Freddy vs Jason (2003)

Episode 50, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw

Craig:  Hello, and welcome to the 50th episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Craig. 

Todd:  And I’m Todd. 

Craig:  And today, we thought we would try something a little special, since it is our 50th episode. Since we started out with Wes Craven and since we have done a couple of Nightmare on Elm Street movies already, we thought it might be fun to take a look at 2003’s Freddy versus Jason. Like I said, we’ve done a couple nightmares before. We’ve never really done, Friday 13th yet, but we’ve referenced both, franchises many, many, many times. And I thought this would be a fun one to do for the 50th. Todd, you had never seen this before. Right? 

Todd:  That’s that’s correct. I don’t know this. So I would think I was in Japan at the time when this came out. It was, what, 2,003? So, yeah. That this one kinda flew by me. I have to say I was not as excited about seeing the Freddy versus Jason crossover as I think a lot of the fans were. I know that this film has been in the works for quite some time since the since the mid to late eighties, actually. But I don’t know.   You know, for me, this whole idea of taking 2 people from, these different franchises and pushing them together, kinda like Superman and Batman, or like a comic book, stars, takes a little bit away, from the idea that they exist in what I consider to be 2 different worlds, though technically they really don’t. Right? They both exist on Earth. One’s in Camp Crystal Lake, one is on Elm Street, but it can be argued that, well, I mean, they’re still terrorizing people in everyday settings. So it it it makes sense maybe more so, than a lot of comic book franchises to put these 2 people together. But in in the sense for me it it kinda takes a little bit away from it. It kind of really acknowledges, I guess, what’s obvious to anybody anyway, and that these two characters are really larger than life. They’re really characters. They’re really the superheroes of their own horror genre, and so something like this was bound to happen anyway. 

Craig:  Yeah. Well, I come from the other camp that you’re not in. I was one of those fans who was really hoping, for this crossover. The Friday 13th movies and Nightmare on Elm Street movies were events for me as a kid. I mean these, in my opinion are kind of the 2 biggest horror icons of our generation. I mean of course there’s Michael Myers and Leatherface and Pinhead and and lots of other really good, characters, in the world of horror from the 19 eighties nineties. But these 2 were really just the be all and end all for me. You know, when a new, Nightmare sequel would get announced, I would look forward to it for months, until it finally came out.   The, Friday 13th movies for me were kind of more of a video store thing. I didn’t see them in the theaters so much but, as soon as a new sequel popped up on the video shelves, I would rent it right away. And so this the announcement of this crossover was something that really excited me. I had known that it had been being thrown around, in Hollywood for a long time. Initially, the, obstacle was that, the rights were owned by 2 different, companies, and so they didn’t know how to get past that legal stuff. Eventually, Paramount, bailed on Friday 13th when they stopped being lucrative, and, so the rights were available and people this this movie went through dozens upon dozens of scripts and incarnations before it actually, came to fruition in 2003. And, you know, when it when Paramount first dropped Todd the rights, they were excited to do it. But right around that same time was when Wes Craven made amends with New Line, and he didn’t really have any interest in doing a crossover, so they went with New Nightmare instead.   And so it wasn’t until 2003 that we got this. And I was in the theater opening weekend with my dad, to see this movie. And, you know, I remember I remember coming out of the theater thinking that was pretty good. I don’t remember being super stoked about it. And since then, I’ve not really watched it. I’ve not really rewatched it in its entirety a lot, but it gets played on cable quite a bit, every once in a while. And so I’ve caught bits and pieces of it here and there, and I’ll sit and watch it for a little bit, you know, if it’s on. But I’ve never sat really and watched it from beginning to end, until again today.   And I gotta say, I I thought I came out of it this time, and I think that it’s because this time I was watching it with a more critical eye, I actually came out enjoying it and and thinking that it was a pretty solid effort. Not perfect, but, I thought that they actually did a pretty good job of believably entwining these 2 franchises, in a way that didn’t seem entirely forced. It it felt kind of natural, for these 2, to exist in the same universe, at least for me. And and, you know, like I said, it’s not perfect. It’s got its flaws, and I’m sure it will highlight those as we talk about it, but I thought it was a pretty solid effort. You know, what what did you think? 

Todd:  You know, I I agree with you there, and as as I said before, I think these kind of things are rather silly, but they really avoided getting too silly with it just because, you’re right. They managed to bridge those two worlds in a more believable way and not a cheesy, corny, weird way. I was really curious how they were gonna put these two characters together. And really as it turns out, it makes sense that it’s Freddy versus Jason versus instead of, Jason versus Freddy. Because although we get a good bit of both of them in this film, probably pretty equally and they’re pretty equally matched, Freddie is the instigator. From the beginning we we have a, a voice over where Freddie is talking and basically describing his plan. And his plan is that, it and it’s it’s almost shades of new nightmare in a way, where it takes this idea that there’s a lore that has to be continued in order for the character himself to have power and to be to exist in this world. And I thought that was an interesting touch.   I mean, it goes in a slightly different direction with it, but the idea is a little bit the same, and that is that Freddie has been so forgotten on Elm Street that he no longer has power. He can’t come and visit the kids because the town has been so successful at suppressing the memory of him, that, that he can’t come back. And so he says he scoured the pits of hell, in order to find, someone who he could send back to earth, to rekindle the memory of Freddie. And he finds the perfect person in Jason, and he comes to Jason as his mother, and I guess this is the Jason that’s like lingering around in hell or something. 

Craig:  Yeah, I guess. 

Todd:  Going through memories of kills and killing people and pretending to kill people or whatever, which was interesting, And, comes to him as his mother and says, Jason, you’ve got to go back. 

Clip:  Do you know what your gift is? No matter what they do to you, you cannot die. You can never die. You’ve just been sleeping, honey. But now, the time has come to wake up. Mame has something she wants you to do. I need you to go to Elm Street. The children have been very bad on Elm Street. Rise up, Jason.   Your work is finished. Hear Hear my voice and live again. 

Todd:  And his mother transforms, and we see that his mother is actually Freddie, who’s convinced him to do that. That was really an interesting idea, quite honestly. And I’ll have to admit it. It did work. 

