I've seen bits and pieces of this over the years since it came to cable. Some of the pieces I caught impressed me, because it seemed the whole thing was a spoof of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, as well as space horror films like ALIEN. Now that I have seen the film from start to finish, I have come to the conclusion that it is trying to make fun of the series, but the problem is that it was written like one of those late-night softcore spoofs.
In the prologue, Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, HATCHET) has been captured and is set to be cryogenically frozen, because he can't be killed. He gets loose in the facility and Rowan (Lexa Doig, TV's ANDROMEDA) lures the killer into the freezing chamber and accidentally gets frozen along with him. Apparently Earth was doomed with or without Jason on ice because in the future humans live on Earth II. An education mission is sent back to Earth to check it out, discovering Rowan and Jason and taking them back on the ship to thaw them out.
On the ship, the plot is a complete rip off of ALIEN. Prof. Lowe (Jonathan Potts, DEVIL) is the weaselly corporate hack who sees Jason as dollar signs. Simply replace the alien with Jason and the space miner victims with scientists and horny students. The rest of the film is watching one horny teen after another getting hacked up. One victim gets her head dunked in a sink of liquid nitrogen and then has her face smashed on the counter. I lost count of the number of victims that get slashed by a machete. One even loses his arm via the big knife while Jason is still frozen for goodness sake.
None of this is taken seriously in the least. Losing an arm in the future is no big deal because there is a machine that will reattach it. That's if you don't forget to bring it back with you like the dummy does in this film. His great line when someone hands him his arm, "I gotta stop losing my arm. Hi arm." Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder, TV's ANDROMEDA) is an android who is like the Terminator crossed with a dominatrix version of the sex bots from AUSTIN POWERS. Her nerdy programmer
The only truly funny moment is one where the crew get Jason stuck in a virtual reality room and send him back to the 1980s Crystal Lake camp where he started his murders. Two buxom beauties give him come hither looks from their sleeping bags, which become killing tools for the confused and frustrated monster.
In a big tense moment, the spaceship comes full speed into a space city and takes out tops of buildings. The pilot says they just need to turn around because they over shot it. It's not campy funny; it's just stupid. Even the opening sequence there is not tension when it is clear it's trying to play things straight. Director James Isaac (SKINWALKERS) cuts the sequence to an awful score that sounds like it came from one of those bad Halloween music CDs you buy at the drug store.
As the tenth installment in the horror franchise, this one does nothing to improve its reputation. It's not as low-rent as FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, but it's not worthy of being a theatrical release either. It's cheap in every meaning of the word. When a franchise has run out of ideas, they always send the characters to space. So why not Jason? He's beaten every other cliché to death why not that one too
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
