What the HELL happened to...A Nightmare on Elm Street

What the HELL happened too, Freddy

Don Roberts

I grew up within a video store, and it gave me many great memories, it also introduced me to horror films and I love that. I’ve looked back several dozen times over the years and I keep coming back to two things that brought me to find those films. It was firstly the forbidden part of it. They weren’t kept in a back room like the adult stuff was. Which for those who never grew up with video stores but heard tales of, yes. Yes they used to rent porn in video stores, which was kept in a room separate from the rest of the store. Either with a saloon door or a curtain. Ours had a combination curtain and beaded curtain. That way they heard every person who entered and shouldn’t enter.

I never did.

Supposedly.

But I loved that when I found horror, it was a section my parents told me was full of scary films that I might not be ready for. Of course I felt I was, but what kept me there once the forbidden films rush past was the art work. I have a book full of old VHS scifi and horror film art because there is genuinely nothing cooler than that. They had very unique often illustrated box artwork and it always drew me in. That’s what got me to rent Hellraiser, and the original Nightmare on Elm Street. It was just such striking imagery and I felt I had to see it. Had no idea what the hell it was about but I had too.

One of the first horror films I remember seeing in theaters was with my mom and a cousin. I was obsessed with needing to see this movie and buy the power for it. Because of all the horror box art and posters I’d seen, this one was the most epic of all of them. It was A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3 Dream Warriors. Next to the Japanese vhs art for Poltergeist 2, this movies poster and art still stand out as being epic and amazing to me. Even though I was familiar with the first Nightmare I didn’t recall much of the second one. But the third one cemented me into the series.

Ever since then I’ve loved these movies and funny enough remained one of those growing up that I never had to fight my parents about going to see in theaters because my mom loved them too! It’s one of the few horror films we’d watch together because she loved his dark humor and I did too. I have a lot of sincere love for this franchise and when they get it right, it makes me a happy boy. When they fumble it, I can still enjoy it. Until Wes Craven did what he did returning to the series. But then thankfully the remake came along and I found a new thing to shake my head at and ask myself why can’t they get it right. Why did they need to do this.

So of course I had to include this in the series.

It would have been far too easy to switch it up and leap into the Chainsaw Massacre franchise. But honestly? I wanted to cover, dive into, and critique the franchises I loved because I’ll happily admit they definitely got it wrong down the pipeline with a lot of these, and some it just happened without their choice or say so. So the chance to get into these movies and explore the same? Damn right I would.

It’s kind of funny but sad that so far of these franchises? Friday the 13th was the one sole franchise to get it right through 6 films before falling off. Though some can debate that, absolutely. There are some that would say Freddy didn’t drop off until part 6 Freddy’s Dead. Which is a fair argument. Some would say it was any and all films past that. Again I can see that. But for a lot of us, it started a backwards slide after 3. This repeats another trend we’ve seen so far with the other two franchises we covered where they seemed to finally nail the thing, made a stellar film and a lot of money. But instead of shooting up and out into the stratosphere. They decided to do something else entirely. With some success but a sincere dip in quality. Which is important I feel to always bring up with each films breakdown. Though the fans weren’t entirely pleased with some of these, that didn’t chance the cultural limelight that shined on these films, and no light shined more vibrantly and readily, than it did on Freddy and Jason. The royalty of horror. Even if Michael started this gangster shit, these two stole the show.

Especially Freddy.

So with that being said. We need to see what happens when you manage a third film that not only managed to bring in fans lost with the sequel and wanting better, not only landed a great writer(Frank Darabont), but was the horror equivalent of Star Trek’s Wrath of Khan. It was a box office success, a great breath of life into the franchise and brought in thousands of new fans.

Naturally a sequel was the only way to go from there, and oh jim boy did we get a sequel. For better or worse, and just like we’ve said with Halloween and Friday the 13th. They built up the fanbase, delivered high hopes and set the stage. And then the sequel came.

Part 4 The Dream Master

With the incredible success of Dream Warriors, New Line slammed down their wallets and demanded a sequel to follow it up immediately. No waiting, no thinking it out. Just get Robert in makeup and start filming so we can keep theater seats moist and keep this puppy pumping out nightmare bucks!

As we learned with past franchises thus far. This would be a disaster.

Normally.

To make it even better, the studio was demanding a cast in stone release time for the film. Much like sequels from Michael and Jason they faced the mad dash rush and problems of the writers strike in 88’. So this meant screaming at a writer to produce a script before the strike, or saying fuck it we’re writing while we film. Which would lead to disaster as we’ve learned in the past.

Normally.

This is a whirlwind of freddy style antics with the film being the final girl in the story.

Because believe it or not, whether you hate or like this followup, it was a massive success. There was no way it would be anything else but in all honesty. It’s a bit hard to imagine, again. But like I had said before, there was a time in this world where Freddy was treated like a pop star. Because he was. He was appearing in music videos, he released an album of Freddy songs, there was an 800 number I remember as a kid you could call during October to hear a spooky freddy message. He was on talk shows, MTV’s headbanger’s ball. He had a television show at one point, a Nintendo game, board game and toys. All of which I had growing up. Hell when this movie came out that following October I went as Freddy for Halloween. There are likely photos still out there of this. My red and green sweater, plastic glove hand and oatmeal paste looking face makeup.

Horror was on top of the world and people loved it, with Freddy standing as king. Because he had personality and people ate it up. Jason had his fans as did Michael, but very incredibly few icons got the status and fanbase as Freddy.

So again, normally when you rush to push out a film, Like Halloween learned, and Friday suffered. When you fight to push out a script and end up filming without a script. As both learned. It normally doesn’t lead to a grand standing good time. But Freddy was Freddy, and people wanted more of Freddy. And somehow they managed to pull it off despite bodies being dragged behind New Lines bullet train.

So for those unfamiliar, let’s dig into;

The story

With Freddy not only defeated, but his soul put to rest and body buried on consecrated ground within the city’s wrecking yard with stolen holy water and crosses. Somehow Freddy returned, much to the dismay of surviving dream warriors Joey, Kincaid, and dream Jesus herself Kristen, the last surviving Elm Street kids.

Our three heroes whom found their strength in themselves through dreams, including Joey who cured his muteness through fighting Freddy, are all out of the hospital and living their best lives in High School. Or trying while Kristen keeps dreaming of Freddy’s boiler room. Fearing his return which her friends remind her nightly that they kicked his ass and he isn’t coming back. Now of all ways for things to go tits up, no one. Not one soul. Could have imagined or ever thought they’d say to someone, that Freddy was reborn, given life and a path back to the dreamworld. Through flaming dog piss. Yes, the pissing pooch belong to Cincaid, named Jason. Nudge, nudge, wink, nudge, wink, wink. DO YOU GET IT?!!! Jason the dog, pisses on Freddy’s junkyard grave, igniting out the tip of his lipstick startling both cincaid AND the dog, unleashing once again onto the lives of all, a piss fueled Freddy.

