TRAIN WRECK OR REALLY COOL POTENTIAL? YOU BE THE JUDGE

Oh yeah … all the film geeks today are going to have this story:New Line Cinema “is in negotiations with director-producer Sam Raimi … for a project titled Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. In the proposed sequel, Freddy (from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films) and Jason (from the Friday the 13th pics) would go up against Ash, the cynical anti-hero survivor of Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy, which also includes Army of Darkness.

Let me just say upfront, I am not now, nor have I ever been a huge horror film fan. I don’t roundly dislike them, but I’ve never subscribed to Fangoria or been so excited about the latest appearance of certain slasher villains. With that said, I appreciate the genre and think many of the classic films and characters from the 70s and 80s when the films really started gaining a fanatical following are quite brilliant.

Long before he was the director of major blockbusters like Spider-Man, Raimi, he was an indie film maverick who made the aforementioned cult classic Evil Dead trilogy. Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street is legitimately one of the scariest movies you will ever see. It’s premise alone — a boogeyman who kills teenagers in their dreams — is the reason the franchise has survived, but in the original film, Freddy was not so much the wise-cracking caricature he became in all the sequels. In fact, you don’t even see him as much; he exists mostly in bits and shadow. While the original Friday the 13th isn’t the great film and doesn’t compare to these others — and it’s definitely not in the class of the film that really started the trend, John Carpenter’s absolutely brilliant Halloween, a film with not nearly the reputation it should have due to the absolutely bastardization of its story and main character through a litany of horrible sequels. (Like Psycho, which influenced it heavily, Halloween shows very little direct blood and violence while still scaring the shit out of you. A great example of well-made horror and cheaply made shitty horror is to watch Halloween and then immediately watch its awful sequel Halloween II. The characters are the same; the story continues from where the first movie ends. But the film is missing everything that made the original so good and scary while adding a lot more gratuitous and graphic violence.)

So here’s the thing: I have no use for Freddy vs. Jason. I mean, if someone came up with a great idea and made an amazing movie, fine. And I’m not going to criticize that film specifically because I didn’t see it. Much like Alien vs. Predator, however, both of these films were obviously made primarily for commercial purposes only, and I have yet to hear from anybody who is not a major horror or sci-fi fan that either are worthwhile.

Still, you stick Sam Raimi into the mix in a creative role (even if he won’t direct himself), and you throw in the underappreciated and underused Bruce Campbell playing the character that made him “famous,” and I just may have to see this damn movie. Of course, if the deal to involve Raimi falls through — which I’m sure is more than possible — than just toss this title onto the scrap heap of history, and please release it in January so it can quietly play without really bothering any of us.