Talk about a clash of the titans. In one corner is Freddy Krueger, the razor-taloned wise guy famous for killing teens in their nightmares and making No-Doz the most abused drug on Elm Street (7 films, 30 victims). His opponent, Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees, was the hockey-masked butcher at a summer camp before taking his machete-wielding show on the road (10 films, 127 victims). Now these slumber party horror icons are back in Freddy vs. Jason, a ludicrous, morally bankrupt slasher flick raised to “event” status. As these homicidal maniacs collide, teens get the worst of both worlds.
After meeting in hell, a scheming Freddy invades Jason’s dreams and dupes him into hewing his way through a new crop of Elm Street teens, thus releasing ol’ knife-fingers from eternal bondage. But Jason won’t quit, and Freddy wants to reclaim his turf. Then Jason goes after Freddy, enraged at being tricked. Buckets of blood and sexualized carnage later, both monsters are “killed,” then resurrected for a possible rematch.
The violence is brutal, gory and incessant. “The only marching orders we got from the studio was that the movie should be violent as h—,” says scriptwriter Damian Shannon. People get cut in two, impaled, electrocuted, burned to a crisp, dismembered or decapitated. Also, viewers are violated by gratuitous nudity, explicit sex and sick humor—once involving a graphic display of necrophilia. This is diseased stuff. Need I even mention the alcohol, marijuana and obscenities? Do films like Freddy vs. Jason desensitize fans to real-life violence and suffering? Consider this: A casual on-screen reference to Columbine elicited laughter from an enthusiastic crowd in, of all places, Denver, Colo. Now that’s scary.
