they’re supposed to be mostly teenagers on this ship. Yeah. Which I thought was hilarious. I mean, it’s kind of impossible to tell by looking at them, but.

Craig: Can I do the cold open real quick? Please, please. Okay, so we open with what looks like hell. I guess like it’s a lot of weird CGI hell stuff and chanting and then we get just snips of a doctor like sewing things together or whatever and I think that this is supposed to bridge us from Jason goes to hell to now like Somehow back out of hell He’s back out of hell.

A doctor has put him back together and they have, he’s alive apparently. And they have him chained up kind of like Hannibal Lecter, like in the middle of a huge room with just spotlights on him, a warehouse he’s chained up in the middle of the room, but he’s very much alive and awake. And he’s staring at this.

Guy who’s watching him and the guy walks up and throws a blanket over him and says stare at this for a while And then the main woman of our story Rowan She comes out to me. I just have in my note bureaucrat, but it’s David Cronenberg, 

Todd: you mean. 

Craig: David Cronenberg. Yeah, 

Todd: the director, but he did do a few acting bits in movies, some cameos.

It’s so recognizable. 

Craig: Oh my god, the fam I mean, I wouldn’t recognize them by sight, but David Cronenberg, are you kidding me? Like, and it’s also just so cool that he was involved, and, and he Accepted the role He did it, but he wanted to be involved in it Like he was involved in some rewrites and I don’t know he was a fan of of it And I think that’s really cool.

But anyway, he shows up and like Rowan says, 

Clip: what are you doing here? 

Craig: I’m taking the specimen 

Clip: Well, you can’t, I haven’t prepped the cryostasis chamber. I don’t want them frozen Rowan, 

Craig: I want them soft. It’s a great line. Good job, David Cronenberg. But again, it just comes down to the same thing that we saw in Critters and.

They want a weapon. Yeah. This is a being that can regenerate, that never dies and that regenerates. 

Todd: Needs to be researched, needs to be studied for military use in the future. Yeah, so we can 

Craig: regenerate our troops. But ultimately it doesn’t really matter because we find out that Jason got out by himself anyway.

He did a bait and switch and put that guard under his blanket and chained up in the chains and he’s out and he kills all of them including David Cronenberg, then Rowan masterfully Tricks him and and gets him into the cryogenic freezer or whatever and she thinks that she’s won but he stabs his machete through the metal door and Through her which releases the nitrogen gas or whatever it is and freezes them both now I’m fine with this as a device to freeze them both.

I I suppose I will have to say that about Probably many things that happen in this movie, but that doesn’t make any sense. There is no way that machete, that machete would have just bent on the inside. There’s no way that it busted through that metal door. 

Todd: In, through her. It’s just part of the joke, right?

I mean, and I, and I kinda like how it sets that up from the very beginning. Like, Jason just gets his way. Every single time. Until the end, which you know isn’t going to be the end. Because he’s gonna be in another movie. He’s gonna get his way all over again. I just thought that was hilarious. That there was this sort of final F you moment.

Where he’s Alright, well I guess I’m in cryostasis. But before I do go, I’m gonna And, and this big metal door that is, uh, you know, 10 inches thick isn’t going to stop me. It’s just funny. 

Craig: It’s hilarious, but I also have in my notes, in bold, because I wanted to say something about it, that so far, all of this looks fan tastic.

Yeah. They’re running through hallways in a, I don’t know, it’s not a spaceship at this point. It just looks so good and I’m sure that I’m influenced by the things that we’ve seen up till now. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: That looked so bad, but I was just watching this and thinking, holy shit, this is a Friday the 13th movie.

This looks fantastic. It 

Todd: looks so good. It really looks. They were able to shoot it up in Canada, so, you know, their money went a lot further up that way. And most of the money that they put into the movie went up onto the screen. You know, they didn’t cast any name actors. In fact, part of the reason they went to cast all those Canadian actors is because most of them were non SAG and so they didn’t have to pay them residuals.