Craig:  I think so too. You know, I that opening sequence, I remember being in the theater. That opening sequence was really exciting because I knew, you know, they were showing all these flashbacks from the other Nightmare films. And I it made me happy to know that they were going to acknowledge the previous films and that really was gonna be a continuation. And then when it jumps to what appears to be a very typical Friday 13th scene with, a young beautiful topless girl, you know, skinny dipping in the lake and then getting chased by Jason. It just felt very, genuine at least in terms of both franchises. And then when you get the crossover where it turns out that this is actually like Jason’s hell dream or whatever, and Freddie’s able to appear to him there, I thought it just worked pretty seamlessly. It was cool to, again, acknowledge the character of missus Voorhees because she’s really the one that started the whole thing with the Friday, franchise.   They tried to get Betsy Palmer back to, reprise her role, but, she felt that, the role, didn’t have enough substance. It well, it wasn’t big enough, for her, and so she didn’t come back. She had kinda done the same thing with, Friday 13th part 2. They had wanted her to reprise her role in that movie, but, she wasn’t satisfied with, the money that they were offering. So she never reprised her role, which is kind of unfortunate. It would have been cool to see her, in this film even in that small cameo. But, yeah, I thought that, you know, you get that all of that stuff, all of that exposition explaining how these two worlds are gonna be crossed happens in, like, the first 5 to 7 minutes, and then we’re just thrown into this new movie. And it feels, you know, while there are tons of references to and homages to both franchises throughout the whole movie.   I mean, they just abound. It it also feels like its own separate thing. You know, kind of like a sister piece or something and, I thought that was really cool. And right, you know, after that, that initial introduction, then we are thrown right into the thick of the movie where where we see Jason appear on Elm Street, and you get the mix of those two iconic scores with the Jason Jason’s and, you know, the Nightmare on Elm Street, kind of lullaby song, and and, they they put them together, and it’s just I don’t know. As a fanboy, it just made me kind of giddy. And then we get right into meeting these teenagers who we know are going to be the teenagers who are gonna have to put up, or or face off against these 2 villains. And and I was I I was in it. I was invested from the beginning. 

Todd:  Yeah. And, you know, that’s one thing I think that the director, Ronnie Yu, he I think he did what? Bride of Chucky before this, and a number of films in China. He has been a fan of this kind of film for a while, and, he seems to be the perfect guy to do it because he managed, as you said, to really give you the flavor of both movies in the movie. It’s really interesting how there is a, I guess, for lack of a better word, there’s a a Friday 13th aesthetic that gets injected into the Elm Street universe. So that Mhmm. You know, the Elm Street universe is this sort of normal neighborhood, that you can walk around in and be safe in and and more or less, but then when you fall asleep, it becomes a sort of nightmarish place. Or just in the heads of kids, it be it it turns into a nightmare, and we have this alternate universe that we see 

Clip:  a lot Mhmm. 

Todd:  In the sense of the broken down Elm Street and the kid the girls jumping rope and whatnot. But what we got here in the beginning with these, kids in the Elm Street house was definitely more of the Jason aesthetic where the outside is dangerous, where it’s dark, and where he’s stalking them from from outside. And it felt very much like, a cabin in one of the Friday 13th movies. I mean, that’s just the the sense that you got from the way that it was shot and the way that it was portrayed. And I thought that was a pretty very skillfully done, quite honestly. I guess the kids in there are Laurie, who’s the somewhat virginal needs to meet a guy gal. You have Kip, who is the girl who’s a little wilder, who’s smoking at the beginning and talking tough. 

Craig:  Gibb is played by, Catherine Isobel, who I just absolutely love. She’s one of my favorite actresses in in horror, today. 

Todd:  She did a pretty good job in this one. And Kia, the the almost the token minority in the movie, I believe, is a member of, Destiny’s Child. Right? 

Craig:  Yeah. Kelly Rowland. Uh-huh. 

Todd:  Kelly Rowland. And, honestly, I’d have to say of all of them, she she was definitely the the more amateur actor. 

Craig:  Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I I think, if I’m not mistaken, that this was her first movie. I don’t know if she had done any other acting before, but, it was kind of her first movie. And, I’ve read that since the release of the movie, she’s gotten a hard time from a lot of interviewers, and things about her appearance in this movie. But she’s always said that she had a good time making it and it was a success, so she has no regrets. But, yeah. I mean, you can tell that this is not her, her cup of tea necessarily.   And and that’s, you know, it’s fair. It’s her first movie. You know? She’s she’s an amateur, and and she holds her own. Her acting isn’t so poor that it pulled me out of the movie. 

Todd:  I think more than anything, it it just sort of exposed a little bit of the of the silliness of some of the dialogue Yeah. 

Clip:  Sure. 

Todd:  More than anything. But the 3 of them were in the house, and they’re chatting and, discussing, what they’re gonna do. Laurie’s parents Laurie, it’s Laurie’s, parents’ house, and they’re out of Todd. 

Craig:  And so And it’s the Elm Street house. It is. It’s the same, it’s, the same well, it’s actually not the same set piece because they filmed it in a foreign country, but, it’s it resembles and is meant to be the same house from the entire, Nightmare franchise that was originally Nancy’s house, in in part 1. And I liked that too. You know, just all these little I don’t know. I mean, I I feel like it’s fan service, all of these, connections to the originals, and I appreciated that. 

Todd:  Well, and it’s fan service, but it’s also fan service to the point. Like, it’s actually integral to the plot that this be the original house. Because Right. When Jason visits them, oh, there’s a guy named Trey who comes over, who’s the jerk jock guy, who’s, I guess, the cooking up with Gip. Gip and then Blake, who’s his, companion who’s a little more suave, but not quite. Right. Low key who’s trying to hook up with Laurie in in a sense, and, Blake is the fur Trey is the first victim. It’s it’s important because once, Trey is killed in the house in what is a pretty brutal scene, very 

Craig:  Yeah. 

Todd:  Very brutal. In fact, that is another way I think that, the contrast between Freddie and Jason, is most obvious. Whereas Freddie is almost like a craftsman in a way, I think. Like, he he he’s imaginative and, the ways that people die in his films, I don’t know. I guess you could say are a little more artful. 

Craig:  Yeah. Well, he’s more sadistic. Like, he takes pleasure. You know? He has fun with it. It’s it’s almost like a game to him, whereas Jason is just this lumbering killing force who, you know, I guess, initially, revenge was his motive, but now it just seems like it’s just kind of this is what he does. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And yeah, that that first kill is brutal. Of course, Gib and Trey have sex, which is, you know, the big sin for Jason, you know, it’s gonna get you every time. And, he, Trey first gets stabbed through all the way through his body and all the way through the bed. You see the machete coming up through the bottom of the bed too multiple times before Jason then just folds the bed completely in half, breaking, trace back in the process. And, yeah, it’s it’s it’s really brutal, and I like that it set the tone for that kind of brutality. I read that, New Line initially thought that it was too brutal, and, they wanted it reshot or cut. But, the writers were adamant that they thought that it would work and so they left it in. And I guess that’s like the most talked about kill, in the whole movie. 

Todd:  It is brutal and you know, it’s funny because we’ve come a long way. I know that the earlier ones in the franchise really had to do so much cutting that, that oftentimes the gore effects, which were really good, were only flashed on screen for, like, a minute or 2. And and that’s what they had to do to get an r Craig. And this movie, if held to the same standard, would would be unreleasable with the amount of gun brutality. Actually, I was thinking it has to be the most brutal of the Friday 13th movies in that sense. Don’t you think? 

