In 1993, New Line Cinema bought the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, which featured as its central character the hockey-masked, seemingly indestructible killer, Jason Voorhees (who first appeared in 1980's Friday the 13th and went on to star in nine sequels). From the outset the studio envisioned an on-screen match up between Jason and their own equally iconic movie madman Freddy Krueger, who stalked people through their dreams in the popular Nightmare on Elm Street series (which began in 1984 and spawned six sequels).

"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 twenty 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."

But the studio knew they were drawing on an established tradition in both film and comic books of combining two super-villains, and they knew there was a legion of fans for both franchises ready to pounce if anyone messed with their dream match-up. Although there were potential minefields everywhere, the first and most obvious challenge was - how do you honour both franchises equally and not resort to camp? Another dramatic question was, according to Cunningham, "who's tougher? Because neither Freddy nor Jason has been able to be defeated in their previous films. Audiences will absolutely require that these two seemingly invincible forces engage in a killer battle."

These questions proved to have complicated answers. A number of screenwriters took cracks at devising the right scenario before Damian Shannon and Mark Swift hit the target. Says Shannon, "We knew that you could have a smart and scary crossover that didn't throw the original films out the window. So the first thing we did was come up with a list of rules we thought were crucial for a successful merging of the two franchises. Adds Swift "First and foremost was that we wouldn't violate the mythologies and back stories for Freddy and Jason. Instead, their pasts play a vital role in their battle to find out once and for all who's the 'baddest mother' in all of horror."

Once the initial treatment was approved, the studio sent the writers off with little interference to craft a screenplay. "That's one of the great things about working for New Line," says Swift. "The studio lets you do your thing. Of course Robert Shaye, the head of the studio, was always very involved in the process. He has a great understanding of the horror genre and of these franchises in particular. He even has a cameo in the movie."

Robert Englund, who has played the role of Freddy Krueger since the character's creation in 1984, was attached from the beginning, though he, like the producers, was not happy with earlier attempts at the script, and his approval was vital to the project coming together. Shannon and Swift's script, says Englund, "brought to the story all the things I wanted to see. I really wanted to exploit the nightmares of Jason Voorhees, to have Freddy privy to what makes Jason tick, to go into the nightmare world of little Jason and the fantasy world of big Jason and, in doing so, to have his back story reiterated through the plot. Freddy needed to get into Jason's head and the screenwriters solved that."

With the script in place, the studio turned to the talents of director Ronny Yu, who has a background in Hong Kong filmmaking. "Ronny's film The Bride with White Hair is a perfect blend of action, horror and visual style - just what Freddy vs. Jason needed," says Mark Shannon. "We spent quite a bit of time with Ronny in pre-production, and he had a lot of great ideas which we incorporated."

Yu knew nothing about the two franchises but discussed the script with New Line and found that his unfamiliarity with Freddy and Jason was exactly what the studio wanted: somebody to come in with a fresh look and fresh ideas in order to put a new touch on the franchises. "When I look at this horror film I don't look at it as a slasher movie," says Yu. "I look at it as an action-horror movie. I look at it like Alien. For me, Freddy vs. Jason is like Godzilla vs. King Kong. There's a lot of dynamic action, on top of it being scary."

Still, the director must have been feeling the pressure to live up to the success of the earlier films. Not so, claims Yu. "I try not to get myself into that situation, because once you do you create a lot of barriers. I try to just trust my own instincts. The way I direct is to look at the monitor from an audience point of view, not from a Ronny Yu point of view. I look at that shot and ask myself, 'If I were in the audience would I feel interested? Would I feel excited? Would I think this performance is great?' This is what I've always done, with every movie I've made. This is how I make a decision."

A challenge that Yu did take on was to blend the worlds of dream and reality so seamlessly that the audience would feel as tricked as the film's characters. That, he says, took the most thought and energy. "How do you trick the audience into believing what you're trying to achieve?" he asks. "It's not just the usual, 'Okay, cover this with a wide shot.' Somehow you have to give the audience that eerie feeling. You have to think much harder as a story-teller than in other films. Every frame has to be calculated. So all the time I was challenging myself."