Within the first few minutes of the movie ALL the surviving cast members from Part 3 we cheered for and hoped the best of, were slaughtered by Freddy, and only one of the deaths remains the most highly questionable WE, will be getting into that soon I assure you.

As Kristen is about to be punted into the land of forever sleep, Freddy reads from the script and instructs her to reach out and pull a new friend into her dreamworld. Because Freddy is about to run out of vengeance kills and will need new kids he can go after. Kristen pulls her newest bestie Alice into her dreams and becomes the target of Freddy’s antics. But Kristen isn’t going to let her dream abilities go to waste, she transfers her abilities to Alice and now she has dream abilities. I say abilities because there is more than meets the eye with Kristens abilities past what we were told about being able to drag others into dreams. We shall see more on this soon. With the last of the Elm Street brats dead, Alice is here to usher in a new era of bodies for Freddy. Having no idea what Kristen gave to her, she ends up bringing her own friends into the dreamworld, unaware how she’s doing it. It’s a fun concept and fucked up that she’s killing her friends without knowing how to control this and Freddy is just racking up the XP. Eventually Alice grows into a strong dreamer haver person  and comes to the very slow realization she has been getting shared XP from Freddie’s kills. Every friend of hers that gets killed off, she ends up benefiting from by gaining their strengths of character and likely their flaws. While she gains kung fu from one friend she ends up inheriting their erectile dysfunction as well. Gaining genius levels of intelligence and engineering from another friend, also gives her the debuff of peeing every time she laughs. Now granted it may suck knowing the person you are somewhat friends with will unwittingly drag you into a death dream. But worse then that is the knowledge when you DIE she will inherit your personality and strengths. I mean my sister would love killing me and leveling up. Granted. But for everyone else it’s not really a high on the list friend feature.

Just saying.

So with the power of kung fu, intelligence boost and raw bad bitch energy, while dealing with pissing herself when she laughs, odd erectile dysfunctions and crippling depression. Alice finds herself ready to fight Freddy. In a showdown of mehness that we have to all deal with. While fighting Freddy and realizing he just can’t stop, won’t stop Dream demon for life. She needs to go back to the drawing board. Remembering her earlier mumbled out ADR dream master rhyme. She uses the power of evil seeing its own reflection and being vanquished. How Freddy managed never to look at himself, though having used a room of mirrors in the last film to torment and attack the dream warriors well. We can only guess. But it’s enough to take down the Freddy and he is gone. Alice ends up with one major league hunk by the end of the film. Her alcoholic father is sobering up and all is right in the world, until we get a chuckle from Freddy and we know shit is about to go down again soon. Just not, now.

There were, some problems with the story, for some of us.

Firstly people weren’t entirely happy with having lost the three faces we followed and cheered on during the last film. They were only brought in to die so we could move on. It makes sense in the end. You have to do something with the last of the Elm Street kids, and as long as they’re alive. Freddy can’t move on with his life. It sucks sure, but it makes sense

People also didn’t understand just how powerful Kristen apparently was given her original ability of dragging people into her dreams was changed to give Alice powers to fight Freddy, which ultimately didn’t work well for her. But you needed an angle so, it makes sense. For all we know she had it within her the whole. But she didn’t.

Fans also were curious as to why Kristen looks incredibly different from what we saw in the last film. But they also wondered what was wrong with Alice’s voice because it was rather oddly, some would say famously dubbed over.

AND people wanted to know just how. How in this world we live in, that these people live in. Is no one questioning just what magic Joey was performing to have ended up dying, drowned inside his water bed.

The man’s mother finds him trapped inside his waterbed, staring up dead eyed at the ceiling. My family had waterbeds for all of us growing up. It was fun but hell on our backs. Those beds have a small plastic nozzle that fits an adapter fitted to a hose. How a grown man fit inside this and ended up into his bed? Honestly the mom should have began by applauding him for achieving an illusion on that level, despite it going horribly wrong. Or she figured her sons curios interest in transdimensional teleportation and occult magick finally got the better of him.

To be fair this is also the same world where Johnny Depp’s character was sucked into his own mattress and turned into a blood geyser.

These things remain points which, are fair-that people often sight for why they don’t care for this entry. While I have my own gripes about the film I still like it enough. Dream warriors as I said was the first I can recall seeing with my mom and cousin in theaters. I only remember bits and pieces of going and seeing it with them. But I grew up and remember very vividly each Freddy film after that our family went and saw. It was just at that magical time growing up. It holds a place with me and always will. But again, not what I’d call a great Freddy film, but still fun.

Thankfully this film had actual trouble and faults along its path that could have lead to a vastly different potentially worse outcome. Or for all we know better?

Funny enough most the gripes we all have with the film are directly from the challenges this film faced.

The story as we got it, was interesting enough but still puzzling to people. But trust me when I say we got off easy. New Line had a habit, despite his later comments to the contrary. The studio would go to Wes Craven asking for his ideas and input on sequel ideas. Pitches that could bring Freddy back and further the franchise. Much like Lucas with Disney. Disney didn’t listen to Lucas, for wrong reasons, while New Line didn’t listen to Craven, for very good reasons.

Craven, likely on his toilet eating a breakfast burrito squeezed out the great idea of. Time travel Freddy.

You might be asking. Such things as, how the fuck? Why the fuck? Who the fuck? Yes time travel Freddy was the brainchild of Wes Craven. He pitched the idea that, Freddy. Through the power of dreams. Could Quantum leap his way in the dreamworld into the past, where he could haunt people throughout the generations. He could kill Hitler in his dreamworld. He could terrorize Aristotle. Make the founding fathers add no dreaming to the constitution.

Fuck that noise. Freddy could travel back to the first Elm Street movie and stop Nancy from killing him. EVEN BETTER he could haunt and kill the parents that would burn him alive! Holy fuck think about that. Freddy killing children in the real world while dream Freddy kills suspicious parents hunting him down. I take it back. This is a great idea!

But the studio said Ha haaa go fuck yourself.

We’ll unfortunately never know what time antics time Freddy would have gotten into. Instead the studio went, a different direction.

The next attempt with Freddy was a bit more grounded in reality and didn’t break the recently re-established lore of part 3. This new story, nearly happened. But eventually got reshaped and rewritten into what we got. This was the story of Alice and her brother Rick. Which we already know from the movie. Only this time, the two siblings would be born at the same time wonder twins with psychic powers, linked twin abilities and dream powers.

The idea was that these two grew up a little different from everyone else. They share the twin ability of knowing what the other is thinking, controlling dreams. One farts the other feels the ripple in their butthole. One has periods, the other has cramps. You get the idea.

