So three films down, and technically four to go on this page - three from the main continuity, then a soft reboot of sorts.
Some of these, as their titles suggest, get a bit formulaic, similar names, and similar themes as they develop Freddy’s backstory. There’s a little retconning, but for the most part it fits in, though who would marry even pre-Freddy Freddy is a mystery.
That said, in the last 3 main films, that’s 3 in four years, so they were cranking them out and perhaps hence some similarities. Still, they all work.
Enough of that, let’s get back into the Freddy universe.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master (1988)
So much more than a trilogy! The fourth film kicks off with another dream of the Freddy house (but which was Nancy’s house in the original?). The nursery rhyme and the children skipping is back; the tricycle is back, only this time it' s falling down the stairs and not melting - and that’s just the first five minutes. Soon the house becomes a boiler room, and we know what that means!
Initially, this picks up with some of our Dream Warriors from part 3, except the Kristen character has magically changed from being played by Tuesday Knight instead of Partricia Arquette. She can still pull her friends Joey and Kincaid from the previous film into her dreams though, and have them help fight Freddy, except of course, that Freddy died in part 3 … or did he?
Anyway, the dream warriors are back at school and has a new collection of friends: one is a martial arts fan, along with his sister Alice who day dreams (and who have an alcoholic father), along with the book nerd etc.. Pay attention, this will be important later.
Their dreams begin to converge on the car wrecking yard ,and then Kincaid’s dog comes into his dream and digs up Freddy’s bones. The dog is called Jason by the way, and pees fire. No, really. Before you know it Freddy is back through the power of reverse stop motion and it’s a great effect.
First down sadly is Kincaid, who I liked as a character, but clearly he was last film’s news. Joey is next, killed via his waterbed. So now it’s just the new kids.
Alice is the first to bring up dream control, and the dream master, passed on to her from her deceased mother as a poem. Kristen tries to use the idea to control her own dreams, but for her it just results in creeepy dreams in nice looking locations, giving us the image of Freddy in shades and eventually Freddy gets her too. Now all of the part 3 alumni are gone.
This now makes Alice the main character as Kristen transfers her ability to pull people into dreams to her. Next her asmatic friend Sheila is killed by Freddy in an exam, seeming from an asma attack anfter Freddy sucks the air from her body, and her life spirit seems to enter Alice like Kristen’s did. This is something enw for the film, where victim’s power is transferred to survivor’s, and in turn Alice takes on some of their personality traits.
Rick the martial arts fan dies in a Japan themed dream (and he gets an actual funeral), and now Alice has his martial arts skills.
Ina fun sequence, Alice falls asleep at the cinema, and is brought into a black and white version of a run down Springfield, though sadly the scene doesn’t stay in monochrome. Alice sees a version of herself as an old lady still working in the same diner when Freddy confronts her and confirms that whilst all of the Elm Street kids (kids of the parents who killed him), he’s using her to get more.
It’s an interesting premise, and whilst the kills are imaginative, the film starts to feel like the formula is being followed a little too strictly. The film lacks a certain style compared to the previous installments too, or rather the bits of style are broken up throughout the film. It’s not bad, it just feels like a process.
Even the final showdown, where Alice takes a memento from each fallen friend in what was a true 80s montage is just lacking something - too many supporting characters maybe? The fight scene is acceptable, and it poses the title’s question - who is the dream master? Freddy or Alice?
Certainly Alice can burn a hole through Freddy, but ultimately he’s made to see his true form and then all the souls he’s collected - as shown on his chest - rise up and rip him apart. It’s not bad as endings go and the FX for it are excellent.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - Dream Master
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 - The Dream Child (1989)
As ever we start with a dream scene, and this time they’ve combined it with a shower scene, before Alice is dropped into Freddy’s noiler-room inspired world. the Nightmare films didn’t go big into nudity compared to other 80s horror, limiting themselves to boob scene perhaps, so to open with this was something of a shift. It then leads into a reminder about the ‘son of a 100 maniacs’ line, with Freddy’s mother being trapped in an asylum.
In the real world, Alics and some new friends (…) are graduating high school, but they become increasingly aware that there’s something going on in their dreams, even Alice’s boyfriend, who I only remember as ‘Alice’s boyfirend’. He might have had a name…
Amyway, in one sequence Alice dreams she’s in a hospital, and actually witnessing Freddy’s birth, and he’s quite the looker before he runs, or crawls or.. something away and Alice follows him to the set of the ruined church where the finale of the previous fiolm was. There are series of slow motion explosions, things coming out of the ground, screams, and maybe Freddy has been reborn.
This film also expands on Freddy’s witty one liners which had been gradsually increasiong with each film, and arguably was opne of Freddy’s things. Where he doesn’t drop wit though is when he’s confronted by his habit wearing Nun mother.
Back to the friends, one is a comic book fan, who is also drawing. This will become relevant later. Another is a diver. This will become relevant later. Another has a domineering mother. This will … well you get the idea since it’s the same conceit as the previous film.
