FREDDY vs JASON teams up two of the most cultish (and mindless) movie villains of recent decades; a very poor emulation of those 1940s Universal horror classics pairing up the Wolfman and the Frankenstein monster. I'll give you my diagnosis up front: IF you liked either the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise or the Friday the Thirteenth franchise, you might like this, maybe; if you didn't, then you won't, positively. But don't get your hopes too high.

For those fortunate few out there who haven't been soiled by either series, I'll do a brief backstory: Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, who created and stayed with the role through something like 8 movies and a TV series) is the monster from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. He was a psychopathic serial child killer in life, and when he was caught by the police but let go on a legal technicality, his neighbors on Elm Street lynched him by burning him alive. After he's dead, he gets revenge by killing their children (now he specializes in teenagers, especially girls with well developed bosoms) by invading their dreams, with plenty of special effects. In every movie, the way to kill him is to lure him or drag him bodily into the real world, where he can be killed again by conventional means.

Jason Voorhees (in this flick, Ken Kirzinger, who otherwise is a stuntman) is the killing machine from the Friday the Thirteenths (and Jason) franchise ... altho his penchant for wearing a hockey mask might cause you to confuse him with the similar villain from the Halloween franchise. Supposedly he was a very ugly little boy who drowned at summer camp, and he somehow returned from the grave as a very robust and tall psychopath who kills teenagers (again specializing in girls with large bazooms) with his machete. He apparently is very resilient to attempts to kill him, but in each flick he's done in by wrecking his physical body. In each movie a different actor has worn the hockey mask, and in one of the later entries the plot hinged on his murderous soul migrating from one normal person to another.

So, as you can see, these characters and their respective franchises, are acquired tastes.

In FREDDY vs. JASON, Freddy Kreuger is dead and in hell, of course, but he complains that he hasn't gotten around in the past four years because kids no longer dream about him. He's been totally forgotten, and therefore he's stuck in his eternal prison. But Freddy has an idea; he revives Jason, who is capable of being reanimated in the waking world, to wreck havoc on the kids now living in the Elm Street arondissment, knowing that Jason's killings will remind them of Freddy and bring him back to their thoughts.

Jason goes after his assignment like a real craftsman, and we find out why Freddy is now a stay-at-home. It was decided, by the adults, natch, to turn Freddy into a non-person, never mention his name, censor the newspaper microfilm at the library to eliminate any mention of him, etc. And, oh yes, the adults sent a flock of kids who had survived encounters with Freddy to a psychiatric gulag so they couldn't "infect" the rest of the kids by talking about Freddy. Somehow this nutty scheme worked, and even though Freddy slashed his way through these same neighborhoods only four years ago, high school students don't know anything about him (well, there's a lot of current events that high school students don't seem to know).

Two boys in the psychiatric hospital glimpse a TV newscast about Jason's killings in their old neighborhood, and they escape from the hospital. Now, if they were sent there four years ago, and they are the same age as the kids back in the high school then (a) they were locked away at such tender ages as 11 or 12 without anyone trying to intervene, and (b) you'd think they'd have trouble finding their way around their friend's high school which they had never attended. But nobody worries about either possibility in this movie. The two boys find their old friends, blurt out the story about Freddy - which they've remembered despite four years of heavy psychiatric medication but which their unmedicated cohorts never seemed to know - and now Freddy himself is able to have a field day in the kids' dreams.

The conflict arises because Freddy can only get his steel claws on kids who are dreaming, but Jason, having done his bit, keeps on killing teenagers. Freddy realizes this when a girl vanishes from his grasp - slasher interruptus - because Jason has just used his machete on her sleeping body. Unless Jason can be turned off, all the kids who might dream about Freddy will be dead and Freddy will be back where he started. But how to turn Jason off, since Jason's in the real world and Freddy's in the dream world?

OK, that's enough. That's more than enough for most of you. If you like teen slasher films with a supernatural edge (and no logic) then maybe this will be amusing for 97 minutes that you'd otherwise spending doing homework. That's about all I can say for this movie. Robert Englund (Freddy) is probably the only recognizable face in this crowd. They clearly spent some effort on the special effects and stunts. You get to see, very briefly, about a dozen bare breasts (usually two at a time). This is R rated for good reason.

As with the other movies in both series, despite the decisive ending, there's still the risk of a sequel. Since pairing up villains from separate franchises is now a possibility, maybe pit Freddy against the very similar ghost monster Candyman, and pit Jason against his near-twin from the Halloween series.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age