Terror Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

New Line Cinema recruited a barely known Finnish director whose only American credits were a couple of low-rent exploitation pictures to helm its fourth Freddy Krueger picture. Two years later, after DIE HARD 2 went through the roof, Renny Harlin was on Hollywood’s directorial A-list.

With genre stalwarts John Carl Buechler (TROLL), Kevin Yagher (THE HIDDEN), Screaming Mad George (PREDATOR), and Christopher Biggs (GALAXY OF TERROR) working on the many icky prosthetics and makeup effects, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER became the top-grossing Freddy flick of all time. It opened at number one at the box office and stayed there for nearly a month.

A dog pees fire in an auto graveyard, and Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is resurrected to kill three surviving teenagers from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3. Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Eastman) go fairly quickly. Kristin (Tuesday Knight, replacing Patricia Arquette), the last surviving Elm Street Child, lives just long enough to call her best friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) into her fatal dream—some friend, huh—and pass along to Alice her power to share dreams.

Writers Brian Helgeland (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL) and Jim and Ken Wheat (THE SILENT SCREAM) are more interested in spectacle than logic—the town barely notices the deaths of four teenagers in two days—and so is Harlin, whose visual style is clearly influenced by music videos. What’s fresh is that Alice also takes over various facets of the personalities of her friends that die, though it isn’t explained how this could be. So, for instance, when Alice meets Freddy for their final battle in the dream world, she can use martial arts skills acquired from her dead brother (Andras Jones).

Frankly, the narrative is a real—ahem—nightmare. Harlin and his writers seem confused about Freddy’s powers and motivations, and Englund is just phoning it in. I don’t think he has any dialogue that isn’t a cheesy one-liner, which does little to build his character or make him scary. Krueger is just a clown in funny disguises (Englund even dresses in drag) at this point.

While NIGHTMARE 4 is a creative bust, it was, as mentioned above, the most financially successful Freddy film and would stay that way until FREDDY VS. JASON came out in 2003. You can hardly blame producers Robert Shaye and Rachel Talalay for making number five next.

You Must Be Dreaming

New Line Cinema’s second sequel to its smash horror hit A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was a crucial one, as it marked the transformation of its dream-weaving serial killer Freddy Krueger from terrifying screen villain to comical folk hero. With the addition of humor to the scares, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS became less frightening, but also more appealing to a mass audience, which began buying Freddy souvenirs and action figures.

It’s a step up from PART 2, in spite of the jumbled pre-production involving four screenwriters. Elm Street creator Wes Craven was invited to script Part Three with his partner Bruce Wagner (WILD PALMS), though it was heavily rewritten by Frank Darabont (later to direct THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE MIST) and the series’ new director, Chuck Russell, the DREAMSCAPE author making his debut behind the lens. The story offers more than a few imaginative setpieces and a definite surprise or two near the end.

Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), returning from the original film, is an intern at an asylum, where she works with suicidal teenagers with nightmare disorders. From their symptoms, she recognizes them as victims of Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and works with a skeptical Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) to prevent Freddy from attacking them through their dreams.

Patricia Arquette, later the star of MEDIUM, plays Kristin, Freddy’s main nemesis. A fatherless teen with latent psychic powers, Kristin is able to invite others to participate in her dreams. Only by calling together Nancy and the surviving teens into her latest nightmare do they have a chance to destroy Freddy.

Of course, the fantastic premise provides plenty of opportunities to showcase imaginative special effects, and Russell’s crew is more than up to the task. Kevin Yagher, Greg Cannom, and Mark Shostrom create the icky makeup effects, and Dream Quest Images and Doug Beswick handle the practical effects, which include a gigantic phallus-shaped “Freddy Snake” that swallows Kristin and a stop-motion Freddy marionette. Englund surprisingly has little screen time, but the script and cast keep him always in the forefront of the audience’s mind.

Brooke Bundy, Larry Fishburne (THE MATRIX), Nan Martin, and Priscilla Pointer add steady adult support to the young cast, helping to ground the fantasy in something tangible, as does John Saxon, returning as Nancy’s policeman father and the worse for wear. Jennifer Rubin (making her film debut; oddly, her next movie was BAD DREAMS!), Bradley Gregg, Ken Sagoes, Penelope Sudrow, and Ira Heiden are good as Arquette’s fellow patients. And, yes, that really is Dick Cavett and Zsa Zsa Gabor making cameos.

Welcome To Your New Nightmare

After eight films and a television series that brought in boffo box office for the studio, New Line turned its lucrative NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise over to uber-producer Michael Bay (TRANSFORMERS) and a music video director, Samuel Bayer, making his first feature film. Sounds like a terrible idea, and though this 2010 remake isn’t a good movie, it made back its bucks and more, and that’s all that counts in Hollywood.

I don’t think the filmmakers even understand horror movies. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET looks as though they watched other horror movies to see how they worked, but they didn’t watch any good ones—just the pallid remakes of them. Full of loud music stings, yellow-brown cinematography, and unimaginative setpieces, the remake even wastes what looks like a sound idea on paper: the casting of intense Jackie Earle Haley (WATCHMEN) as child killer-turned-dream invader Freddy Krueger.

Like the rest of the movie, Haley tries to get by on appearance alone, but doesn’t quite cut it. He lacks the energy and black humor that Robert Englund brought to the role. It’s true that Freddy became less scary in the later sequels when New Line started playing up the comedy to make him a more family-friendly serial killer, but in the original NIGHTMARE, Englund played the perfect balance of menace and joker—a psychopath who enjoyed his job. Haley has the look down and appears to be trying, but the script and direction are just going through the motions.

