Squirting blood fest

Into the great tradition of big-screen movie monster showdowns, such as King Kong vs. Godzilla, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Kramer vs. Kramer, comes Freddy vs. Jason, the long-rumored cinematic match-up of two horror film icons long past their prime.

Coming into the battle, Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger, replacing fanboy favorite Kane Hodder), the machete-wielding, hockey-mask-wearing star of the Friday the 13th franchise, has compiled no victories. Every one of his 10 movies, from the original Halloween rip-off through last year’s terrible sci-fi revamping, Jason X, has sucked. In the other corner, Freddy Krueger (always played by Robert Englund) boasts two definitive victories, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and a couple of close calls. Both characters have been the victims of bad 3-D films, crappy TV shows and a strain of over marketing that has reduced them to clowns instead of effective movie monsters.

While last year’s Jason X is a miserable movie, it features one very funny scene where Jason, stuck in a hologram of Camp Crystal Lake (his usual killing field) is taunted by two female campers offering promiscuous sex and alcohol. He responds to their invitation by shoving them into sleeping bags and bopping them on a nearby tree, an odd tongue-in-cheek moment in an otherwise straightforward, bad slasher flick.

Like that one good scene, Freddy vs. Jason is all tongue-in-cheek, mischievously over-the-top and surprisingly fun all things considered. If you are going to make this movie, and New Line Cinema has long been determined to do so, this is the way to do it. While director Ronny Yu’s take on the slasher pair isn’t terribly scary, it does achieve a sort of glorious sickness that is undeniably fun.

In the coming months, Yu will undoubtedly be fielding many offers. He’s made a $30 million movie that looks better than most costing over $100 million. For lovers of the horror movie genre (I consider myself a fair-weather friend), what Yu delivers is bloody nirvana.

It’s as if somebody whispered the Freddy and Jason mythos and backgrounds into Yu’s ear but didn’t allow him to watch any of the previous lousy movies. The character of Freddy returns to his sadistic roots. There is a creepy prologue that shows Krueger’s child killer before neighborhood parents set him ablaze. Jason remains a clown, but he’s a funny circus clown with new tricks instead of being an annoying hack who frequents birthday parties with fluorescent wigs, squirting flowers and fake poo. New realizations of Freddy’s boiler room and Jason’s Camp Crystal Lake are solid visual achievements.

The premise of the evil match-up is supreme ingenuity for this sort of undertaking. The children of Elm Street have forgotten Freddy, so he is unable to haunt their nightmares. While posing as Jason’s long-dead mom in the psycho killer’s own bad dreams, Freddy enlists the masked one’s help in committing copycat Krueger murders, hoping to spark some memories among town folk and return to nocturnal slashing. When Jason gets carried away, refusing to share in the carnage, Freddy feels jilted, and the promised battle ensues. While the actual fight comprises only a small chunk of the film, it’s an entertaining, well-staged super brawl.

As bloody movies go, this one is king. The slightest touch of razor or machete to flesh produces shooting geysers of crimson splendor. This has to be the bloodiest movie since Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, a prized accomplishment considering the subject matter. In the pantheon of slasher movies, this one can be considered epic. While the film will probably kill a few brain cells upon consumption, Freddy and Jason have provided more fun than most the summer’s blockbusters combined.