October 11th, 2014 - Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Despite being a child of the 80's, I never really got to know any of the big horror icons as a child.  I could talk my folks into checking out R-rated action movies, but horror was more or less out of the question, for a couple reasons.  One, my mom didn't like violence, unless it was a sexy Van Damme dishing it out.  I guess she couldn't justify taking me to see Jean Claude movies without okaying some of his contemporaries that were, um, less easy on the eyes.  And two, I was scared!  I was not okay with slashers as a child.  I could swing the PG/PG-13 horror and could stomach creature features, but the ol' hack-and-stab was not my thing.  So despite being around for their heyday, I had no first-hand knowledge of Freddy or Jason when they were in their prime.

I watched all of the Friday the 13th movies in one day a few years back, but I am still relatively new to Elm Street.  Obviously, I kind of know about them through osmosis - Freddy is a pretty big cultural force as far as horror goes.  So it's been fun getting to finally check them out - a friend has lent me the box set (Thanks Austin!)  I had have already checked out parts 1-3, and hope to finish the rest by the end of the year.

My general impressions:

Part 1:  More serious than I expected.  A "real movie."  Legitimately nightmarish.

Part 2:  Absolute garbage quickie cash-in.  No redeeming qualities.

Part 3:  Quality.  Still a bit more serious than I thought it would be.  The psychiatric hospital made the proceedings a bit "heavier" that I expected from series that I had always viewed as more of a tongue-in-cheek joke.

Which brings me to The Dream Master.  I think this was where the series starts to line up with my (admittedly uninformed) expectations - generic high schoolers getting killed in elaborate sequences and Freddy cracking stupid jokes.  It was enjoyable - especially the death scenes and the slick direction from Renny Harlin.  But, like many a horror franchise, by part 4 the cracks are starting to show.

After the events of The Dream Warriors, Kristen (Tuesday Knight, replacing Patricia Arquette from part 3) is back in high school - things are back to normal.  We meet her group of friends (all conveniently identifiable by a quirk that will be used to kill them later on).  But Kristen has a feeling that all is not well, and we wouldn't have a sequel if Freddy didn't come back.  He awakens and uses Kristen as a portal into other people's dreams - he haunts her and she calls out to her friends for help.  Then those friends are available for Freddy to kill.  Think of her as a recruiter for Mr. Krueger, willing or no.

What I liked

It just looked slick - I'm sure this has a lot to do with director Renny Harlin - this was his second feature, I think? He's always made good looking movies.  You could tell the studio put time, effort, and money into the set-pieces.  The dream kill/sequences were all pretty memorable (the girl turning into a bug stuck out as particularly excellent). And things looked great anytime we'd see the numerous souls Freddy had captured, either in his body or on his nightmare-pizza (!)  It was just fun to take in all of these effects - yeah, you could sometimes tell they were little puppets or models or whatever, but that's part of the fun.  You could see the care put into them.  90% of these sequences would be CGI nowadays, and it's just a shame.  And I'll always be a fan of the backlighting from this era - where the house/monster/whatever would be shrouded in fog while an obvious spotlight shoots out from behind - it just looks cool!  The Dream Master has several good examples.

There was a decent balance of horror and fun too.  By now, Freddy's jokes are really getting to be groaners - but still entertaining (i.e. a great "wet-dream" comment after drowning someone in a waterbed).  And dream or no, I cannot totally dismiss a movie where a dog pisses fire.  (In what has to be nice little dig on the Friday series, the dog is named Jason.)  And while nothing is really outright frightening, the idea that our heroine is more or less helping Freddy kill her friends keeps things in the "kind of sad" world.  Also, we get a couple of genuinely surprising deaths from our main group - interesting that Elm Street is a franchise that is developing a reputation for killing off their main characters.

But let's be honest, the gloved-one is the star here.  And such a big star that he gets his own Rap Song! If you've ever wanted to see Freddy chase around the Fat Boys, now is your chance.  And yes, Freddy's lyrics do include "My name is Freddy and I'm here to say..."  Also, the end song over the credits is written and sung by Sinead O'Connor.  Never would have guessed there was an Elm Street/"Nothing Compares 2 U" connection, but there you go.

What I didn't like

You don't really expect a Nightmare movie to be completely logic-bound, but a little of it would be nice every now and again.  Freddy is just alive again because... he is?  And there isn't really as much continuity in the "rules" as I would like.  Some people that are killed in their dreams are just plain old dead in real life, sometimes they have wounds, and sometimes they are trapped in their own waterbed.  And also *SPOILER* Freddy gets killed by someone showing him a mirror.  It just seems unlikely that he's never come across one, you know?  It is an awesome sequence (the souls he's eaten literally tear him apart), I wish we just had gotten there differently.

Some of the non-Freddy acting and dialogue a little too cheesy. "It's his banquet... and I'm his last course!"  Robert Englund can get away with that.  Most can't.  And the stereotypes in the group of friends are just a little too broad.  The nerd studies a lot and wears huge glasses!  The rebel has crazy hair and wears a leather jacket!  It's hard to see how they would all be friends.

And really, by now Freddy isn't that scary.  You've seen him do his thing enough, and you know if he dies, he'll probably just be back again.  Granted, by part four everything will seem a little episodic, but still.  There just isn't much at stake here.

Ultimately

It was the high water mark (box office-wise) for the franchise until Jason came along. Overall, it was enjoyable and wears it's late 80's-ness on it's sleeve.  I'm not expecting it to get any better.

I would   watch recommend parts 1 and 3 first, then more or less recommend    this film.