What the HELL happened to A Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy's Dead!!!

Part 6 Freddy’s Dead

New Line learned a harsh lesson about doing copious amounts of booger sugar and coordinating film production with their near destruction of Freddy in The Dream Master. So naturally while licking their wounds they took the time to rethink their life decisions. They weren’t going to rush this and they wanted to really make a solid move with this next sequel. Looming in the background of course was still the want for doing their dream cross over of Freddy vs Jason. But we weren’t there just yet. They had some harsh realizations. With both the success and chaotic productions and subsequent near destruction of the brand. They needed to put Freddy to sleep and come back to the drawing board. Granted they could have easily done so and waited, but there was money yet to be squeezed out, and the idea which has repeated in other franchises. Was the hard reset. You put an end to the era you birthed and let it lay untouched. Revisit the property later and enter a hard reboot. The same would happen with Both Jason and Michael respectfully and it was needed for both them and Freddy. A reset allows you to restructure and reintroduce the character and throw out some new ideas. But before they could do that. They had to finish Pop Freddy. So this would be their main event. The FINAL Nightmare. Freddy would be dead for good. Much like Jason and his big city adventure. This was being marketed everywhere as the last we would see of the dream killer. They even held a fake funeral for Freddy. New Line was going all out  on this one and it was fun to see happening live. Given the running gag of other horror franchises and the fact no one ever stayed dead, well of course no one really bought it. But it was still fun to think of. And ultimately this proved the best decision New Line could make given where the road eventually would take them.

Had they actually ended Freddy with this one.

So welcome one and all to 90’s Freddy, and I do mean, the 90’s.

You can romanticize as people often do the 80’s I get that. But when people began doing that with the 90’s? You could all just fuck the hell right off. There was nothing fun and awesome about the 90’s. Slap bracelets? Yeah sure, have fun with that We had…the 90’s was a time those of us who lived it don’t like talking about. Because it was a body horror generation. I won’t get into it because Freddy is the center star here. But we can just say clothing choices back in the 90’s were the specialist kind of special to exist and no one was happy with it. Then or now.

Fuck it lets get into the story of the movie yeah? Yeah.

Story

So Freddy is back and doing what he loves. No explanations given or asked. He’s just happy to be doing his schtick and chasing down a boy we’ll call Sir John of Doe. The film opens up in a very Escape from New York way giving us a map of the US. Informing us all all the mass child deaths in Springwood and how the town is essentially now a ghost town of aging boomers. Leaving poor John Doe as the last of his kind.

After surviving an initial tickle pickle with Freddy, He finds himself with memory loss and in a new town, wondering aimlessly while trying to escape the terrors in his dreams. He finds himself in shelter for troubled youths. Convincing a very bored child psychologiest, Maggie that they need to do a road trip back to Springwood to uncover his identity. Maggie having just met this kid decides he’s worth the extra attention and she could use a break from her mundane life dealing with shitty kids attitudes. So she checks out the company van and heads off on a road trip. As you do. Unbeknownst too Maggie, she has children escaping with them in the van. Mildly put off by this but with limited choices. Maggi accepts the castaways and they begin exploring the town. Where we uncover Freddy’s turbulent past growing up from an orphanage, That this town is where Tom and Roseanne Arnold settled down and divorced, and that a town void of children is the most peace you’ll ever know and kill for once you past 38.

So As John the Donut explored the important questions with Maggie. Our group of escaped teens begin their time with Fredrick Von Krueger.

As before the kids begin vanishing as Freddy dispatches them. Literally vanishing. That was a new thing from this movie that both mad sense and at the same time, didn’t. It also gives a weird revisit to an inconsistency with Freddy where. Sometimes his attacks in the dream world end up playing out in the real world. Or like in this case. The kids just vanish entirely never to be seen again.

It’s genuinely a weird thing I wish they addressed but anywho. One by one our troubled 90’s youths are being dispatched and we learn a terrible truth about John Doe. He isn’t as special as he thought he was! He’s just a normal ass dumb kid blaming his dreams for all of lifes many, many failures. He also gets turned into a human pin cushion which was worth seeing. See John Doe believed he was the main protagonist in the film, and the son of Fredrick Kroger, heir to the Kroger grocery chains. But alas he was not. He was simply a pawn to help Tom and Roseanne escape the town. Or at least would have been had this been a much more daring film.