That said, again, the kills are well done. The boyfriend first survives a run in with Freddy in his car, wakes up again at a now deserted pool, whern takes a motorcycle (without a helmet) to Alice’s cafe. The bike then transforms in Freddy which is a decent effect. And apparently his name was Dan.
Also, Alice is also now pregnant. Whilst she’s in the hospital she meets a young boy called Jacob. And she likes that name.
Ah yes, the woman who has an overbearing mother who wants her to be a model - now she falls asleep, we get Freddy as a chef who force feeds her until she starts choking. On the subject of food, this is interspersed with some great stop motion work of the food in Alice’s fridge rotting and turning into eyeballs, and then the choking figure of her friend (who might be called Greta) comes through the fridge, only for Freeddy to pull her back to the dinner party she’s sleeping and choking through, and finally dying at.
Excuse me for not focussing on names and other character traits, but there’s so little development beyond something which hints at how they’ll die.
The only real suspense is in how people are getting pulled into dreams whilst Alice is awake since that’s her power, but it’s dropped that not only is Jacob her son, but he’s also how people are being pulled into dreams … because he’s dreaming. Also, Freddy is feeding the souls of the dead friends to Jacob.
The film also delves into forced adoption, abortion and other aspects of teeange pregnancy. It’s not dwelt upon, but it’s a fairly audacious move for a film like this.
As kills go, the best structured is Mark’s (?), aka Comic Book Person. He goes into a black and white comic as one of his comic heroes, only to be shredded by ‘Super Freddy’. It’s well done and adds soinme variety.
Eventaully Alice gets Freddy trapped in the room with the 100 maniacs, who try to rip him to pieces, but he escapes back to Jacob, but then Alice manifests Freddy from inside her at the same time her diving friend finds Amanda, touches her shoulder and she vanishes, only to re-appear where Freddy and Alice are fighting. Amanda tells Jacob to fight Freddy, and he becomes a mini-Freddy.
Jacob frees all of Freddy’s souls, and transforms himm back to baby who then returns to Amanda’s womb, from which he tries to escape. Jacob becomes a wholly normal baby and the film closes with the family in the park and some kids singing the Freddy nursery rhyme.
It’s different I suppose.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 - The Dream Child
Freddy’s Dead - The Final Nightmare (1991)
A film so scary, they didn’t even need to invoke Elm Street in the name.
This one leaves the ‘continuity’ the previous films a bit, and states it’s set ten years in the future - in a Springfield, where a generation of children has been murdered or killed themselves, leading to a mass psychosis of the rest of the population. No really, that’s how it starts.
We begin as usual with a dream, this time with a teenager falling through the bottom of a plane and landing back in his bed, even though his house is now falling through the air. He looks out of the window and and there’s Freddy, riding a broomstick and dressed as a witch; no really, that’s how it starts. Eventually he’s dumped back into the real world, but has a head injury and amnesia.
The humour, especially in the one liners, had been building for a while in the series, but in this one, we find it’s a fairly central part of the films’ design. There are callbacks to the previous films - Freddy’s house, the small tricycle - but this one is structurally different.
The film focusses on a shelter for kids and we’re introduced to each of them and of course they all all have very specific character traits; one doesn’t like to be touched, one is deaf, another likes boxing, and they are hatching a plan to leave the shelter.
Another bit of backstory introduced in this film, is that of dream demons who search for the most evil human they can find and offer them immortality. I wonder if that’ll come back later in the film. Another new piece of history is that Freddy had a family and a child. I wonder if that’ll come back later in the film.
To be fair, at least they drop these in early, rather than when needed later, so you know something is coming.
In the shelter the kids are, as expected, having dreams including the resident therapists. Eventually they take the boy with amnesia back to Springwood, but the other kids hide in the van, trying to escape.
This version of Springwood is the one with no kids, but it does have a cameo by Roseanne Barr. It becomes clear this town is some kind of group dream, but it also wraps in dreams within dreams as the kids in the van find there’s no way to leave and so seek shelter in a house.
The adults still living in the town explain Freddy’s daughter was taken into care, and then the rampage began.
Eventually, Freddy starts picking each one of these new characters off; the deaf kid gets brought to Freddy’s boilerroom where Freddie gives him super hearing, and now even a drop of water is painful. Freddy produces a blackboard and scrapes his blades across it (and that seems like such an obvious thing, and yet we’ve not seen it before), and the kid’s head explodes.
The dope fuelled Spencer gets pulled into a psychedelic TV, but as he was playing a video game when he was introduced, he now gets pulled into a game where Freddy is playing him like a game character. It’s fun, but Freddy doesn’t look as scary, a little more rounded, dryer and shown in more light.
Eventually Freddy gets the amnesia kid and reveals that Freddy is indeed looking for his daughter. One facet they keep is of the kids souls being sucked into Freddy’s body, but Freddy can also now take a host, in this case the therapist. This is almost like the possession idea that part 2 used.