They could just buy them out on the movie. The movie also has the distinction of being the very first film that was shot in 35mm, scanned into hi def digitally, and then had the visual effects added to it, and then turned right back around and made it back onto a 35mm print. Which I think It was kind of a new technique at the time, and it, it shows.

They said that, you know, uh, the movie looks so good, because we were able to play around and do these kind of visual effects, that at the time looked really, really impressive, and by the time it was released two years later, because New Line just let it sit on the shelf for a while, much to their detriment, then the effects already looked old.

So that was probably another reason why it didn’t do so well at the movie, but very ambitious, ambitious in the lighting. They had a huge crew of like 80 plus people working on here, all master craftsmen, all really allowed to just play around and do what they do again, like we said before. Everyone, including the crew, loved working on this movie because they really felt they had a chance to play, and it shows.

I think it shows on the screen. The lighting is so great. One of the, the lighting guy was interviewed in that book, and he said what was so cool about having this space set to work with was on the one hand, we had these shadows. You know, so that Jason could be coming out and in shadow or half in shadow or sleeking back into the shadows, but a woman could walk into the same room and she could just step into kind of a different light and have a more soft, flattering light on her.

You can just do all these different things up in space. And I feel like this movie, more than any of the ones we saw previously, really used that atmosphere to its advantage and made it. Look much, much bigger than its budget actually was. It looks like a really big movie. 

Craig: Yeah, the budget was, as I said before, much larger than it had been on any of the previous films, and But it’s still a low budget for a movie like this, that’s trying to compete with 15 million.

I mean, for a space movie, sure. Yeah. Sure, sure, absolutely. But, I don’t want to say Cronenberg loaned some of his crew, you know, these people make their own decisions, but some of Cronenberg’s crew worked on this because he was behind it. You mentioned that it sat on the shelf. I’m surprised that I don’t remember that because I have been a horror fanatic my entire life.

I was always very excited when new entries in Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th were coming out. I remember being excited about this and I remember seeing the posters with, you know, the half Jason regular that we’re accustomed to and the half like Jason X or Turbo Jason or whatever you want to call him.

And I was really excited about it and I guess that it just must have been before I had regular access to the internet because I didn’t realize that it had still existed. It’s been filmed in 2000, I believe, and Wasn’t released in the United States until 2002 and it had been Released in Europe a year before that and apparently it had been leaked to the internet before it Released here.

Yeah, people were watching it Which may account for why it did so poorly because hardcore fans who would typically pay money to go see it in the theater Had already seen it. Yeah. Because it had been leaked on the internet. I didn’t know that. I feel like we could talk about this for days. Okay, so, you know, all of that pre stuff happened that we talked about and then they get picked.

Again, very much like Alien. I feel like they get picked up by like a trolling ship or like a scavenger ship or something. It’s a bunch of students, which is convenient because they can be A lot of young hot people, they’re on some kind of like archeological exploration or something? 

Todd: Do you mean they’re exploring the abandoned Crystal Lake Research Facility?

Oh, no, no, no. That’s in the beginning. That’s in the beginning. Yeah, but that’s what 

Craig: they find. That is what they are exploring. You’re right. Because I guess that the abandoned Crystal Lake Research Facility is on earth, which has become Uninhabitable. 

Clip: Yeah. 

Craig: So, are these people just coming, I, I, I don’t know if they’re coming to scavenge, or just archaeology, or whatever.

Todd: They’re just, they’re research students, like, they’ve got their professor, Brandon Lau, his, his companion, who’s an android, he’s got an intern, and then the rest of them are all students. It’s a field trip to Earth, because it’s 2040, it’s 2455, and Earth is too polluted. 400 years later, yeah. 

Clip: Mm hmm. 

Todd: It’s 

Craig: a bunch of young, sexy people.

You said something about the acting before, you know, the, the director or whoever was concerned about the acting. Like, they did rehearsals. Like, you don’t Nobody does rehearsals for this. No, you don’t rehearse these movies. No. You don’t have time. Yeah. You shoot these movies, and, and if you have the luxury of doing a few shots per scene, great, but you don’t even necessarily have that luxury.

You certainly don’t rehearse these movies, but they did. They were concerned about the acting, and I think the acting was Fine. Yeah. In all caps, like all caps. Fine. 