Craig:  Probably. Yeah. I mean I would guess so. People get that. I mean, it’s been there have been so many of them Yeah. And it’s been so long since I’ve sat and watched all of them. I don’t remember a lot of the details, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. And that wasn’t just the case with, Friday 13th either.   Wes Craven famously butted heads with the head of the, MPAA and and the ratings board, and all all of his movies, he had to make serious cuts, and he was never happy about that. But you’re right. We clearly have come a long way because we can get away with a lot more. 

Todd:  Yeah. And so, of course, he’s killed, and what that does then for the cops who are visiting is it’s shades of Freddy, but they don’t say Freddy. There’s a new cop, kind of on the beat, and, he’s just moved into town not long ago, and he’s the one who gets there first. And, then the I’m sorry. I could say cop, but it’s the sheriffs and and his deputies. And then the sheriff comes in, and, he seems to know right away that this seems like, Freddie is back. But he won’t tell the younger cop, anything about Freddie. He won’t even say the name, but he seems pretty convinced that this is, what it is.   And so now you get that suspense, like, somebody’s remembering. How much remembering is it gonna take, before Freddie could come back into this world? So it’s an interesting conceit that you get Jason to come in and do a killing so brutal and so unusually, yeah, kids folded up into a bed. Right. And in the same house, on Elm Street as before, that it rekindles these adults’ memories and makes it almost impossible for them to suppress the memory of Freddie, which, as we find out, they’ve been actively trying to do because I guess that is what has been effective at keeping him at bay. If you don’t know who Freddy Krueger is, he can’t appear in your dreams. Right? 

Craig:  Yeah. And so what they’ve done, what the town has done is anybody, any of the town’s kids who knew anything or had been affected by Freddy, they have been taken off, to, Weston Hills, which is an is an institution. It’s it’s the same institution where Freddie was conceived and born. It’s the same institution, from Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3, the dream warriors, where the kids were there. And what they’ve done is they’ve taken all those kids there and kept them segregated from the rest of the town, and they’ve been giving them this Craig, Hypnosil, which again, we were introduced to in part Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Nancy was taking Hypnosil and and got the institution to give those kids Hypnosil because it’s a dream suppressant. And so that’s how they’ve effectively wiped Freddie’s memory from from the entire town except for some of the adults. And so when, Laurie is is outside her house and all the cops are there, one of the lower deputies does mention Freddy’s name. 

Clip:  We need to lock this down now. Keep a good day. Do you hear me? Killed in bed. Jesus. It’s even the same damn house. 1428 l. It’s gotta be him. Right? It’s gotta be Freddy Krueger.   Don’t even say that son of a bitch’s name out loud. Let’s just keep it together. You’ve been through too much. Let this thing spread now. 

Craig:  But Laurie heard it. And so she, wants to know, you know, who is this guy, what is going on, but the the cops won’t tell her even when she’s in, the police station, and they’re talking to her and, she’s saying, you know, she just wants to know what’s going on. The police have asked her all these weird names about dreams, but they won’t they’re weird things about dreams, but they won’t tell her anything. And that is when she’s sitting there trying desperately to remember what the name was that she heard, and she’s leaning on the table in the interrogation room trying to remember, trying to remember. Finally, she opens her eyes and says, Freddie. And I thought that it was such a cool conceit that just having the idea planted in her mind and knowing his name was almost enough to allow him to break through. And immediately, she is in a Nightmare on Elm Street dream sequence. Very typical of the Nightmare on Elm Street dream sequences where it’s really spooky.   She’s walking through the, the, police station. There’s a bunch of posters for missing kids on the wall as she walks by. They all follow her, and she hears this little girl crying and and she goes to her, and the girl says, it’s Freddy Krueger. He likes little kids, especially little girls. And she turns around and her eyeball eyeballs have been slashed out. And of course, Laurie is scared, and the little girl says, it’s okay to be afraid. We were all afraid. Warn your friends.   Warn everybody. So, you know, it’s it’s like Freddie wants and needs her to go out and tell her friends about all of this so his power can continue to grow. And I really thought that that was a really clever thing, and that, you know, in the the realm of reality that the movie is set in, a really smart plan. Yeah. Like, of course, she’s gonna tell her friends, and and so I I appreciated that. 

Todd:  Then we get a jump to Westin Hills where we meet Will, and Mark. Will is a kid who’s had some interactions with Laurie in the past. She referred to him earlier as, someone when she was 14 that she had kind of a little relationship with, and then he got he just left, and she didn’t really know what happened to him. Obviously, he’s been institutionalized because he saw something. We find out later, he saw what he thought was Laurie’s dad killing Laurie’s mom. And so Mhmm. Anyway, he’s in this institution along with Mark, this other kid, and Will sees on the screen behind behind the the one of the desks where he’s getting his medication, that some the news that something has happened in that Elm Street house. And that gets him all worried about Laurie because he knows that she lives there.   And so, even though they can’t remember Freddie either, he does worry about her. And so he and, and, Mark end up breaking out in what has to be the easiest easiest way possible, of this place, commandeering his van. Is is it his brother’s van or something that’s all tricked out? 

Craig:  It’s his yeah. It it’s his late brother’s van. Yeah. It’s just it’s this goofy, like, I don’t even know, you know, 19 seventies black lights in the back. It’s some big mural on the outside. It’s funny. 

Todd:  That’s right. And they go to find Laurie, and and they appear in the school to them and say, you know, be careful. But Mark seems to seems to remember more and and he he knows something is up but he doesn’t know quite what it is. He’s the more skeptical one. He’s like, look, we’ve we’ve been given all this hypnosil. There’s clearly something that they’re trying to keep from us, but we just can’t remember what it is. Is it that he starts to come back to him or that he starts having the dreams too? How does that work? 

Craig:  Well, it seems to me I I love that scene in the school because you have those 3 girls. You’ve got, Laurie, Kia, and Gib, all in school, school, and of course, you know, they’re very upset about what’s happened. Not only was was there the first murder, but we also, skipped over a scene where Freddy appeared to the other guy who had been there with, at their little gathering, Blake. And Freddy appears to him and kinda lunges at him, but doesn’t really have the power yet to to kill him, so he allows Jason to do it. And so another one of their friends has been killed over the night and that guy’s dad, both. So they’re obviously upset, and, they’re in the middle of a hall. It’s a busy hallway, and Laurie starts talking about it. 

Clip:  I mean, there was this man, but he was more like a monster really. And they kept calling him Freddy, and he was so real. What what did he look like? He had he had this dark brown hat, and his skin was terribly burned. And then on his right hand, he had, like, these razor fingers. You must be trippy. Oh, you know, a woman, and then there’s these little girls. And then they’re singing. They’re singing. 

