I’ve had one of those weeks which scrunch the scrotum and makes you feel as though there is nothing about yourself worth redemption. As an unemployed blogger, there is very little we can do with any regularity. Going to the movies is one of those things. So I’ve fallen back on my DVD collection and the Instant Watch of my Netflix subscription. People always ask me why I named myself Mr. Unhappy and weeks like this seem to reinforce why I did. This is not your problem so on to the movies...
Tonight’s little quick hits party is about the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Recently I sat down and saw a 4 hour documentary on the series and then watched the entire 7 movie series. The documentary is called “Never Sleep Again : The Elm Street Legacy”. I’d recommend it for those of us who love the horror. As far as the Nightmare movies hold up:
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The best of the series... by far. Heather Langencamp stars as Nancy, the foil for Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger. As the movie opens we follow the pretty Tina about the world of her dream where a mysterious man is stalking her. So shook up by the dreams she enlists Nancy and Glen (played by a young unknown named Johnny Depp, miles before his Captain Jack days) to spend the night with her. Her boyfriend Rod shows up and appears to have had the same dream as Nancy and Tina but shrugs it off. When Tina dies spectacularly spinning around the room, Nancy begins to learn how to stop the monster in her dreams before all of her friends are killed. I’ve always loved the genius of the original story and the acting of Langencamp, Robert Englund, and of course the hall monitor who says “Where’s your pass?!” Wes Craven proved that he was a player here and created a world that led to 6 sequels. An excellent movie.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 : Freddy’s Revenge
Sometimes an idea seems great on paper and then when it is accomplished you look back and say “How did we make a horror movie about what it means to be a closeted gay man?” Nightmare 2 is that movie in which Freddy attempts to use the body of a young high school boy to enter the world and kill again. A new family has taken up residence in the house from the original movie. When young Jesse Walsh finds Nancy’s diary in his closet he becomes a link for Freddy to come to the real world through him. Again this movie works because there is a lot of subtext and smart kills. Where it falls apart is in breaking rules set up in the first film. When Freddy crashes a pool party, all the rules are tossed out the window. It is a mismanagement of the series and one that needed to be addressed in the next film in the series. This movie is worth a viewing but as part of the series it is the odd duck out.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Luckily for the series, it gets back on track with the script from series originator Wes Craven and some touch up work by Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, The Mist and Walking Dead among his credits) and the return of Heather Langencamp as Nancy who is now helping the other Elm Street kids fight Freddy Krueger. Patricia Arquette debuts and foreshadows her role in Medium by waking violently as Kristen who has the ability to pull others into her dreams with her. Together with a group of kids they go into their dreams and fight Freddy. The movie series elevates itself to a new level (and one the series won’t see again until New Nightmare) and creates a movie icon out of Robert Englund’s Krueger. The deaths are more elaborate and restore Freddy to his nightmarish self. Nightmare 3 also has the most iconic quip of any horror movie. “Welcome to prime-time bitch!” made Englund’s career and ensured his stay in Make-up chairs for years to come. The series is remade and buried Krueger once and for all... yeah right.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Nightmare 4 reunites the survivors of 3 (for like 10 minutes at least) with the subtraction of Patricia Arquette who is replaced by Tuesday Knight. The last of the Elm Street kids do not last long and Kristen accidently pulls her new BFF Alice into her dream allowing Freddy access to a new batch of kids. Alice has a power too though and takes on the abilities of her friends after they die and offers the first person to ever be evenly matched with Freddy in the dream world. The Dream Master raises the stakes of the last movie but disappoints with lackluster deaths and a general lack of respect for the last movie. A dog pissing on Freddy’s consecrated grave is what allows him to be freed from the trap from Nightmare 3. It is the sign of things to come for the series. Still enjoyable but they erase any connection to the last movie within the first act. I would have enjoyed seeing the Dream Warriors survive a little longer. After all, this is not their first trip down the aisle with Freddy Krueger’s nightmares. Alice is a competent survivor but this movie leaves you wondering what could have been had New Line taken a little more time with the script and given a little more money.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Here is where we just start getting silly with this series. It happens with every horror franchise. Friday the 13th fell apart at number 3, Halloween at number 5, Hellraiser at number 2. There is very little to enjoy here. Alice is back, minus her dream master abilities, and she has been a busy girl with her boyfriend from Dream Master, Dan. She begins having waking dreams which shed some light on Freddy Krueger’s past and it is learned after a death that she is pregnant. Freddy is trying to return to Earth through the child, using his dreams to pull Alice into the dream world. I don’t know if they just slapped this together as they went but it seems like they didn’t put much thought behind this movie. Krueger is no longer scary and is now a caricature of himself. His quips fall flat, the deaths are spectacular but boring and the add a victim problem of any horror series becomes readily apparent here. Some characters just don’t belong and therefore are not long for the movie. In fact, some of the kids are so obnoxious that you don’t even care when they die. Just a bad addition to the series but watchable...barely.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
The tagline for this movie is “They saved the best for last.” I won’t say this movie is the best but it is much better than the Dream Child debacle. Freddy sends out the last child in Springwood (the city decimated by Krueger throughout the series) to retrieve the one person who can free him from the confines of the small town and unleash him on the world at large, his child. Freddy’s Dead allows the viewer access to some of the life of Krueger before his death and gives the series a conclusion. The problem with it is, that Freddy is so iconic that when the time comes for his death almost anything falls short. They couldn’t really have satisfied you but they leave you wanting with a bad 3-D sequence. I’ll say that I laughed more than I jumped during this movie. When it comes to scares, it was time for Freddy to disappear for awhile.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
So 3 years after burying Freddy, Wes Craven had a dream that pulled him back into the series. He conceived the idea that Freddy was inhabited by evil itself and that when the movie series ended, the evil wanted more victims so he went into our world to pull his ultimate enemy back into the movies going after Heather Langencamp (playing herself) and her family. This movie is a trip down the rabbit hole with Heather as she frantically tries to find out what is plaguing her family and wondering if she can become the person her son needs her to be to survive. The genius in taking this movie out of the world of Springwood to our world breathes new life in the series although adds the wooden acting of Bob Shaye and Wes Craven. New Nightmare allows the series to grow and become scary again. The new Freddy is scary again, less comic and has a new glove made of bone. It is an awesome bookend to the series.
Mr. Unhappy sez of the entire series: A more or less even series, probably the best of any horror franchise. If you have the time, there is a lot worse things you can do with it.
I will tell you that I enjoyed the new remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street with Jackie Earle Haley taking over for Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. It was a scary fun movie but for this I wanted to keep the series limited to the Robert Englund versions. I don’t think it would be fair or worthwhile to compare these two very different versions. I will be doing a best of the remakes blog soon which will most certainly have this movie on it.
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