Todd: Better than most of the series. Let’s put it that way. We’re absolutely 

Craig: like nobody, nobody’s going to win any awards for their performances in this movie, but I enjoyed everybody.

It’s not a problem. I didn’t have a problem with it because as a viewer, I don’t really care as a podcaster who feels like they need to keep track of things, a million people. There are 

Todd: so many people. I know, God, God, I just, I can’t even begin. Like, I, you know, I lost track of who was who and who was hooking up with who and why it mattered.

And I don’t think it does really. 

Craig: No, it doesn’t. And there were like, there were three brunettes that were almost indistinguishable from one another. Exactly. I don’t think that we should get. I don’t think we should get caught up in that. What I think we should get caught up in are the really good things because there are so many great things in this movie.

Okay. So they bring Jason and Ronan or whatever her name is, Rowan on the ship. And they, they say. Yeah, we can save her with the technology that we have. They’re really just more interested in Jason. He’s a humanoid. They recognize him as a humanoid and he’s totally dead. They don’t have any plans with him really, but they bring him on the ship.

Anyway, they do bring. Rowan back to life like Ripley immediately 

Todd: warns them. 

Clip: Did you get him? Where is he? Tell me about him. 

Todd: No one’s here. You’re safe with us

Clip: there’s a leak in the cryo unit and Was it contained? 

Craig: Was contained but when the cryo unit ruptured you didn’t escape it It puts you into stasis I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love that the way that they bring her back and the technology that they used throughout this movie is nanotechnology.

Yeah. Like I feel like we don’t hear as much about nanotechnology nanotechnology. As we did five years ago. I feel like nanotechnology was the wave of the future and I haven’t heard that much about it lately. 

Todd: It’s 

Craig: still 

Todd: pretty bad ass, but it’s getting eclipsed by AI these days. Yeah. Yeah, 

Craig: it is very cool.

Like these. They call them ants, but these tiny little robots, I don’t know. Nanobots. Yeah, they’re so tiny as to not even be visible. They’re only visible when you see them in mass. They almost move like liquid. And they cover her wound and they heal her and she’s alive and she’s fine. And like you said, she warns them.

But, they all go off and, you know, there’s a lot of plot that we could talk about. It’s not really all that They leave Jason with this beautiful blonde girl, Adrian, and she’s supposed to kind of research him or whatever, but the assistants that they leave her with are these horny teenagers. And they’re so horny that they can’t keep their hands off of each other.

And so she’s like, would you just get out of here and f k already? And then come back when you’re done? 

Todd: That was hilarious. And they’re like, really? Oh, okay, cool. Thanks. That’s what they do. But I’m very confused by this scene because she starts to poke and prod at him. And it looks like she pulls out his eyeball.

Craig: I think that was supposed to be his brain because. They did a scan of him and they made a point of talking about how how could anybody that size Function with such a tiny brain. What’d she do like lobotomy wise 

Todd: or something? 

Craig: Well through his eye Like I have no idea like I I just thought that that was a weird line any like what are they implying?

Why does he have a tiny brain? 

Todd: It’s weird. Yeah I mean he’s a supernatural creature He was a kid. Maybe it’s a child’s brain inside an adult’s body Who knows 

Craig: but what she pulls 

Todd: out is the size of a eyeball cashew Like it looks like an eyeball to me and it’s white and it’s goopy. It looks like a deflated eyeball Yeah, I thought she pulled out his eye, but she didn’t because we see his both of his eyes throughout the whole movie But anyway, 

Craig: I was trying to get to all right I’m just gonna get to it now what I consider the best kill though I think that lots of these kills are fantastic the best kill is the the first one where those horny people that she just sent away are f ing and them doing that Wakes him up like he just he 

Todd: sits straight up.

Yes. 

Craig: He sits straight up and then he kills Adrian and the way that he kills her is he just you know, he she doesn’t know he’s awake or whatever and he’s just behind her and he grabs her and she screams and He dips her face into a vat of I guess liquid nitrogen which immediately freezes her entire face and then he smashes it on a counter and it Shatters It’s so good.