Craig:  What I loved about this scene is that they’re standing right in the middle of the hall. It’s the everything’s bustling around them. But as she’s telling the story, people are slowing down and stopping to the point where eventually when she’s about done with her story, everybody is just kind of standing around listening. And again, I thought, oh gosh, Freddie’s plan is so working. You know, this whole high hallway of high school kids is hearing this lore and, you know, that’s making them susceptible. It’s it’s a a raw subject for Mark because his brother, I believe, was a victim of Freddie. And so he kind of has that history, and he knows a little bit more about it than the other kids do. And so he’s kind of able to fill in, some of the gaps there.   But yeah, his, his older brother, I I it it seemed to me had been it it had been blamed on suicide. And maybe he killed himself because he was being tormented by Freddie, I don’t know. But, Freddie definitely had something to do with it. So, Mark is kind of familiar because of that. 

Todd:  Okay. That’s it. Very good. So yeah. So so then there’s a scene in the school, and they take off again. 

Craig:  Bob Shea makes a little cameo as the principal there. Yeah. You can miss it, but he’s there. 

Todd:  For, like, 3 seconds. I thought that was funny. I thought maybe we’d see more of the principal. Maybe they shot a seed and it didn’t work and they cut it, but he just pops in, looks at everything, and then boom, we cut away to the next shot. 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. 

Todd:  But anyway, so what happens then is that Will and Mark are going on their own, little adventure to go do research, and they even go to the library at one point and find that newspaper articles are blacked out. That’s how effective the town has been at keeping this a secret. Of course, blocking out blacking out the newspaper articles only makes things more suspicious, but Right. That’s what they find at the library. They’re kinda putting 2 and 2 together, that something is up. 

Craig:  There’s a big there’s a big, rave that night in in the cornfield, and, the girls decide that they’re gonna go just to kind of get their minds off of what’s going on. And they do and it’s this huge party, and everybody’s drinking and dancing. And, Gib is particularly upset because it was I don’t even know if it’d be fair to call that guy who got killed in the bed her boyfriend. I think they were just messing around. But she’s really upset, and she gets really drunk and wanders off, into the corn by herself, where her dead lover, Trey, appears to her broken and and, you know, looking very dead and says something like, you know, I’ve only been dead a day and hear you out at are out at a kegger getting plowed or something like that. And he says, come on. And he leads her through the cornfield to what looked like, I don’t know, a silo or a grain mill, something like that. But once you get inside, very, very, very reminiscent of Freddie’s boiler room.   And that’s where Freddie appears to her in his classic way, you know, first in silhouette, showing the knives, and he plays, a cat and mouse game with her in this boiler room that’s, you know, virtually identical to scenes that we’ve seen in his previous movies. 

Todd:  Yeah. I mean, the the almost shot for shot, you could reference, oh, that’s a shot from this movie. That’s a shot from this movie. Right. But it it’s good. I mean, it’s kinda nice because it’s the Freddy that we that we know and love. It’s the see it’s the setting that we know and love. And I think it’s very appropriate that the first, well, attempted kill anyway, if you don’t count what happened in the street earlier, which was kind of a quicker blip, by Freddie is in this very iconic boiler room Freddie type setting.   And of course, she’s asleep, so she is laying down in the cornfield, sleeping, and we see her body there and another kid guy come over. And it looks like he’s going to take advantage of her, while she’s sleeping, which is really super creepy. 

Craig:  It was. 

Todd:  I mean, and and even more now so, it’s such a problem. I mean, it’s always been kind of an issue, but this is a kind of issue that’s been brought to the forefront, I think, most recently. So it’s funny because you can tell that this is a 2003 film because there’s a rave scene. Uh-huh. But but in the same sense, it’s remarkably current, I guess. I I don’t know. That’s kinda weird to say about about, kind of a rape scene. But to have a girl who is, incapacitated at a party, being taken advantage of by another guy is almost a modern twist on it’s just a Todd element that just kind of got accidentally thrown in there, you know, into a movie that’s 13 years old. 

Craig:  But Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it’s it’s just something that’s very fresh in our mind because it’s such kind of a hot button issue right now. And I think because we have been so exposed to these types of incidents and, you know, so many people are are standing up and saying this isn’t okay. I think it’s just, really fresh in our mem in our minds because I don’t remember it being so troubling to me, the first time I saw it. But this time I saw it, you know, it felt very real, and scarily so. So, yeah, it was it was it was an it was a hard to watch scene.   And, you know, it’s like maybe 5 seconds, and and there’s nothing graphic going on there, but you see what the intent is, and that’s very uncomfortable. 

Todd:  It is. Yet it provides this really interesting crossover element too. Right? So you have this girl who’s asleep, so she’s in Freddie’s world. She’s susceptible to Freddie, but she’s also having sex. I mean, she isn’t having sex, but there’s a sexual activity happening Right. Which makes her a target for Jason, you know, and that’s exactly what happens. He bursts forward and, kills, basically stabs through both of them, and just as Freddy is about to kill her in the dream. And it’s a really neat shot scene where here she is, cornered inside this locker essentially And Freddie is Mhmm.   Coming in and about to get her when suddenly her chest just bursts forth in blood and there’s blood behind her and she almost folds into herself. And Freddy’s like, what? She was mine. 

Craig:  And Right. 

Todd:  Jason stole his, his first kill away from him and then goes on a bloody rampage through the whole party, like insane bloody rampage, just comes out of the cornfields. He’s on fire. He’s just hacking and slashing people right and left. And I have to admit, I mean, that was a pretty cool scene. 

Craig:  I love that scene. It’s so over the Todd, and I would think that I would read that on paper and say, that’ll never work. It’s it’s way too over the top. It’s so goofy, but it does work. I mean, he he comes out, you know, somebody throws alcohol on him and that’s how he ends up, on fire. But he comes out and he’s this guy that plays Jason in this movie, Ken Kirzinger, I think is like 656 6. I mean, he’s this and he’s huge. He’s a huge guy.   And to see him, you know, fully ablaze coming out of this cornfield, wielding the machete, which is also on on fire, and, he just starts hacking away at these partygoers. And the body count is just crazy. Like, it’s not like he just gets 1 or 2 kids. I mean, like, he’s just, like, plowing through them. And I was trying to keep track up until this point, and I think that by the time this party is over from the beginning of the movie, not even including the first kill, because the first kill was technically a dream, by the end of this party, Jason has already killed 13 people. And aside from the flashbacks, Freddy hasn’t killed anybody. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And and, you know, that I was really kinda surprised. I’m jumping ahead that I’m gonna get, in in the whole movie, the whole body count for the whole movie is, I think, 24. Freddy only kills one of those people. Every other person in the movie is killed by Jason, and I thought that was really I I was surprised by it. I thought that there would be more equal carnage on both sides, but there’s not. Freddy only kills 1 person in the whole movie. 