They would share these abilities but Rick would be the more dominant sibling, with all the cool friends and social circles, while Alice would be the quiet Anakin type screaming into her pillow how he’s holding her back. In this version of the film Freddy attacks and kills Rick, which immediately Alice feels and reacts too, violently. She would absorb her brothers abilities. His power levels and unlocking her own with him gone and no longer feeling held back, Freddy inadvertently unleashes a powerful being like none we’ve seen before. It would have lead to a physical and psychic battle unlike anything seen before with Freddy and Alice.

That legitimately would have been a cool movie. So why didn’t we get that?

Unfortunately the director felt it was too complicated a story to explain. It would take time and effects to explain the twins linked abilities and powers. So rewrites were the order of the day. The writers began retooling the story into what we got. A confident loving older brother, a shy unsure of herself younger sister, forced to find her inner strength with the death of her brother and friends.

It’s still essentially the same story but I can’t help but feel maybe it would’ve benefited with the wonder twin powers element. It would have explained a bit more of what happened with Alice and her abilities. The film still handled it fairly well, I’ll give it that, though it’s not the best story they could have used after the events of the 3rd one. Maybe save it for a part 5 or 6. But not a direct follow up. Having a massive hit and characters people genuinely liked and cared for, heading into a direct follow up. That’s what you run with. You have those three finish their story, one last round with a mad Freddy, then you enter Alice, her twin and a new threat to fight Freddy. Instead they shoe horned the survivors in so they could quickly kill them off and move on to Alice and her story.

So with dropping Craven’s wonderful time travel idea, going into power twins and settling on normal teenage siblings. We had our story. What was next, of course dealt with the other mystery people wondered about.

The vanishing of Kristen.

Again going with people loving the last group of survivors. You had to bring them back even if to kill them off. Nancy did it so we must continue it. That meant Kristen would lose her star status as Freddy destroyer and Alice take the Throne. Let’s call up Patricia Arquette and get her busy with dying!

Sergio Leone had a similar moment while making Once Upon A Time in the West. He had to make one more western and when he decided on this. He wanted to introduce Charlese Bronson’s character the Harmonica man by having him kill at a train station, Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Elli Wallach. He would kill his Dollars trilogy stars in his final western. These three men declined that invitation.

Patricia declined her offer. Not for the same reason as these three big names. But because like other actors learn and agents tell them, horror is safe. It’s a starting point that can open doors for you to find other, better projects. She was rising up the ranks and was wanting to move on after Dream Warriors into bigger roles. Nothing wrong stepping away from where you started and it often does lead to bigger and better things. Rather famously Marina Sirtis known for Counselor Deanna Troi in Star Trek The Next Generation. She had her start in Canon films of, varying degrees of shit. She was thankful for Star Trek rescuing her from that and no one could blame her. Same goes for Patricia. She left with good graces. To be fair I am glad she made the decision not to become a scream queen. That’s still something I struggle with being a thing. Patricia is a fine actress, but her scream makes me believe meta humans do exist among us and that her scream exploded a few brains on set and New Line spent a lot covering those ‘accidents’ on set.

Seriously the woman is a siren, if I go missing, you’ll know I was right.

So recasting wands waved and we moved on. We had the cast, we had our story and we had a script.

Did I make a typo earlier in mentioning writing on the fly while filming, when they actually did have a finished script? No. No mistake.

They fought as did Halloween and Friday the 13th too get their script pinned before the writers strike. They did manage that by an almost literal final minute. They had a basic script to go by. Usually on a set once your script is done. It still changes. You write additional dialog or change dialog. You may have to redo entire scenes, and in the case of horror, you need to write out your kills. Just like Pornos.

I’m not even joking it’s actually fun to know this.

In adult films, or pornos if you must. Be it from the golden age of adult cinema or the few films done today with plot(yes, plot) A writer turns in a roughly 25 page or so story which introduces the characters, sets up their scene, dialog and then insert place holders that can simply say “Sex scene” or “Actor and Actress have sex”. Then once filming begins and they get to the sex. They begin working out the specifics of the shot and what they want in it. Horror is done in the same manor where you have the introduction. The scene setup, dialog and then a placeholder for each kill. So once they get to it they can discuss what will happen, how it will be filmed. They write out each kill, talk with the effects team, setup the scene and go from there.

So the movie had a script yes. But as Hector Barbosa said, it’s more like a guideline. So we had a Freddy script introducing characters, setting up some scenes to lead us to our 2nd and 3rd act. But no dream sequences or subsequent kills.

With all writers having laid down their word processors and picking up signs for striking, this left the film with three minds to go through a daily on set routine. These brave souls were the director Renny Harlin, production executive Michael De Luca and producer Rachel Talalay. Whom daily mind you, would have to gather and brainstorm. All while filming mind you, the following.

Daily dialog for one. The actors like in our other franchises often didn’t have finished scripts for their scenes. The ended up actually letting the cast ad-lib lines during scenes as they felt that might make it feel more natural and realistic.

For complicated dream sequences that felt impossible to put on paper, they would circle up and tell their storyboard artist a loose concept for the scene and let him plan them out. I like that because it’s close to Avatar Legend of Kora, in having someone shout at you “DO THE THING!” and them well, doing the thing.  But it worked somehow.

Which happened a lot with this film. There were some fully fleshed out scenes, and a handful of dream sequences. But they couldn’t use them. Partly because of the budget they had not allowing them to film huge set pieces and build what would be needed for them. The other part was the fact that CGI was not readily available back then. It was still a tool for the very wealthy so it wasn’t as common to see. This is also why during the Freddy Kung Fu scene we didn’t actually SEE Freddy doing any fighting. With everything they originally had scripted for that sequence as Rick’s death was a main story beat and needed to be scripted initially. They couldn’t film it. So the whole thing was rewritten and Freddy became invisible. Why invisible?

Well, That leads into other challenges these three had to face on top of the script writing.

As we talked about, New Line was shoving this film as hard and fast as they could to get it in theaters. They told them exactly when to have it out and they meant it. That meant the time taken to work on a script they could film with, and coming up with the missing and new dream sequences. While the rest of production was moving . One hand didn’t know what the other was doing. To help combat this quickly falling apart production. The three minds doing the writing began setting about salvaging this train skidding on and off the rails.

They took their power ranger medallions and separated into three units.

Firstly we had the director. He would handle anything involving the main cast and dialogue scenes. His task would be to run through the writing of those scenes as quickly as possible, film the main cast with those scenes and get them moving out as soon as possible, head off to their deaths and get the fuck on to the next step.