So having seen all the town of Springwood had to offer, and losing most of their original group. Maggie and her friend Tracy come up with good excuses for losing three teens to a dream demon and head back to big city town. Unaware Freddy is following them now, ready to open another Kroger in the city.

Once back at the shelter Maggie finds her coverup of the dead teens incredibly easy as no one had any memory of them what so ever! Way to go Maggie! However it troubles her so she seeks insight from Yaphet Kotto.

Long story short, Maggie uncovers multiple things through research and dream leaping. She learns that Alice Cooper was the father of Freddy, which explains a lot. She also learned her father was Freddy and murdered her mother. Which explains a lot. Now thankfully the film isn’t doing what Jason Goes to hell would later do, we don’t get Yaphet Kotto breaking her fingers and explaining Through a Krueger can he be reborn and by the hands of a Krueger can he be killed. Instead we learn that Freddy was given his amazing dream powers by making a deal with dream demon sperm, while Springwood parents burned him alive. Yes Freddy was resurrected to kill kids in their dreams thanks to a deal with sperm demons. These things look like sperm and you can’t convince me otherwise. We of course learn all this through dream flashbacks in the land of 3D which was a main selling point of the film. 90’s 3D was a nightmare no one needs to pay extra for and watch again for fun today.

So our group of troubled youth and bored doctors decide to drag the dream demon into our world and fight him one on one.

Maggie settles her daddy issues with her father, denies her right to the Kroger family fortune and shoves every sharp instrument in the building into him. Before pegging Freddy with a pipebomb, blowing the man up, releasing his demon jizz monsters and ending his legacy once and for all as Maggie announces to us in the cinema, “Freddy’s Dead”

I will grant this movie one thing. The song and montage playing through the end credits was a nice touch.

So for better or worse. This was The last outing we had of Freddy. For now. It was him at his most Freddy. For now. The film had the right idea though. It kept to the roots of the new pop Freddy New Line built and he was frolicking through each kill as happy a man as Freddy could be. Honestly I still laugh today at his taunting of the deaf teen Carlo. Him turning to the audience shushing us while he stalked behind him. Shouting and hollering jumping around. It’s great shit man. And when Freddy is seen pushing out a large bed of nails waiting for John Doe to land on them. How He pushes with effort this huge bed and has to stop. Panting and turning to the camera to sigh. It’s great.

It also was one of the problems some fans had.

Which we will get into.

Now, as we mentioned this film did not follow the previous two films footsteps which avoided their failures. There was no rush to meet an unreal deadline, there was no mad dash to have script pages delivered minutes before shooting. Honestly this was a fairly clean by the numbers production. That isn’t to say it didn’t have its problems. It did. Just thankfully nowhere near the levels of apocalyptic despair they previously put people through. And one of the people working on this film survived that dystopian war camp known as The Dream Master, Rachel Talalay.

So what the hell happened with Freddy’s Dead? A lot actually, and it’s one of the more interesting films I enjoyed researching through the years. Mostly because of what we nearly got, and possibly still should have got versus the movie they released.

Which brings us to the always fun to learn about, early drafts of the film.

Now New Line was never going to admit fault with their Dream trilogy, or that they milked that for all it was worth. In fact they were ready to revisit it again with this movie.

One of the original scripts circling around and considered, would have focused on Jacob-Alices son from the Dream Child. In this story, Alice is killed in her sleep by Freddy, and Jacob becomes a John Connor of sorts. Spending his trouble youth learning to defend himself in his dreams and trying to hunt down and fill Freddy for good in an attempt to avenge his mother and save others from the fate her friends, his mother and his own friends suffer. However our director and promoted Studio Executive Rachal, said fuck that noise. The idea was interesting but, she hated(understandable) the whole convoluted lore part 5 cooked up and most everything to do with those films, and no one was in a rush to revisit Alices dream powers now passed on to another person. So it was not to be.

But they did like the idea of someone hunting Freddy. So that idea stuck around. Resulting in what would have been the possibly funniest and even weirdest Freddy film. The script was coined as The Dream Police, It would feature a task force, developed to deal with, Dream level threats. Like Freddy. So we’d get a dream version of The Fugitive, where Freddy is being chased down by federal dream agents across dreamland in an attempt to evade capture and trial. I mean I get it the man was put on trial in the real world and got burned alive last time. Going through it again in a dream world, well that’d be a whole other level of hell.

