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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 30 |
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FREDDY vs. JASON  Freddy Krueger slices Jason Voorhees |
between undying monsters
of TheColumnists.com
It all began 60 years ago about the time the guys in the executive office at Universal Pictures looked at the box office returns from their latest monster movie, "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man," and somebody said, "Hey, I think we're onto something here..."
They certainly were, all right. Some might argue they were on a roller coaster to financial ruin since their scheme to start pitting all the Universal monsters against each other eventually ruined the box office for all the studio's classic monsters. In fact, after two more "monster rally" films in 1944-45 "(House of Frankenstein," "House of Dracula"), the first great era of Universal horror films reached its creative nadir with the "Abbott and Costello Meet..." films (1948-55) that made fun of the whole gang of Universal monsters. They were never really quite as menacing again.
Since then, other studios have continued to occasional monster "challenge matches" with diminishing creative results, most especially the Japanese with their "Godzilla vs. ...," including the gawdawful "King Kong vs. Godzilla" (1962) and, ultimately, those ultra-dumb films in which Godzilla and several of his defeated enemies ("Mothra," "Rodan," etc.) teamed up to battle giant monsters from other worlds. And so on.
Which brings us to "Freddy
vs. Jason," the new monster film that pits the slasher-ghost
Freddy Krueger from the seven "Nightmare on Elm Street"
films against demonic spirit Jason Voorhees from the 10 "Friday
the 13th" films in the first giant monster "showdown"
of the 21st century.
The "Nightmare" series, launched by writer-director
Wes Craven in 1984, lasted 10 years and included a syndicated
TV spinoff series, "Freddy's Nightmares." The other
series, started in 1980 with Sean Cunningham's "Friday the
13th," was still running in 2002, 22 years later. It also
spawned a syndicated TV series, "Friday the 13th."
Both series had threatened to end several times, but new generations
of teen slasher fans kept motivating increasingly ridiculous
"comeback" performances.
Well, the decision to cross-pollinate the two near-dormant series seems to have worked. The film featuring these two apparently unkillable ghosts started out as America's No. 1 box office hit, outgrossing every other movie during its first week of national release.
I toddled down to the multi-plex to see "Freddy vs. Jason" on the first day of its second week, choosing a 3 o'clock afternoon screening to see if the surprise summer hit really had any "legs" after all. I came in 10 minutes before showtime and was the only person there. However, the teens and 20somethings came pouring in on my heels and pretty soon the place was about half full--not bad for a Friday afternoon of week No. 2 in a smaller town like Bellingham, WA.
No, I won't be telling who won the first battle between these demons, but my personal feeling is they'll fight again, especially since they didn't do anything to each other that hasn't been done to them both individually before. They've always managed to rise again, so I'm confident the nifty box office returns of "Freddy vs. Jason" will lead to additional "Nightmare" or "Friday" chapters, if not a "Freddy vs. Jason II" after some mad scientist finds their corpses locked together in rigor mortis in a frozen ice cave and decides to bring them back to "life" for the rematch.
Merging the two series
of films took considerable negotiating--the project was rumored
for a couple of years--but New Line Cinema kept plugging away
until the final deal was hammered out. I doubt if everybody came
away happy.
Though Wes Craven gets on-screen credit for creating Freddy Krueger,
he did not participate in the making of "Freddy vs. Jason."
Sean Cunningham, the director who gave us the first Jason Voorhees
film, did serve as one of the new movie's producers, so undoubtedly
had some input, although Robert Yu was the director in charge.
Robert Englund, the only actor to ever portray the burn-scarred
Freddy, reprises his role and it's likely they wouldn't have
gone ahead with the film if Englund hadn't signed on. No star
is quite so closely associated with the "Friday/Jason"
canon, but Kane Hodder, who had begun to emerge as the definitive
Jason in the last several films in that series. He was replaced
by non-entity Ken Kirzinger, who has no lines of dialogue in
the movie--no doubt because Hodder wanted to see some real money.
In case you stopped going to horror pictures about the time Bud Abbott and Lou Costello first met Frankenstein, I suppose I'd better tell you who Freddy and Jason are and what makes them monsters.
Freddy Krueger was a school janitor who liked to kill children. When he escaped going to prison because of a legal technicality, parents of the murdered children tracked him down and burned him alive. For some reason, that fiery finish for Freddy inspired all the evil forces of the universe to enrich him with unholy powers and he came back to life, sort of. When we first met him in "A Nightmare on Elm Street" in 1984, he was coming after the little children he didn't get to slice and dice the first time around. They were now teenagers. He would materialize in their dreams, slashing them to bits with his special gloves that sprout razor blade-like fingernails.
