Every Town Has an Elm Street Part 4 (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, 1988)

Renny Harlin has not made many great films, oh sure, he is no Uwe Boll*, and he can at least lay claim to directing Die Hard 2: Die Harder (until a Good Day to Die Hard, the least of the Die Hards, yet still quite entertaining). But with NoES 4: the Dream Master, he helped push the Nightmare Franchise farther down the goofy tracks it was put on by the third film. At this point, Freddy is more a prankster whose punchlines always end in a cruel death for the audience. Kind of like Larry the Cable guy, but all crispy.

Kristen (Patricia Arquette unwisely did not return…look what that choice did to her career. But Tuesday Knight-not kidding- stepped in to take over the role. Blondes are pretty interchangeable, right?) and the other survivors of the last film have been skating along okay and are in school, making friends. Kristen even has a boyfriend, martial arts enthusiast Rick (Andras Jones). The film wastes no time, because the audience sure isn’t going to care about the new characters, they want to see Freddy get all stabby.

For no discernible reason, Freddy does get back. First he kills Roland Kinkaid (Ken Sagoes), whose tough guy exterior fades real fast when he wets his pants. Then Freddy pays a visit to Joey (Rodney Eastman)…now if you saw the last Elm Street, you know Joey cannot refuse a attractive topless blonde. He is also delusional enough to think these women want him-rather than he is in a dream. Here, he looks at a pin-up on his wall, and the water bed starts to shake, and when he looks up, the poster is blank. Yeah, Joey, that is not a good sign. He pulls back the sheets to see the hot blonde in the water waving to him. Yeah, not a good sign either-especially when she swims away. Joey’s last incident with a hot almost naked blonde went badly…this one goes worse, because Freddy pops through the mattress and cuts little Joey to ribbons. Now, usually, the movies try and make the death “appear” natural…not this one…mom walks into the room pulls back the sheets and Joey is trapped under the plastic-drowned. Huh? Is this a danger of water beds I was previously not aware of?!

Anyways, Kristen freaks out, she starts telling her friends about Freddy. This time around, it is not the adults, but the kids who laugh Freddy off. Kristen’s gone nuts! Just because her two friends died overnight is nothing to be weirded out by. But Rick’s shy sister Alice (Lisa Wilcox) tells Kristen about a poem that speaks of the Dream Master-but she can’t remember how it ends, and that sucks for Kristen, because she might have been able to defeat Freddy…and the audience would have benefited, as the movie would have been shorter. Alice recommends that Kristen just go to her happy place if she finds herself in a nightmare. Ah, yes, that will do the trick. In the meantime, Alice daydreams about boldly hitting on her brother’s football buddy Dan (Danny Hassel). Alice is teased by her buff, weightlifting friend Debbie (Brooke Theiss) who also has the hots for Dan. Hen there is the bookish friend Shelia (Toy Newkirk).

Kristen has an argument with her mother after work and discovers that her mother has drugged her (a very popular move by parents in the Elm Street films). After yelling at her mother “You just murdered me, mom!” (Heh, kids can be sooooo melodramatic) she stumble into her bedroom and finds herself at Freddy’s dream house. Crap. She remembers Alice’s recommendation and goes to her happy place-the beach! Of course, if you see a little blonde girl you do not know building a sand castle? It is not a good sign. Apparently Freddy can find Kristen’s happy place. Freddy is not actually ready to kill Kristen, as it turns out, if he does so now? He can’t keep killing. Kristen is the last Elm Street Kid. Lucky for Freddy, Kristen has a dream power to pull other people into her dreams, allowing Freddy a loophole.

And that means poor, shy Alice is pulled into Kristen’s dream, Kristen passes her power on to Alice, making her the new dream conduit Freddy needs. And Alice is not empowered enough to stand up to Freddy…at least, not before a bunch of her friends are dead. Freddy works his way through her friends and brother, and each time a friend dies? She gets their dream power. No wonder she does not try to hard to save them! Anyways, after Shelia and Rick get killed by Freddy, Alice Dan and Debbie decide to fight back. Alice picked up her brother’s martial arts abilities, so she isn’t any wimp.

Unfortunately for Debbie; Freddy traps Alice and Dan in a repeating dream loop so they cannot get to her. This, of course, lets Freddy enact another gruesome kill. It turns out the dream loop was happening in a vehicle and Dan ends up in the hospital (you can see where this is going, right?). Alice is in full bad ass mode and flies into Dan’s dream to save him from being diced. The doctors, being somewhat more efficient than in other Elm Street films, save Dan-leaving Alice to fight on her own. It takes the whole movie-but she remembers the end to the poem-evil is going to see its reflection and will die. Yes, she shows Freddy his face in the mirror and that is how she defeats him. Seriously, all the souls he collected over the years from Elm Street (apparently it is a really, really, really long street) crawl out of Freddy just leaving his clothes on the ground. Then Alice and Dan start to date and forget about their dead friends.