Thankfully the idea was canned as, believe it or not. That whole idea would be a hard sell to the audience and even more comical than they would care to go. Which is still funny considering what we’ll eventually get into

Out of every little factoid and interesting behind the scenes treasure from this film, this one. This script remains a grail like nugget amongst fans in the know.

And that is the fabled PeterJackson script for what he called Dream Lover.

Out there on the web, at one time at least. You could hunt down pages of this thing and to my knowledge someone did purchase the script in auction and has since then not been seen or heard of. Much like Spielbergs early draft he did of a very VERY dark E.T. sequel.

Peter Jackson pitched a great idea for a Freddy film and it hurts me we never got this. In his film, Freddy was well known throughout the world. In a very meta tone actually. Freddy was known to everyone and people learned how to defeat him given the many different encounters he’s had in the past. In the film Freddy is presented as ‘Old man Freddy’, an aged senior who no longer is leaping around terrorizing teens in their sleep, but instead is being bullied! Yes, Freddy is the one being tormented in his own world. People went from taking Hypnocil to now taking sleeping pills so they can fuck with Freddy and beat him, torment him and bully the man.

During one such romp through Freddy’s decrepit home, a teenage bully ends up slipping and trapped, actually feeling afraid for once. That fear is what’s always given Freddy his power going back to the very first film. This begins energizing the old man Freddy and be kills the kid. Gaining a soul and power. Freddy is back and ready for payback. Going after the top bullies who tormented him, He ends up kidnapping one of his tormenters and taunting the others to come get him. Trapping them in his dreamworld where once again he is in control.

The studio and director loved the idea, and loved what he wrote. They all agreed this would be a HELL of a Nightmare film for Freddy. But that also is why they turned it down.

It would make a great Nightmare film. But not a finale film.

They committed to the bit of ending Freddy and they just felt Jackson’s script wouldn’t capture that tone but instead act as more of a jumping off point for a new series of films. Which I call bullshit on but I’m no executive. I mean really that would have worked! The idea of a defeated beaten Freddy finding himself again, becoming a menace one last time. You could work it into a finale. But again. It wasn’t in the cards. But its incredibly interesting to know how things would have gone from there. Would this have been the start of Jackson making more high budget horror films? Hell making more horror? As discussed with the host of Reels of Justice when I made a guest appearance, would New Line picking up this film, and him possibly taking over as director had stopped him from making the Lord of the Rings later with New Line? Or would that possibly had given more good faith to his name with the studio to have the films made.

There’s a lot of what if to play with around that and people generally still feel  though this movie did not happen, it still should. I mean Robert is within the age to pull it off but. That still remains a pipe dream.

In the end, they decided to run with the idea of Freddy having a child that was kept hidden through adoption, much like Laurie Strodes children, and would serve as the weapon to bring him to his end.

With a story agreed upon, and a script written and shockingly finished. They were ready to begin.

But that’s when the challenged started.

Firstly there was John Doe. Or rather Carlos. Ricky Dean was cast as John Doe and was meant to be the main figure of the film. However once the guy read the script, he felt in his actors mind that he identified more with the character of Carlos, and decided to step down as the titular character and take a much smaller role. Bold move but the man stuck to his guns and told the studio he was rerolling his character. Forcing the studio to scramble and recast the part as quick as could be.

There was also another recasting unfortunately. See Talalay the director had worked on indie films previously. In fact she worked with a lot of the John Waters crew and films. Given her shot at directing the final Freddy film. She wanted to bring in for their big studio cameo and show the world the true face of beauty one more time, Divine. Yes the lovely Divine was set to be in this film. No she would not replace Tom and Roseanne. She was intended to play the lady on the plane in John Does opening dream sequence. Unfortunately Divine would pass away before filming and had to be recast. Another one of those would have been great moments.

Speaking of our intrepid director. This would mark the first time a female director would step into the franchise. It was a high watermark in her career and a great push for her. However this was not a move met with high praise.

Partly, unfortunately. Her receiving the directors chair was viewed two fold. Some believed a woman was not the proper fit for horror. This thankfully was a minority. But believe in it they did, though they didn’t apparently know about the beautiful horror vampire film Near Dark, or Slumber Party massacre to name a few. They also felt because Rachel worked for the studio, even receiving the promotion to executive. The crew felt she wasn’t trustworthy. If having  womanly parts wasn’t bad enough, the idea of working for a studio plant that would turn anyone over to gulag they deemed not following company protocol. Well that was a bridge too far.

