reddy vs. Jason arrives in theaters at summer's end with a big gimmick: pitting two of horror filmdom's two most iconic figures against each other in the grudge match to beat all grudge matchs. New Line Cinema teams Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger, from the Nightmare on Elm Street series, with Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked giant from Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th franchise—and let the games begin!
Longtime stunt coordinator Ken Kirzinger plays Jason, stepping in for Kane Hodder, who played the machete-wielding killer in several previous Friday the 13th movies.
Hong Kong action helmer Ronny Yu (Bride of Chucky) takes on the directing chores, bringing his own cinematic sensibility to bear. And the movie introduces a raft of new teen meat, including Destiny's Child popster Kelly Rowland in her feature-film debut. Freddy vs. Jason opened Aug. 15.
Englund, Kirzinger and Cunningham (who gets a producer credit on Freddy) took a moment at the recent Comic-Con International to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about the movie.
Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger, is this move the end of both franchises or the beginning of a new one?
Englund: I don't know. I think they may be testing the waters at New Line, to ... put some fresh blood into both the Friday the 13th franchise [and Nightmare, to] see what they can come up with. I have a hunch that New Line has one or two great Friday the 13th scripts on the shelf. I know there's one or two great Nightmare on Elm Street scripts. I know there was one done way back around part three, with the sister of Tina from part one. And it's a great, female woman warrior ... like a 30-something girl ... coming back to avenge her sister's death. It was a great script. I know there's talk of a prequel to Elm Street. Robert Englund or another actor playing Freddy, the serial killer, before he burns, before the vigilante parents torch him to death, set in the '70s, you know? So that's interesting. I've heard [that Nightmare creator] Wes [Craven] has said no to that, but somebody else might pick up that. But those are the only rumors I've heard.
Kirzinger: If it makes money, they'll probably make another one.
Ken, this is your first time as Jason.
Kirzinger: I actually have done a lot of suit stuff, as I call it. I played a guy in a Sasquatch suit on MacGyver. I was Michael Pare's alter ego in Bad Moon, the werewolf in that. I was a character called Moloch in The Outer Limits, which was probably my biggest acting role I ever had. But it's all behind a mask. But it's not new to me. I did an X-Files. I had a character, actually, [in] the first season [episode called] "Ice." Richter. "We're not who we are." So it wasn't too big a transition for me. The biggest thing for me was to try, in my own way, to try to make the character my own. ... Kane Hodder had played him four times. And I didn't want to make him the same. And Ronny didn't want to make him the same, either. So hopefully you'll see a difference.
You also worked on previous Friday the 13th films?
Kirzinger: Well, I was a stunt coordinator on [Friday the 13th Part VIII:] Jason Takes Manhattan, and ... there's a scene where Kane breaks down the door of a diner, and I'm the sort of owner of the diner. And I come to confront him. And he grabs me and throws me into a mirror behind the bar.
Robert, how does Freddy meet Jason?
Englund: I always said, we have to have a Jason Voorhees nightmare. We have to see what makes him tick. What a sick puppy he is. And it's also a way to get into the backstory [in a] real graceful, frightening and filmic way, to see some exposition. And there's a point where I lure him into my world, and ... I morph ... [into] the mother. I'm pretending to be his mother, because I know he has real issues. And the mother ... calls him a dog or a faithful dog or something like that. And it clicked on me: Big dog. .... So that was like the kind of Freddy attitude I had [toward] him. But Ken does this thing sometimes, when he's in the middle of violence ... and something will get his attention, and he does that RCA Victor thing with his head [cocks his head], you know, listening to his master's voice, you know? And it's great.
We were in Las Vegas the other day, and we're doing this sort of faux Don King weigh-in, Freddy vs. Jason, and they just sent it out to all the sports affiliates all over the country. And Ken and I walk out on stage in full drag, as Freddy and Jason, and some guy yells at Ken, "Go back to outer space, asshole." And Ken, does that take again, that big RCA Victor dog thing with his head, and I totally lost it on stage.
Ken, tell us about Jason's kills in this film.
Kirzinger: I work primarily with the machete in this movie, but there's a couple of other good kills in there. Because Jason does use anything that's at his disposal.
Ronny had a great idea. Jason in this movie moves very slowly until he acts. And if you've seen one of the trailers, you know, at the rave and everything, the two kids are sort of berating him. He's standing there, and then, just like, bam! He snaps the kid's neck. It just makes it so much more effective to have Jason move like that.
There were reports that the movie had multiple endings. Is that true?
Englund: The so-called Rob Bottin script, when we were trying to this movie by summer 2000 ... had two endings. Jason wins one, Freddy wins. And obviously, if it's just the ending, that's just the 10th reel. So no matter which octoplex in Kearney Mesa you're at, you can switch the thing, so you never know what ending it is. So the Jason fans have to pay to see the movie twice. Freddy movie have to pay it two or three times, until they get the right ending.
But that gimmick was decided against. I kind of like it, actually. I thought it was a great kind of William Castle, you know, kind of concept.
But then they changed it. We shot the movie, we just shot one ending. But they were tweaking the final reel a lot. Building and building and building. ... We have many encounters in the movie. ... I got this one of the sound editors. He said it reminded him of Popeye and Bluto. There was another one that reminded him almost, when I'm on my turf, and he thinks he's amputating limbs and things, and they kind of come back, that's sort of Monty Python-esque. And there's the one at the end, where I have to fight with my wits, because I'm in his world, I'm on his turf in Crystal Lake, and I have nothing but my wits left, that's also kind of Road Runner. And they're not as much scary as they are Freddy vs. Jason, as opposed to Jason vs. the kids and Freddy vs. the kids, where that's the real horror.
Sean Cunningham, were you unhappy with Kane Hodder's work?
Cunningham: Not at all. I'm a big fan of Kane, and Kane would have been just fine. This was just something else that we did. Ken had, in fact, understudied him, or stunt doubled for him. ... I have nothing but good things to say about Kane and how he pulled it off.
Then why was he replaced?
Cunningham: I can tell you from a studio perspective. ... It was something that we discussed at length. ... I grew up on these movies, OK? I love these movies. And I think that we felt that the mission of Freddy vs. Jason in terms of the audiences it brings in, is you're targeting three basic audiences: The audiences that grew up with these movies initially, audiences like myself who saw the later movies in the theater, and then the audiences that discover these now. ...
And I think we all sort of felt that ... in terms of the image of the image of Jason we were presenting, really take the Jason archetype that is known, which is that clean hockey mask from parts III and IV, [and combine it] with the zombie-fied Jason from [Friday the 13th Part IV:] Jason Lives and sort of go that route. But at the same time draw almost a David-and-Goliath sort of visual imagery between Jason and Freddy. And Ken ... if you get a chance to see him in the footage from the Vegas event, when they're up next to each other, Freddy is up to his chest, and Jason looks about as badass as he's ever looked. And that said, when you see the movie, I would argue, as a guy who has seen all these movies at least 10 times, Ken's Jason is probably an amalgamation of what has come before.
Really, I think, he has ... a quintessential take on the character, and it's actually the angriest you've ever seen Jason, and it plays really well.
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Dan Simmons
