A Nightmare on Elm Street

by D.P.S.

Forward – a word on Wes Craven

A Nightmare on Elm Street(ANOES) is a franchise that is not near and dear to my heart. I have never been a fan of Freddy and by proxy, Wes Craven. All of Craven’s movies seem to define their own genre but then be a parody unto themselves, all inside jokes. Very few filmmakers create (or have the luxury to create) original stories that just live in their own disconnected world – seemingly building upon tropes but at the same time oblivious to them. Original yes, compelling, no.

The best auteur counterpart to Wes Craven is probably Lloyd Kaufman. They both make genre films (that are by and large not good films) with utter disregard for their audience or what came before them, even to the extent of their own sequels. They make movies for fun – for their friends. Craven’s first outing was Last House on the Left which put him on a very different path from Kaufman where he could get larger studios to distribute his films, he tried hard to not get too campy but all of his movies I think really only exist so that his friends that made special effects could have jobs. Kaufman’s movies are all a joke for people that just want to laugh at the spectacle of something while Craven’s really did push the envelope for special effects. Those effects are the highlight, the only highlight, of his films and especially ANOES. The films belong to an innocent age of teenage spectacle. The movies didn’t need to be good, they just needed to exist. And they didn’t have to be horrifying either, just gross, just a bazaar of special effects that nobody had ever seen put together quite like that before. The Garbage Pail kids are just as much a commentary on 80s teen pop culture and horror as they are a spoof of the Cabbage Patch Dolls. This was a time when the content didn’t have to compete for our attention.

“Gonna see the new Freddy movie this Friday?”
“Bet your sweet ass I’m gonna go see the new Freddy movie”

This was just something everybody would do, could do, and nobody is going to miss out. There was a greater shared culture, at least as far as movies and tv went. (The argument can also be made that the incredible lobby cards illustrated by Matthew Joseph Peak sold the majority of tickets. I know if I saw one of his posters for the first time I would 100% see whatever movie they were for, gangway for disappointment but his poster art stays with you.) This is beneficial for making spectacle movies that are not good films, perfect timing. Those 80s movies could not exist today, they’d never get distributed for the big screen, if made at all, they would be part of the multitude of direct to video drivel or GASP, Shudder.com. To be fair to Wes, his best film was his last movie, Scream 4. None of his movies are scary though, so there is a big part of me that feels dirty attributing the horror tag to them. Seems like a fair enough prerequisite for a horror film.

While the Freddy movies were, and still are iconic, they aren’t scary at all. We’re really just hanging with Wes Craven’s friends while they take turns playing “hey check this out” and cramming as many effects into each scene as possible. I can now take in these movies and enjoy them as stupid popcorn flicks and in the grand scheme of Horror, Wes Craven does play a significant part, in his own way.

-D.P.S.

Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (ANOES) is not scary at all but really silly at most points, annoying at others, and disgusting in a couple. That being said the special effects are fantastic. All over the place and just a joy to watch the artist craft some amazing effects and displaying a love that is almost completely lost in filmmaking now.

The actors all do their jobs and while I’m not crazy about Johnny Depp or Heather Langenkamp’s performances it’s the actress playing Nancy’s mom that just ruins every fucking scene she is in. Halfway through the film you are so ready for her to fucking die and then her death is used as this pivotal moment in the lore of the film series and it just doesn’t matter at all because at his point you are actively rooting for Freddy to kill everybody in fucked up ways, especially Nancy’s mom.

This is probably where it loses me. Because the ANOES movies are not scary and the actors are mostly annoying jobbers that never made another film, you are anxiously awaiting Freddy’s next murder – because all the scenes in between are nails on a chalkboard (SEE WHAT I DID THERE).

I hate that Nancy defeats Freddy by boobytrapping her house with the help of a book from the library. Rewatching this it is obviously just another excuse to fit in more special effects and “cool shit” so I get it now and can enjoy the movie but growing up that one detail just really ruined the whole fucking thing for me (I hate Home Alone too but I’m not sure if those memories are linked).

Rankings

1. Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

This is the gay ANOES. It is so-called because it’s fucking GAY. Like damn, so gay. It’s unsaid but about as subtle as a getting hit by a bus, were that bus full of gay clowns. This is certainly a product of the time where the heavy-handedness was needed because what the film wanted to say and show could not be done, at least in no marketable way. My hat’s off to new creatives trying to do something new and build bridges across not only genres, but also audiences. It doesn’t work at all but the effort and daring in this film is admirable. I’m not really sure how the inclusion of obviously gay characters that are only represented as villains and repressed victims is meant to come across but maybe it doesn’t matter because the film is so bad anyways.

