There is actually a line of dialog in Jason X, the tenth film in the Friday the 13th series, where a woman in peril shouts "He's an unstoppable killing machine!" You can't make this shit up. I went into this film wanting something to laugh at, a terrible film to make fun of for my new series of reviews, the "Stinker of the Month." I certainly got what I was looking for, but I also got that rare thing in a movie like this: a tad bit of originality, or at least a sense of humor. This film was much better than the inagural Stinker, Resident Evil, because it knew what it was and didn't try to be anything else, but it also found time to present two specific great moments, something that Resident Evil had none of. I guess this is me proclaiming that Jason X was better than I thought it would be.

It's still a big ball of garbage. I would give you a plot synopsis, but is one really necessary? Call it Jason in Space. A prologue shows Jason killing a bunch of government workers who want to use him for research. He is frozen in a cryogenic tomb (right next to Walt Disney) with the woman who finally defeats him, played by yet another photogenic but bland actress, Lexa Doig. At some indeterminate time later (I will discuss the chronology in the next paragraph), he is found in 2455 by a team of researchers who are excavating the Crystal Lake site on Old Earth. You see... never mind. People don't live on Earth anymore, and leave it at that. They also find Doig. They take the duo onto their ship and start to thaw them out. Doig is a little dismayed to find that it is somewhere over 400 years later, but Jason is happy because there is a whole dingy, dark, creepy, shadowy ship full of nubile young men and women who do such terrible things as have premarital sex and tell bad jokes. You've seen it all before. Since it's futuristic, there is an android character (much like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except that she's hot) and lots of gadgets and pseudo-technospeak. As far as I can tell, Jason kills 17.875 people (you'll understand if you see the film).

The acting is universally bad. The special effects are beyond terrible; they look like they were designed by a ten year old boy on his mom's I-Mac. There is no attempt to build any suspense at all: by this point in the series, we all know that people are going to get hacked, slashed, and julienned; we just want them to get it over with. The script (or most of it) is laughably bad, not even able to figure out how much time has passed since the beginning of the film or even what year Doig froze Jason. Let me explain. We are told early on that it is 2455 when Jason is awakened. Doig is told that she was frozen for 4.55 centuries (455 years to you laymen). That would mean that she was frozen in 2000, the year this film was made (after which it sat on the shelf for two years). So why is it that Doig informs the other characters that the government attempted to execute Jason in 2008? You accuse me of being a nit-picker, but all I want is internal logic in my films. Filmmakers, please pick some stupid idea and stick with it. You can borrow my calculator if you need to figure out the year. Also, what's with the title? I insist on pronouncing it "Jason Ecks," as in the letter X instead of the roman numeral for 10. Why? Well, the previous films were called Friday the 13th, not "Jason" anything. I take perverse glee in explaining that to people who try to correct me.

Most of the cast members are unknowns who probably thought this would be their breakthrough role until it sat on the shelf for so long. This is writer Todd Farmer's first filmed script. Director James Isaac created the great special effects for David Cronenberg's 1999 film eXistenZ. Kane Hodder, getting first billing for the first time, has played Jason in every film since 1988's Part 7, but he has also done stunts for over 50 films. This must be fun for him.

There are three reasons why this film gets a generous 1.5 goat rating. First is Jason's first kill, involving a pretty girl's head being shoved in liquid nitrogen and then dashed against a table. Haven't seen that one before. Second is an utterly hilarious moment involving Jason being fooled by a hologram of nubile naked campers at Crystal Lake. The nearly empty theater rocked with laughter at that. Last was a surreal and near-brilliant ending that looked like an outtake from Pleasantville or something. It shocked me with its originality. It makes me think that the screenwriter may have been able to come up with a better film overall if he took the time to do it. Since the film sat on the shelves for two years, I suppose he had enough time. What's that saying about 700 monkeys typing for 700 years?