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The sequel versus good taste
Love it or cleave it, horror sequel schlock is fun, goofy and gory
By John Behling
Published:
Thursday, September 4, 2003
Freddy (left) and Jason (right) bicker, slash and stab their way through this sequel of sequels.
In the beginning they made love. Well, kind of. Freddy creator Wes Craven and Jason creator Sean Cunningham first met in their directorial debut, the 1971 romantic comedy "Together." Twelve years later the children of their two groundbreaking horror films "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), and "Friday the 13th" (1980), Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees are together in "Freddy vs. Jason."
The Freddy/Jason juggernaut is 20 years and 17 films strong, standing on top of thousands and thousands of corpses, VHS tapes and Halloween masks. The Freddy vs. Jason project carries with it five years of rumors, failed attempts, re-casts, re-writes and agonizing delays. The entity which began as two low-budget horror films in the early 80s has now become a super-sequel, a perfect embodiment of the studio hive-mind.
"It's gonna come out," insisted loyal fans posting on the Internet. Due to the volume of news, rumors and updates, the film has two separate pages of buzz on Web site Dark Horizons, dating back to 1998.
The whole spectacle is a far cry from "Together" or even Cunningham and Craven's second film, the 1972 horror cornerstone "The Last House on the Left."
A true horror story, "The Last House on the Left" is a revolting look at rape, torture and murder that is just too real for mainstream audiences. With their later, more marketable slashers, Craven and Cunningham introduced two super-villains. Hollywood ran with them, creating a brand of serial murderer that's pleasantly distanced from reality. Craven left the Freddy series behind after 1994's "New Nightmare." Cunningham likewise avoided the Friday the 13th sequels but signed on to produce Freddy vs. Jason.
Two years ago I was cheering for "Freddy vs. Jason." I was howling for the ultimate match-up, the perfect action-figure play fantasy. But I've found myself distracted by new signs of life in the horror genre. "House of 1000 Corpses," "28 Days Later" and the upcoming "Cabin Fever" are stirring whispers of a revolution coming, a cleansing that is well needed in an environment that has become stale with rigor mortis. Sitting in the theatre, I question whether there can be any merit in a film with such staggering hype, difficult history and the word "vs" in the title.
A parental conspiracy succeeded in keeping "Nightmare of Elm Street" dream stalker Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund of course) from the minds and dreams of the children of Elm Street. Without their fear to power him, Freddy sulks in Hell. In the first frames, a downtrodden Freddy reminisces about the glorious '80s with a montage of his greatest hits. Determined to have a comeback, Freddy discovers Jason Voorhees (stuntman Ken Kirzinger), the hockey masked anti-pre-marital sex activist of the Friday the 13th series. Krueger uses the guise of Jason's beloved mother to convince him to kill on Elm Street, a place where he'll find plenty of debauchery. But as Jason cuts a swath through a new crop of sexed-up, booze-brained teens, Freddy finds that he can't get him to stop. In order to get his own homicidal payoff, Freddy must teach the dim-witted Jason how to share.
The first shocker is just how well the stitches hold this monster together. A pack of typical teens (beautiful and morally vacant) provide scenery, kill fodder. Survivors of Freddy and Jason bring others up to speed and plot to kill them both, this time for good. I think half of the people who go to this film would be just as satisfied if Freddy and Jason happened to meet one day at the bus stop completely by chance and decided to toss their afternoon plans to fight and slaughter teens. But this movie tries for a little bit more.
It's no surprise that filmmakers decided to focus on Freddy's nightmare land, rather than the woods of Lake Crystal. Wes Craven's innovative slasher on acid, "Nightmare on Elm Street" created a whole world of horror, similar to our own but twisted enough to hide a child murder within a Beetlejuice-like guise. Krueger's empty schools, mental institutions, haunted houses and unholy boiler rooms still have the ability to take away our safety blankets. Jason counterbalances the surreal with brutal, snappy kills for immediate satisfaction. Coupled with some ripped off Jay and Silent Bob ganja humor, "Freddy vs. Jason" has the laugh/shriek mechanism required for a full emotional release.
For some reason I also found the teens of Freddy vs. Jason disturbingly relatable. Anyone living in America right now knows what it feels like to be lied to by traditionalist conspirators who we trust to watch over us while we sleep. Every one knows what it feels like to be part of a dream where we can't wake up. Oh and we all like boobs, dumb girls, beer, marijuana, slasher violence, cornfield raves, one-liners and special effects (fine, not all of us like one-liners).
But forget the cultural analysis; forget what this film is and what this film means. Let's drop the twisted corridors of Krueger's dreams for a straightforward question like the drop of Jason's blade: Do I like this film?
Yes.
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