The story and even some of the setpieces are familiar. The teenagers on Elm Street are having trouble sleeping, because their nightmares are being invaded by a horribly mutilated madman in a slouch hat and striped sweater who threatens to murder them. When some of the kids die in apparent suicides, only Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara, star of the American remake of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) understands they’re being murdered in their dreams by Freddy Krueger.

While technically accomplished in many ways, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET suffers from a lack of imagination, humor, and verve. Its gloomy protagonists played by Mara and the equally somber Kyle Gallner fail to make us care about them, and Bayer and his writers aren’t good at making us care about anything else.

The Man Of Your Dreams Is Back

When Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET became New Line Cinema’s top-grossing film of all time, hell, yeah, you better believe Freddy Krueger would return. Just twelve months after the original hit multiplexes, the man in the felt slouch hat was back for revenge in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, PART 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, written by New Line staffer David Chaskin (THE CURSE) and helmed by Jack Sholder, a former New Line trailer editor who made his directorial debut with the studio’s first horror picture, the successful ALONE IN THE DARK.

Sholder was a good choice; he delivers some striking images, such as the school bus balanced atop a giant canyon spire, and effective scare scenes. The problem is Chaskin’s screenplay, which not only makes little sense within the context of this movie’s universe, but also violates strict rules already established by Craven the year before. Also, the not-so-subtle homosexual context is ridiculously hilarious more than two decades later. While Chaskin has said he intended the content to be homophobic, to feed upon the fears of the young men in NIGHTMARE’s target audience, it’s so broadly played by Sholder, who claims he never noticed any gay subtext, that the film is more campy than frightening.

Five years after the first NIGHTMARE, a new family, the Walshes, have moved into the Thompsons’ old house on Elm Street, where teen son Jesse (Mark Patton) finds Nancy’s diary. Her writings about a creepy monster named Fred who comes to her in the night remind Jesse of his nightmares, which always culminate in him screaming and awakening in a clammy sweat.

Of course, Freddy (Robert Englund) is back, but the problem with PART 2 is that he can now move about in the real world to cause havoc. Perhaps Chaskin and Sholder thought it would be scarier to let Freddy freely interact with the characters in their reality, but of course what it really does is take away what was so special about him. It also leads to some awful dumb scares like a possessed parakeet that attacks the Walshes, a flaming toaster, and a gay gym teacher (Marshall Bell) who is strung up naked in the locker room and whipped with wet towels.

Most of the neighborhood kids think Jesse is weird, but he comes to befriend jock Grady (Robert Rusler) and romance rich girl Lisa (Meryl Streep lookalike Kim Myers). He also discovers—and this is another off-target decision of Chaskin’s—that Freddy is possessing him, even when he’s awake, and forcing him to murder. Why Freddy, who seems to take great joy in tormenting and killing others, would push Jesse to do it for him is beyond me.

Because Sholder, Englund, and the special effects are so good, PART 2 isn’t a total nightmare. But when its big setpiece is Freddy Krueger running around a pool party tossing teens into the water, it’s fair to say it in no way approaches the heightened scares of Craven’s original. Also with Hope Lange (THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR) and Clu Gulager (with unnaturally darkened hair and eyebrows to de-age him) and Jesse’s parents, Melinda Fee, Sydney Walsh (HOOPERMAN), young Christie Clarke (who grew up to join DAYS OF OUR LIVES), Lyman Ward, Steve Eastin, and Brian Wimmer. Music by Christopher Young. Kevin Yagher and Mark Shostrom handled the makeup effects. Sholder went on to direct the excellent THE HIDDEN.

One, Two, Freddy's Coming For You

When Wes Craven teamed with New Line Cinema head honcho Robert Shaye to make 1984's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, neither could have predicted it would lead to not only the studio’s most successful film franchise ever, but also one of the genre’s most influential classics. And nobody could have guessed that its young leading man making his film debut, Johnny Depp, would become one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Credit should mainly go to writer/director Craven and actor Robert Englund, whose portrayal of boogeyman Freddy Krueger fluctuated over the years to match the films’ increasingly silly tone, but he played it straight and sinister the first time out the gate to create a terrifying monster.

Freddy Krueger was a child murderer who was burned to death by vigilante parents years earlier. Now, the teenagers of Elm Street, including nice girl Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), are haunted by nightmares in which they are terrorized by a horribly burned man in a green-and-red striped sweater, felt hat, and razor-sharp blades for fingers. Nancy is smackdab in the middle of the horror; her best friend Tina (Amanda Wyss) is the first victim, and the bloody murders are investigated by her cop father (top-billed John Saxon). It’s also Nancy who realizes that Freddy can only get at them in their dreams, but how long can she stay awake?

Craven’s clever script goes beyond just creating a highly original villain. While gore and gruesome shocks are present, NIGHTMARE isn’t a slasher flick. Its theme of kids trying to stay awake to survive while their parents try to bury their ugly past in their subconscious is intriguing, though the erratic performances (Langenkamp is unpolished though likable, Saxon authoritative, Englund frightening in surprisingly little screen time, Ronee Blakley as Nancy's mom frankly terrible) prevent Craven from developing the subtext too far. NIGHTMARE is a film of rich imagery, bolstered by imaginative in-camera special effects created with more knowhow than money.

Ignore the PHANTASM-inspired ending imposed on Craven by Shaye. Langenkamp and Saxon both returned for the third and seventh movies. Rachel Talalay, the assistant production manager, worked her way up New Line’s ranks to producer and finally director of FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE.