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Just for the record, folks, I thought of that title all by myself. Damn, I'm pleased with it. Cause, see, it's like a description of the content of FREDDY VS. JASON, cause they're both frightening, and they clash; but at the same time, it's a riff on the name of a popular crappy movie. And "Titans" rhymes with "Frightens". Also "Whitens" and "Slightens". But neither of those is appropriate to the situation. And I'm not even sure that "slightens" is a word.

Ladies and gentlemen, the paragraph you've just read was not actually the preamble to this review, but an experiment. I bet myself a dollar I could, in a single paragraph, flex more creativity than in the entire hour and forty minutes of FREDDY VS. JASON. So, the good news is, I won a dollar. The bad news is, I also lost a dollar.

Seriously, kids, is this really the kind of movie anyone really imagines themselves leaving saying "Eh ... I'd expected more"? I know that seems like a rhetorical question, but it's not. The answer is no.

Rumors of this Battle of the Network Horror Franchises have been bouncing around the net-geek community for so long, the movie itself is practically a bigger urban legend than its protagonists/antagonists (they never really tell you which is which).

So, here's the score - Freddy (Robert Englund) is in the afterlife, bitching about his fade into obscurity from the hearts and minds of the teens he once terrorized in Springwood. Apparently, they no longer fear him, so he can't terrorize them in their dreams. But, he figures, if he sends someone into the field to do some dirty work - namely, scaring the shit out of teenagers - he can get his groove back.

So, he finds the perfect errand boy - Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger), last seen being sent to Hell (or so says this flick; to the best of my recollection, last time I saw Jason, it was in some piece of shit on a space station) - and dispatches him to ... dispatch the youth of Springwood.

And dispatch he does. Apparently, Jason still hasn't lost his knack for killing post-coital teens. It's like Spanish Fly in reverse to him, I guess. He lights on the kids in Freddy's old Elm St. crash-pad, in the middle of one of their crazy teenaged beer-and-sex-and-cigarette parties, and guts a kid before bending him in half the wrong way. It's pretty cool, actually. Plus, there's boobies a-plenty in the first twenty minutes of the movie, so really, who can complain?

Again, not rhetorical. The answer is "no one".

So, the kids - Lori (Monica Keena and her spectacular breasts), Kia (the other one from Destiny's Child), et. al., are all traumatized, and then these whispers start going around about Freddy, nightmares ensue, etc. etc.

Enter Lori's psycho-ward ex-boyfriend Will (Jason "Son of Jack Tripper" Ritter) who ... and then ...

... Folks, I'm sorry, I can't actually remember what happened next or why. Let's call a spade a spade, and realize this is a fanboy wetdream, building up to an inevitable and over-long donnybrook between the two title bad guys. And fight they do, and it's all very bloody and fighty and ...

... okay, I can't remember anything else about the movie. And I saw it three hours ago. I swear I'm not high. Right now, anyway.

Ok, so let's re-boil the movie down - Freddy, Jason, Boobs. Assembled rather hastily and not especially well, but seriously, what do you want?! I mean, if the thought of two long- and often-retired horror champs going head-to-head doesn't appeal to you, go see LE DIVORCE. If, on the other hand, the thought of two long- and often-retired horror champs going head-to-head *does* appeal to you, then, I guess go see FREDDY VS. JASON.

Cause it's a movie where that stuff happens.

And Monica Keena's got big boobies.

There, I've said my piece.

Done.

Leave me be.

Seriously, fuck off.

Ok, I'm giving you a three-count, then I'm calling the cops.

Folks, the review's over! Just go see the fucking movie already!! It's got boobs. And Freddy. And Jason. And boobs. There, happy?

Jeez, you people disgust me.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST

by jim

Many of us grew up on the films of Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger, they have impacted everything from the franchising of horror characters to the way we perceive movie sequels. Besides their contributions in the film world, they have become something almost beloved to their fans. We grew up on these modern incarnations of Dracula and Frankenstein. Some may say the comparison of these timeless monsters is giving the slasher too much credit, but all of them were born to play upon the fears of the Everyman during their times. No matter what you think of the films that came after the first FRIDAY THE 13TH and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, the originals of each were films that reenlivened the monster era of horror. The way the films have prospered in sequels has been a double-edged sword. While there has certainly been an audience and lots of financial gain to egg them on, they have also trivialized and discredited the real scariness of Freddy and Jason. However, it has been a long while since anyone was truly afraid of the Wolf Man?

I think one psychological reason behind the deluge of sequels is that neither franchise, despite many attempts, was ever able to come to a satisfying finale. If the studios can resist further cashing in on a suddenly revitalized vehicle (which I doubt they can), FREDDY VS. JASON could really be the conclusion they were looking for. The film opens with a faithfully recreated cliché scene from the FRIDAY series. Your stereotypical hot, horny girl goes down to Crystal Lake to skinny dip with her boyfriend. She gets naked, she can't find her boyfriend...you know the rest. What follows is a film that holds on to the cheesy things we love about the sagas. The naked chicks, the barely there dialogue, the familiar music. Basically, everything you loved from these two franchises is represented here. The difference is it is all done with a concern for plot and more attention paid to the acting. Mind you, the acting is still VERY second rate, but better than we've come to expect. The origins of both Freddy and Jason are more deeply explored and we really are given a look into their psyches like we haven't in a very long time, if ever.