Secondly we had our effects team working none stop. If you imagine a montage of one person sleeping while another toils away, waking up the sleeping partner and switches over to napping while the other continues the work? That’s about it. Because CGI was not on the table, every sequence in the dreamworld had to be planned out practically and that also meant testing to make sure it’d actually work. Given they had no time for that. This meant the moment Renny Had the sequences written, they were given these designs, and had to make mad dashes to create them and make it happen. That meant coming up with how to do and make work the pizza of souls, and eventually an unholy huge nearly life threatening 20ft tall Freddy. They blueprinted it, created it, filmed it now move on to the next part!

Next would be the final stages that didn’t need any of the  main players. The stunt work for each sequence, insert shots and transitions. Simple enough yes?

Now, with this in mind. This is how life while filming worked for you, the actor.

You go to the director, who is scribbling out on legal note pads scenes for you. If you ask him whats on the menu for you today? He either threw out pages or handed you huge storyboards from the artist and growled out this was your scene before writing out for everyone else and point you over to the camera. You film your scene and hand the storyboards Rennie gave you over to Rachel Talalay. She thrust you onto her mad max style motorcycle and rushes you over to the Effects unit. You had them the storyboard, they beg for food and water, this is paid upon delivery of your dream sequence. They quickly bring you over, film your death and wait to be fed. Once fed you are then black bagged and driven over to the later unit of stunts and insert shots where afterward you are given a slap on the back and the door slammed with your ass out the studio door. This was handled by De Luca. The man watching the storm of these units working, shooting, building, shooting, and fighting and shooting.

This filmset was absolute chaos and Mad Max is the best way to put it. Each unit was a world unto its own. They never spoke directly to one another just worked on the loose believe you were where you needed to be and did what was needed. If an actor wasn’t available? The show goes on, insert stunt unit and carry on. If the movie felt rushed and no time was given to rest between deaths? That’d be the reason.

Which was itself another issue these three had to deal with. Because we wouldn’t have Patricia returning as Kristen, they didn’t have a replacement on hand. This took time and on a bullet train that wasn’t stopping. That meant changes had to be made. Again If it sounds familiar, it is. Jason and Michael were watching drinking coffee thankful it wasn’t them this time. The eventual casting of a new Kristen did not happen until the absolute last minute. That meant with the film still being filmed. They had to do additional rewrites. What originally was meant to be a passing of the torch in much the same way Nancy did with Kristen in the last film, was now going to be a rushed job. This is why her two friends are killed off so quickly and why the only real shots we get of Kristen are one establishing her friendship with Alice, her fight with her mom and the famous beach dream sequence.

It would have felt less jarring to fans who complained about her and the others being killed off so quickly had they gone with what was originally intended. But alas. When the studio says do the thing you. Well yes. Do the thing.

Add to all this the fact they had a very thin budget which was quickly dwindling. It meant other sequences couldn’t be filmed. Like for instance the Freddy Kung Fu fight. With three units working independently and still somehow together. Their titular villain was being pulled every which way a dozen times a day. Between makeup, dream kills, visual effects shots and stunt work. He wasn’t always there for the other shots, more notably in this instance the dream kill. So instead of waiting for him to be available, Because again we gotta make that deadline. They simply settled on Rick kicking air, taking fake punches, and Freddy’s glove flying into his gut.

Which also change the story drastically as well! They meant for Rick to have more screen time and a bit more build up but. No time, no script. Move along.

All of this ended up making the film feel like a bundled mass blob of quick cuts, scenes that come and go with little effect and one quick kill after the other with little build up. It was far from ideal let alone functional.

And

Even then!

We still had two more boss fights! Because what would a world of chaos like this be. Without the studio stepping its toes into the waters.

The studio knew, as Moustafa Akkad did, and Paramount had with Jason. That they had a cash cow on their hands. They also knew what people liked from part 3.

Freddy was fun now and still wicked. He’s far removed from the monster who  would cut his fingers off in front of you and make you scared to think what he’d do to you if he’d do that to himself. So the studio wanted more of what people liked. They put out a mandate to the production. Make Robert Funny.

No scares, no horror. Make the man funny. That’s why we got Freddy in Sunglasses, the Greetings from Hell postcard, and Freddy eating soul food among other highlights. So no scares and no horror.

This also worked hand in hand with their second mandate for the film. Making the kills look cartoonish. Stylized music video like sequences that would appeal to younger people. They were ditching the grit and grime and marketing the film for the MTV generation. These changes were also why his makeup changed a third time from looking charred and torn, to part two looking more fresh and pulpy. To what later became known as pepperoni face. Larger pink scars vs raw burnt patches. A marketable Kreuger is a friendlier looking Kreuger.

The funny part of all this, is the  gore.

Because this film needed someone balancing a house of cards on top of an on fire trembling bullet train. They had to factor in the 2nd core of Freddy. The gore in his kills.

Now given what we have in the film. The most stand out scene we really have has to be the bug transformation. It’s pretty up there on the visual gross out scale and you can tell the effects team had a lot of fun with that. That scene passed studio inspection because it was gross, it was cool, but most importantly being in line with the new Freddy, it wasn’t bloody. If you thought there wasn’t that much blood in the movie? You are right, there isn’t. Originally however? They were making offerings to the blood god daily. For instance Kristens exit from the film, was changed from her charbroiled ending. Originally she was going to meet her fate on the sunny beach. And not nicely.

The effects team made a prosthetic chest they were rather proud of for the actress. Freddy would chase her down pin her and begin taring her apart. We’re talking guts flinging, tit flesh flying in chunks and blood everywhere. Blood for the blood god!

Kincaid’s death was also changed. In the film he gets stabbed and embraced by Freddy, which is still pretty great. But originally Freddy grabs him from behind and rams his gloved hand through his chest. Another fountain of blood and gore.

Even the cockroach transformation for Debbie was changed. That actually did include a good deal of blood as well. They drew it out and wanted something more on par with the painful, agonizing transformation from An American Werewolf in London.

Freddy also tormented Alice a lot more. There was a dream sequence filmed where Alice sees her father being kind hearted and happy for a change. No longer the drunk argumentative parent from earlier. She feels happy with his, only for Freddy to burst through the wall like the Kool-aid creature(That is NOT a man) and slams her dads head through a wall. You’d think that would make the cut but apparently Robert did so with a ‘lot’ of anger and it came off way too intense.

They even filmed a huge, and expensive set where Kristen was standing outside her home, only to see the entire house split down the middle, crumble and reveal Freddy’s home. The effects crew spent three weeks and a lot of pennies making this.

All of these were cut and changed. Dramatically. Both by the studio and their demand for a funnier Freddy, and, or old familiar friend the MPAA

Oh yes. This was during their prime 1988 was not safe for any horror film. Pop icon or not. All these original deaths were cut

This is why Kincaid got a polite stiletto stab in the belly and woke with tiny pools of red on his chest. Why Kristen got a nice bath in the flames instead of her tits cut off, and why bug lady got smothered in slime vs blood.

