Slasher movies aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, you could create a movie about a psychotic using only a hockey mask, a really big knife and a few gallons of stage blood. Not anymore. Since Freddy Krueger first attacked teenagers through their dreams in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, slasher films have had to have more and more effects as the horror became more imaginative. Still, the question lingered: how would Freddy’s imaginative mayhem fare against an old school killing machine like Jason?

Unlike when Universal pitted Frankenstein against the Wolf Man, this battle was difficult to get just right. There were many unsatisfying scripts that found their way onto the Internet and worried fans about how the film would turn out. The problem is, Jason inhabits the real world, and Freddy the dream world. “Jason is stronger, so Freddy wouldn’t last very long with Jason in the real world,” says Robert Englund, who plays Freddy. “But Freddy’s a lot smarter, so in the dream world, it’s a whole different thing — there’s a lot of mind games and manipulation.” But if Freddy were to find himself up against Jason in the real world, Freddy would be in trouble.

“Freddy and Jason are both pop horror icons,” says producer Sean S. Cunningham — who produced and directed the original Friday the 13th. “They’ve been in the culture for over 20 years and each of them has become a symbol of all those things that collectively we are afraid of, first as teenagers and then as adults.” Also, because neither Freddy nor Jason has been able to be defeated in their previous films, audiences will require that these two seemingly invincible forces engage in a killer battle.”

Blocking the Scene — Director Ronny Yu (middle) blocks the scene with Robert Englund (on the ground) and Monica Keena (right). All images courtesy of Digital Dimension © 2003 James Dittiger/New Line Productions.

This mixture of Jason’s reality and Freddy’s nightmares called for a mixture of practical and digital effects. Freddy’s face, for instance was a prosthetic mask that had 15 pieces and took three hours to apply and an hour to remove. All the pieces had to be attached, glued and blended onto Englund to allow the full range of acting that’s not possible with, well, a hockey mask.

Created by special make-up effects designer, Bill Terezakis — a veteran of television shows such as Babylon 5 and James Cameron’s Dark Angel, and features such as Final Destination 2 and Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed — Freddy’s look had to resemble David Miller’s original make-up for Freddy. However, he was given more freedom to create “demon Freddy” — an exaggerated, heightened, angry look that shows up when Freddy is really really angry.

“The demon make-up is based on Freddy Krueger’s makeup, but we took another life-cast of Robert and built an enhanced muscle over his face. Then we took the skin out of the original Freddy mold and blended that over top the new muscle to give him more of a brutish, beefed up look. The paint scheme is reds and lavenders. There’s a mouthful of teeth, contact lenses — everything kind of blends together and makes what the audience will recognize as a demonic version of Freddy Krueger.” Terezakis was also responsible for 72 wounds, courses and dismemberments — things that are much easier to do as a practical effect than a digital one.

Robert Englund (seated) has his make-up touched up during a break.

The digital effects were created by Cinesite, Pixel Magic and Digital Dimension, which shared the responsibility of taking the effects in a lower budgeted film and propelling it to the next level. Pixel Magic created more than 100 effects shots in just four months for Freddy vs. Jason, including CG character animation, green screen composites, wire and rig removals among other effects. One of the highlights of the film that Pixel Magic created was the pinball sequence. In this scene, Freddy has captured Jason in the dream world, where Jason is a victim of Freddy’s considerable power there. Freddy knocks Jason around a warehouse like a ball on a pinball table. To get this effect right, visual effects supervisor Raymond McIntyre Jr. resorted to the creation of an animated Jason. A cyber scan was created of Ken Kurzinger, the actor who played Jason, but scaled up to make it larger than life. The model was given a texture based on Jason’s clothing. A CG environment was created to match certain aspects of the set for the CG Jason to interact with — mostly beams that Jason could hit, can composited with elements of CG dust.