Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Freddy vs. Jason ::
by Forrest Grump
Do you remember when slasher movies
were scary. Letting slide for a second that you are a big growed up adult, and
you have managed to figure out the formula, you are a human plot device
detector, silently calling out to yourself all the horror movie stereotypes (the
bitch, the slut, the geek). You devise a pecking order in your imagination when
you watch, and you try to see if you were right about who will die, and when.
When I was a little boy, my treat for Halloween was watching a slasher movie. I
got to see Halloween 4: The appendectomy of Michael Myers, or the such. Scared
me it did, unstoppable force preying on teenagers, killing townies and
possessing the spirit of a little girl. Good flick, I ate up the slasher movies
after that, each one becoming a little less scary than the last.
Freddy versus Jason is a movie you have seen before, and at the same time it
isn't. The film is an attempted resurrection of the two franchise characters of
Freddy Kreuger, and Jason Vorhees. Sadly, the 1990s were not kind to either
killer. Freddy Kreuger got dead, and then came back to life in the terrible New
Nightmare, Jason got dead, and then came back to life in the somewhat ok (My
review here people!) Jason X.
As a resurrection and reinvention, the movie works. The plot surprisingly comes
off as somewhat thought through. Freddy needs fear to exist, people forgot about
him, so no one fears him. He manipulates Jason to turn into a walking
cuisinenart on Elm street. Teens
get dead, but when Freddy wants to become the #1 killer in town again, Jason
isn't quite ready to give up the job, zaniness ensues.
Buckets more blood than were used in any three of the last movies. It it bothers
me to think this got away with "R", perhaps the MPAA recognized what it was, a
movie made for the fans, finally to deliver on a ten year old promise. There was
also the gleeful battle
between the two unstoppable forces. This is in fact everything it was cracked up
to be. slightly comedic, terribly brutal, and a lot of fun. There were a fair
amount of nekkid people getting
dead, and there was a grand exploration of the origin of Jason (complete with a
surprise cameo). Another thing I really likes about this movie was that it took
the character of Jason Vorhees, who is usually the one on one stalk you type,
and turned him loose in a large
crowd of people. Always wanted to see that. Freddy is his usual wise-ass self,
master
manipulator behind the scenes, inflicting cruelty with both the razor glove, and
the more evil butchery of the English language (puns suck).
But despite the good things about the
movie, there are bad as well. The running subplot between the main character and
her father is weak. The fodder teen masses seem to be going through the movie
doing impressions of pop culture characters. ie: Jay the stoner, the cop
that-when-you-see-who-it-is-you-know-they-are-all-screwed, and the fat guy is
doing his best impression of Jack Black. That aside, the movie delivers what it
promised, a 40 minute battle between the two most recognized slashers in the
business. The battle rocks, and though the ending is a little ambiguous, there
is a fairly clear winner (email me if you want to debate that one).
I give the movie a B, solid, delivers where is has to, but not too much to offer
for the casual movie goer.