Back at the shelter again the therapists and remaining girls hatch a plan to get Freddy, but it turns out the woman therapist (Maggie) was adopted. I wonder who the parents could have been. There are flashbacks to Freddy and his family, and we see some different versions of Freddy’s glove, and then we see Maggie brought into the storyline, except her real name was Katherine.
It seems Freddy needed a new town, new souls, and as he says, “Every town has an Elm Street.” Some of the old rules still apply though, and they discover that if they’re holding someone of Freddy they can bring him out to the real world.
This film was made in 3D, so at one point the character puts on the old red and green glasses to see the demons and the cinematography does a few things to play up the 3D, but it doesn’t spoil it for normal viewing. Maggie finds the dream demons in Freddy’s dreams, and some parts of his childhood memories, including rocker Alice Cooper as his dad!
They bring Freddie to the real world, except now he doesn’t have the burns and claims the demons made him do it. Of course he’s lying, and Katherine rips his glove off and they fight. Eventually she gains the upper hand and Freddy tempts her to put the glove on. She does, but only to attack Freddy with it, before shoving a pipe bomb into him and escaping. After he explodes the dream demons escape, but they declare “Freddy’s Dead”.
It’s an odd film; the humour and the serious storyline don’t mesh very well in places, and the dream demon retcon seems unneccesary.
As the credits roll they do a montage of the previous films, so they had at least some confidence this was the last one.
Freddy's Dead - The Final Nightmare
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994)
Certainly Freddy’s Dead took a turn from the continuity, this one steps outside of the film completely and is set in a pseduo-real world where Freeddy is a character played by Robert Englund, but the fantasy world starts to intrude.
It’s a film-within-a-film cocnept where they’re making a new ‘Nightmare film. Heather Langenkamp plays herself and her in-film boyfriend is an FX person. However, odd things start happening on-set, initially with Freddy’s glove. Howeever, this film within a film is within Heather Langenkamp’s dream! OK, I’m glad we’re clear on that.
In the ‘real’ world there is an increasing number of earthquakes and Heather is receiving strange phone calls. It’s intrersting that the ‘real’ world in this feels a bit strange in it’s own way, even the TV interview Heather does. That’s fun because Robert Englund joins in character, and then out of character he has all the fans wanting autographs.
This leads to New Line offering Heather a new role in a new Nightmare film, which is a fun scene since the producers are played by the real life producers.
Her son is also acting increasingly erratic, and it’s this family angle which connects some of the plot - Heather doesn’t want to do horror with having a son.
Heather’s husband is killed by Freddy when he’s driving home (perhaps also using the first CG in a Nightmare film?) and Heather goes to ID the body, and sees the claw marks.
As it’s out of the continuity, it’s good to see some actors from the different films make cameo roles at his funeral such as John Saxon, as well as writer and director Wes Craven.
As the story moves on, Heather’s son is seen always watching the original Nightmare film on TVs around the house when he appears to be sleepwalking. He also recites the nursery rhyme from the other films and starts doing increasingly dangerous things. The character actor is annoying to be honest.
The story does move slowly for the first half though, until eventually each main character admits they’re having dreams of a darker, scarier Freddy, and it’s influencing them - Robert Englund is painting a demonic Freddy canvas. There are some callbacks too - a tongue coming out of the phone, or someone asking Heather for a hall pass and wading through goo on stairs for example - which is fun for older fans.
Wes Craven does a decent turn on the acting side, describing how he’s having dreams and then writing them up as a script and the ’entity’ is an ancient evil, which had been trapped within the original Elm Street series, but now they’re no longer popular he can escape.
When Freddy is revealed as a jump scare you can see he does look more demonic, still burned, but with more detailed flesh, demonic eyes and a bulkier appearance. The red and green jumper is now almost black and red, and he wears leather trousers instead of material. It’s also show that the quakes are also somehow linked to him and Nancy.
SThe film continues in the hospital, where Freddy kills the baby-sitter and only the son can see him; it’s a little like the deaths in the first episode for sure. The staff of course, like the parents in the original just don’t believe. Then again, when Heather calls John Saxon he doesn’t believe either, but it’s John Saxon so he heads out and meets Heather at her house. Or does he? When the two meet he calls her Nancy, and he has a police badge on and it seems the original fil is recreating itself.
HEather takes some sleeping tablets and follows her son’s voice, ending up in an ancient temple to Freddy, or rather the demon who is now Freddy. In the temple she finds more pages to the new film too… except there would be no new movie.
Heather and her son fight Freddy through the temple, eventually cornering him a kiln of sorts, and we see Freddy’s innate fear of fire as he transforms into all the other forms he’s taken over the years. Then there’s a a huge explosion as Heather and her son manage to escape back to the real world.
It’s OK as a film I suppose, the Freddy character has a certain Nosferatu style, but I don’t think it was as dark as the original, and given the cameos, it is the original it’s most linked to.
Overall it’s interesting as a concept and film, but I don’t really think it brought anything truly new, except reminding you that maybe Heather Langenkamp was the best lead from the whole series.
