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BY LINCOLN GASKING | Jason's
6'5", 255 pound frame appears in the doorway. His piercing green
eyes are looking straight at me. His right hand rises. Pointing.
In my direction. And then Jason speaks. There's a frightening enthusiasm
in his booming voice. "Look at that guy. I'm dying to
kill him!" I immediately scrambled under the interview table,
without realizing the stupidity of trying to hide from Jason. Thankfully,
this was not a Friday the 13th reality, it was just Jason's alter-ego,
Kane Hodder, brandishing only his twisted sense of humor. Of course,
you can try explaining that to one's stomach, but I think it has a smaller
brain than Jason's.
A cheerful, smiling Kane sits down at the end of the table. His
scarred hands rest on the table - all thanks to a bungled fire incident
that cruel fate left him with physical and emotional scars that
still affect him to this day. Kane's other work as a stuntman has
proven much more harrowing than his role as Jason. His filmography
is impressive, literally hundreds of films including Se7en, Gone in Sixty
Seconds, Demolition Man, The Last Boy Scout, Four Rooms and Under Siege.
"Fire stunts, in particular, are unpredictable," warns Hodder.
"Because they require someone else to put [the fire] out."
According to director Jim Isaac, Hodder was the parapet of Jason lore
on the set. One day in the middle of shooting, Jim had just finished
an enthusiastic five minute explanation of an elaborate fight sequence
to the cast and crew, involving Jason falling backwards from a shotgun
blast. After he had finished, he got a small tap on the shoulder.
It was Jason/Kane, whispering in his ear. "Jason doesn't do
that." Isaac laughs. "He takes it all very seriously."
Hodder finds the character of Jason more difficult to pull off than one
would at first imagine. If you're trying to act covered in a hockey
mask, chains and heavy clothing, it's very difficult to actually reveal
character. In response, Hodder has developed some novel methods
around this. "It's all in the body language," he explains.
"It's the way I stand. I always get fans asking me to do the
Jason walk". Another response by director Isaac was to
have more close-ups of Jason's eyes, something Hodder is very happy about.
The Jason movies have certainly evolved over time. Whereas the initial
films were simply bone-chillingly frightening, Jason X is more, well,
fun. And this is exactly what the Director had in mind. As
one of the key guys responsible for resurrecting the iconic character
of Hollywood: "The goal was to do something fun with Jason,"
he explains. "We wanted to throw it way into the future, surrounded
by unusual visuals... while still staying true to Jason". "I
don't mind the humor," admits Hodder, "as long as it's not at
Jason".
Isaac is surprised at just how much the MPAA allowed in the final cut.
For the uninitiated, the MPAA process is often a harrowing, stress-filled
back-and-forth battle between the film's producers and their board, where
they negotiate the hacking of scenes to receive the desired rating for
the film. The object of this game is to push the boundaries of whatever
rating you want by adding fluff, over-the-top "MPAA fodder":
extraordinarily long, violent scenes that are only kept in as weapons
of negotiation that can be cut without degrading the original vision.
This is especially important in films like Jason, where the film lives
or dies by its mortality rate.
But something unexpected happened. "When we showed the MPAA,"
explains Isaac, "we got word they really enjoyed the film" and
their laundry list of cuts was surprisingly minimal. "We have
one scene [the "screw" scene for those who've seen it] where
we had the death scene go on for like a full minute," laughs Isaac.
Excruciatingly long, but giving room to move for the MPAA. Another scene
had David Cronenberg covered in a sea of blood. It had been added
digitally in post, and was the only other comment which was easily "fixed".
Another scene with a guy cut in half - "they didn't say a word,"
marvels Isaac. It's still in the film, to great effect.
Isaac explains the often-surreal process of making a Jason film.
"It will get to a point where we are sitting around a table saying,
'OK, we've got another death', and trying to work out how to make it as
creative a kill as possible." But make no mistake - kills are
taken with deadly seriousness on the set. There's the McDonalds-style
kill counter [13 kills served daily], and there's Kane, who religiously
records the kill count for each film. Kane's very satisfied with
'X, because not only does it boast the highest kills in any of the films,
Jason makes a murderously good entrance: "[Jason has] seven
kills in the first two-and-a-half minutes," he says proudly.
Hodder's happy he got to keep his favorite weapon, even in space. "The
real thing is the machete -- it's important to have that."
This is another reason for Hodder's religious following of Jason lore:
"[Fans] like to see Jason acting the same and using the same implements."
Before 'X, his personal favorite kill was in Part VII, the famed Sleeping
Bag kill, but he's got a shattering new favorite in this one -- you'll
know it when you see it! "Fans love the creativity of
the kills," explains Kane, and he makes sure that each one is as
creative as possible. In one of the twenty-something death scenes,
he was required to snap a guy's neck from behind in the script.