Unlike three, the Dream Master has a somewhat less pedigree behind the camera. The writers include William Kotzwinkle (this was his first movie), Brian Helgeland (okay, he did go on to write L.A. Confidential) and Jim & Ken Wheat (who wrote the Ewok Adventure: Battle for Endor and wrote Elm Street Four under a single pseudonym) and the previously mentioned Renny Harlin. This is certainly a slick and imaginative film, with extravagant dream sequences where girls turn into cockroaches, a girl gets the life sucked out of her and a kid gets sucked into a water bed. But it is just not good. The story is very on the nose. Alice has a mirror crowded with photos, as her friends die, she removes them and sees more and more of herself in the looking glass (get it?!). The special effects are the strongest part of the film, and in the end the dream sequences overwhelm any story and character development possible.

Oh, and by the way, if you are going to create a poem? Show some freaking originality, people. Seriously, this is the poem that Alice has trouble remembering:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
the Master of Dreams my soul to keep,
in the reflection of my mind’s eye,
evil will see itself…and it shall die!”

I remember that one from:

“Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
And If I should die, before I wake
I pray all my toys break so none of the other kids can play with them.”

This addition of the reflection theme just does not work…and it never returns to the franchise…because previous films had Freddy able to look at his reflection and…well, not die.

October 2, 2015 0

Every Town Has an Elm Street Part 3 (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors, 1987)

Now let us take a look at the third Elm Street Film. The Dream Warriors is easily one of the best of the series and one of the best loved. Dream Warriors deftly handles horror, fantasy, action and comedy in one solid package. Not entirely surprising, the cooks include Wes Craven, Frank Darabont (writer of Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile) and Chuck Russell (who also directed, he is primarily known for directing the Jim Carrey film the Mask).

It’s a pretty effective story. The last remaining Elm Street kids have been institutionalized, suffering from horrific nightmares. No one seems to know what to do, because, again, in horror movies? Adults are dumb and do not listen to anyone. They presume the kids are really just, you know, suicidal. Because suicidal people always claim a guy is stalking them in thei9r dreams and trying to kill them. And they tend to do so en mass.

But these kids are lucky, you see, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is back to save the franch-uh- I mean, the kids. She, with help from Dr. Neil (Craig Wasson, of Ghost Story, Body Double and most recently, Sasquatch Mountain), work against an uncaring world to save the kids. They do not of course, because frankly, that would be a boring horror movie. Instead, Freddy kills a few of the kids rather creatively. Nancy discovers that young Kristen (played by young Patricia Arquette) can pull people into her dreams. This manages to give the surviving kids an edge.

Nancy and the kids manage to fight back against Freddy, while Dr. Neil meets a mysterious nun who conveniently knows a lot about Fred Krueger. We also see the return of Nancy’s pop, Donald (John Saxon).

At Nancy’s funeral, a heartbroken Dr. Neil receives another visit from mysterious old nun woman. Dr. Neil follows her through the cemetary, where she disappears…but then Doctor Neil sees a headstone…the nun was the ghost of Amanda Krueger-FREDDY’S MOTHER!!!!

This film is notable for many reasons. For instance, this film introduced the concept of the “dream power”, in which kids have a unique power-usually based in their self image- which they can use to fight Freddy. The fourth and fifth films fail to put this to good use though. It also introduces the back story for Freddy that he was the “Bastard Son of 100 Maniacs”. His mother was a young nun who worked in an asylum and was locked up for a weekend with 100 depraved maniacs who raped her.

The film also introduced far more elaborate dream sequences. The first two films had dream sequences that challenged you to figure out whether the character was asleep or awake. In the Dream Warriors, the dreams are more fantasy adventures. This is easily one of the top three films of the franchise, and worth watching, it is not scary, but it is full of adventure, fun, solid effects ( a very nice stop motion fight is reminiscent of Harryhausen) and pretty nicely played.

However, the film is also guilty of starting the film down the path the series took that bothered so many fans, specifically, Freddy the Comedian. This is the film that gave us the line, “Welcome to Prime Time, Bitch!!!” And while it works in this film, it clearly took the character down a road of self mockery. So, in spite of the snark, I really do recommend this as a entertaining film to watch.

October 2, 2015 0

Every Town Has an Elm Street Part 2 (A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge, 1985)

Okay, from here on out, spoilers fly with no regards as to whether you have seen the movies or not. These will mostly be…well, not so much reviews, as observations. And probably more than a bit snarky.

So, Nightmare On Elm Street was a huge hit. Not all that surprisingly, New Line rushed out a sequel. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2:Freddy’s Revenge. Revenge on who? Don’t really know. It is not Nancy, because she is not in this one. Luckily for the story, her diary is though. When young Jesse’s (Mark Patton) family moves into Nancy’s old house, he starts getting tormented by horrific dreams involving Freddy.

Turns out Freddy has a plan, and that plan includes using Mark to maybe kill people. Like his creepy leather loving gym teacher. But Mark, see, he is a good kid. Oh, a little wimpy. And his parakeet is prone to bursting into flames. But Mark doesn’t want to help Freddy. Instead he just wants to hang out with his friends and meet girls. He starts to hang out with Lisa (Kim Myers), and spends much of the film struggling with his teachers and parents (Clu Gulager and Hope Lang), because frankly, Parents (and teachers) just do not get what it is like to be a teenager haunted by the death of a child killer. By the way, in life Freddy killed little kids, why did he switch to teens after death? Anyways, Freddy is using Jesse to try and get back into the real world. His friend Grady laughs it all off, but thankfully; new girlfriend Lisa takes him seriously.