Todd:  Well, you know what though? It’s it’s really in keeping with, again, their aesthetic. You know, Jason is the hack and slash guy who, a victim is just a a Todd to him, whereas Freddy is definitely more cold and calculating. And if you look at those 2 films, the film series, the Freddy takes his time and is more creative, and there are a lot more effects involved in shooting that kind of movie. So for for both creative and practical reasons, Freddy doesn’t usually have as many victims, overall as Jason does. And so, again, they really kept that balance. It seems unbalanced, but in reality, it’s kinda balanced. And then, of course, you add on top of it the fact that the point is that Jason is killing all these people before Freddie can get to them. And that’s another reason for it, obviously.   And it becomes the perfect catalyst for Freddie to go against Jason to have their Right. Final battle at the end. And I thought that was actually pretty good. That was a pretty organic and natural way because that was my big question going into this movie is, all right, you’ve got these 2 guys, but they’re almost on the same team. Why would they be going against each other at any point? And so that becomes the reason then that Freddie gets frustrated with Jason. He’s unleashed the monster he can’t retract. He’s killing all the kids on Elm Street before he can have a chance to get to them. 

Craig:  Yeah. I thought that was really clever Todd. And and, it does then provide motive for, Jason to wanna take out his adversary because he’s competition now, basically. You know, the the party, of course, breaks up. Everybody screams and runs. The the girls, the remaining girls, Lori and Kia, they jump into Will’s van, and then they’re also joined by this new character who just pops in. I had never noticed this before, but, like, this character just comes in out of nowhere, and it’s almost like we’re just supposed to think he’s been there the whole time, this guy named Bill. He’s kinda the the scouter guy.   Is that his name Bill? Yeah? Yeah. He’s like the 

Todd:  the j of j and silent Bob. 

Craig:  Right. Right. And and then they’ve also got paired up with this nerdy kid, Linderman, who has a crush on Laurie, and he and Kia have kind of a adversarial kind of relationship. But at this point, I in my mind and in my notes, I kept referring to them as the scuba gang because they were just this ragtag group of kids who were running around together trying to figure out the mystery, fighting off the bad guys. Will takes Lori home, and Lori has a confrontation with her dad about what’s really going on, and her dad is evasive and won’t tell her and tells her, you know, just don’t worry about it. I’ll explain everything later. And and, Lori Will has told Lori that he believes that her dad killed her mom, and Lori confronts him about that, and he denies it and says, you know, you don’t understand. But anyway, Laurie is upset and runs away and and hooks back up with Will, and they decide that they’re gonna have to go find Mark because Mark is the one who knows about Freddie, and he can he can help.   Mark is back at his house by himself, and he’s thinking about his brother. And as we come to find out that he’s sleeping, he’s dreaming, and so his brother, appears to him, and and in like a a pool of not a pool, a bathtub, of blood. And this is so random, but the the brother who’s only in it for a few minutes is played by Zack Ward, who is, Scott Farkas, the villain in a Christmas story. And I always think it’s funny when he pops up in things because I always remember him from that movie. 

Todd:  He’s that iconic redhead. Like, it’s hard to even even though he’s much older now, he he looks the same. Yeah. And he looks a little weird. 

Clip:  Yeah. Record. 

Craig:  So and and Mark becomes Freddy’s first and only kill. Mark or Freddie says to Mark, I need you to send a message for me. And Mark says, well, I’m not going to. I’m not gonna do that. He says, well, I guess I’ll have to do it myself. And so he sets him on fire. And and meanwhile, Will and Lori have arrived, and they’re looking in the window, but they can’t get in. So they see all this happening.   His back, is set on fire, and and they see slash marks going across his face. And eventually, he’s, thrown against a wall and and is dead. But they can see that on his back, the words Freddie’s back, have been burned into his back, which was kind of a a a funny little joke, but but adequately frightening, as well. And that’s when they all the remaining kids all hook up at somebody’s house and they start talking about what they’re gonna do. And, Stubbs, the new cop in town, I, just shows up randomly and is going to help them. They’re all everybody’s sitting around a table except Laurie. Laurie’s sitting on the couch, off a little ways. And she they’re talking.   They’re saying, what are we gonna do? Will figures out Freddy’s plan that Jason was supposed to come back and and get them all scared so that Freddy can come back. And Laurie says, Freddy died by fire, Jason by water. How can we use that? And the people around the table start saying, well, maybe maybe Freddie would accept a sacrifice. Who can we sacrifice? Oh, we’ll have to sacrifice a virgin. And they all turn to Lori, And they’re talking about her and and and teasing her in a very crass and uncharacteristic way, and they get up and they’re gonna tie her up, and then her father pops into the picture out of nowhere and says, don’t worry. Daddy’s here. And he he, like, tries to start making out with her. Of course, she freaks out.   And then it’s revealed that it’s Freddie. This is a dream. And, she, as Freddie is trying to kiss her, she grabs hold of his ear. And meanwhile, her friends see that she’s asleep and dreaming and struggling. They wake her up, and she pulls the ear out of the dream. So we get that, you know, that’s something that has happened in most of the Nightmare movies, but they had to establish that it could happen here so that they could incorporate that into their plan, how to get rid of him. 

Todd:  And at least they had that scene because Todd be quite frank, most of the rest of that scene, I think, is a little silly. I think one of the weaknesses of this movie, is that the all of the characters put 2 and 2 together way too easily and almost wait too suddenly. There’s a scene earlier in the van, after Mark and Will have been to the library, where they’re trying to piece together why the memory of Freddie has been why this memory has been suppressed. 

Clip:  How come we were never allowed to call any of our friends, man? How come none of our friends ever called us? We were in a quarantine, man. That’s what Westin Hills was for. Well, even if all you’re saying is true, then why didn’t Freddie kill Laurie? Maybe he’s not strong enough yet. My brother said it’s our fear that gives him his power. Yeah. Well, you sure as hell spread enough fear today at school. You’re right. They want us to forget Freddie so they wouldn’t fear him that What if I screwed up the town’s plan? 

Todd:  Which Right. Which is just such a silly line. So silly and ridiculous. And you get the same thing, I think, here where they’re piecing 2 and 2 together. Oh, Freddy sent Jason here in order to rekindle. I mean, there’s so much they would have to know and so many leaps of logic in the fantasy world that they would have to do to be able to suddenly come up with that conclusion and and have it be correct. It just it’s just kinda dumb. But it it 

Craig:  it does the plot hole, 

Clip:  I guess. 

Craig:  It does. Well, and I think that that’s why they had to do it that way. The initial cut of the movie was 2 and a half hours long, and and that frankly is just too long for this kind of movie. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  So they so they brought people in to to cut it Todd, and I imagine that, we lost some exposition and some more, you know, some investigating. So it seems like they’re drawing fast conclusions. But to be fair, the movie does move at a quick pace. It it never slows down really. There it doesn’t lag anywhere except maybe at this table scene, which is is brief. But it it keeps boom, boom, boom. Things are moving. They’re always on the go.   So, yeah, I think it was an economy thing. You know, they had to keep the the plot moving forward. But, yeah, some some goofy dialogue, in in order to do that. 