A pretty standard kill for Jason. But Hodder wanted to take it a
little further. "Instead of just another kill, I wanted it to have
the feel of an anaconda - snapping his neck extra slowly," he demonstrates
with his hands, twisting them ever-so-slowly. " It's kinda
more interesting," he explains. "There's no reason for
Jason to rush. No one's going to do shit."
As to the universal appeal of Jason, Isaac's sure the key is the simplicity
of the character. "It's that Jason represents evil, that monster
under the bed. He's the one that just keeps on coming, no matter
what happens. There's no mercy. With Jason, you cannot talk
your way out of being killed. Normally, whether it's Freddy or some
other evil being, if you're slimy enough and you're willing to make some
sort of deal, you can normally escape. But with Jason, there's no
interest at all." Hodder agrees. "Jason's motivation
to kill is for someone to be in reach."
As for the new uber-Jason, as he was coined on set, it came about from
director Isaac wanting a resurrection scene written into the screenplay:
"I wanted the kids to construct a weapon to kill Jason and then have
him reborn." Isaac had long-time collaborator Stephan Dupuis
(Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Mrs. Doubtfire, Cape Fear) create
a design he describes as visually striking, powerful and sexy. As
for the effects, Isaac had Canadian SFX company, Command Post Toybox (who
did Fight Club, Bride of Chucky and the two-headed creature in Existenz),
create a whopping three hundred and fifty shots for the film, all on a
shoestring budget.
So what about Freddy vs. Jason? Is it still happening? "I'm
looking forward to kicking Freddy's ass," says Hodder enthusiastically.
"There's no set date but it's fairly imminent. New Line knows
how to do this sort of thing. Robert Englund [Freddy] and I have
talked, and the script we have now is quite good. It develops the
controversy between the two characters, and [having another horror icon]
gives me more to play off of and to react to." Hodder explains:
"It hasn't been since Part Seven that there was someone who could
battle Jason somewhat".
According to 'X director Isaac, Freddy vs. Jason is going to happen before
Jason 11. As for the concept, he's unsure. "I don't know.
If the story is good, it will work. But if it's just for the sake
of a Jason vs. Freddy film, it won't." Everyone agrees that
beyond Freddy vs. Jason, if enough good scripts can be found, finishing
at 13 would be the perfect ending for the Jason franchise.
And does Jason have nightmares? "Hell no," laughs Kane.
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REVIEW: JASON X
If you haven't noticed, it's harder and harder to scare kids these days.
The grunts, groans and gore of yesterday barely raise a hair on the neck
of your average pop-savvy Gen-Yer. Then someone found a solution
to reviving the horror genre: it's probably easier to just make
'em laugh. And that's exactly what's happened to the iconic Friday
The 13th franchise amongst others: the horror of Jason's early years has
evolved into self-referential fun.
What are fans wanting to know before going into Jason X? It probably
boils down to two things: the creative value of Jason's murderous antics,
and the general enjoyability of the film. On both counts, the film
comes out fighting. I won't spoil the kills, but here's the setup:
As Jason's alter-ego Kane Hodder will tell you, the film starts off with
a fatality frenzy, when a heavily chained and sedated Jason is strung
up like a piece of meat at a cryogenic freezing lab in 2010. They've
tried everything: they simply can't kill him, so the government is going
for the next best option. Of course, a couple of inches of metal
isn't going to stop him almost breaking free of the facility, only to
be successfully frozen and discovered by an archeology team four hundred
years into the future, on a visit to a desolate, abandoned planet Earth.
Taking the specimen back onto the spaceship sets up the tenth Friday The
13th film, and leads to some unique Jason situations.
Director Jim Isaac has squeezed his tiny budget to the extreme, hiring
a Canadian SFX company to create over three hundred effects shots for
the film, giving it a scale much grander than you'd expect. He also
chose to spend a fair percentage of his 'kill' budget on one particularly
stunning (and funny) sequence which is probably the film's greatest achievement
in adding to Jason lore. It's definitely
What's great about Jason X is its salute to earlier films in the series,
even taking Jason back to a virtual-reality Crystal Lake, where he meets
two bursting-at-the-seams cheerleaders which he dispatches creatively
with two sleeping bags. It's this sort of fun that makes Jason X
a watchable film.
You also get to see Jason in his 21st century format: dubbed "uber-Jason",
a mean metallurgic killing machine who not only looks fantastic, but more
menacing than ever. If nothing else, this film continues to prove
the Friday The 13th franchise has a large similarity to its iconic character.
Just when you thought it was all over, it just keeps on coming back for
more.
Bring on Freddy vs. Jason!
KILL CREATIVITY: ***
FILM: **1/2
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