Of the latter-day series monsters, Freddy is the most distinctive because he actually has a personality. He is, in fact, a wise-ass, coming off with gag lines that occasionally make you laugh even while he's making you gag. In "Freddy vs. Jason," he's back in high form. In one scene, we find him humping a young lady against a wall. When we draw a little closer, we notice she's rather obviously a corpse. Or as Freddy cracks, "She's literally dead on her feet."
In the original "Friday the 13th," Jason Voorhees was a malformed youngster, tormented by the other kids at Lake Whatchamacallit summer camp and finally drowned as a result of their harassment. A decade or so later, his demented mom began killing the kids at the camp, now mostly teenagers, in Jason's name. Ultimately, the actual Jason rose from the depths of the lake, now a fully-grown adult monster, and, began doing his own killing, usually with a very sharp machete. In his third film, he started wearing what has become his trademark wardrobe item--a hockey mask--to hide his grotesque features.
In much of the series, Jason is little more than a large hulking presence, a sort of armed zombie whose specialty is killing teenagers before, after or during their sexual escapades. He seems to get bigger and bulkier with each film and is now a giant plodder who clunks along like the Frankenstein Monster. Toward the latter-days of the series, the ungainly "Friday the 13th" i.d. was dropped from the films and they continued as just plain "Jason" movies.
The new movie suggests
that both Freddy and Jason are confined to Hell when the story
begins. In a way, that throws out the last films we saw them
in.
Freddy last appeared in "Wes Craven's New Nightmare"
(1994), a strange film in which the real director (Craven) and
some of the original actors from the "Nightmare" series
are haunted by Freddy as he seeks to regenerate himself while
Craven is developing a new "Freddy" script.
Jason Voorhees last appeared in last year's "Jason X," an equally bizarre departure from its series, which finds Jason aboard a spaceship in the future, killing off the young crew members one by one like the giant kill-creature from the "Alien" films. In the final reel of "Jason X," we see his remains, hockey mask and all, fall out of space and into what appears to be the very lake where he first emerged in 1980.
This time, though, Freddy re-enters the world of humans by invading the dreams of fellow Hell resident Jason Voorhees. There's some mumbo-jumbo about Freddy motivating Jason to rise from his grave. Jason then heads toward Elm Street, trusty machete in hand, and picks up where Freddy left off a decade ago.
After convincing the authorities that Freddy is back in business, Jason ultimately is transported to his original lakeside habitat by, of all people, the teenagers he's been trying to slash. They hope he'll finally confront and destroy the real architect of this latest spree of carnage--Freddy Krueger.
"He'll have the advantage of being on his own turf," one of the teens remarks.
To cut to the chase, the ultimate battle between the two monsters is definitely worth the price of admission. Freddy slashes, Jason chops and they both do a gargantuan amount of damage to each other and the derelict summer camp. Their ultimate prey--teenagers Lori and Will (Monica Keener, Jason Ritter)--take part in the final showdown, helping the two death machines do as much permanent damage to each other as possible. I lost track of the body count early in the film, so I have nothing further to say about the damage the two "stars" did to the supporting cast.
Though no referee lifts
one monster's hand in victory and no official judges rule, you
definitely get to see one monster seem to triumph over the other.
Why do I think both monsters will be back? Well, aside from the
obvious profit motive, there's a point in the movie where Freddy
looks at the audience and winks. That tells me he wants to come
back, even if he has to tackle Jason all over again. Jason, as
usual, says nothing, but his ghost mom (Paula Shaw), cheering
from the sidelines now and then, reminds Jason that he can't
die, no matter how bad things may start looking for him.
Will they ever think about matching one of these monsters against Michael Myers, the "Halloween" slasher/ghost who's the other great movie monster of their era? I wouldn't count on it. Different studios are involved and there could be a huge ruckus over creative control.
But if the "Freddy vs. Jason" box office hangs in there for another couple of weeks, anything is possible. Money talks. If it talks long enough, they might even bring Frankenstein, Godzilla and The Wolf Man out of retirement to get in on the box office killing in what could be the first all-star monster tag team match in movie history.
©2003 by Ron Miller.
The "Freddy vs. Jason" illustration is courtesy of
New Line Cinema.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He is a lifelong
monster movie fan and this fall will teach a course called "Famous
Monsters of Filmland" at Whatcom Community College in Bellingham,
Washington.
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