First the studio and their mandates made cuts. The house splitting apart? The dads head through the wall? That was the studio. They wanted to move on past Kristen and get into Alice who was the new heroine. So they fucked over Kristen to move on. Same with the kitchen sequence. That was cut as well for pacing. They wanted things to move along, and again. Funny Freddy, not menacing Freddy.

The rest fell solely at the feet of the MPAA. Which resulted in further script changes and into reshoots. On top of further chopping up scenes and appearing more like sequences.

Again that Simpsons line pops back up. “Stop it, he’s already dead!”

But they would never stop. Not for several more years.

Just when you thought the movie would be released? The studio had to let test audiences take a look. Which lead to a new ending as well. On top of everything else.

Remember, the studio who demanded. Not asked for or suggested.  But actually flat out demanded a release date set in stone. Causing the chaos that was this films production. Still felt they had the time to meddle in it, right down to the wire.

Also imagine not being happy with the product you forced through and make everyone lose their minds trying to piece together literally every fucking day. Go figure.

The original ending had a bit more of a happier, cheesier tone. It featured a special rig built by the effects crew where once Freddy was gone. We’d see the heavenly spirit orbs of the Elm Street kids and Alice’s friends floating off to the great beyond, everyone thanking her as they did and Freddy would lay on the ground twitching, shriveling into a husk as more and more of his life energy souls fled his body. Freddy was tormented, in pain and souls were clawing free. Eventually the husk of Freddy turned to dust. Leaving his glove and hat behind.

Audiences laughed apparently at this and, this was fun to find out. They didn’t find it scary. Well the studio didn’t give a shit about the last part. But they did care about the spirit orbs looking comical so. The ending was changed out and what we got was the vastly edited down and reshot ending. This is why Freddy’s ending moments look so disjointed. Because they were! It’s almost a travesty but a great wonder at the same time. In concept and from how the cast and crew described it. This sounds horrific and cool. So just how bad were the spirit orbs that this had to be cut out? Honestly it very nearly mirrors what later happens to Freddy in the follow up to this. So there was obviously an idea there. But it apparently either was ahead of its time, or really did look that bad. Given the ending we got? It really is close to this and even that is still..I mean it’s awesome seeing Freddy struggling as the souls fight back. They tare the mans body apart. We also had some sweet rockin soul tits in there. The body rig they built was massive and also had its own set of issues. But the ending does convey near the same. They worked in bits of what they had while shooting more and. I mean again. I’d love seeing what that looked like, but alas.

But after all this. The apocalyptic filming camps. Cast changes, constant writing and changes to the film. It was given its final rating and blessed by both the studio and the MPAA, released onto the world making its targeted release date.

All of this on TOP of a little lawsuit against Will Smith for releasing a song they intended to have used in the movie he wrote for, only to have the deal fall through and him releasing it anyway.

Somehow, despite everything. The film was a massive success.

Mirroring Jason and Michael, this films budget was in the single digits at around $6 nearly $7 million. It ended up making a killing in the box office taking in very nearly $50 million. It was just a few shy of that settling in at $49.3 million.

Just for context? That was the highest gross of all the Nightmare films and stayed that way until Freddy Vs Jason, 15 years later.

Audiences and critics mirrored each other. You had critics who loved it and the new turn for Freddy, you had new and young fans who absolutely loved it for the same reason. Funny pop Freddy, kick ass music and a soundtrack you could pick up at Tower Records. Then you had the critics who found is cheesy and over the top, and the fans who missed scary Freddy. They didn’t like dream comedian Freddy or his antics. They didn’t like the terror free nightmares and wanted scary.

It’s hard writing Scary without wanting to immediately type of Scary Terry. If you know, you know.

This film was the height of Freddy popularity. Of course it was going to get a sequel for sure now, and Robert would continue making the circle of appearances and being the awesome man he still is. The film signaled the changing of the guard and would serve as the beginning of the divide for fans. Something we’re all a lot more used to now, but back then was still something new. Honestly at the time you could compare it to Star Wars fans who declared Empire Strikes back as the best Star Wars films and hated Return of the Jedi  for the Ewoks and humor, where other fans felt Return of the Jedi was the best in the saga and offered a great closure to the trilogy.

Simpler times man. Simpler times.

Today this sequel still stands much as it did when it came out. Most love it, Others hate it. But both camps agree the effects work that came out of this was amazing for the time and something some effects classes still study, rightfully so.

The movie and how you perceived it at the time also in large part depended on the Freddy factor. When you came into the franchise and when Freddy solidified for you as a figure. For me it was Dream Warriors as I remember it having the biggest impact on me growing up. I’ve had friends who had the same effect but with part 4 and they defend The Dream Master as being the pinnacle of the series. The high water mark. While the rest of us believe that falls on everything they got right with Dream Warriors.

The fact we can still debate where it stands overall in the franchise and people still love it despite or because of the drastic shifts in tone and Freddy overall is itself a conversation. But the fact this film even finished, let alone came out as good as it did given everything it suffered through. That’s really something. And again both Freddy and Jason went through the same baptism of fire. But they also had their high point of resurrection when given time and care. The fact Freddy managed that with Dream Warriors, and reinvented himself to start status in the follow up instead of moderate success and is also something. Everyone fumbles the ball after their high point. But Freddy managed to break the box office. Holding off the downfall for at least a little longer.

In the end this film, while divisive and definitive. What nearly derailed it and cost us Freddy. Was the same thing that gave us the Freddy we all know now. The studio.

Without their insane rush, staff working without a writer let alone a clue what was going on, The heavy edits and demands by the studio. We would have a very different film. But would it had been better? No idea. You could say it likely would have been. But as it is, What the hell happened to Freddy was the direct result of what does, has, and still can happen in Hollywood where from the panicked fired of chaos and uncontrolled anarchy, can come gold. Despite their near killing of the film. They managed to make bank and lead the series into its new heroine, and new Freddy. But would the same success follow in the next film? I mean…if your drunk enough, anything can look good to someone.

That being said, we have more Freddy to look forward too. We also have more ADR’d Alice to look forward too. Seriously why was she dubbed? If we had a literal siren screeching at us, she couldn’t have been that bad. Right?

Part 5 The Dream Child

From Dream Warriors

To The Dream Master

And ending with The Dream Child.

Our Dream trilogy comes to an end. It’s funny too considering because Dream Warriors, while some laugh at the title now, It was loved by everyone. It sounded bad ass and again that poster. It promised exactly what the title suggested. Then we get Dream Master, which the studio decided on because Dream Warriors rocked so hard, so why not double down. But by the time we got to part 5 well. People were getting tired of the gimmick. Sort of like how as a kid you do something kinda funny and you make a relative laugh. So you double down and do it again, getting ANOTHER laugh, but by the time you have no idea what else to do so you try doing it again. That’s when your mom steps in and says “Okay settle down lets give them a break” and your time to shine has ended.