Todd:  You had mentioned Laurie’s dad earlier, and that’s another thing I thought they did a great job. Again, I’m incorporating some of that aesthetic in here where the adults and the parents are the problem. That is one of Wes Craven’s hallmarks, really, of most of his movies, are that, parents are evil parents are the threat to the children, and you get that in this movie Todd. Even though they’re doing their best to protect the kids by suppressing these memories, they can’t help but be a threat to them at the end of the day because when Right. When he does come back, he’s gonna come back from with full force. And it’s just that parental thing, you know, by telling somebody something’s forbidden, then that person just wants it more. And so you get this inevitability, the sense that this, this whole community is completely doomed. There’s no way they can suppress this from the kids enough that the kids aren’t eventually going to want to find out about it.   And when they do find out about it, it’s only after the fact that they were going to realize that was a mistake. But then, Laurie’s dad is just really mean about it. I mean, when she confronts him earlier in the house, he doesn’t seem like the caring, loving kind of father here. Of course, he’s being accused of murder, which we find out later wasn’t the case at all. He’s not comforting, in trying to set the record straight with 

Clip:  her. Laurie, mister Deming, you’re upset. We We both are. No. I think what you need now more than anything is to get some rest. Why don’t I give you some pills? That’ll help you sleep, and then we’ll talk about it in the morning. I don’t wanna sleep, dad. I wanna know why you’ve been lying to me.   We’ll talk about it in the morning. Now do what I say. Laurie. Laurie. Laurie. Open the door. Open the door. Oh, wow. 

Craig:  And really, it’s bad because 

Todd:  he’s in he’s he’s kinda between a rock and a hard place. He can’t set the record straight with her because if he tells her the truth, then she’s in even more danger. So, it’s it’s just it’s it’s a really odd and kind of cool bit of complexity that we’re discussing here about this movie or how they made it work. And so as you say, I guess I’m willing to forgive, some leaps in logic in order to move the plot along because some the script is pretty good otherwise, I think. 

Craig:  Mhmm. Mhmm. I think so too. Well, the kids, now that they know what’s going on, they realize that they they’re not safe anywhere. They can’t sleep because they might dream, and there’s the physical threat in their waking life Todd. So they’re not sure what they’re gonna do, but they realize sleep isn’t the problem, dreaming is the problem. And, Will knows about the Hypnosil, so they go to Westin Hills to get some Hypnosil to take. And there’s this interesting scene, in the in the hospital where they’re looking for the hypnosil.   The stoner guy, Bill, goes off on his own to smoke a joint, and when he does, Freddy appears to him in the form of a caterpillar, like a demented version of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland Yeah. And and and smokes a bowl with him, which is kinda funny. But then, and the other kids find this whole room lined with beds with, teenagers in comas because they’ve overdosed on hypnocil because the hypnocil wasn’t working on them. And Lori realizes that her dad is in charge of all this and so she’s disgusted by that. The caterpillar and and meanwhile, Jason shows up, breaks down the big metal doors, gets in, Todd, you know, kills the guard. They know he’s there, And, the caterpillar, the when he’s stoned, Bill goes into the room with all the coma kids. And because he’s, I guess, in a stoned daze or he’s dreaming, and I don’t know, they tell him we can’t hear it because they’re whispering, but, they tell him to get the hypnocil and dump it all down the the sink. And he says, I can’t do that.   We need this. But then something drips down on his face, and he looks up, and the Freddy caterpillar is which you don’t see a lot in the Nightmare movies, but in Nightmare 2, which they did acknowledge in that opening sequence, there’s kind of a Freddy possessing, the main character component. So it’s not totally out of canon. So the the other kids are running from Jason. They run-in, they run into Bill in the hallway who’s just standing there, and they’re trying to get him to come with them, but he says in Freddie’s voice, let me take care of this bitch. And they see once they’re behind him that he’s got these 2 enormous syringes of, tranquilizer. And so he just allows Jason to approach him, and as Jason gets up close to him, he takes the 2 syringes and plunges them into his neck and and plunges the tranq in. And it works, but not before, Jason hacks him in half with his machete.   But right after he does that, Jason falls over. He’s out out cold. And that’s when the kids come up with their plan for how they’re gonna how they’re gonna fight Freddie with Jason. 

Todd:  Yeah. They’re gonna basically pit the 2 together. Laurie puts 22 together that obviously these these 2 are not friendly with each other. And so what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna they’re gonna get Jason back to his location at Crystal Lake to give him, I guess, the home court advantage. And Crystal Lake, thankfully, is just down the road. So there we Right. Solved that question. 

Craig:  Who knew who knew that these two things happened within 30 miles of one another all along? 

Todd:  Right. And then she becomes the bait in in in a sense. She goes they go into the dream and she’s going Todd, again, this is from the first movie, she’s going to pull Freddie into this world, where she’s vulnerable, but with Jason there as he’s waking up from the tranquilizers, and they’re gonna duke it out in the real world. Jason obviously seems to be the superior one, in this world. And so it makes a lot of sense that it’s actually a pretty good plan. Always the problem with these these plans as we’ve seen in the other movies is, can they wake the person up out of the dream in time, at the right time, at all? And so that becomes a bit of an issue as well as they’re going through it. 

