Trick or Trailers: Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Two titans of terror coming together in one historic, long-awaited death match. Winner take all! How easy is that to sell? Even in as commercial a genre as horror, some movies still present a marketing challenge but not this one. No, once you put that vs. between Freddy and Jason, your job is essentially done. You barely even need to have a trailer.

That said, this trailer was met with a special sense of excitement:



Hard to believe that Freddy vs. Jason celebrated it's fifteenth (!) anniversary this year but when you look at the trailer, it certainly reminds you that it was from a different, distant time. First of all, it was from back in the day when New Line Cinema was still a thing. I know we still see that logo pop up here and there on new movies but it's not like it was when a movie was specifically a New Line Cinema film. That logo conjures such a sense of nostalgia for me. During the '80s and '90s, when times were sometimes lean for genre films, when I would see the New Line logo come up on the front of a trailer, I got pumped because I knew it was a good chance it'd be a horror trailer.

Either that, or a House Party sequel.



Either way I was happy!

And thank God Freddy vs. Jason came out during an era where FANGORIA was still a robust presence. It would have been a crime had this movie, a film for the Fango crowd if there ever was one, had come out with no accompanying Fango cover story to mark its arrival.

Awwww yeeeah!

For a movie that had so many expectations to live up to, I feel like Freddy vs. Jason mostly satisfied. Mostly. But while I'm grateful that they made this before Robert Englund aged out of the Freddy role, I feel like had this been made in the late '80s, at the commercial peak of both franchises, whether the movie was good or bad it would have been - I don't know - more pure. Well, as "pure" as a shameless cash grab can be. But hey, what they came up with in the early 00's was just fine. By now, this movie has its own retro-charm going for it.

With Michael Myers killing it at the box office again, Robert Englund donning his Freddy make-up for a guest spot on The Goldbergs, and LeBron James rumored to be getting a new Friday the 13th going, you've got to wonder if another big slasher vs. might be in the cards.

Given how hard it was to make Freddy vs. Jason happen in the first place, I'm gonna guess no. Seems like a real long shot. So until the day should ever come when another movie attempts to bring two or more icons together in bloody battle, Freddy vs. Jason will continue to wear the crown as the uncontested champ of slasher throwdowns.

Trick or Trailers: Bride of Chucky (1998)

As the wait for a fourth Chucky film stretched longer and longer after 1991's Child's Play 3, to the point where more than five years had gone by with no news, I kind of figured that was it. All I would have going forward as a Chucky fan would be my memories and my VHS tapes. It would be a somewhat diminished life, for sure, but I'd have to learn to stop pining for Chucky's return and focus on, I don't know, other stuff.

Happily, when Scream came along in 1996 and made horror commercially viable again, circumstances aligned for Chucky's comeback. For me, any Chucky is great - I even like the much-maligned Child's Play 3 - so having Chucky back period, in even the most rudimentary of sequels, was enough to make me overjoyed. The thought that this might be really good hardly crossed my mind.

After all, what were the odds of the fourth installment of a somewhat played-out series being incredible? Pretty slim, I'd say. But getting Hong Kong director Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) to helm this installment was a true stroke of genius. Working from Chucky creator Don Mancini's wickedly funny script, Yu helped to reinvent the Chucky franchise in a way that no one saw coming.

When I first saw the trailer for Bride of Chucky it just popped off the screen as not just looking different from any previous Chucky movie but different from any other American horror movie as well. It was just immediately striking, visually.

Aside from the lavish look that Yu gave Bride, Mancini's brilliant move to give Chucky another doll to bounce off of is really what clinches it for Bride. The dynamic between Brad Dourif and Jennifer Tilly gave this movie a whole new energy and I loved seeing that carry on into the criminally underrated Seed of Chucky (2004).

Released on October 16th, 1998, Bride of Chucky helped make Halloween that year an extra celebratory one and I'm stoked that Chucky is back again this Halloween with Curse of Chucky, which hits DVD today. While I do wish that Universal had given Curse a theatrical release, having a new installment of this classic series with creator Don Mancini calling the shots and Chucky still voiced by the irreplaceable Brad Dourif is enough to make me as happy as Andy Barclay unwrapping his first Good Guy doll.