It’s so good. I watched, you know, that six, I didn’t watch the six hour documentary about it, but I watched the 45 minutes about this movie and she said that there were like 10 prosthetic heads made of her. So it was really eerie seeing, but everybody was really proud of that effect. And, and she said that what she had to do was Cain Hodder put her face, well, whoever was doing it, put her face in the water.

And she had to scream for a few seconds and then just stop and be motionless so that they could put the CG on, CGI on later. 

Todd: Yeah, like the icicles suddenly 

Craig: freezing her. And she said it looked really great, but the other thing that she said was, all of them, everybody, said that Kane Hodder was just professional.

He was just amazing to work with. He worked so hard with her on the choreography of this scene. to make sure that she felt safe. And she said that she 100 percent did. Everybody that spoke about this movie and that documentary just went on and on about how wonderful Kane Hodder was and listening to him talk about it.

He really like these roles can be, and sometimes are played by stunt people who aren’t necessarily actors. And, and I’m, I’m not. Criticizing them, you know, they do their job and they do it. Well, sure. But Kane Hodder Wanted to put character into Jason. He played him four times. He did a lot with the eyes and He did a lot Kane Hodder’s Jason does a lot with breathing He does a lot of heavy breathing where he can see the chest move.

Uh huh Yeah, right, right, right. And you see that here too. It’s shocking to me that I feel the need to compliment somebody in a role like this, but he’s great. He’s fantastic. 

Todd: He is. He does such a good job. You probably see more of his character in this movie than, I mean, again, you’re, you’re probably more the expert in it, but I feel like he has more opportunity to shine in this.

Yeah, I think so. He’s on screen a little longer. He’s a little more lit. You certainly see his eyes a lot more, especially later when he kind of transforms and we can talk about that later, but also apparently the MPAA, just as a, as a side note, didn’t really have many problems with this movie. They, in their phone call to them, they were thinking the, one of the production guys that had to handle the phone call, they were thinking the worst because Sean Cunningham is from the very beginning had a very tumultuous relationship with them said that.

You know, they were like, uh, you know what, we think you got a really fun film here. And they had a very, very few cuts. And one of the cuts that they wanted them to make was to make this liquid nitrogen smashing thing different. And they said, ironically, like when we cut it, it actually looked a lot better.

The final product. Yeah. I 

Craig: read that they only had to cut. Like less than two like a couple minutes Maybe even less than that. They didn’t have to cut very much at all far less than any other 

Todd: episode in the series 

Craig: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean god we’ve already been talking about it for so long the thing that I liked about this Entry is that it is so different from the previous entries in that it feels so ambitious.

Like the, the other entries, I enjoy them all. I really do. I mean, after part three, they leaned into the camp and, and. There was a lot more humor and a lot more campiness and there there’s humor in this movie too But this one just feels so much more ambitious as I said before I just think for many reasons Including the fact that this movie is chock full of great fun kills It just stands Ahead, above all of the other ones, like, uh, I love the first one.

I love it. I love the second one. I love it. Like they hold special places in my heart, but I just had, I was watching this movie and I just so desperately wished that you and I had been able to watch it together. 

Clip: It would have been a lot of fun. 

Craig: It’s so fun. It’s just a fun movie. And now, you know, at this point we’re left with Jason let loose on this spaceship.

And basically for the next, I don’t know, 45 minutes, he just goes on a killing spree. Like he kills the horny guy and he kills everybody.

Literally tens of thousands. Of people. 

Todd: End up getting killed, yeah. There’s a nice balance of humor without it getting super campy like we’ve seen the other space ones going. I was really impressed how they were able to introduce the typical space themes. Like liquid nitrogen, my god. Okay, so now we know that you can’t have an outer space movie without liquid nitrogen being involved somehow.

Then, you know, they do the The holodeck bit, Dallas and the other kid are shooting each other on the holodeck and there’s a bit of a fake out there Where you think one of them gets killed, but it turns out that they’re actually playing around, you know, they’re shooting. It’s it’s all fake Yeah 

Craig: It’s vr. I love that scene.