Yu also possesses a strong background in graphic arts, and brings a similar sensibility to Freddy vs. Jason. Even Robert Englund, as familiar as he is with the series, found Yu's approach so different that it was at first disorientating. "Ronny and Second Unit Director Poon Hang Sang have both created comic books before, so they have that graphic, storyboard way of seeing the world. They see through the roof and they see up through the ground. It's like those cartoons where the guy gets punched so hard he leaves the earth, and you see the earth in the background receding as he flies. Ronny and Poon see things that way and they actually do things that way. It's amazing. You just have to surrender yourself to their incredible imagination, because it's unrestricted."

The blending of the two worlds of Freddy and Jason was just as tough for the screenwriters. "We wanted them to go at it in the dream world and in the real world," says Damian Shannon. "Figuring out how that was going to happen without breaking the rules for each character was definitely tough." It was also tough to think of a way for the other characters to bring Jason and Freddy together without reducing the teens to stock players. Swift added "But the real trick was coming up with a compelling story line for our new characters, the ones caught in the middle of these two titans of terror. In the end, it had to be about their struggle."

Having fun at the expense of your colleagues is always good for a laugh, but given Englund's lengthy history with Freddy, how did Englund himself maintain interest? For this Englund credits the franchise's directors, past and present, for keeping him attracted to his character. "I'd have just come off some artistic European movie and I'd be saying, 'oh God, I gotta get back in the make-up again.' But then Renny Harlin, Stephen Hopkins, Chuck Russell, these young guys with their storyboards and their drawings and their enthusiasm, would just enthrall me with their talent and their energy and I'd get back on board."

It proved the same with director Ronny Yu. "Ronny respects and loves this genre," declares Englund. "He has a strange popular culture sensibility, though he doesn't necessarily articulate it. It's all in his visualization. He is as young and vibrant in that kind of way as you can be. It was hard work on this because of the schedule and the nights and the cold, but we'd run over to the monitor shivering and looking at our breath and we'd see cool stuff, even in the video replay. That kept me going after a twenty-four hour day working in freezing temperatures with blood spattered all over me. Ronny's visual poetry on a little tiny screen in the forest."

The attraction of the horror movie has a long and illustrious history. From Nosferatu to War of the Worlds to The Exorcist, Freddy vs. Jason has had many notable predecessors, including each character's own successful series. But why the attraction? For many, the answer is simple: horror movies are a safe way to experience the adrenaline rush of fear without any attendant danger. As Jason Ritter puts it, "I go to a scary movie because I like that feeling of my heart beating. I like the physical reactions that you get, that tense feeling in your nerves, the blood pumping through your body, but without any actual danger. It's a safe way to scare yourself."

Robert Englund, though, argues that horror movies meet more than just a superficial need to be scared witless; he believes they "fulfil a certain cultural necessity. I think we don't address death any longer in American culture," explains Englund. "Everybody just wants to be young forever, and no one realises that death is as much a part of life as growing up. You live, you die; that's it. But something happens in the dark between an audience member and a horror movie. When you identify with the person in jeopardy in the film, you confront your own mortality. I think it's one of the last places we really confront death, in a dark theatre watching a scary movie." Producer Sean S. Cunningham feels that "both Freddy and Jason collectively represent the faceless, unnamed fears in our psyche."

What makes Freddy so particularly frightening a villain is the lopsided playing field that is our subconscious. Freddy gets you when you're asleep, when you're at your weakest and most vulnerable. "What's scary about Freddy is how he knows your most private thoughts and exploits them," says Englund. "He knows your sexual peccadilloes, the boy you have a crush on, that you're scared of bugs. He's in your bedroom, he's under your bed. He's looking in that mirror when you brush your teeth, when you put the Clearasil on. He's invading that private, sacred space."

This is what makes Freddy's approach to murder so different from that of his rival, Jason, who prefers to pounce on his victims, eliminating them with a swift swipe of his machete. Producer Sean S. Cunningham likens Jason to a killer shark. "What's really terrifying about a shark is that he's just hungry. And similarly, Jason comes across as a faceless, mindless source of death that can just snatch your life away from you for no rhyme or reason, and that's a terrifying fear to have to live with."