ANOES Part 2 fails right out the gate as a direct sequel to the first movie with a new family moving into Nancy’s house and is titled Freddy’s Revenge. But Freddy is not seeking revenge in this movie. None the original cast (or Wes Craven) returns for this film. With Jack Sholder stepping in to direct this sequel takes a much darker (and gayer) tone.

Our new protagonist, Jesse, is the new kid in town and even though he’s presumably only been in Springwood for a day he is already carpooling the richest and most popular girl in school because reasons – that’s never explained ok whatever. Freddy is still in the house or haunting the house as it were now which works in the canon sorta, with Nancy pulling Freddy into the real world to kill him in Part 1. Now we see that Freddy can sometimes get into the real world if he possesses Jesse – enter the shenanigans with Freddy getting Jesse into trouble and using his body to kill others (but also to kind of save him once from his leather daddy gym coach). This includes his friends and BDSM bondage gear wearing leather daddy gym coach who apparently kidnaps boys and tortures them by making them run laps… honestly it was really hard to tell if this was a dream sequence or was legit supposed to be happening. Jack Sholder makes sure to show as much young teen boy ass as possible, even in the shower, ok whatever man (honestly there’s just so much you can’t help but scream “gay” at the TV every 5 minutes).

While there are still plenty of creative and interesting special effects in this movie, all the humor was removed. There are no jokes but yet still camp and that might be hard to imagine but that’s what this movie is. The script was definitely more ambitious in trying to make something adult and intriguing than ANOES Part 1 and it failed by all accounts (but it did try). So yeah it’s not scary and there’s no jokes. While this is the “gay Nightmare” it’s probably the biggest deviation from the series and isn’t worth a second watch. I expect this to shore up the end of the line in 9th place when I’m done. (spoiler, it doesn’t and there are other sequels that dive into the shallow end of the pool much harder)

RANKINGS

1. Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
2. Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

Part 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Dream Warriors is great for many reasons.

First, it replaces the aforementioned gay ANOES Part 2 as a direct sequel to the first movie. Hooray we can now forget that Freddy’s Revenge exists.

Second, Wes Craven returns to write and brings Frank Darabont with him. Chuck Russell is our new director and while he’s made a handful of mostly forgettable movies he did direct The Blob, The Mask, and Scorpion King so he’s familiar with directing projects soaked in special effects. And the story almost makes sense! It does add quite a bit to the lore of Freddy and helps setup future sequels that nobody has capitalized well on yet (which is sad, I don’t know what to say). ANOES Part 1, Dreamscape, and Firestarter, all came out in 1984. And while there was probably some overlap in their scripts getting passed around producers and the poaching of ideas, Dream Warriors returns to pluck ideas from Dreamscape with the addition of having characters that can walk in one another’s dreams. The word “psychic” is never used and the movie never ventures into sci-fi but the tropes had already been established for them to build on in an eerie way, just leaning harder into the setup that our heroes are all disturbed teenagers that may have been abused. This movie was probably already being filmed when Stephen King’s IT was published and there is certainly an exchange of ideas in sci-fi and horror during this time, even if unsaid (as is most things that draw inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons or 80s films which a lot of this movie borrows from and it is fun to see it borrowed again in newer media like Stranger Things unless you’re a nostalgia gatekeeping curmudgeon).

Third, this movie is just fun. Heather Langenkamp is still a terrible actress but everybody else is great, especially Larry Fishburne and Patricia Arquette in early roles. This one has the most cohesive plot, act progression, and acting. The special effects are absolutely through the roof. 35 years later and I’m still baffled by how they achieved some of the shots, and there are SO many. The spectacle in this movie is a treat and undeniably rewatchable. Fans of the genre will see where lots of inspiration for later projects came from.

The additions of only half of Freddy’s origin and the setup for the next installment. It’s all done very well and with respect to both the source material and the audience. I super respect this, one thing about the ANOES movies (and 80s movies in general) is that the writing does not consider the audience to be stupid – the explanations of how things work in this movie universe would be written in a very different way today to placate to the mouthbreathing Morlock masses happily addicted to their phones and overloaded on spoiling themselves just for the sake of indulging their ADHD. I’d run out of internet if I whined about Hollywood horror writers – like who cares about your worldbuilding, asshole? Just get on with it and we will figure it out or be lured into the mystery of your story stop masturbating with the fucking script you hacks.

Dream Warriors made me want to watch more Freddy movies. Still not scary, but fun now for sure.