When you get right down to it, this film is a real mess that makes almost no sense at all in the context of the other sequels. For example, the film establishes Freddy’s boiler room is in the factory he used to work at. This factory never comes up in later sequels. This is the only film where Freddy is trying to break out and live in the real world, a motive he lacks in other all other incarnations, which makes sense; he is more powerful in the dream world. It also does not help the film that, as a lead, Jesse is pretty unsympathetic. At best he is whiny and annoying, which is not good for your protagonist. I am not sure if the main problem lies with the actor or the script. Though, one wonders how different the film would have been if Jesse were played by Christian Slater or Brad Pitt (both auditioned). Craven avoided the sequel partly because he did not, actually, intend to create a Franchise with Elm Street and also because he felt they were going to far astray of his original concept, especially with having Freddy make Jesse kill people. And it shows. This film just feels entirely out of place in the series.

It is interesting that the least loved* of the films has a central lead that is male. The strongest films of the series feature female protagonists. As I noted, Jesse is not a sympathetic character, and honestly comes across as very weak and easy to manipulate.

But in the end, what makes it really stand out? Basically, this is the most homo-erotic horror film ever. In fact, comically so. I don’t mean this in a denigrating way towards the gay community, or even homo-eroticism in films. But in the Elm Street series, it just feels…well, out of place, mainly because the film plays everything straight. It is not like it is a wink and a nudge. I am not even sure that they realized at the time (Jack Sholder, the director states they did not, however, he sees it now). And it is this unintentional aspect just makes it oddly humorous. I mean you have lines like, “Something is trying to get inside of me” and “He’s inside me… and he wants to take me again!” You just cannot miss the subtext. And we all know unintended subtext is comedic gold, people.

When it comes down to it, this is a terrible film, not worth watching on your own. However, it is a hysterical comedy when watched with a group of friends.

*Oddly, for as much as it is derided, it is one of the highest grossing of the series.

October 1, 2015 0

Every Town Has an Elm Street Part 1 (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984)

In 1972, college professor turned aspiring film maker Wes Craven produced the low budget horror film Last House on the Left to some small success, in 1977, he got more horror cred with the survival flick the Hills Have Eyes. After that it was a string of mostly forgettable TV movies and the like. But in 1983 or so, Craven hit paydirt.

He met with Bob Shaye of the indie studio New Line Cinema. There he pitched the idea that would put New Line on the map. Craven told Shaye about the idea of a killer who hunts kids in their dreams…and if you die in your dream, you die in real life. Based on a series of news stories Craven had read, in which people had told loved ones of terrifying nightmare they were having, and then died in their sleep (all involved young people, in at least one case, the kid secretly went days without sleep, hiding coffee in his room).

Shaye saw the potential there and green lit the project. What came about is one of the most memorable icons of 80’s horror. Named after a childhood bully, Craven created Fred Krueger, a child murderer who got freed on a technicality and then was killed by the parents of Elm Street.

Years later, high school student Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her friends find their dreams haunted by a creepy man in a green and red sweater, oblivious to the fact that their parents murdered Kruger years before. And, of course, the parents would prefer to keep it that way. Nancy’s mother (Ronee Blakely) is a fall down drunk, estranged from Nancy’s police lieutenant father (John Saxon) who is determined to keep the truth from coming out. But the sins of the parents are threatening the lives of the youth in this story. And the parents do not want to face the truth (hey, it is a horror film, parents never believe the kids).

As Nancy’s friends start dying, the police right them off as murders and suicides, but Nancy knows better. She starts trying to fight the need for sleep, and manages to avoid Freddy’s claws. But her mother is certain her daughter is just going crazy, while her father sticks to what he can see and is unwilling to accept his daughter’s claims.

In fact, truthfully, the greatest threat to Nancy is her parent’s unwillingness to listen to her. In that regard, the film becomes, at times, unbearably preachy. But ultimately, Nancy stands up to Freddy, apparently defeating him at his own game.

Overall, the original Nightmare On Elm Street holds up quite well. Freddy was not yet as campy, and Robert Englund plays him with a real grim vibe. Freddy’s voice is a guttural, throaty growl that is immensely threatening. The first reveal of Freddy walking down an alley with distended arms, scraping his claws along garages is hauntingly creepy. The practical effects and make up still are effective. The music is one of the few things that really does not hold up over the years. Those synthesizer based soundtracks rarely do. One exception is that the main theme is pretty creepy. The thing that truly risks ruining the movie though? The final scene is clearly tacked on for sequel possibilities and it really makes no sense. Wes Craven has disowned that ending that was forcd on his work. Producers should trust their directors.

But overall, this remains a solid effort, even if it is somewhat tainted by a slew of much lesser sequels (though there are a couple worth catching).

October 1, 2015 0