Craig:  Well, what you mentioned about, you know, Jason having the advantage in his world and Freddie having the advantage in his world, I really like the way that they played that up. Because while Jason’s out, he’s susceptible to Freddy because he’s unconscious. So Freddy can enter into his subconscious, and there’s this really cool scene where they have a fight in the dream world. And in the dream world, Freddy totally has the upper hand. I mean, it’s his world, his rules. He can virtually do anything that he wants. And so he’s throwing Jason around, like Jason’s like a pinball on a pinball machine. You even get the pinball sound effects.   He uses Jason’s own machete against him and impales him with the machete, drops some big piece of boiler room equipment on him, and eventually he says, why won’t you die? Because no matter what he does, he won’t die. But he also gets a glimpse just randomly. There’s a place where water is falling, and, and Freddy’s on one side of the sheet of water and Jason’s on the other and Jason’s approaching, but right as he gets to the water, he stops. And Freddy says, oh, you are afraid of something. And so then Freddy makes it rain in the whole place, and it really reduces Jason to that deformed child, and he physically reverts in the dream world to that, deformed child who had drowned. And j and Freddy, takes his, one of his knife fingers and kind of puts it into Jason’s skull. And we really get to see the interior of Jason’s mind and it flashes us back to the camp, Camp Crystal Lake, when Jason was a kid. And all of the kids are bullying him.   1 of them throws a burlap sack over his head, which is a total throwback to, Friday 13 part 2 because that was what he wore before the hockey mask. Laurie eventually, they give her tranquilizer too so she can go into it and because this is where Freddie is, I guess, she enters into this world too and she witnesses all these things going on. She witnesses the torment, She witnesses the kids pushing Jason into the lake and then leaving him there as she struggles or as he struggles. She runs up to the camp counselors who are literally screwing on the on the on the porch of the camp. And she’s like, aren’t you gonna do anything? And the camp counselor turns around, and it’s Freddy. And so, Laurie runs to try to to rescue this drowning Jason as a child, and she tries to pull him out, but Freddy pulls him back down. And this is when the there’s kind of a funny scene in the car where because Freddie now has in the dream world, Freddie has Jason underwater. In the physical world, he’s beginning to drown.   So he’s unconscious, but he’s coughing up water. And they realize that somebody has to give him CPR and that that falls to, Kia. And of course, you know, she doesn’t wanna do it. It’s kinda comical, her reluctance. But right before she’s able to do it, the he wakes up. Jason bolts up and that frightens everybody and they crash the van. Jason gets thrown out of the van. Everybody else is okay, but Laurie is still unconscious and, they luckily crashed right next to the Camp Crystal Lake sign.   So they are going to head into Crystal Lake, but they can’t wake Laurie up. She and this is one of the coolest scenes I thought from the movie. As soon as Jason disappears, Freddy’s underwater holding Jason down there, Laurie’s up on the dock, as soon as Jason disappears, Freddy looks up and he just says, You. And he leaps out of the water in this beautiful slow mo shot where the water is trailing in this arc behind him, and it’s the the whole scene has gone completely red, and he he confronts her there on the dock. And then they struggle. They end up back at her house, where he, he shows her what actually happened to her mom. It had actually been Freddy who had killed her mom. The dad was trying to save the mom, but it appeared from Will’s perspective that the dad was the one who was actually stabbing her.   But now she knows her dad didn’t actually kill her mom, but she’s she’s and Freddy is tormenting her. He’s hurting her. He’s cutting her. He’s molesting her. And, but there’s nothing that she can do because they can’t get her woken up. I don’t know if it’s because there was too much tranquilizer or if it was because of the Craig, but they take her body, her physical body into a cabin. They’re trying to wake her up, and that’s when Jason shows up. He breaks into the cabin, sets the, not intentionally, but knocks over some gasoline, sets the cabin on fire.   So the fire is burning all around. At some point, Laurie’s arm falls into the fire. And just like burning woke Nancy up in nightmare 1, this wakes her up, and she’s holding on to Freddie at the time. So Freddie gets pulled into the real world, and that’s where the final battle begins. 

Todd:  Yeah. And I think this is a lot more interesting to watch than the earlier confrontation between Freddy and Jason Because and that’s the problem I have with a lot of these kind of movies, like the superhero against superhero, is is you know that they’re they’re both immortal in a sense. They’re nobody’s gonna win. Nobody’s gonna die. So when you’re in the dream world and Freddy is fighting Jason, it just, I don’t know. I kinda tuned out a little bit even though it was it was it was an interesting to watch scene. I I was ready for it to be over. This, however, I was very curious to see how it was gonna turn out, because here they are both in the real world, where, again, Jason does have the the the real advantage.   And you’re thinking, man, they’re not gonna kill Freddie off in this in this one, are they? You know, there’s there’s some real tension. Plus you have that fire and water, so we know that both of their they’re not just a danger to each other, but they each have that that weakness. And it’s kinda cool actually how that ended up, you know. It it poetically makes it work for this movie, almost like it was meant to be even though the franchises were developed completely separately. Right. Yeah. And so here they are. They’re on the dock and the lake and they’re fighting and things and you’re thinking, oh, what what how’s Jason gonna get in the water? How’s Freddie gonna get burned? And I thought that it was pretty interesting.   It was a nice, battle sequence, I guess. Even though at the end of the day, you know they’re not gonna totally kill these characters off, you still wanna see how they’re gonna get offed in this movie, because that’s always an element of these movies anyway. How are you gonna neutralize the threat? How are you gonna put the characters to rest for a little bit, longer? 

Craig:  Well and I really like this scene because it could have been over super quickly. You know, they they could have battled it out really fast, but it it it doesn’t. It goes on for a while, and it’s all interesting. And, you know, they fight in the cabin in the fire for a while, and that’s an interesting set piece. Then they get out, into like this construction area, where, Freddy uses all this and I think that’s a good point. And so, I think that’s a good point. And so, I think that’s a 

Clip:  good point. And so, I think that’s a good point. 

Craig:  And so, I think that’s a Todd point. In this world. And then, yeah, like you said, you know, they they go back and forth and back and forth. Kia gets killed in there somewhere. The the young guy, the nerdy guy dies. So Will and Lori are really the only ones who are left, and they’re witnessing all this. And Will is trying to get them in a boat and get them out of there. 

Clip:  No. We can’t help her anymore. No. I’m staying. Are you all there? You’re Craig. You got what you wanted. You pull Freddy out. Now he’s fighting Jason.   Come on. What would he want? He killed my mother, Will. It was Freddy. My dad covered enough to protect me. He didn’t do it. Look. He has taken everything from us. He has ruined both of our past, and I am not leaving until I see him die. 

Craig:  When Freddy and Jason are fighting on the dock, Lori and Will get, I guess it’s, fuel, boat fuel, and and they spray the whole dock with it, and eventually, set it on fire. So again, you know, the the the fire is on the dock, but they’re right on the water Todd. So it’s both those elements. And it’s a good fight. You know? It’s it’s violent. They’re using each other’s weapons against them. They’re really imposing serious physical damage on one another. Freddy gets his arm ripped off.   Freddy’s able to plunge Jason’s machete deep into his torso. Eventually, the gas tanks explode, and they’re both thrown out into the water. And Will and, Lori think that’s it. They think they’ve won. But then here comes somebody walking towards them on the dock, somebody lumbering in big heavy shoes holding a machete. So you think it’s gonna be Jason, but it’s not. It’s Freddy. And he very menacingly looks at them and raises the machete, and then burst through his chest comes his own glove.   And he looks down and realizes it seems that this is, a mortal wound, or at least that he’s severely compromised. Jason falls back into the water, and we presume that he’s done for. Laurie, Jason or excuse me, Freddie drops the machete. Laurie stands up 

Clip:  Welcome to my world, bitch. 

Craig:  And cuts his head off. And, that’s that’s that’s pretty much where the movie in itself ends. It appears that they have both been defeated. And and I liked it because it felt poetic that they offed each other, and they offed each other with the other’s instrument of death. And I liked that. I liked that kind of a sense of it kind of being a tie, there at the end. But then you get this end cap where we see this mist on the lake. It’s the next day, obviously.   And you see j Jason emerge walking out of the lake, emerging from the lake. You can see that he’s walking towards his cabin that we had visited earlier in the movie, and he’s holding Freddie’s head. And Freddy looks totally dead until it pans down to him and he gives a little wink at the camera, and that’s the end. What did you I’m really interested to see what you thought of that ending. 

Todd:  I figured there’d be something like that at the end. You, you’ve got to, appeal to both, I guess both franchises in a way, that, if, if Jason’s gonna still be alive, Freddy’s gotta still be alive too. And so I really nowadays, I don’t expect these characters to actually be killed off, And, I knew that there would be something at the end of the movie that would give a hint or a nod to leave it open for a sequel, either a sequel to Freddy versus Jason or a sequel in either franchise. And so I wasn’t surprised at that at all. I thought actually it was kind of a clever way of ending it, to be honest. And I guess that’s something that, was it Sean Cunningham, the the, producer who directed the original, Friday 13th movie, kinda came up with it that finally appeased everybody. Because I think there was some contention as to how this was going to end and who is gonna beat who, and that seemed to be the one that everybody was happy with, at the studios. Is that right? 