Todd: It’s so good that scene. 

Craig: I love that scene two soldiers. You don’t know Right away, but they’re playing like a VR simulation and you see these giant monsters and I thought that this was Brilliant. It was that they introduced these huge monsters that look CGI They you know, they they don’t look great Yeah, but then you realize that they’re a part of this VR experience that they’re playing so they shouldn’t look that great I thought that that was such a Smart.

An excellent way of using the effects that you have, acknowledging that they’re limited, but there’s an explanation for why they’re limited. And despite the fact that they were limited, they still looked really good! 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: yeah, he 

Todd: bashes the Daoist’s skull in, he breaks Azrael’s back, god, that, that really hurt.

Craig: There are so many great kills. There’s one guy, Bronski, who gets killed several times, but still isn’t alive at the end of the movie. Yes. There’s a kill where a soldier gets thrown off a catwalk onto a giant drill bit, and then his body just slowly spins down the That’s brilliant! 

Todd: It’s really smart 

Craig: and it looks fantastic 

Clip: Besides you found Condor.

Craig: What’s his 

Clip: condition? He’s screwed

Todd: Well, he kills the pilot and see this is how I felt about it, you know, I didn’t feel suspense I was just watching it for a ride. Do I ever feel suspense in a Friday the 13th movie? I’m not quite sure. But my point I was trying to make at the very beginning of this was I feel like the earlier movies really make an effort to build suspense.

This movie has so many people and so much going on in such a small space that it’s just like, here are these people, and then suddenly Jason pops out and dispatches them. It’s more of that. For that, I can see why people might have been a little disappointed. in it when it came out for that reason it just doesn’t have the well the build up to every kill that I expect in the series.

I don’t know. Gosh. I 

Craig: don’t know. I I 

Todd: miss remembering it 

Craig: I disagree because in the previous ones the formula was pretty much the same, you know These kids are at a camp and it’s you know Early 20 somethings or late teens or whatever and he just goes around Picking them off one by one. I actually kind of liked the claustrophobic atmosphere of this one because it felt like Jason didn’t have to do anything.

They just kept coming to him. Yeah, he would just, he would just stand in a dark corner and somebody would eventually back into him and he could just cut their throat. And I kind of liked. Some of those quieter moments, there was that moment where somebody just back to him and he cut their throat and there was another moment, I think, where somebody just kind of bumped into him in the dark and he grabbed the man’s head and slowly like he didn’t crack it real fast, like he twisted it slowly.

So it was like crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. Yeah. And I liked that. I mean, ultimately, yeah. Plot wise, is it really all that different from the other movies? No, it’s still about picking off a bunch of kids, but it’s more 

Todd: interesting environment. I think with more interesting stuff to do 

Craig: Yeah, it’s in a more interesting environment.

You’ve got more interesting characters. You’ve got more interesting dynamic. It’s not just Camp counselors, you know, you you’ve got this general guy who is a leader. You’ve also got KM, who we haven’t mentioned at all, who’s an Android, who is very tough and a strong adversary for Jason. And another thing that’s different is that in the Friday the 13th movies, Typically, they don’t even realize that people are getting killed until very late in the movie.

In this, you know, they know that Jason’s out there very early on. They can’t help but know. The only other thing that’s very different about this movie is because it was made in 2001. Scream. It’s not as meta as scream, but it still throws in a lot of the meta jokes. And that works for me. Like I’m down with it, especially this, this far into a popular, but.

To be honest, fairly mediocre franchise. Do it. Do it. Try something new. Throw the meta at it. Go for it. I am down. 

Todd: Yeah. Well, I think the other thing that makes this feel really fresh is that unlike the previous episodes, these are people with Resources and tech. And know how. These are not just kids at a camp in the dark.

You know, this is a sophisticated operation and everybody’s got a job. There’s an android in here. They should be able to just seal the doors, you know, or something like that and it would stop him. You know, he’s not an alien who’s like slinking through the air vents, but it doesn’t matter. Like, he kills, like you said.

