Imagine Jason Voorhees wreaking havoc in the aisles of a Crystal Lake S-Mart. The only thing standing between him and the gruesome murders of the teenage employees working there is Ash Williams. Who also works there. Housewares! What a scene! A scene that never happened. Actually, it did happen in both a comic book and a script for a movie we never received. Oh, and Freddy Krueger was there too. Using Jason to gain access to the Necronomicon so that he could read its passages and become more powerful than ever.
There’s so, so much more to Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash and it’s all been covered by Bloody Disgusting before. The reason I bring it up today? Were it not for the alleged unwillingness of competing studios to have their character be the loser of the three way fisticuffs, it totally would have worked. Not only do I believe Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash could have been the greatest horror crossover of all time, I believe it would have opened up the possibilities to do ANY future crossovers. Honestly? I think it would have changed horror forever.
Because of one reason….Ash Williams. Here’s why.
Ash is the Perfect Good Guy for an Idea This Over the Top
First off, a horror icon crossover needs someone to root for. Duh. But to survive something on this level you can’t just be a new camper, random teen or a tiny Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins cosplayer (Corey Feldman in Final Chapter). As great as those have been in the past, it just doesn’t work for something this grandiose. Ash is the one person in horror I could imagine surviving a near death fight with Freddy Krueger only to turn around and have Michael Myers waiting on him outside.
His survivability factor could work over and over again because that is what we’re used to seeing him go through. The man cut off his own hand and replaced it with a chainsaw. He was vortexed into an ancient time and responded by becoming their King! He’s the only good guy horror icon I see as formidable enough to pull this off. Like John McClane in the Die Hard franchise, we know what he’s survived before. We’re used to him being overwhelmed and overmatched and somehow still crawling out the other side.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to tell you that characters like Sidney Prescott from Scream or Laurie Strode from Halloween weren’t formidable. Clearly, they were. They’ve brought more horror icons down than Dimension’s Home Video Department in the 2000s. But this is all a bit more fantastical than those situations and Ash is the one character who could continuously and believably pull it off. He’s the nucleus that would make all this work.
The Necronomicon is a Built-In Script Fix
You know how many failed attempts there were to get a Freddy vs. Jason script ready for the big screen? Enough to write an entire book about them, as Dustin McNeill did with Slash of the Titans. I read most of those scripts and in each of them you could always see the struggle the writers were faced with. “Why are these horror icons fighting?” “How did they cross paths?” They have to spend so much time explaining it. Meanwhile, the audience that just showed up to watch their favorite monsters fight becomes restless. Why is the film spending all this running time setting up peripheral characters and storylines?!
The Necronomicon and Ash can fix all of that. Not just for a Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash movie. For any crossover you want to imagine.
In the comic series, Ash alludes that the Necronomicon lured him to where Freddy and Jason were. You could go that route. Freddy was lured to it for its power. You could go that route. Not to mention, the power of the book gives Ash a puncher’s chance to defeat any of these villains through its passages. A one-armed puncher’s chance (sorry!). The internalized memo pitching Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash said it best: “We’ll be able to avoid all the heavy lifting and hand wringing that comes with bringing disparate storytelling universes together.”
(That’s exactly what led to ten years of development hell for Freddy vs. Jason.)
Styles Make Fights
How many times have you argued with your friends over beers (or Squeeze-It’s if you’re under drinking age or just a person of good taste) about which horror icon would win in a fight? But some just don’t match up well. Especially not script wise. Wouldn’t Jason Voorhees vs. Michael Myers be a pretty quiet movie? Not with Ash there to keep things interesting until they cross paths. A serial killer teen in a Ghostface costume doesn’t stand much of a chance against any of these guys… until he’s possessed by a Deadite. Imagine a possessed “Bad-Ash” version of Ghostface unleashed on a group of Woodsboro students being hunted by Freddy Krueger?!
With Ash being so “plug and play” with any of the horror icons and the Necronomicon to create havoc? You could have a total end of Ghostbusters level of anarchy at your finger tips at any time. Plausibly. Ash is the glue you could use to bring absolutely any horror icon into the mix.
For God’s Sake… How Do You Stop It?
Just to show how sustainable all this really is…here’s a quick Comic-Con Marvel-esque style pitch off the top of my head for some movies this franchise could spawn:
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash — We already have the script. It ends with Freddy sent packing through a Necronomicon portal and Jason buried underneath a frozen lake alongside the Necronomicon. I’ll take a ticket right now.
Ash vs. Jason vs. Michael Myers — After the events of the first film, the town of Crystal Lake recognizes Ash for saving them from their long time nemesis Jason Voorhees. They make him into a local celebrity and he reaps the benefits in pure Ash Williams style. All is well until Jason is resurrected. Ash uses the book to open yet another portal, tackling Jason through it and saving his newfound home (and lady friend, of course). He wakes up in a new reality in the middle of a residential street covered in leaves. Haddonfield. Ash, in a shocking twist, is murdered by these two midway through the film. We spend the rest of the running time watching the forever anticipated battle between Jason and Michael. At the end of the film, however, a shocking post credits sequence shows us Ash in Hell. We hear chains rattling.
Ash vs. Pinhead and the Cenobites — Now, I understand you don’t just go to Hell and meet Pinhead there. But writers are gonna write. Maybe Ash sees Pinhead and friends coming and going as they please and decides to make a deal. However it’s written, try to tell me Ash being in Hell for the opening act of the movie wouldn’t be a hilarious premise! “What the hell am I doing here? Why aren’t I in the other place with the other guy? What’s his damn problem?” It all ends with a teenage murderer opening up a puzzle box he finds at one of his victims’ suburban homes. The camera pans out and the sign says “Woodsboro.”
Okay, I have to stop now. You get the idea and these certainly aren’t the most original thoughts in the world. I’d probably be fired by an Ari Gold type by now if this were an actual thought out pitch. But my point is that I came up with all that in about ten minutes and could have gone on and on. With Ash and the Necronomicon as the north star? Someone, somewhere would have had the horror world in the palm of their hands.
The post Ash vs. Everyone - Why Ash Williams Was the Perfect Conduit for a Horror Crossover Universe appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.