She was a survivor of the Dream Master and the hellscape that brought. She worked on indie films and with John Waters. She was going to deal with this shit. This type of descent could and likely would halt production and filming. She did not forget what she went through on part 4. She decided to circumcise the crew herself and bring in her marry band of misfits she was used to working with.

A victory for Rachel, a new challenge for the studio whom she served.

She began hiring key crew members from the film she worked on with John, a favorite of mine and my sisters, Cry Baby. This was unsettling some on set because these people were more comfortable leaning into campy, bizarre, surreal comedy. Which was a far cry from the dark horror and humor that Freddy was established for by now.

It also directly influenced the film which they had feared. The film under her control was going to lean more heavily into not just corny humor and weirdness. It was going to go full on loony toons. Which also was not well received. Sure Freddy could be and was funny. But going all in on the camp and turning the violence into a joke with no actual terror, removing the horror. Well that was. A choice.

Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an already tired and divided franchise.

But this was just a little speed bump. The studio gave their trust over to Talalay and they let things cautiously ride. It’s hard to imagine but a film directed by one of their own had very little studio interference where as the last two films were riddled daily with it. Amazing that…

Though the studio did not interfere. Robert Englund did. He decided to do an early pilot for Mythbusters and test out of Freddy’s glove actually could kill or severely harm someone. Actually no he didn’t intentionally do it. He just over stepped his mark accidentally and ended up slashing into the face of the young actress playing Tracy during their dream fight. Lezlie Deane did not die, thankfully. But she had severe cuts on her face which needed immediate medical assistance, a tetanus shot, and resulted in permanent scars across her face. Marking her as the only real life survivor of a Freddy Krueger attack.

Unfortunately for Lezlie. That was only part of her trauma on this film. Her character Tracy is shown to be a boxing, karate gym nut. It’s part of how she deals with her traumatic childhood. As we learn from the film she was abused physically and sexually by her father. During the movie it comes up several times as she is constantly moving to defend herself, quick to anger and the moment anyone touches her, she’s going to respond swiftly. They used it effectively in her dream sequences and at certain parts of the film but it still feels they didn’t go much further with the character which is unfortunate. However. The character was a bit too close to home for Lezlie, as she had suffered similar abuse in reality as her character had. Making matters worse, she had repressed those memories and through filming these scenes, ended up unlocking her own trauma.

She had to deal with these crushing realities on set and during filming which, for anyone is a hell of a thing. It affected her performance during the film and drained her psychologically. After the filming it only grew more present for her sadly. I mean that’s a hell of a thing to discover, or rather recover from yourself, and to then have to play a character who had a similar history while trying to process all of this. And THEN to get cut across your face by a knife glove. She was having a time of it. To say the least.

She was the more severe of the victims during this movies production but by no means its last. The next big fall would come from our new director.

As with past Nightmare films, they shot mostly during the night, while the studio was not bullet training this production. It was still a big studio release and one being handled by a first time director long time producer and now executive. She was working 16 hour days learning the responsibilities that fall on the chair of director while navigating the landscape that felt against her as both a first time director and woman in the franchise that the original crew didn’t trust. When you first direct, regardless what you know or don’t. The studio and others are watching you through a microscope. It’s taxing on anyone. George Lucas during the making of A New hope was hospitalized for hypertension brought on from extreme stress and severe exhaustion.

It wasn’t just the duties of a director being too much for a first outing. It was a lot more. A lot.

The studio still carried its no delays allowed policy. If it wasn’t going to work the first time? Find a work around and move on. The director ended up getting sick during production. She had a violent flu and upper respiratory infection. If she took time off? That would delay the production and every day a studio has to shut down production cost thousands of dollars. She chose to soldier on. Filming and working 16 hours a day filming, managing crew and sets. Wrangling actors and planning out daily shots while being sick as hell and having breathing issues was a recipe for disaster.

On top of normal filming expectations, she also had to deal with the worst part of this film, but a gimmick they demanded for the final Freddy to draw people in.

This film would have its near entire 3rd act finale filmed in 3D.