That’s about how it got when the series reached this point.

So as we said, when the last film was a box office smash and people embraced Freddy and his antics. It only meant another had to follow. I mean Freddy was at his highest peak now, Robert Englund was a household name on par with Stallone and Arnold, and he dug it. The man loved being Freddy and he was doing other projects too. Things were turning up Milhouse and it was a good time for the Franchise.

So no teasing this time. I won’t bait you on what happened here. Because New Line had a unique experience that Halloween and Friday the 13th didn’t really get, but would have loved.They gambled and pushed out as hard and fast as they could a sequel that nearly broke the director, crew and cast. It paid off big time, where as for Michael and Jason they had a big success, they pushed out another sequel and managed to fuck the chicken while it crossed the road.

Those franchises were gamblers who rolled the dice and took the loss on the chin, while still giving it another go.

New Line was the gambler snorting coke from a salt shaker letting it ride. Every. Fucking. Sequel.

Because they rushed out a sequel hitting while the anvil was hot, and it paid off. They did the exact same thing again. But upped the stakes when they didn’t need too.

Just as before, they set in stone a non negotiable release date. 8 months from part 4s release. They had no story, no script. No secured cast. So naturally they hired a director, because LET IT FUCKIN’ RIDE BABY!

And of course this meant, every problem the last production had? Was amplified to 11. Every. Fucking. Issue.

There is no way shape or form to not assume huge duffle bags of pure Columbian bam bam were being tossed into ceiling fans making it rain in executive offices.

So for the sake of giving the only bit of sanity we will get in this one. Let’s cover the story we ended up with. Because surely that will make this a bit less painful.

The Story

Alice has graduated and having landed herself one major league hunk in High School, she’s opened up the gates to her temple and Dan is taking her to pound town nightly while the two embrace the road to college. The two have managed to raw dog their way through a loving relationship and life is going preciously well. Until Freddy comes back. Thanks to Alice having the oddest dream, seeing herself as Amanda Krueger, playing out the established Freddy lore from Part three of Amanda being raped repeatedly by 100 maniacs over the weekend. She gives birth to the still funniest looking Freddy baby, and it goes flying out the delivery room, skittering to the site of Freddy and Alice’s last stand, the church of Freddy. Naturally baby Freddy wants to find his dusty rags to cover his unnatural nudity. As he does so he begins to take his final form and Freddy is reborn proclaiming to one and all. “It’s a boooooyy”

From there the fun begins as Freddy once more begins terrorizing poor Alice and those closest to her. Killing off her bed warmer Dan, Going after her new friends since the last group all died and no one thought maybe to avoid the girl who’s friends all died. As people die, Alice has to deal with the newest mind puzzle of how Freddy is coming through without her being in dreams. She’s also told her eggo is prego and she still seems more focused on Freddy and his new fangled dream powers. Until we learn its not a new power so much as it’s Freddy ghost riding the dream whip of her baby.

So Alice as before, and Nancy did for the crazies, has to explain to her friends who Freddy is, what Freddy is and what Freddy does. No one believes her, until they start dying. Then everyone is ready to help her stop Freddy. Because Freddy plans, as far as we know. To take over her baby when he’s born, and thus be brought into our world ready to resume his child murdering spree. Which would honestly had been funny if Freddy was born with his scarred up face and went to school like that.

So Alice and friends begin trying to find Amanda Kruegers resting place. Which was already laid out in Part 3, but now is changed to a tower room of shame. Freddy and Alice have themselves another showdown in the dreamworld, where her son, Jacob is running from Freddy and Freddy is running after them. Jacob decides to trick Freddy into letting his mommy go and teaching him to be cool like Freddy. Freddy gives him an unsure look and decides, your pretty cringe kid, but sure I’ll show you how to be cool.” Unfortunately for Freddy this is a trick instigated by his mothers holy ghost. Freddys soul is sucked out of Alice’s womb and back into his mothers arms, back into her ghost womb. While Alice embraces the holy ghost of Christ into her womb and readies to give birth to Jesus, while Amanda fights for eternity keeping Freddy and his gloved hand up her holiest of holes.

Though that is the short bus version. It really is just that simple, and not as fun. Honestly it gets a bit tiring when each of these movies has to go through the same thing every time. Freddy comes back. People tell you your being paranoid, don’t worry. People die. You tell your friends whats causing it. They don’t believe you. Then they start dying and you share the lore. They semi believe you until more people die. Then they are on board and by then Freddy is dead. It worked in part 3. You could make sense of it in part 4. But doing it a third time just became a Tuesday on Elm Street.

So with no script, no cast and no idea what the fuck they were going to do. This could only mean the best for the film as story time began to take shape and the coke filled room introduced writers to give out their ideas.

One such idea was an interesting one given the studio’s rebranding of Freddy. The idea pitched as Freddy Rules, which god that already sounds 90’s as fuck. The idea was bringing Freddy back closer to his roots. Only more in line with Evil Dead meets Exorcist 3. They wanted to go heavy on the dark gritty Freddy, and make things visceral and angry. They wanted to lean hardcore into what Freddy could be. It’d mark a return to gore and straight up murder over fun.

Well that didn’t go so well and he exited the project and concept. Not that the studio was eager exactly to change their pop culture icon a third time.

NEXT!!

Well if making Freddy a visceral murder machine bathing in flesh and the screams of the innocent wasn’t going to work. The next frand idea came from famed Splatterpunk writers John Skipp and Craig Spector who pitched, of all things. A fully written script, and the idea of making a more, surreal horror film. A cerebral Freddy film exploring collective unconsciousness, They turned in a fully realized idea full of unreal dream sequences and characters. The studio, high off their collective asses, nodded. Did another line, and famously said to them, and this really did happen, “You wrote a Nightmare on Elm Street movie like Stanley Kubric would do it, and we don’t want that!”

So out the door that idea went and so did any hope of a conceptual surreal Freddy.

NEXT!!

This time, 3rd lucks a charm applied. A familiar face to the franchise returned to pitch an idea they tried all the way back when Dream Warriors was being considered. Leslie Bohem. She rather notable pitched the idea originally to the studio of doing a Freddy movie where Freddy would come into the world through invading a babies dreams. At the time they felt the idea of a demon baby killing people in their sleep was a bit too out there and not that socially acceptable. It was also just fucking weird. Well this time the studio was a little more open to the concept.

They embraced it actually. Loved it.

They didn’t.

They only greenlit the idea because they set a deadline, hired a director and they needed the wheels on the bus to start burning rubber.

