When Freddy Meets Jason

Tonight's marathon is about the pairing up of two great titans in the horror genre for the inevitable showdown in Ronny Yu's 2003 blockbuster Freddy Vs Jason. It is because of this showdown that this marathon was conceived to show both men at their most terrifying and ruthless before their epic meeting that forces the audience to choose a side to root for. The question of which of these two legends had a bigger impact on pop culture is debatable but there's no denying that it was the sheer impact that they left on viewers with their respective series that sent the audience to the theaters in droves to watch them meet for the first time on film. Tonight's marathon is a celebration of that union and to also point out that in this fight, there are no good guys to root for but just pure evil. These two men are named Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. We have on our fun and exciting menu for this evening:

Nightmare On Elm Street 1984, Friday the 13th 1980, Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors 1987 Friday The 13th 2009, Wes Cravens New Nightmare 1994, and Freddy Vs Jason 2003
     

It could be argued that tonight's marathon appears to favor Freddy's side more than Jason's but that's mainly due to the fact that there is a specific story arc going on with the three Nightmare On Elm Street films chosen for this marathon. Behind every great villain is a lead character that you ultimately come to care about during the ordeal. In the case of Freddy Krueger, it's Nancy Thompson from the first Nightmare film who also stars in Dream Warriors and New Nightmare. Her character is strong as a female lead and gives Freddy a worthy opponent, someone who won't fall victim to his murderous tactics so quickly, and ultimately chooses to fight back as Freddy claims her friends.

      The first film of the evening is Wes Craven's horror movie classic titled Nightmare on Elm Street starring Robert Englund as Freddy, Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, John Saxon as Nancy's father Lt. Donald Thompson, and Johnny Depp in his first starring role as Glen Lantz. Taking direct inspiration from a kid who bullied him in school, Wes Craven crafts a terrifying story of a group of teenagers being hunted by the vicious serial killer Freddy in their dreams with the outcome being he kills them while they're asleep. Realizing that they are being picked off one by one, the survivors band together to fight back against Freddy in their dreams and come up with a plan to bring him out of his dream and into reality. Nightmare on Elm Street arrived in an era in the 1980's where horror and slasher films were thriving with the already established franchises such as Halloween and Friday The 13th reigning supreme. Nightmare brought a different kind of concept to the table with a villain who is already dead but can't easily be defeated and haunts people at their most vulnerable state which in this case is their sleep. Freddy can take many shapes and forms with his supernatural power and once you think he's been defeated, he rises again even stronger than before. Audiences fell in love with Freddy because not only was he cruel and vicious in his murders but extremely funny and entertaining with his defiance towards peoples requests to back off. The duo team of Wes Craven and Robert Englund for Nightmare On Elm Street paved way for one of the most powerful collaborations in horror.

      The second movie of the marathon is the 1980 slasher classic titled Friday The 13th. Arriving a total of two years after the success of John Carpenter's Halloween which successfully introduced audiences to the unstoppable Michael Myers, Paramount Pictures introduced audiences to a similar type of villain but one that's more brutal and sinister named Jason Voorhees. The story for Friday The 13th centers around a group of camp counselors slowly being stalked and murdered by a mysterious person on the premises while trying to successfully reopen a summer camp which got closed down years prior due to the tragic event of a child's drowning. That child goes onto become the man behind the hockey mast named Jason. Although the film was critically panned upon it's release in 1980, the film was a certified box office success making 39.7 million on a budget of just $550,000. The film was greenlighted after the immediate success of Halloween  and was the first Horror film of its kind to get official distribution from a major Hollywood studio such as Paramount Pictures. The films reviews improved over time to the status of becoming a cult classic but it never achieved the critical fame of Halloween or Nightmare On Elm Street. What made those two films special is that it gave you a female heroine and a villain that were equal to each other and Jason's series mainly consisted of him committing horrific acts of murder without any real characters to latch onto. There was no Jamie Lee Curtis or Heather Langenkamp to root in the series except the character of Annie in the first movie played by Laurie Bartram who manages to survive the massacre in the first Friday the 13th.

      The third movie of the marathon is Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors with Heather Langenkamp reprising her iconic role from the first Nightmare along with John Saxon as her alcoholic father. Together they join a group of young kids in a sanitarium along with their physician to fight Freddy Krueger once again when it's revealed that the kids all locked up are the last of the elm street children whose parents helped kill Freddy Krueger during his child killing spree. While learning to take control of their own dreams, they find a way to fight Freddy Krueger and defeat him once and for all with the help of Nancy. Generally considered one of the better sequels in the Nightmare On Elm Street series, instead of playing the events of the first movie as fiction in New Nightmare, Dream Warriors continues the story arc of the first movie and shows us where Nancy and Freddy are at after the ending of the first movie.

      The fourth movie of the marathon is the 2009 reboot of Friday The 13th titled Friday the 13th. Whereas the first movie revealed the mother of Jason to be the mastermind behind the camp murders in an act of crazed vengeance, this film shows Jason Voorhees committing his acts of murder from the beginning. Much like the original Friday the 13th, this one uses the same plot with a group of young adults discovering the boarded up Camp Crystal Lake where they come across Jason Voorhees and his intentions to slaughter everyone who comes along. Rather than using the actual sequel to the original Friday The 13th, the original centered around his mothers murderous schemes and this one reintroduces the audience to the same franchise with Jason being the killer from the beginning. The reimagining of the Friday The 13th storyline succeeds as a worthy follow up to it's predecessors by delivering on the heavy amounts of gore, violence, and cheese that ran rampant throughout the series. With Jason and his mothers story arcs covered there's only the inevitable showdown between Freddy and Jason to cover.

      The fifth movie of the evening is the final chapter to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise titled Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Bringing back Heather Langenkamp as herself/Nancy in the final chapter of the Nightmare series, Wes Craven returns to the directors chair placing the story in reality with the first Nightmare On Elm Street being acknowledged as a work of fiction. Freddy Krueger is chosen by a demonic force to enter the new world through a portal and Heather being faced with the decision of whether she should play the role of Nancy one last time to stop Freddy from entering reality. New Nightmare is the finale that the Nightmare On Elm Street series deserves and the true ending for Nancy and Freddys story arc. The film received critical acclaim from fans and critics upon it's release who declared it the best sequel to the first film out of the whole series and a perfect cap off to the Freddy Krueger story arc...until Freddy Vs Jason.

      The sixth movie of the marathon is the epic finale and the film that audiences waited in anticipation over prior to it's success. This blockbuster crossover film brought these two iconic characters together and showed them not just going after the teenage crowd but themselves as well in the ultimate battle between evil vs evil. With both sides being inherently bad, the audience is left to wonder out of the two who they should root for. Hypothetically one would end up rotting for Jason due to his tragic past but that's about the only thing that can be said about him that warrants empathy. The film is all about putting these two together and having them fight it out in all their glory which at the time was every horror movie fans dream come true.

So what are these movies trying to say when you put them all together as one? The message behind this marathon is that there are forces of evil out there that can't be explained and could very well be hard to stop. When evil combines with evil, the consequences can be devastating and the impact felt for everyone around them. There are no heroic traits in Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees but if the two are to fight each other, should you take a side for survival? Events such as the drowning of a child at Camp Crystal Lake can never go away and will leave a stain on the camp forever. Villains like Freddy Krueger can never be defeated unless people work together as a team. Sometimes it can be better to not know what to be afraid of and popular cinematic villains such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers will never die.

For Wes Craven