J… 2021 A to Z Horror Movies #AtoZChallenge

Hello, and welcome to my 2021 A to Z April Blogging Challenge! This year, I talk about all the horror movies Alec and I have watched so far during the pandemic. There are quite a lot of them. Today, though, is “J.” Today, I only have two movies to talk about. That will be true tomorrow, too, but then things get long again.

Anyway, without further ado…

Jason X (2001)

Canada, USA

Director: James Isaac

I liked Jason X. I’m getting that out of the way at once, so that if you personally totally hated Jason X, you’ll be warned ahead of time that we aren’t going to agree.

So, for those of you who don’t know, Jason X is Friday the 13th… in space! We open in the present day. Jason Voorhees is being cryogenically frozen–and then he wakes up and goes on a killing spree, because he is a murder-machine, and that’s what he does. He gets frozen in the midst of his rampage, as does a skeptical scientist.

Centuries later, both frozen bodies are found, brought onto a spaceship, and revived. The scientist is revived on purpose. The people on the ship don’t mean to revive Jason, at first because he looks too far gone to come back, and then because they figure out who he is (and think they’ve hit the scientific jackpot, with this specimen). But he gets at the ship’s automated healing tech, and drags himself back into relevance. And then goes on a killing spree. In a spaceship. Which is neat.

I liked many of the characters. I was especially fond of the robot-lady and her tentative maybe-romance with her programmer. I thought that was cute.

I also liked a lot of the humor–though let me pause here to just mention that I don’t mean the abominable punning. I liked the parts that were humorous without being jokes. Not so much the part where, on observing that a friend has been transfixed by a gigantic screw-like object, one of the characters just says, “he’s screwed.” The movie is silly, but maybe not quite that silly? And it reminded me that I was watching a movie in a franchise that was sort of sick of itself.

And I was also into the fashion. This movie is set 500 years or so in the future. People should dress a little differently from how they dress now. And they do. They don’t dress very differently, but there are some interesting choices. One lady is in something that is actually popular now but that (I’m pretty sure?) wasn’t a thing in 2001, when the movie was made (“the cold-shoulder look”). Another lady is in a shirt I would not be surprised to see on someone at a Renn Faire, but was mildly startled to see in a spaceship. I wish they’d pushed the fashion a little farther, because 500 years is a very long time, and I feel it would have shifted more than we see here (or maybe it shifted, and then shifted back!), but I was pleased to see that some thought was given to the subject. And that they didn’t always opt for shiny-looking “futuristic” materials. The cold-shoulder top is, I think, knitted.

Oh, and David Cronenberg is in this movie. He’s in the present-day scenes. He plays a scientist who wants to preserve Jason X for study, because, I mean, the man is unkillable, and harnessing his immortality would be a great scientific advance. That’s another neat part of this movie. People not only recognize that Jason Voorhees is supernaturally impossible to kill, but some of the consequences of this recognition are explored.

Anyway, I liked Jason X. I thought it was fun. Also, another A to Zer is also talking about Jason X! It has actually happened a few times, now, that my horror movie list has overlapped with another A to Z (there are two other people that I know of doing horror movie A to Zs; links to both blogs at the end of this post!), but this is the first time I’ve known about it ahead of time, so here is that link again.

 

 

The Jigsaw Murders (1989)

USA

Director: Jag Mundhra

We saw this one because Jag Mundhra directed Hack-O-Lantern, which we both thoroughly enjoyed (and which I talk about in my “H” post). But… The Jigsaw Murders was a bit of a disappointment. And not in any very memorable way. Or anyway, I barely remember it.

***

That’s it for today, folks! This post has actually turned out to be much longer than I planned, because I found that I had more to say about Jason X than I expected.

Here are the links to the two other blogs that are also doing horror movie A to Zs:

The Writerly Reader

The Semi-Retired Gamer

By the way, if there are any other horror movie A to Zs out there, let me know in the Comments section!

Mystery Picture “K”:

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8 Comments

  1. Aw, I should have watched Jason X. I was considering it. Could have been a blogging trifecta!

  2. Thanks for the shout out! I don’t care what anybody says; Jason X is just downright fun. Plus, it has what it probably the best kill in the entire series. You know the one. Shortly after he wakes up.

    Yep, Q was a bit of a struggle for me. I went with what I knew. I’ll probably get some pushback on Z but oh well.

  3. “Look, sweetie! My animatronic clone I ordered for the Christmas elf mall display finally arrived!”

  4. I’ve been out of touch for a couple of days, so this is my first look at your J post. I haven’t yet peeked at K, but I am going to make my guess here.

    The mystery Picture is from the opening scene of Kidding Aside. Kathleen Kidder’s dad is driving her to school to set up her science project — a youthfully optimistic attempt to reanimate life — for the Science Fair when Kathleen, bookworm and social outcast, gleefully reveals her popular twin sister Karen’s participation in the project — Karen’s head in a box. Mr. Kidder’s shock causes him to crash into a power pole, resulting in his instantaneous death by pole-induced blunt force trauma, and Kathleen’s by electrocution. Karen’s head is thrown clear of the ensuing conflagration.

    The first person on the scene is another Science Fair participant, Kevin Franklin, approaching on his bicycle. He recognizes Mr. Kidder’s car and rushes to it to see if Karen, his girlfriend, is inside. The flames won’t allow him to get close enough to see if the crispy critter in the passenger seat is Karen or Kathleen, but he hears a cry for help from the bushes at the side of the road, drops his bike, and runs toward the screams.

    Horrified by his discovery, he recognizes Karen by her slightly darker blonde hair than her sister’s, falls to his knees and gently lifts her head from the box.

    “Karen! Who did this to you?” he asks, tears running down his cheeks.

    The head is silent for a moment, confusion in its eyes. When it speaks, it is haltingly, as if it’s creating the tale on the spot.

    “I remember my sister, uh, Kathleen, asking me to help her with her science project. She had a brilliant idea, and she’s so much smarter than I am that of course I said yes.”

    This struck Kevin as only slightly less strange than Karen’s current condition, but he loved her, so he accepted her at her word.

    What he and the viewers didn’t know then, but would learn to their ultimate terror was that the electrical current that killed Kathleen had actually connected to Karen’s head and had transferred Karen’s personality, memories, and extraordinary mental ability into Karen’s dead brain and started it up again.

    Also, Kathleen was now thoroughly pissed off, and she knew Kevin would do anything Karen wanted him to, so this was her chance to take revenge on everyone who had preferred her sister over herself.

    I won’t tell you any more about it, because I wouldn’t want to ruin the gore or the ending for any of your other subscribers.

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