Things were set in motion and now they could begin collecting the old cast and let the director know the good news!

Only they still didn’t have a script.

Which presented one mild problem in a growing list of problems.
One of which, just like before. Was the hired director, Stephen Hopkins. He had ideas of his own on where to take this film, or as the studio saw it, delusions of grandeur.

His vision was more in line with classic horror. Think along the lines of old Hammer horror. The old Christopher Lee Dracula films, Peter Cushing. He wanted to take Freddy into a more traditional gothic horror tone. Build eerie old style sets, manors and castle like settings, This is also where the later still used Escher staircase idea came from as well.

Honestly it would have been a fun turn for Freddy. It would still allow him to be his wacky 90’s self and his was a character, concept and look that would have worked well in a Hammer like setting. But the studio much like Moustafa had become protective of their Michael Jackson of Horror. Freddy was a brand now, and you don’t alter the cash cow brand. So it was not to be. But the man fought for this vision. Constantly. Especially given they still had NO FUCKING SCRIPT.

The man had a vision and was not going to let up on this. Even when the camera’s began to roll. And there was not a single page of script around. He began pushing and edging his story into the script. Slowly but surely he managed some of his demands. But the studio high or otherwise was not going to let him stir shit and ruin Freddy. So they tolerated him, to a point. While still pulling the man away from their writer and demanding Freddy remain Freddy.

These back and fourths were daily. Though they never reached the point of throwing fist or shouting their heads off. They were always after one another. This director was not going to walk away unless they fired him, and knowing the mess they put themselves in with their set in stone release date. They wouldn’t risk it. They knew replacing him would fuck them over royally. So instead they had the worst complicated relationship, which involved constantly pulling aside the already over worked writer. One side screaming to ignore the other and do things their way. While the other pulled her repeating the same thing.

Again a gentle reminder. There was no script. It existed in concept mostly until the moment of filming. It was worse than the last film. Which is saying something. At least they came up with a system albeit it stressed beyond repairs and forcing people into groups. But it worked. This time no such luck. It was wake up, pop some pills, and pray one ear wouldn’t bleed while the other just listened to white noise.

Did the two immoveable objects ever compromise? Eventually they did, and only once. You wouldn’t even have to guess how. It’s rather evident in the movie. But yes. They did settle finally on one sequence where the man could have his hammer horror fun. The Super Freddy comic fight. You don’t have to watch it too closely to visualize where it originally was headed. The setup was right there for a ‘take on me’ referenced fight scene. Which would look amazing. Instead the comic nerd got to fight a black and white uber super freddy. Which was as a kid a scene I loved laughing at. Freddy just looked so ridiculous it was impossible not too. It was a fun but all too quick scene.

The scene stands out to everyone, because well. It’s entirely out of place. The tone, the style. All of it. It was basically a sizzle reel, test footage from the director to show what he wanted and what they could give him if ONLY THEY WOULD SEE REASON!

But the studio wouldn’t have it.

This wasn’t just a simple fight of two heads butting over creative choices and vision. This director genuinely was going head to head against the studio, which under normal circumstances would’ve cost him his job. Even when the script wouldn’t be in his favor the man was caught. Multiple times by the studio, submitting cuts of the film, scenes and dailies where he completely went his own way. It got to a point the studio, every day. Reviewed film he shot. They began demanding storyboards from him. Daily. For everything he planned to shoot. Which he had to draw himself. He had to prove he was going with their vision, that he would stay within budget and wasn’t ballooning the film by working in his deeply desired larger sets like the huge staircase sequence. That was allowed as it would serve for the final fight. But nothing more. He wasn’t just put on a short leash. The man had eyes on him constantly and they had a hand around the scruff of his neck.

Again. Just like before. This was only a small portion of a much larger disaster.

Once again with everyone rushing in a giant clusterfuck of a production and not one soul mirroring the previous productions mad max style groupings. Every department was going to suffer. Next on the chopping block was the one group you don’t want fucking up your horror movie.

The very special, special effects

So with a tight budget, growing increasingly tighter every with a director and his constant demands for rewrites and new sets. The effects and set departments were working overtime with no clear goal in sight. Given the tone of the film whether it was the hammer horror gothic style shoved in by the director and his demands for large set pieces and mechanical puppetry, or the studio and their surreal effects shots including one named in the credits as ‘Womb with a view”, This was a daunting task for anyone. Add in an insanely cocaine fueled rush and you have yet another department of disasters. Now on the last film even with three groups working to offload onto each other. The effects group still suffered and did their best to construct sets, build gags and test mechanics before filming. They had to make sure they could film what was asked for. Otherwise rewrites were inbound.

This time they had no time for testing. No time for failures. It was literally build it, film it, move on.

Yes none of this worked out.

The movie required a mechanical baby freddy puppet. They did their best in the time they had, and the result was a barely functioning puppet. Bruce the shark managed to work better and look somewhat real versus this thing. Instead of crawling or skittering on the floor, the puppet would jerk and twitch. It never worked properly  and  often had to be pulled. When filmed the puppet looked somehow worse. No time for reshoots and further building. The director had to film with what they had, and edit it down to look ‘acceptable’. Which was the word of the production. Acceptable.

Greta. The model wo was force fed her own innards. They built a mechanical prosthetic of Greta. A stomach Freddy could cut open, with intestines that would ungulate and spit blood. This didn’t work at all. The prosthetic would instantly clog up after one or two spurts, and begin leaking out onto the stage the fake blood and ‘food’ she was being spoonfed. Resulting in crew getting sick and the stage smelling of an unholy concoction for hours. Same thing as before. Edit it down and make it look ‘acceptable’.

Dans famous motorcycle death when Dan gets turned into Tetsuo The Iron Man. This was the big film death so it had to look good. It was also the first death to be filmed. That didn’t mean they had time and money. They had to rush through it. Second verse same as the first. The metal and foam plates restricted movement and often broke. Jamming together and preventing the actor from moving. The tubes spitting out oil clogged. The concept was great. The result was mediocre at best. Because this would be the hero shot of all the deaths. Acceptable was not entirely within their vocabulary. So the studio told them fix it. They couldn’t. The suit would break mid take. Extending the setup and shooting schedule. It ended up putting them behind on schedule even more, and each take cost the studio more and more money. What  we end up with. Is a hot glued mess of all cuts to make a scene that was, acceptably okay. Which is better than just acceptable.

Super Freddy was another challenge. They built a suit for Robert to wear, bulked up chest and popeye like arms. The suit was so thick he couldn’t move. He looked like the little brother in A Christmas Story wearing several jackets unable to move his arms. So they rushed and hired a bodybuilder. Which is why Freddys face grew suddenly thicker and a bit deformed.