This meant specialized equipment, new cameras and special setups on set to rig up these effects and shots. A fun thing to do, and I encourage you just for the visual. Google 3D Camera from the 90’s. The things are massive. Shooting one scene required multiple cameras and any time you switched angles meant spending a long time resetting and recalibrating the cameras. This meant scenes took twice as long to film, set up, light and finish. Given the tight schedule? This meant they had to push through even harder, and faster to get these scenes done. Which meant rushing the setup and recalibration of huge expensive equipment. There are two things in filmmaking that cost a fortune and will get you on a special list with studios if you touch or destroy. Cameras and muppets. Genuinely if you touched a muppet on set the puppeteers and crew of Henson studios would flip their shit and tell you just how much those cost and if you fuck them up, it’s going to cost the studio, and take time to fix. Same with cameras. So being told as a first time director, while sick as shit, working 16 hours, “hey we want to film the last 30 or so minutes in 3D. Heres one of a kind heavy as fuck expensive as all sin equipment have fun and if you scratch a lens it’ll cost you your career and life. Have fun!”

All of this eventually got to her and she collapsed from exhaustion. She was taken to the hospital she should have gone to initially, and a line producer was brought in to finish the last hours of filming. She genuinely deserves a lot of credit, studio plant or not. She stuck it out damn near to the end and the act alone should have earned her the respect of earlier detractors.

Honestly because we could use a bit of a laugh, there is one challenge the film had that just. It’s worth mentioning because it’s just too silly not to, and it could have ended up costing them a lot in the end.

The Nintendo controversy.

For some reason. Bob Shaye, the Nightmare equivalent of Moustafa Akkad. Felt it was his duty to work in product placement with Freddy films. He thought it’d be a great tie in with the youth given the popularity of console gaming, to work in a dream sequence where Freddy kills one character in a video game and uses a Nintendo Power Glove to do so.

He respectfully wrote Nintendo asking for their permission to do so and use their glove in the film.

Nintendo said hell to the fucking no!

They weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of having their family friendly console gaming controller used in a horror film where the main villain is a child murderer. So yeah, Bob was told not so politely to never contact them again and keep Nintendo out of his film, and mouth.

Bob Shaye, rather famously told Talalay. Actually ordered her “Fuck’em I don’t care what they want. I’m going to use it anyway. Shoot the scene” And so they did.

With a few caveats. Mostly the very entirely for legal purposes redesign of the glove to resemble something far removed from the Nintendo Power Glove. Bypassing a potential lawsuit with actually using the thing.

How ever. Bob was not done, you don’t tell Moustafa how to use Michael in Halloween, and you don’t tell Bob what he can and can’t do in his franchise. While the Nintendo Power Glove would not make an actual appearance. He made a point to still throw in the lines by Freddy “You forgot the Power Glove!” and the Nintendo tag line “NOW your playing with power!”

It’s a purely little shit move and moment. And he expected a swift kick in the balls from Nintendo. Which given their history of lawsuits. Well the man knew what he was doing and what was coming.

Only no lawsuit came. Once the film was released, people laughed and loved the dumb glove and lines. They loved it enough they went out and bought the damn thing. So his product placement worked, Nintendo made money and they decided no lawsuit for you.

With Talalay recovering, and filming wrapped. The movie was edited with Talalay and presented to the last former Hurdle that tore the last film several new assholes.

This was the beginning of a new era and power move by New Line and Talalay. Knowing the film would likely be scrutinized. They pre-emptively edited some scenes. Knowing they would hold onto these scenes for home video release and later in what would be dubbed Directors Cuts of the film. Other studios began tricking the MPAA with this move as well. Discovering they could, though it was heavily frowned upon and was fought at times later on, edit back in scenes removed on VHS releases. This itself caused issues but only when it really stuck out, and in some cases like with Basic Instinct where you had full coochie being displayed under an R rated opposed to a proper rating.

However some scenes did face a light trimming from the MPAA. Mostly the exploding head of Carlos. Otherwise the film was given a pass, which was a blessing. But not really a surprise.

If you recall from what we discussed in the Friday the 13th films and their unholy slaughtering with the MPAA, the organization specifically stated violence was okay as long as it was fantastical and more so if it was cartoon or satirical.

Given this film was completely shot as a live action Loony Toons cartoon during dream sequences. They got a pass on a lot of the kills. Which even then weren’t dark or disturbing, let alone Bloody. The most blood in fact you see in the film comes from the television flooding with blood during Spencers dream sequence. And the MPAA had a long standing battle with exploding heads. Even when this one barely had any gore to it. So the film walked by with just a tiny stumble and got cleared with its R rating.