FREDDY VS. JASON has been over a decade in the coming, many factors have gone into it's delay, but having seen the film, I'm glad they waited. You can take any swing you want at this film, you can decry it has filler or as a mindless, bloody distraction, but this film is for the fans. The true fans will have no reason to complain, this is one of the most successfully executed films I have ever seen. It is everything it wanted to be, and in a rare twist of fate, everything the audience could want at the same time. Much credit has to go to director Ronny Yu and writers David S. Goyer, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, for avoiding the many potential potholes and living up to some heavy expectations. For his part, Robert Englund delivers perhaps his best performance as Freddy since the first film.

Fans of the films will come out of this theater with same deliriously happy smile that my friends and I stumbled out wearing. For those who are just looking for a cheap thrill on movie night, this one is a sure bet to please, especially the awesome fight scenes between the two competing leads.

I really would love to see these two storied franchises end their runs on this high note. I think it would be fitting that this great collaboration should be the capper. However, knowing the film industry the financial success of this movie is sure to breed exploitive sequel after exploitive sequel, until everyone forgets just how good this first entry really was.

DESTROY ALL MANIACS

by pat

Looking past how long fans have looked forward to this movie, despite worries that it wouldn't work, since the two characters are so dissimilar it makes you wonder who started the notion that pairing them would be a good idea, and simply appreciating the fact that all at once we have a new "Friday" and "Nightmare" all at once, this movie was just simply a lot of damn fun.

Did it fail what we like about Freddy? Sure, in some places. I rarely got the impression the filmmakers were comfortable with the vast playground of "anything can happen" dreamscapes. Instead, we get a lot of time spent either in the characters' normal surroundings, or a big boiler room. This is a guy who made a planet's worth of junkyard, spun a house through the stratosphere, and turned a kid into a puppet. He may have been weak, but as the Dream Master, he didn't do nearly as much messing with people's darkest fears as he could have. He did it, but not with the crippling cruelty we're accustomed to. On the other hand, they made sure to play up the fact that he was a child molester and murderer, something glossed over in favor of making this Bastard Son of 1000 Maniacs likeable. It wasn't part 3, at least it wasn't part 2.

How did they handle Jason? What's to handle, if you really pay attention? I don't mean to dismiss the Fridays, but I do consider them inconsistent in tone, rules, style, and continuity. As long as there are some grisly, creative deaths, a chase through the woods, and some gratuitous nudity, it will likely serve as a decent entry in the series. Jason and his surroundings are true to form, and while it isn't Kane Hodder behind the mask, the guy does a fine job of standing menacingly and swinging a machete. They also played up an angle I'd explored some time back, that Jason was at the core a sympathetic and misunderstood character. Yay, me! I smarts! Anyway, it wasn't part 6, but at least it wasn't part 7.

The first long chunk of the film is exposition, character building, and more exposition. We get a pretty neat explanation of how the two come to co-exist, as well as set up the rules for their interaction, and drop some seeds for the second half of the film. Most of it is necessary, though not all of it entertaining. Every so often, we get a kill to keep things moving. I think maybe a little too much time was spent establishing characters we knew would die, since we didn't care much about them by the time they bit it anyway. The lead girl is very easy on the eyes, though, so that should help you through. I did wonder how she got a tattoo, if her father was so overprotective and she was so virginal, but I didn't think about it for too long.

Two characters I absolutely hated were the Jason Mewes wannabe, who wouldn't be fit to sniff the real Jay's browned rolling papers on a good day, and a jovial fat party guy that seemed like how a studio would genetically engineer a Jack Black / Horatio Sanz hybrid. The two of them were terrible, and really made me root for the mass murderer to get a -killin'. I blame characters like them for my skewed view of right and wrong, sick and funny. If I side with a serial killer because he butchers somebody in a graphic and humiliating way, well, no amount of counseling will take those assholes out of the real world, so I need those twisted little moments of joy.

The movie really gets going once we get to the cornfield rave. Jason gets to go on quite a tear, Freddy starts to realize his plan wasn't so good, the little John Cusack-like kid starts to gives the geek tag-along role something more, and we have most of the information in place, so talk takes a back seat to action, more or less. The body count starts picking up, the locations change, and in general we get to the "Oh, shit!" factor that we go to movies like this for. The movie escalates into a big, bloody mess of a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and the grin on my face grew. I'm guessing that because these guys are evil and meant to suffer and fail, the MPAA let quite a bit slide, because not a razor-fingered punch was pulled. I've seen it twice now, and that ending lost nothing for me the second time around. If you want to know who won by the way, I won't say. You shouldn't be going for the result, you go for the fight. Definitely go for the fight.