Tens of thousands of people, by killing the pilot, who they’re trying to dock at this space station. This huge space station. And when he kills the pilot, the ship veers off course, kind of leans on the controls, like a boat smashing into the dock. Smashes right through this Improbably glass dome, but it was, okay, that’s fine, of the space station.

And, uh, goes right through it in slow motion. And when they get past it, they’re like, Alright, well, we got, we got, we gotta turn around and go back. And they look in the window. And the whole thing is just exploding to nothing. It’s hilarious. It’s the point where they’re like, Oh man, now we’re totally screwed.

Right? That was our hope. And, uh, it’s a comedy at the same time. And it’s just so hilarious that Jason managed to kill so many people with one swipe, you know? 

Craig: But again, I, I would just emphasize that this is a perfectly serviceable early two thousands. Space sci fi movie that Jason has to, happens to be in.

I’m not gonna, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not today level quality, but it looks good. 

Todd: It looks really good. It looks better than all the other movies. 

Craig: Especially compared to the ColecoVision that we saw in Leprechaun, it looks fantastic. 

Todd: Yeah, 

Craig: Jason has to take out basically an entire squadron of military people, which he does very quickly.

But then it comes down to the last few people, including our main girl and the, the Android and he shows up and the Android’s like, well, let me take a shot at him because her builder slash lover and we’re leaving out so much. I love the, when the Android wants. Boobs and he gives her boobs, but then the nipples pop off.

It’s really funny. There are so many, there are so many good things about this movie that we’re skipping. You guys watch this. If you haven’t seen it, it’s so good. If you’ve only seen like. One or two Friday the 13th movies and you thought they were pretty stupid watch this. Anyway, it’s so good, but he upgrades her so she’s kind of I don’t know Linda Hamilton badass or whatever with big guns and She kills Jason.

She blows off his arm. She blows off his leg. She blows off his head Unfortunately, she blows him away right on to The lab table 

Todd: and they just walk away 

Craig: after they walk out of the room, the electricity starts shorting and the computer comes on and reconstructs him with the nanotechnology. And there’s not enough biological.

Material, so they use synthetic material. Then he comes back as Uber Jason and Uber Jason is f g awesome.

I love it. I love the design. It looks good. Kane Hodder loved the design. He said it was really challenging because. In his regular Jason costume, he could do anything. In the Uber Jason costume, his movement was severely limited. And so they can’t do too much with him, but just his appearance. And he really doesn’t do much!

In fact, I’m pretty sure that I read, Uber Jason kills nobody directly. In this movie, he knocks the androids head off, but she’s still alive because she’s just an android. So her boyfriend carries the head around one of the people that’s still remaining this cute young black guy, whose name I can’t remember 

Todd: Waylander.

Craig: Yes, a throwback to Alien, Alien Weyland. He blows himself up in this passageway to disconnect part of the ship and Jason is still in it. So he dies, but not by Jason’s hand. Then, apparently Jason was somehow able to grab onto the outside of the ship and he punches Punches a hole in the hull of the ship that then sucks.

It sucks Janessa out throughout that tiny little hole. Well, and, and even better, like he punches the hole in the hall and the vacuum, you know, effect starts and she’s holding onto the graded floor and asking for help and they almost help her, but even better than before she gets. Part of the graded floor gets pulled over.

The whole, so that when she gets sucked out and says this sex on so many levels, not only does she get sucked out through the hole, but she has to get sucked out through that. Great. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Now we don’t, we, we only see the aftermath. So it’s. It’s not all that exciting, but still fun and creative and maybe a throwback to Alien 4, 

Todd: I think.

Then Rowan distracts him because he’s on the holodeck or something or they create a holographic version of Camp Crystal Lake and Jason suddenly for a moment is very confused. He looks around and he walks forward and there are two giggling girls laying down on sleeping bags and they both pop up And they take their tops off.

Clip: Hey, you want a beer? Or do you want to smoke some pot? Or we can have premarital sex!

We love premarital sex! 