Craig:  Yeah. It is. And and and they they actually planned multiple different endings. In one ending, an ending they actually shot, this was the ending that they were planning on using. After the big battle, we cut to a scene between Will and Laurie where they are safe and comfortable, and they’re in bed, and they’re fooling around. And it appears that they’re going to have sex for the first time. But right before they do, Will grabs her by the throat and starts strangling her, reaches up his other hand and it’s the Freddy glove. And audiences hated it.   They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand. Was this a dream? Is Will now like some sort of like son of Freddy? Nobody got it. And frankly, I don’t get it either. And so they they scrapped that. There are some really interesting ones. There was one in the final battle where they were battling on, the, the dock. The lake was going to start swirling as though there were a drain that had been plugged at the bottom, and the lake was gonna totally drain to this hole in the bottom that was glowing red.   And they were going to get, Freddy and Jason were gonna get sucked down in there where, they would continue fighting until a bunch of hooked chains shot out and and and stopped them both, and then you would Pinhead would arrive and say, well, what seems to be the problem? 

Clip:  Got it. That would 

Craig:  that would have actually made me really happy. But they there was a rights thing. They couldn’t really get it. Plus the the they, I guess the director thought that Pen Head was a little cheap, compared to the other 2. There was another similar one where they ended up down in hell and Satan watched them battling out in this big gladiator pit, and it was supposed to be implied that the battle would go on forever. Lots of stuff like that. But eventually, they went with the ending that they had. And I remember coming out of the movie thinking that it was kinda cheap, that it was kind of a cop out.   Watching it again now, I don’t really feel that way so much. I thought that it was, you know, I guess I didn’t really want either of them to ultimately lose. Like you said, you know, you don’t want them to really be dead. You want there to be the the chance that they could come back. And so, you know, I think that it was like the whole movie. It’s not perfect, but it’s I can’t I can’t think of a better way that they could have gone with it. And so I think that overall, it was a success, especially if you read some of the ideas that were thrown around in development. There was some really far out stuff going on out there about how to get these 2 icons together.   And some of it was really, really out there, and I think would have been really silly. I think that overall, this this worked really well. 

Todd:  Yeah. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the movie and, how less critical of it I I ended up being than I thought I would be. Again, the the dialogue is really is really quite silly. And again, that’s just for economy. And to be fair, the dialogue in most of these movies is really silly. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  So it’s not out of character for those films anyway, to make giant leaps of logic and and whatnot. Some some of the movies are better than others. Another thing that, is maybe a knock on this movie but really couldn’t be helped is that Freddy is really best, I think, in shadow. Freddy is really best as the villain who’s lurking behind, who comes out at these moments and and shocks and surprises. And some of the more scary Nightmare on Elm Street movies are the ones where you see less of him, or or when you do see him, you don’t see much of him. And then in this in this film, I felt like you saw an awful lot of him for a really long time, so much so you know, almost as much in some scenes as you see the other human characters. So you get really good looks at his face, really good looks at him, and and after a while, he seems to be a character instead of a supernatural threat. And again, that really can’t be helped because of the kind of movie that you’re doing, but it didn’t really play to his strengths, I think, overall as much as the film played to Jason’s strengths of the sheer brutality of him walking around and killing in the real world. 

Craig:  I agree with you, and I I also thought that it was interesting that they really kinda took liberty with Freddy’s look. His look kind of altered throughout the course of the movie. There are some times when it would be the very traditional look. There are other times, like in some dream sequences, that that scene that I talked about him coming out of the water where his face looks almost demonic, like, almost like a different character. And it didn’t bother me because the effects were cool and I liked it, but I thought it was interesting they took those liberties. It’s interesting that you say that this ends up really kind of being more of a Jason movie, because Robert Shea really pushed for more Freddy stuff here. And I guess they ended up cutting out quite a lot of the Jason stuff. I mean, they eliminated entire characters.   Like, Tommy Jarvis from some of the earlier movies was supposed to be a central character. All that stuff got cut. But I I definitely agree with you that it the balance, it does seem more like Jason gets more to do in this movie than Freddy does. And that’s interesting that the movie comes from New Line. That’s that’s Freddy’s house. But I I actually thought the balance was good. I ended up liking it overall. I thought that it was well shot.   I think as far as all of the entries in either of these franchises, this stands out as one of the strongest entries. Maybe not the strongest. I still I like New Nightmare better in the Nightmare series. But I thought that it, you know, it was well shot. It was well directed. It was it was interesting to look at. I thought overall, it was well 

Todd:  done. Yeah. I have to agree with you. I think, especially in the Friday 13th franchise, which you don’t I’m just more critical of anyway. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  This is a standout. Maybe, maybe the best in that series in my opinion. Maybe. Yeah. But yeah, I, I’m like you and I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. You know, after being disappointed by Alien versus Predator, I’m just wary of these ideas where these high concept movies where you’re gonna, like, take these 2 these 2 really frightening characters and turn them into superheroes and pit them against each other in in the way that you would in a comic book. But this movie actually worked, and so for what it was, I was really pretty happy with it. It would be interesting, to see a a sequel.   Yeah. 

Craig:  I don’t think we’ll get a sequel. I think Robert England’s done. At least if we, if we get a sequel, it won’t be with Robert England. And I really don’t even consider a Nightmare on Elm Street movie without Robert Englund a Nightmare on Elm Street movie. Yeah. He is he is that franchise. So I don’t know. You know, they they they thought about a sequel.   They thought about throwing ash from the evil dead into the mix. They actually, that went into comic book form instead. I’ve never, taken a look at it. But, I I doubt we’ll be getting a sequel. And I think that’s okay. I think that it works well as a standalone piece in both of the franchises. And it’s just kind of a little curiosity, a little oddity, something a little bit different and, it was fun to watch again. Thank you very much for listening to this episode, our 50th episode.   Thank you especially to those of you who’ve been with us for the long haul. I know there are some of you out there who are listening every weekend, you know, interacting with us. 

Todd:  Yes. A big shout out to Santosh, Kartik, Manuel, and Andy. 

Craig:  A lot of you all, have been really good to us, and we appreciate it. I’ve been having a lot of fun. I I think Todd has too. Am I right? 

Todd:  Oh, absolutely. 

Craig:  Thank you all for listening to us. If you like this podcast, you can find us on, Stitcher. We’re on Itunes, Facebook, Google Plus every once in a while. We’re out there. And if you do like it, please please share it with your friends. We love to hear from you guys, so, feel free to comment, make suggestions. And, until next time, I’m Craig And I’m Todd. With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.