Hey all you readers out there, I’ve got some good friggin’ news for once about FREDDY VS. JASON...
I’ve just finished reading the current draft of the script, sent in from my spy on the front line of New Line.... Codename Harry Caul. Mr Caul likes to listen in on things and wanted to hear what I thought of this draft of FREDDY VS. JASON.... Well... I’m gonna tell him...
The current writers are Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger... and folks... They did a really great job with a script that could have sucked as bad as the previous drafts I’ve seen. God, I remember the one that ended with the Boxing match between Jason and Freddy... Ugh...
Ok... You folks remember NEW NIGHTMARE? Wes Craven’s last take on the Freddy world? Sure you do. Well... In a way this sort of takes a wink and a nod from there.
This isn’t set in the universe of Elm Street or Camp Crystal Lake. This film is set in OUR universe. I’m gonna give you just a teensy bitsy overview of the plotline, just so you can follow my train of thought on this flick...
The film begins with two teenagers in the mood for love, one’s been drinking a bit too much... a gal named Lizzy. Her boyfriend Jason puts her down to sleep, kisses her on the forehead... thinks about ravishing her... but then goes away.
For me, this is where the film made it’s first wonderful turn. Lizzy is asleep, she wakes up, there’s a killer, yadda yadda... terror... screams... she survives what follows. Now the killer happens to be a serial killer that dresses up like Freddy Krueger. Now Lizzy has nightmares involving the ‘real’ Freddy Krueger... but strangely they always end up at Camp Crystal Lake, and always have Jason Vorhees (notice the same first name as her boyfriend) as her savior just in the nick of time.
Anyway, I’m not gonna get into going real far into the plot, which is actually very very fun, because... well it ought to unroll on screen... but I am going to go into why I liked it so much.
First off.... after digesting this script for... ohhhh the 40 minutes or so after I’ve read it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it might actually be the best film involving either character.
Aibel & Berger (the screenwriters remember?) have constructed a deliciously convoluted series of dreams within dreams or more aptly put nightmares within nightmares... so much so that by the end of the script... when what happens happens... I’m not entirely sure if this isn’t all the product of Lizzy’s first dream when her boyfriend put her down. There is no ‘WAKE UP’ though, so I don’t know if by the end of the film we are in a dream or reality and I like that a helluva lot.
Lizzy has a whole buncha friends, and if New Line and director Rob Bottin get a cast of great teens to fill this film with, they’ll have a fantasticly fun filled film frothing upon our screens.
This is Hard “R”, but deliciously surreal. In wet-effects god Rob Bottin’s hands, this film has real fun potential. Lizzy’s friends are a great set of real characters to react to the insanity that Bottin will create.
I was laughing my ass off while reading this script because... while it isn’t silly, it just sends out this fun vibe. The teenagers should be lighthearted people that like to be scared, get giggly when they are scared... just like us when we go to see FRIDAY THE 13TH and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies.
These characters are scared but in an almost gleeful way.
Ok... show of hands.... How many of you saw one of these two franchises when you were a kid and had serious nightmares about the characters? I know for a fact my little sister did. I used to put on my Freddy mask, fedora and plastic gloved hand and chase her around as she screamed like Fay Wray.
This film does that to ya. The scares aren’t ‘Genuine Terror’ but more like a ‘Wheeeeeeeee we’re hahahahahahaha scared hahahahahahaha’ Get it?
It doesn’t necessarily move the mythology of either character forward (thank God), but instead plays with our own confused convoluted memories of the two series.
Imagine you got real drunk after a NIGHTMARE and FRIDAY THE 13th Halloween marathon. Imagine your group of friends and you spent all night in a giggly fun fright filled night of gags and mass quantities of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and Guinness Stout. Imagine you go to sleep (aka pass out) and dream of what happened in the waking world, but in a weird psychedelic blendered surreality that puts a grin on your face, and then the next day you wake up to find the unconcious bodies of all your friends passed out in various pools of puke and spilt beer and liquior. You wake em up... tell em how Freddy killed Joanne and Jason killed Theodore and Ralph tried desperately to kill Jason with a toilet plunger but Jason mounted him on a rack of deer antlers as Ralph pissed in his pants creating a backlit by the fireplace single stream yellowy waterfall. Everyone starts laughing and for the rest of your lives... it becomes the in-joke that outsiders never get!
That’s what this script created. A great fun-filled movie that would get you nervously laughing, jumping here and there and then laughing again.
You guys seen Rob Bottin on THE THING dvd documentary? Ya see how he gets all geeky about all the different wet effects? Well.... shit, he’d just be a joy on this set. Man... Wouldn’t it just rock to be killed by Jason or Freddy in a movie? That’d be just about the coolest fucking thing in the world.... aside from being an Orc in LORD OF THE RINGS or some lightsaber victim in a STAR WARS movie.
I tell ya folks... ol Harry Caul over at New Line wanted to know what I think.... Finance the shit out of this film.... Give Bottin every possible cent to make this “the funnest (yes I know that’s not a word) horror script I’ve ever read”. Because that is sure as hell what a FREDDY VS. JASON script is supposed to do.
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR on the otherhand should be a kickass action film.