Craig: This one minute scene is worth the price of admission. Yeah. It is hilarious. They’re like, what do we do, what do we do? Wait a second. Computer look up records from 1980 camp crystal Lake, and then they project it. And it’s so much fun. Like it’s virtual reality camp crystal Lake. And I love that.

Like it’s virtual reality. So if you really, really look in the background, you can see the walls of the 

Todd: spaceship. Kind of crackling 

Craig: away. Yep. The stairs it’s, it’s like VR. And like AI and that it looks great, but it’s imperfect. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Like the stairs of the cabins go down right directly into the water. And none of that matters.

These are just. Background details, but 

Todd: they’re clever 

Craig: and I absolutely loved it and and it does it distracts him. He has a great time Zipping those girls up in their sleeping bags and beating them against each other and beating them against a tree in the documentary It said that the original concept for that was they were gonna be those naked girls we’re gonna be in the sleeping bags, and he was gonna pick them both up and Helicopter them around his head But they couldn’t figure it out, 

Clip: but 

Craig: if it was the director speaking, he said that ultimately he felt that it worked out better the way that it was.

And I think that it was great too. Yeah. I mean, we’re coming up to the end. Bronski has to spacewalk, go out into space in a suit. A rescue ship has arrived, but they can’t get the rescue hatch open. So he has to go out to do that. You know, they distract Jason, but then Jason’s coming. Bronski gets the door open and then he comes back and stays behind to face Jason while the others go.

They, meaning the android head, her boyfriend, and the main lady, get away on this rescue ship and they see the Grendel, which is the station they’ve been on, completely explode. But then somehow. In the explosion, Jason has been propelled directly towards their window. And, and they’re like, Oh, shit.

But then Bronski in his space suit intercepts. Jason and rides him down through the atmosphere of earth two, which is where they were going. And then we cut to a scene lakeside of two teenagers, two romantic teenagers, and they see a shooting star and think it’s super romantic. And one of them says it landed in the lake.

Let’s go check it out. And then you see the burnt up metal mask of Uber Jason fall to the lake floor. They had originally considered that this might be a new, like shoot off franchise. Like let’s take Friday the 13th into Jason X territory and just run with it. Well, the movie did terribly. I’m sure in large part because of delay in its release, but it did terribly.

And so that was lost, but they did continue it in a series of comics, which I haven’t seen or read, but I would be interested in, I don’t know. I just thought, gosh, man, I was excited about doing this month. And then honestly, I was disappointed. Hellraiser was fun. I liked it, but This one, God, I, I, again, I watched it by myself in the middle of the day on my computer, but I just had, I just thought it was so much fun.

And the whole time I was watching it, I kept thinking, Oh, Todd’s going to love this. I can’t wait to talk about it. It was a lot of fun. Maybe I overestimated it and maybe I’m talking it up too much, but I just had so much fun. 

Todd: It was a blast, and I had never seen it before, and it was much, much better than I thought it would be.

The corniness of it landed, and it wasn’t as corny as the other ones we had seen and what I thought it was going to be. It looked good. The acting was fine, I said before that the suspense really wasn’t there for me, but I, you know, I don’t really care about that. Sure. I was just looking to have a good time with it, and, you know, who’s gonna take this seriously?

And, uh, I was really pleasantly surprised, I really, really enjoyed it, and you’re right, it would’ve been really fun to watch it together. So, if you’ve got some friends out there, you wanna watch this movie, gather them together and see it, and you probably will be surprised. At how good it is. Actually, I think history has redeemed this movie.

My understanding is that even though it flopped in the box office, it is by far the most financially successful of the franchise because it did so well on DVD and rentals and things afterwards. Yep. I think that speaks, uh, for it. Well, thank you so much for joining us on this, uh, trip into the cosmos. I don’t know, maybe we’ll do another space theme month later.

We’re certainly gonna be covering more horror movies that take place in space. If you can think of some other ones that we haven’t mentioned that we’ve missed. A franchise that went to space. Let us know in the comments, let us know on our website, Google Two Guys in a Chainsaw Podcast and you’ll find us out there in all the social media.

And let us know what you think. Let us know what you thought of this month. Let us know also what other movies and theme months you think we can do for the future. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.