RANKINGS

1. Part 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
2. Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
3. Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

Part 4: The Dream Master (1988)

The Dream Master does all the right things the wrong way. I will try to dote on all the good things this sequel does first so we can end on a low note, just like my reason for living after sitting through this pile. This one knocked Freddy’s Revenge out of the bottom of the rankings.

This offering is brought to us by director Renny Harlin in his sophomore outing. It is the most boring movie he’s made that anybody would have seen so maybe this was too much to put on a young director. He went on to make Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, and The Long Kiss Goodnight to name a few. While he’s got plenty of bad movies and has basically only made direct to video trash for almost 20 years, he’s no stranger to keeping something exciting on screen, save for The Dream Master that is.

Part 4 picks up about a year after the events of Dream Warriors where our surviving heroes, Kristen/Kincaid/Joey, are all friends that still live in Springwood and go to high school together. The ending of Dream Warriors skipped over the whole part where they would have been prime suspects in the murder of their fellow patients and counselors, including Nancy who received the shittiest on-screen death for a recurring protagonist I have ever seen (one of my few gripes with Dream Warriors). The kids can now call each other in dreams at will and do so playfully as they all believe Freddy to be dead. Patricia Arquette made her exit from the series for Tuesday Knight to fill in as Kristen but we are introduced to our new protagonist in Alice, played by Lisa Wilcox. This movie’s script is very dense with way more dialogue for our teenage heroes and their friends. On trend with the previous installment there is an attempted maturity that almost works but ultimately fails in The Dream Master because the script really isn’t interesting and the teenagers don’t act natural at all, they are either weak caricatures or just boring – or play out their personalities in montages (thanks a lot Footloose). There’s backstory on side characters and references to characters that never appear on screen so you don’t care about them. Obviously there is a desire from the writers to tell a bigger story but the final cut leaves you without any real connection to Alice emotionally or otherwise.

The lore and framework for the Freddy movies is almost completed in this movie, it serves basically as a long epilogue to Part 3 where nothing new is learned but the powers and lore have been expanded upon so you can better understand how Freddy works. The Alice character becomes the new conduit for Freddy to get what he wants similar to Jesse in Part 2 but now clearly defined as killing kids in dreams allows a Dream Master to steal their power and memories. Alice is a Dream Master and Freddy guiding her to lure her friends into her dreamland so Freddy can feed is a fun addition and creates rules to the franchise that were previously played with fast and loose.

As stated in previous reviews there was some consensus among horror film writers at the time and they either all knew each other or shared notes or stole from each other’s scripts because there is a lot of similar tropes used at the same time that match how The Dream Master used them. Most obviously are the Halloween movies beginning with Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Hellraiser 2: Hellbound. Both of those films also feature disturbed children in psychiatric care that can see the boogeyman when nobody else can. Hellraiser 2 even has a quite blonde girl savant with suggest autism/latent psychic power (I’m not being insensitive this is a trope used in other films) that help stop the “demons from another dimension that just want to harass abused children. And these films were all released in 1988.

One thing that does make Freddy standout though is this is the movie that sculpts his personality. The goofy one-liners and catered kill methods are galvanized in The Dream Master. In random conversation with friends or feeling the nostalgia yourself – this is the version of Freddy Krueger that everybody is thinking of. He didn’t really have a personality before this movie and while his motivations were finally clear in Dream Warriors he doesn’t really get any lines until The Dream Master. In this movie he very quickly gets to the point where you want him to shut up and kill somebody or you’re giggly at something so stupid that only he could get away with saying. Big congrats to Robert Englund for finally getting the lines that made the character iconic.

The special effects in The Dream Master are top notch for the series and what you come to expect. Many more new and daring camera effects for the series that were used in very clever ways especially Alice falling into the movie theater screen, the waterbed scene, and the “soul pizza” that Freddy eats at the diner. All impressed, but the “bugout” kill for Debbie’s character is probably the most memorable. It’s a long sequence you can tell the filmmakers were pleased with. It’s 35 years later and I was muttering “whaaat the fuuuck” at my tv the whole time.

All in all I don’t think The Dream Master was that great. It tried lots of new things and had a much more embellished script and the effects were good. But this offering fell flat on most of that script and I wished it would just hurry up. It breaks the ONE RULE that you cannot break – this movie was boring… There is a dream demon eating teenagers and this film was somehow boring. This script in the hands of any other director would have been assuredly better. The special effects scene are fucking great but they don’t come fast enough to make you not lose interest or GASP, fall asleep.

RANKINGS

1. Part 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
2. Part 1: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
3. Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
4. Part 4: The Dream Master (1988)