It’s another Friday the 13th week folks! It’s time to celebrate a series of films that defined horror for a generation of weirdos such as myself. These films had it all, bad acting, bloody and ridiculous murders, boobs and most importantly other boobs. We will be celebrating all of these movies today as a show of respect to their contribution to the horror genre. These films were tailor made for the 1980’s slasher films and were all made with the purely artistic intention of making all the money while spending none to make them.
When I was a kid growing up in the dark times before internet and on demand television I had to imagine a lot of things. One of the main things I imagined was what would happen if some of the monsters from different movies fought it out. Jason vs Michael Myers, Freddy vs Leatherface, The guy with the drill guitar from Sorority House Massacre against Ivan Drago and most of all, Freddy vs Jason. Finally in 2003 after years of terrible scripts, bad ideas, properties changing hands and nerds angered the planets and stars finally arrived to make the battle of the century happen.
To put it mildly this movie was the biggest financial success in either franchise by a long shot and New Line finally reaped the benefits after years of work. On the other hand it wasn’t super well received by critics and some of the fans of both franchises. After all, everyone wants their favorite to look like he won a definitive battle and this movie wouldn’t give us that. What is would give us is Robert Englund Playing Freddy Krueger for the very last time (to date) and a member of Destiny’s Child getting butchered by a hockey mask wearing momma’s boy and a little bit of fun.
Release Date: August 15, 2003
Budget: 30 Million
Box Office: 114.9 Million
Back story and Plot: Poor Freddy, stuck in Hell with no way of getting out. The good people of Springwood (Ohio, New Jersey? Don’t pay attention to a map in this movie) finally figured out how to keep Freddy from getting to their children. All it took was a little bit of elbow grease and a drug that wouldn’t let anyone dream. It also helped that any youngster that vaguely new ANYTHING about Freddy got shipped of to the loony bin and pumped full of medication. So Freddy had to come up with an alternate plan to instill fear into the town he hates so very much. As back up plans go he had a pretty good one. He pretended to be Jason’s mother and commanded him to kill the teenagers of Springwood, which would cause the fear he so desperately needs to come back.
What Freddy didn’t think about is that Jason loves killing more than I love tacos. He wouldn’t quit killing everyone he came across which made Freddy obsolete again. Luckily there is always a young nubile lady living in the house at 1428 Elm Street that can help him inadvertently murder her own friends. Poor Lori was the sap on this occasion and her boyfriend just happened to have escaped the nuthouse with his buddy to let everyone know about Freddy. It’s really funny how that always works out.
So the big plan from our heroes was to get the two bad guys to fight it out so maybe they have a shot against the winner. My god that is a stupid plan when you read it or say it out loud.
Survivor Girl: Lori Campbell (also Will Rollins)
Lori had some fight in her plus she was blonde so that made her a perfect Friday girl. I’m going to put this a delicately as possible, her main attribute in this movie that was sold to teenagers and people in their early twenties was the fact that she wore a white wet shirt for 90% of the movie that was at least one size too small for her. If you are selling a horror movie that isn’t a bad place to start.
How’d she survive?
They were able (with the help of Freddy cos-playing Jay from Jay and Silent Bob) to knock Jason out and transport his giant body to Crystal Lake (once again pay no attention to the map) for the final boss battle. While he was in his sleep coma Freddy had the advantage but Lori was able to bring Freddy out of her dream so that Jason had a shot in this battle of the titans.
The two battled all over the property and killed any poor bastard that happened to get in their way. In the end with some help from Lori, Jason was able to kill Freddy with his own glove before falling back into the lake due to his own wounds. In the end Jason emerged from the lake holding Freddy’s head indicating that this may not be over. (Spoiler: it was.)
BEST CHARACTER IN THIS MOVIE? Freddy Krueger
Robert Englund steals every scene he is in because no one knows that character better than he does. For all of Freddy’s faults he is and always has been an entertaining son of a bitch.
An Idiot’s Opinion: This wasn’t the best of either of these franchises. The good news was it didn’t need to be. It was entertaining, fun and had some really cool moments. In a mash up movie like this that is all you can really ask for. Unfortunately this was the last of both of these franchises before the inevitable reboots came. It was a hell of a ride to get there.
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