Melodie Johnson Movies

Popular bogeymen Jason Voorhees terrorizes a group of nubile astronauts five centuries into the future in this sci-fi update of the Friday the 13th franchise. Early in the 21st century, Jason (actor/stunt man Kane Hoddar, filling the role for a fourth time) is experimented upon by army technocrats who hope to turn his supernatural invulnerability into a military application. Most of them meet a swift and bloody end -- except Rowan (Lexa Doig), a beautiful functionary, who traps the killer in a cryogenic stasis chamber. Unfortunately, she takes a machete blow in the process, gets frozen herself, and wakes up on a spaceship in the year 2455. The earth has long since been rendered uninhabitable, but the survivors include a group of archaeological students headed by Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts), who hopes to make a quick buck by selling the corpse of the historical serial killer. The kids re-animate Rowan with the help of nanotechnology. Little do they know that a mere thaw job is enough to resuscitate Jason and reawaken his bloodthirst. Soon, the comely students and their space-marine protectors are being dispatched one by one. Help arrives in the form of a holographic chamber and an android named Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder). Soon, though, Jason himself gets an upgrade -- just as the spaceship is getting ready to self-destruct. The tenth installment in the long-running horror series, Jason X was the first new entry to appear in almost a decade. In fact, the previous film, 1993's Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, was one of two installments whose titles erroneously contained the word "final." ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

The life and career of Ricky Nelson--from awkward kiddie TV star to teenaged singing idol to "young hasbeen"--is adequately encapsulated in this made-for-cable movie, one of several celebrity biopics produced for VH-1. Told in flashback as Ricky Nelson (Gregory Calpakis) recounts his experiences to a worshiping fan in the last hours before the 1985 air crash that would take his life, the story begins around 1952, as the adolescent Ricky is recruited by his bandleader-producer father Ozzie Nelson (Jamey Sheridan) to play "himself" on the movie and TV version of the popular radio series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Anxious to crawl out from under the shadow of his dictatorial father Ozzie, his vocalist mom Harriet (Sara Botsford) and his marginally more talented older brother David (Anthony Lemke), the 16-year-old Ricky begs for a chance to sing on the family's series. The wildly enthusiastic audience response to Ricky's warblings prompt Ozzie to aggressive promote Ricky's musical career, but ultimately Ricky breaks loose from the family's influence to strike out on his own. Alas, after several years at the top, Ricky's career and fan following plummets, before he has reached his 30th birthday he is grasping at straws by performing at county fairs and trade shows. Making matters worse is his unhappy marriage to Kris Harmon (depicted as something of a conniving opportunist by Anne Openshaw) and his ever-increasing dependence upon drugs. Astonishingly, the film never allows us to hear Ricky perform "Garden Party", the song that enabled him to make a spectacular comeback. Ricky Nelson: Original Teen Idol first aired on August 22, 1999. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In Ron Oliver's erotic psychodrama, Shannon Tweed stars as a mother whose teen-age son is traumatized by her new husband and her husband's freeloading brother. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi