Entertainment Weekly - October 20, 2017

AARON

MAHNKE

THE WORLD

OF LORE:

MONSTROUS

CREATURES

AUTHOR

MATHEMATICS OF A MELEE

FREDDY VS. JASON

Stars Robert Englund and Ken Kirzinger, along with director

Ronny Yu, deconstruct the highly calculated meeting of horror’s

most malevolent minds.By Christian Holub

A FOND (FAST)

FAREWELL

All told, from the first germ of

an idea to when the house

was film-ready, it took roughly

seven weeks—“It was fast and

furious,” says Ehrin—but it

was demolished in the blink of

an eye once production on

the series wrapped earlier this

year. “Honestly, it’s still hard

for me to accept that it’s not

there,” Ehrin says. “Freddie

Highmore [Norman Bates]

and I got on the phone in the

middle of the night one night,

and we were just crying

because we couldn’t believe

it was gone. It’s the price of

admission for what we do—

that it’s not forever, it’s tempo-

rary—and that’s what makes

it special and magical at the

same time. Of all the houses

in the world, thePsycho

house was [most] lovely.”

HOLLYWOOD’S GREATESTUNTOLD STORIES



Robert

Englund and

Ken Kirzinger



The exterior

of the Bates

family home



Norma’s bedroom

By the timeFreddy vs.

Jason landed in theaters in

2003, fans had been waiting

a long time for the two hor-

ror villains—fromA Night-

mare on Elm Street andFriday the 13th,

respectively—to clash, so the final

fight couldn’t disappoint. For poetic

resonance, the climax happens at

Jason’s old stomping ground, Camp

Crystal Lake (the two had previously

battled inside Freddy Krueger’s dream

world), and when they fight in the

flaming cabin, it combines both mon-

sters’ greatest fears.

“[The fight] starts on Elm Street, but

we hit both of the iconic home turfs,”

says Robert Englund, who played Freddy

for the last time in the film, after seven

previous appearances dating back to the

firstNightmare on Elm Street in 1984.

“Freddy fears fire and Jason fears water,

so those are real primal elements.”

Freddy and Jason themselves embod-

ied physically opposite types, especially

when longtime stunt coordinator Ken

Kirzinger was cast as Jason. (Kirzinger

was the eighth actor to take on the role of

Jason Voorhees.) “Jason’s so much big-

ger...you think, ‘How are they gonna do

this?’” Kirzinger says. But director Ronny

Yu, who’d cut his teeth on Hong Kong

action films likeThe Bride With White

Hair, had an idea. “Ronny has a martial-

arts background, so he knows size

doesn’t necessarily matter,” Kirzinger

says. “He made Freddy smaller and

quicker and Jason bigger and stronger,

and made the fight look relatively even.”

For the all-important question of

who would come out on top, Yu had a

formula. “I sort of calculate: If I get

maybe 30 seconds of the hero winning,

then I have to add another 25 seconds

of the villain fighting back,” he explains.

This required making Jason slightly

more heroic than usual—“Fans got to

see another side of Jason in this movie,”

Kirzinger says—and he finally succeeds

in decapitating Freddy with his trade-

mark machete. But in the last shot,

Freddy’s head gives a knowing wink to

the audience. “That’s how I found the

balance,” Yu says. “I didn’t upset Jason’s

fans, I didn’t upset Freddy’s fans. The

fight continues.”

2003

By Natalie Abrams

BATES MOTEL

PSYCHO