But Freddy likes to play awhile, disarming his targets with a mix of emotional manipulation and sheer confusion before sinking his claws in. Freddy sucks his victims deeper and deeper into his dream world until they can no longer tell the difference between reality and illusion, torturing them psychologically before the final kill. As Ken Kirzinger, who takes on the role of Jason, points out, "Everybody hates nightmares, and to have somebody that can manipulate your dreams is obviously frightening. But to be unable to know the difference between reality and the dream world, to be caught in Freddy's dream world and not even know you're there until it's too late, that is absolutely terrifying."

It is this blending of reality and dream that is central to the story and to the film's allure. Just as the characters often cannot tell the difference between the two, the audience is left guessing as well. "It's a very complex story to tell," says director Ronny Yu, "because you have the dream world and you have the real world - they interplay. All the time the audience is left guessing, 'Are we in the dream world? Oh, maybe not.' So we can sustain their attention." Yu points to one scene in particular to illustrate the effect: "There's a scene where Freddy tries to kill Blake but he can't so Jason gets him instead. In Blake's dream world he's thinking, 'I'm okay, I'm okay,' but immediately we cut to the real world and Jason is right behind him. If I were the audience I would be intrigued."

The trick, too, is in the details--or, more specifically, the lack of them. Says Yu, "How do you trick the audience? How do you frighten them? You need that unknown killer, like the shark in Jaws. So we've tried not to show too much detail. You see a glimpse. You see the hand of Freddy or a glimpse of Jason's machete."

Even without the camera tricks, Jason and Freddy are simply two of cinema's most frightening monsters. Jason frightens us because of the senselessness of his rage, because he's so unapologetic in a culture that desperately demands reasons and remorse for murder. Freddy frightens us because he is the embodiment of vengeance gone wrong, both his own and that of the parents who killed him to avenge the death of their children; he is the deadly consequence that occurs when the line between justice and revenge is crossed.

To his younger viewers, Freddy is also the unwelcome reminder of the ugly truths that await the letting go of childish delusions. He doesn't wear a mask, literally and metaphorically. As Robert Englund puts it, "Wes Craven used to call Freddy the bastard father of us all. Freddy is the symbol of how no one teaches you that life's not fair; there are no classes in how people will stab you in the back, figuratively and literally. He's a symbol of all of the terrible news that's coming down the pike to really blacken your innocence as you mature. Freddy's always dealing with ripe, nubile youth, right at their becoming, and he is like this roadblock, perverting the purest form of their innocence: their dreams. But he's also a product of whom? He's a product of the parents' generation. He's the sins of the parents passed down. It's the same with us, whether we inherit the ruined environment, war, pollution--whatever sins we inherit as young people that we have to deal with. Freddy is all of those things. And I think on a subliminal level the young fans understand that."

"Ronny Yu is not your classic horror movie, slash and gash director," says Simons. "He brings a whole other layer to this thing with his Hong Kong film background. He's added a whole new flavour to the look, the style, even the acting. It's going to be tremendously different than any horror film. I don't remember ever seeing anything quite like what we're making here." Concurs producer Sean S. Cunningham, "Ronny brings a wonderful visual sensibility which he's taking to a whole new level. He's a gifted, exciting director."

Called "the spirit of the entire film" by one cast member, Ronny Yu has brought both Freddy and Jason together in a manner that takes both franchises to the next level. "Ronny Yu has made an intense, operatic horror film that bubbles over with style, action and scares," says screenwriter Damian Shannon. "I think it's safe to say that audiences have never seen anything quite like it," says Swift.

Robert Englund completely agrees, believing "audiences really have a lot to look forward to. Not just these two horror icons, but also this great vision by a director who loves to work in this world. This isn't just an assignment for him. It's what makes Freddy vs. Jason a truly great rock 'em, sock 'em, spill your popcorn, hoot at the screen summer movie."