Since it’s Halloween week, let’s have a horror-based column and poll in today’s Coffee Talk. I want to know which horror series you like best. In the red corner, it’s Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street. In the blue corner, it’s Jason Voohees and Friday the 13th. Both series have scared millions of moviegoers and have earned millions of dollars. Both have had frightful high points and unfortunate sequels that are best forgotten. Come to think of it, both series have gotten the reboot treatment as well. While A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th certainly have a lot in common, I’m certain that you guys and gals prefer one over the other. Kindly vote in the poll below and explain your choice in the comments section.
As for me, I’m going with A Nightmare on Elm Street. There are so many things that I love about the movies and, especially, its villain. The movies had several moments that were legitimately scary. The movies also had some of the earliest instances of “meta” jokes that made sense to me in my youth. I love that Freddy Krueger was portrayed by the guy that played the goofy alien in V and later by the guy that played Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears. In addition to being a fun movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street III exposed Dokken to a mainstream audience.
Most of all, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund’s version) was a charming villain. He was funny and had a warped sense of humor. There were several times when I was rooting for him to kill the Elm Street kids, which felt all kinds of wrong but is a testament to the character’s actor and writers. While Jason Voorhees certainly had a more physical and intimidating presence, he was slow and stupid. If I wanted to be entertained by slow and stupid, I’d just watch a Batista match on WWE Network (zing!).
Anyway, that’s my vote and explanation. Now let’s hear yours! Kindly take the poll and expand on your choice.
[poll id=”196″]
So, looking at the results of the poll, as of now, I seem to be the only one that has chosen Jason over Freddy. I guess now I’ll have to explain why.
My problem is that these are two horror characters from two different worlds. Freddy exists in dreams and Jason in (Crystal Lake-version of) real life. So in order to get them to fight each other, they would have to be either in the dream world (of which I don’t think Jason dreams… or if you kill him in a dream, he’ll just come back to life again) and if you get Freddy into the real world, he can die as easily as any mortal. And, no, I haven’t seen Freddy vs. Jason, so I don’t know what happens in that movie or if it is even “canon.”
I did see all of the Nightmare on Elm St. movies up until the remakes and I’ve seen almost all of the Friday the 13th movies (which includes Jason X).
So, following the rules set forth by the respective franchises, all you’d have to do is get a kid at Camp Crystal Lake to grab Freddy in the dream world then wake him up. At that moment, Jason busts through the flimsy wooden door thinking some teenagers are getting it on and severs Freddy’s head with a dull machete. Even if Freddy could fight back, there’s nothing he could do to kill Jason once he’s in the waking world. Jason wins.
As far as sense of humor goes, yes, Freddy is obviously a lot more comical with the killings (especially in the later movies), but Jason isn’t without a few comedic killings, like one of the times where he takes a camper inside a sleeping bag and uses it like a baseball bat against a tree, or that one handicapped guy that rolls down a set of stairs in a wheelchair with a machete firmly logged into his skull. Also, the scene in “Jason Takes Manhattan” where we see Jason punching that black guy’s head clean off with one swipe was pretty funny.
Jason gets my vote.
(Ha! Beat that, N8.)
I wrote a SUPER long response and it said it “timed out” and I didn’t copy and paste first.
I really don’t feel like writing all of that again.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, ha!!
(I feel your pain. That’s happened to me a couple of times. Personally, I blame the web designer of the site.)
Why don’t you just summarize what you were going to say in two or three sentences?
One of the reasons I might go back to Disqus is that I’ve never had any reliability issues with it. What do you think?