Crossovers are a creative spring and a cash printer in media. In our humble nu world, we have Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s Collision Course, as well as the Urban Assault Vehicle version of “Rollin’” that pulled in hip-hop legends DMX, Method Man, and Redman. With games such as Super Smash Bros. and Marvel vs. Capcom, the debates of “who would win in a fight” were put onto small screens and into the hands of players. For the big screen, particularly in a pre-Avengers world, a meeting of minds could spell big bucks and sensational spectacle.
To that end, Freddy vs. Jason, released in the summer of 2002 after much ballyhoo, is a crossover film bringing possibly the two biggest names in slasher horror into one film. But how did the film that launched a thousand gorehound nerdgasms come to be? Never mind that, how did it end up when the smoke cleared between Crystal Lake and Springwood?
Following the diminishing returns of its later sequels, Paramount sold the license for the Friday the 13th franchise to New Line Cinema, which holds the license for A Nightmare on Elm Street. This meant that the crossover was possible without having to please not one, but two sets of studio execs. While Wes Craven's New Nightmare had breathed new life into the Dream Demon's reign, Jason X was less than stellar, despite having an all-timer of a kill with the liquid nitrogen head smash. Who gives a shit that Mythbusters debunked it, it's a great kill that may have been the best part of the space-set slasher.
The film is the horror equivalent of Chinese Democracy, as it went through nearly a decade of development, eighteen different writers composing a total of a dozen scripts before they finally landed on what eventually made it to screens. Although director Ronny Yu had just come off the successful Bride of Chucky a few years prior, he was, by his own admission, not a huge fan of either Jason’s or Freddy’s previous works, though he did take his love of comic books and pro wrestling to help the overall product. And much like in a good pro wrestling feud, the two opponents don't lay hands on one another till the very end, allowing things to reach a critical mass before the shit (and plenty of gore) hits the fan.
One of the biggest sins the film commits, through no fault of the actual filmmakers but allegedly of the studios, is not casting Kane Hodder, who played Jason in the previous four Friday films, instead opting for stunt actor Ken Kirzinger. To be fair, he was previously in a Friday film as a nameless line cook who gets hoyed into a mirror, and had plenty of both presence and stunt experience to properly portray the physical specimen that is Jason, but not casting the most frequent and best-known actor for the role went over like a fart in church, except the church was on a campground.
And while we’re on the subject of stunt performers… Sadly, the rumors are not true, and Rey Mysterio, perhaps the greatest luchador of all time next to El Santo, was not a stunt double in the film. While in an interview with Chris Van Vliet on his podcast Insight, Mysterio confirmed that he had nothing to do with the film, but his uncle, who was Rey Mysterio Sr., did do stunt work for it. The rumors go on to say that the elder Mysterio was the double for the Jason pinball scene, in which Freddy inexplicably gains the powers of telekinesis and starts throwing Jason around like he's nothing.
Of course, watching this film through a modern lens is going to cause a fair share of cringing, and I don’t just mean the early-era computer animation. In one notorious scene, after grossly referring to her as “dark meat,” Freddy is called the F-slur by Kia (Kelly Rowland). Add to Kia’s vanity and obsession with plastic surgery, which dates the film even more than the soundtrack does.
On the subject of problematic lines, story and otherwise, the making of Freddy Krueger into a creepy and skeezy character is objectively against the designs of the villain's creator, Wes Craven. Licking the photo of the little girl and possibly but also not really but also visibly shtupping a dead girl before the final showdown is just. Jesus, Fred.
There is some good to be distilled from the little slasher that could. The Nineties were threadbare on big box slashers, save for the Scream trilogy and the later Child's Play films. As the MPAA cut the bejeezus out of slashers, especially Friday the 13th films for their graphic violence, the decade’s auteurs went for more psychological and existential horror, to say nothing of the marketing of “thrillers” as opposed to using the label of “horror.”
It also predates the torture porn movement by a couple of years, and that is significant. For a pre-SAW horror film that comes just before the inundation of horror remakes in Hollywood, there is plenty of gore in Freddy vs. Jason, never mind that it also proved the box office viability of slasher films, amassing over $116 million USD worldwide in its theatrical run against a budget of approximately $30 million USD. Critically, it may not measure up, but damn if it didn't rake in serious cash and show that there is gold amidst the gore.
And hey, Freeburg's death is basically a one-cut version of one of Jason's Fatalities in Mortal Kombat X, so there's that.
The soundtrack of the film, as we've previously covered, is incredibly nu metal. The title card of the film displayed as Spineshank blares as a splatter of blood hits the wall is a “fuck yeah"-inducing, air-punching moment that comes at the top of the show and helps set the pace for things to come. Add to this the marketing of the film, which included a live weigh-in in Las Vegas, and the hype behind this clash of killers was palpable throughout the moviegoing world.
See also: A Beginner’s Guide To Nu Metal Cinema
Where are both franchises now? As of the time of this publication, Crystal Lake is in development, following a lengthy legal pissing match between the two creators of the Friday IP, the biggest casualty of which was the sudden and unceremonious demise of the video game. Beyond that, the last entry was the 2009 reboot, which came one year before Nightmare's reboot. The new Friday the 13th was a reskin of the original that, while including some of the funniest dialogue in a sex scene known to man, was actually a solid new vision. Shame about Nightmare’s new tale, as while Jackie Earle Haley did a fine job as a more menacing Freddy, they said the quiet part out loud, made Freddy a kiddy diddler, and had little else of note or celebration in the whole bloody affair. Never mind that both films came out during an absolute glut of remakes, but that is a conversation for another time.
In many respects, Freddy vs. Jason was a hot mess, but its impact on the horror world cannot be understated. It helped solidify the slasher as a viable genre at the box office, something that modern marvels like Terrifier and Thanksgiving have been able to accomplish over two decades later. It almost wasn’t, some would argue it should not have been, but damn if Freddy vs. Jason didn’t ignite the silver screen like Jason walking through a cornfield.
