Feature: Freddy vs Jason

Are You Ready for More Freddy?

Robert Englund speaks about fighting Jason, working with genre legends and a long and illustrious career in carnage...

In a rare public appearance in the UK, Robert Englund begins his three hour signing session by proclaiming to his many fans that Freddy vs Jason is going to be the film that Horror buffs have been waiting for. He also excites the crowd by telling them that a brand new series of V will begin filming shortly, with several of the original cast returning. However, it is for the part of Freddy Krueger that Englund will forever be associated, and so it is fitting that he admitted to feeling ‘proprietary towards the old guy’. Thanks to the kind efforts of Mark Douguid (as well as Lisa Mondie and Jenni Mitchell) I was able to arrange a one to one with Freddy’s alter ego, and what follows is a revealing chat about Englund’s illustrious career in Horror cinema. With his glamorous wife Nancy (who doubles as his assistant) by his side, Englund starts off by maintaining his excitement at the launch of his new web site (www.robertenglund.com) and discusses how happy he is to be in cold and rainy Aberdeen. Why? Well, the city so happens to be where one of his all time favourite movies – Local Hero – was filmed, and Englund mentions that he has long wanted to ‘go on a pilgrimage’ in homage to Bill Forsyth’s classic. Perhaps not the viewing choice you’d expect from the man who has slaughtered countless teenage victims on screen, but with this in mind, it’s on to the first question...

What can the fans expect from the newest instalment of the Freddy story?
Well, I have a different take on it from the director Ronny Yu – he’s the guy who made Bride of Chucky. Ronny sees it as a sort of clash of the titans, but to me it’s like a sound comic book. It’s almost as if in the late seventies to the early Eighties there was a classic comic called Freddy vs Jason, combining the mythology of the two characters and somebody found that and made it into a movie. You know – people criticise the sequelitis and the fact that New Line is combining the characters but this is nothing new. There was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and all that stuff, and we’re just continuing this tradition and after us you’re gonna get Predator vs Alien and Superman vs Batman – trust me!

Did you think that Wes Craven’s New Nightmare would be the last time you’d play Freddy?
I thought that that was the end – I mean there’s a logical bookend in that film. But I did know that around about ’97 or ’98, there was an idea for Freddy vs Jason. It was going to be the millennium film – it was going to come out for summer 2000... but we kept changing directors. We had Rob Bottin, you know the effects genius who did John Carpenter’s The Thing, then we had Guillermo Del Toro and he went on to do Blade 2, and then we got Ronny, which was a match made in heaven... is a drug you take to prevent you from dreaming. It’s become a bit like in the film Coma, where the parents have been using it on the teenagers and on themselves so that they don’t dream, but there are some side-effects, and there is now a generation that doesn’t know Freddy and that doesn’t have fear. So Freddy’s in purgatory – or whatever bizarre kind of hell he’s in – and there he encounters Jason. Freddy’s too weak to get back into Elm Street and strike fear into the hearts of their citizens, and so he uses Jason to do it.

by Calum Waddell

Get the full interview in
Shivers #105

Image © Visual Imagination
Feature © Visual Imagination 2004. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Shivers #105
July 2003
ships from Jun 12 2003
News-stand Price
UK £3.99 / US $6.99

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