The final Freddy film was released in theaters, people flocked to be a part of the spectacle. Both in saying farewell to Freddy and the idea of having some 3D freddy fun.

As before and repeated with these films. The budget was close to the previous film, coming in at around $10 million, and overall the film made $35 million. It financially was a success, not nearly part 4 levels but still far better than the last instalment.

The film survived with little interference and no large fights for a change. A pressing schedule for a first time director, and an actor being attacked by Freddy. But it would not survive the audience and critics.

This film though serving as Freddy’s finale, meant to unite the fans in one last adventure in dreamland. Ended up dividing them further. Freddy already had his detractors in those that yearned for scary Freddy and hated comical Freddy. While they also had fans loving funny Freddy and thinking scary Freddy was boring. This movie kept those two camps firmly carrying their flags. However it also caused a huge rift within those groups and new fans. The turn from dark humor into full on cartoon violence was not well received by everyone. Even supports of fun Freddy found the movie way too campy and more than they cared to handle. Today the film still sets firmly in that you either love it, hate it, or tolerate it. The film also suffered a trend reserved for a few select films, in that it severely aged itself. Even if it was doing so in good humor. Like the cameo with Johnny Depp doing his famous at the time anti-drug PSA. It was funny seeing because growing up we had to go through not only all of those dumb ass commercials. We had D.A.R.E. coming to our schools talking to us about drugs. We also had the obligatory television show episodes that dealt with drugs and told us how bad they were. I still remember DINOSAURS and wondering why Robbie had to talk to us about ‘While what we did was funny, drugs are no laughing matter’ speech, and later addressed the war in Iraq. No one thankfully after the 90’s had to put up with this shit, and it stands now as a reference no one really gets. Same with Roseanne and now famously ex husband Tom Arnold. At the time Roseanne was a huge sitcom everyone loved and watched. Seeing her pop up in a horror film was funny for a chuckle. Now its just an awkward weird moment that sticks out and went nowhere. Add to this the famous Power Glove scene. I mean. Shit you can enjoy Princess Bride and chuckle at the thing opening with a boy playing an 8 bit video game. But this movie committed to the bit and made it a full sequence. Is it enough to kill the movie? No not at all. But it makes for cringe and reminding you, as if the outfits and hair, and music wasn’t enough-that the 90s was a time and place best left desecrated and buried ass up in the middle of a salt field.

But coupled with the cheesy 3D effects and gags of sticking things in your face, knowing once you rented the film it would look awkward as fuck, and still does. The ugly early CGI and, because it was a living cartoon, the over the top Looney Tunes sound effects. All of it was just bad.

Which says a lot given the other movies are flooded heavily with 80’s life blood. But see again. The 80’s was a decade we knew, lived, and people were okay with. So it gets the pass. The 90’s was a fucking nightmare in every sense. So people can accept the nut hugger gym shorts of Freddy’s Revenge, and the George Michael Posters along with nerds playing wizard dice games reserved for outcast. But no one. Not a single soul can accept the style and grunge of the 90’s.

In the end it wasn’t really the studio, or the MPAA. There was no ego that brought Freddy down. It was a general growing out of interest. People began to lose interest with the Dream Master, Dream Child films and though Freddy was fun and the idea of his death was worth checking out. It wasn’t a uniting for a fitting end type finale. It was more like Bender with his camera saying “Neat” and taking a photo before moving on.

It’s a fitting way to end the franchise to be fair. Don’t have people go out hating the movie like they did with Halloween Ressurection and people not giving two shits about Jason X. It’s a win if you can end the show like a has been celebrity signing autographs at a comic convention waiting for people to come up and buy an autograph for $60 bucks instead of people ignoring you entirely.

The film, though. Again if not for what was yet to come. Would have served as the great catalyst for Freddy vs Jason. Freddy was dead and gone. Sent to hell, free of the dream demon sperms. Jason would in his next film go to hell directly. The two forces would find each other and begin their epic battle. In fact when this movie came out? Not long after New Line acquired the rights to the character Jason. So it was all set and ready to go. They just finally needed to settle on a script. Unfortunately though. Wes Craven set down his glass of wine, turned off Scream and said he would like to have a word with the manager about Freddy.

Only, not really Freddy. But close enough.