Robert Englund returns as Freddy and former stunt coordinator Ken Kirzinger dons the infamous hockey mask to take on the role of Jason. I sat down with the two very personable stars at this year's San Diego Comic Con where Englund and Kirzinger were more than happy to provide a look behind the scenes of their heavily anticipated onscreen showdown.
So what can fans expect from Freddy vs Jason?
ROBERT ENGLUND: It's sort of a male adolescent’s fantasy about, "Hey Mr. Englund, could you kick Jason's ass, dude?" It's been around for a long time, and it predates any exploitative gesture of New Line Cinema buying the rights to “Friday the 13th.” It predates the kid who came up to me in 1984 and wondered if I could beat up or Jason or Michael Myers. It harkens back 70 years to “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,” to “Frankenstein meets Dracula.” That concept of who would win between superheroes or supervillains or monsters is the sort of ‘what if’ fantasy that young males have had for the last half a century.
I think it's great that New Line has sort of reentered the matinee fun pop culture logical conclusion of that with “Freddy vs Jason.” We're just the tip of the iceberg and some of them will work and some of them won't. I know there's going to be “Superman Meets Batman” and “Alien vs Predator.” It's all coming and I think that is fun.
When Ken and I go at each other in this, and this is not original - somebody told me this - but they said when they saw us being cut together for one of the fights it reminded them of Ken as like ‘Bluto’ and me as ‘Popeye.’ Remember those old cartoons? Somebody else said to me that there's a scene where I get Ken on my turf - where I get Jason on my turf - and he thinks he's got the upper hand but I’m just faking him out with all these gory wounds and it becomes "Monty Python-esque," like "The Holy Grail." And then there's a thing at the end that is almost “Roadrunner”-like to me. I’ve got to use my wits because I’m on his turf at Camp Crystal Lake. But when we go after the kids, that's when it gets scary and dark.
That makes it sound like the two of you team up to go after the kids.
ROBERT ENGLUND: No, no, no. It's at different times.
KEN KIRZINGER: But the other thing that the fans can expect is that it's bigger and better, because we had a bigger budget. We've got a fantastic director, Ronny Yu, and everything was just done bigger and better. The fight scenes are just great.
ROBERT ENGLUND: But we're not top heavy. We've always been lean and mean - now that's in perspective today. The first five “Nightmare” films were made with spit and love. We produced Johnny Depp, we produced Breckin Meyer, we produced Patricia Arquette, Steven Hopkins, Renny Harlin, Chuck Russell... People who went on to do “The Mask” – all from these movies. The best cameramen in Hollywood came from these movies.
We were lean, mean and hungry. This one, we had a huge script and big cast but we had at least a medium budget to work on. But you get bang for your buck up in Vancouver. We didn't go up there as a runaway production, we went up there because of this guy [indicating Ken]. Because of 'Big Dog' we needed Camp Crystal Lake. If you know Vancouver, if you drive for five minutes it's like Yosemite. It's beautiful up there and they found this perfect lake, which was his turf.
KEN KIRZINGER: Freddy's boiler room - they didn't even have to build that set actually. They found an old boiler room, dressed it up a little, and it was great.
ROBERT ENGLUND: It was a cavernous place.
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