Some excerpts relevant to the crossover-theme:
...based on the interaction of Jason and Freddy here, one might characterize them as "the terror of the child" and the "terror of the parent."
Jason, ever since he was promoted to starring monster in the second FRIDAY THE 13TH installment, has been depicted as a literally childlike man who imagines that he is killing for his beloved-- and deceased-- mother. Freddy, even before he was retconned to make him into a literal parent, was a horror born of the mistakes of Springwood's parents, so that Freddy becomes metaphorically identical with his killers. Though both Jason and Freddy attack primarily teenagers-- who were of course the target audience in the extra-diegetical real world-- Jason kills them for having failed him when he was a child, giving his murderous rampages the intonation of a child's tantrum. Freddy kills teens in order to feed upon them, and even to incorporate their souls into his ghostly flesh, a pop-cultural version of Saturn devouring his children.
And also:
Though the all-out, Hong Kong-style action is inventive, what I like even better is that in this incarnation Freddy and Jason become the Dracula and Frankenstein of the eighties and afterward. Jason is the Monster of Frankenstein, lumbering and pitiless, shrugging off almost every assault via sheer strength and near-invulnerability. Freddy, as much a shape-shifter as Dracula, proves far more agile and clever about wearing down his brutish foe. The only minor deficit of the Big Fight is that it doesn't find any way to reflect the monsters' respective parent/child orientations, which is relegated strictly to the set-up portion of the film.
I'll also add the distinction that this may be the best one-on-one battle between separately conceived characters in a film crossover, easily beating out such contenders as ALIEN VS. PREDATOR and FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN-- enjoyable as those may be for other reasons.
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