Meanwhile there were the sets and rigs needed to give the director his stylized shots. The large staircase scene set production back further and the cost kept escalating. All the while the direct was pushing for more sets, bigger sets. Camera rigs were built for these sequences and often failed. Further pushing filming back. Having stuntmen in these rigs for the staircase scene, Dans Bike crash. The comics. All of it. It was exhausting and the crew were dropping like flies. Again setting back the rushed production. This did not end with set construction and stunt work in the effects department. It escalated.

Soon the cast and crew began getting sick. Overworked and often without rest. Crew were constantly facing dehydration. On set accidents from sleep deprivation. Often the sets involved smoke filled sound stages, large lights and a lot of night shoots. Several actors, including Alice Wilcox(Alice) fell from exhaustion and smoke inhalation.

The original makeup artist who worked on Robert Englund did not return and makeup was now taking them longer. Robert Englund had to sit for hours getting into make up. Wait on set for them to use him, and by then with the heat and smoke. He’d sweat badly enough the spirit glue would come loose and he’d have to return to makeup. Setting the shooting schedules back further. Often leading to quick edits.

Because they couldn’t let things be and let the suffering end. The studio, again working without a finished script right up to the ending. Had the bright idea. During filming. Why don’t we bring back Patricia Arquette. The actress who played Kristen, whom we recast in the last film. Lets bring her back and make her part of the story! Brillaint! We can tie her back into the end of this franchise mid trilogy and people will flip their minds for it. Let’s run with it! They began forming. In the middle of fucking filming. A new plotline, new shots. MORE SETS. To bring her in and tie her story in with Alice and the baby.

Again. Mountains. Copious mountains of cocaine.

So the producers ate it up and reached out to the actress. Who came down with a case of Pregnancy and declined the offer. Which even had she not been? Would have still said no.

SO. The producers facing this new failure, and the studio unable to feel their teeth. They had to force immediate rewrites. Again. Change storylines, again. And up until the very last scene of the film? No one. Not the director, not the actors. No one. Had a clue how the film was going to end until the ending was written and handed in.

But end it finally did. Even if suddenly and without a bang. It was over. The real nightmare had ended and the crew was ready for freedom, long forgotten but often dreamed of.

Until the bells began to ring.

The film, now pieced together, was headed for the final boss. Yes. The MPAA had to raise their hands and get their stabs in.

If history is to be believed and Ceaser was stabbed by every member of congress including his dear friend Brutus. You gotta think. Either that guy was so severely hated, and feared. That every last one of them had to get their knife into him. Or after the first 10 stabs you’d figure, Leave him alone, he’s already dead.

But no. Every blade had to be accounted for. I mean as a bearded Scotsman said. They didn’t get dressed up for nothing.

The MPAA was far from kind on this film. They eviscerated this disaster. Cuts were made across the board to every scene. Everything.

To put it in better perspective, because again Every blade counted.

This film was literal weeks away from release in cinemas. The studio promised theaters a release date and film. They had no choice but to deliver. Even if less than a month out from release.

And again, no reshoots, no nothing. The film editors locked themselves into a room and began cutting every corner of the film they could. Entire sets that took weeks to build were gone. Death scenes trimmed to a few frames. Quick cuts all around and gore cut down to a few quick glimpses. This is why both Dans and Greta’s deaths were so sudden and quickly ended. They couldn’t play cut a little of this and a little of that. This had to be a one time pass and release. So entire scenes as I said were cut out. It was brutal even by their standards.

But the studio did this to themselves.

So the film was released onto the public. Expectations from the public were high. I still remember the teasers and posters for this film. You had a freddy looking evil baby carriage with black spikes jutting out and a proud father Freddy smiling. It looked dark and cool.

It was not a dark and cool movie. It was silly. The rushed ending felt bland and empty. Which a lot of the movie was. Dans bike death was cool. It still looks comical but gnarly in a good way. It just. Well. It all fit the tone the studio wanted.

The movie was both studio themed and director themed. You had his visual style, and gothic foot print, while the studio had their pop culture quipping Freddy. The problem was the film just wasn’t that good. Audiences had begun to grow tired of the schtick reused from the previous film. Freddy was Freddy and fun. But he just couldn’t save a disjointed mess of a film. The cuts to the film made it hard to follow and things felt rushed. It was disjointed and compared to the previous film, a major let down.

Did it perform well? Well The Dream Master raked in $49 million, nearly $50 million on a hyper low budget. This film was made for $8 million and brought in…$22 million.

Welcome to the club Freddy.

Not enough to be a success, but enough to say you made enough to warrant pushing down the road for another film. Just…not as fast as they had.

Critics and fans were let down. No one was clamoring for more. You know you fucked up when both critics and fans accuse you(the studio) of making a quick cash grab. And that’s what they did, and called out.

The studio gambled and let it ride. Just like the last time. Bet it all every spin of the wheel and roll of the dice. They pushed everyone under them to literal exhaustion and once the wheels were spinning they never backed down. This film is still today an example in studio interference, directors unleashed and critical failure productions. Everything failed across the board. Because of the studio. Today studios are a bit more forgiving and pushing back a film release isn’t unheard of. Marvel still famously as with Disney films with incomplete scripts. Resulting in mirrored results. Not resounding box office successes, but moderately okay cash grabs. Resulting in hurt relations with actors and the studios. Upset fans, and people tired of spending their money on sub par products, wishing for the days of taking their time and building up to something resembling quality and care.

To fail that badly as to be remembered to this day throughout Hollywood as how not to make a movie? That says something.

Thankfully for many, this was the end of the dream trilogy and for at least a while, Freddy would slumber once more and no one was going to hit the whopper button after this hit theaters. Anyone even near it would be sacked and fed to llamas.

I’m joking but I’m also serious. Not about the llamas though they bite. Just not as badly as a mouse.

The next Freddy film wouldn’t come out for another two years. Given the mad dash new Line was implementing throughout? This signaled a major shift in direction. They were going to course correct and needed too. Otherwise they’d go down as the studio that killed their cash cow and brought Freddy and his empire crumbling down.

They would slumber, and wait. Biding their time until a new way to sell their franchise would arise. That chance came around with the idea of following Jasons footsteps and giving the world what was build as, and technically was. The final Nightmare.

Part 6 Freddy’s Dead

New Line learned a harsh lesson about doing copious amounts of booger sugar and coordinating film production with their near destruction of Freddy in The Dream Master. So naturally while licking their wounds they took the time to rethink their life decisions. They weren’t going to rush this and they wanted to really make a solid move with this next sequel. Looming in the background of course was still the want for doing their dream cross over of Freddy vs Jason. But we weren’t there just yet. They had some harsh realizations. With both the success and chaotic productions and subsequent near destruction of the brand. They needed to put Freddy to sleep and come back to the drawing board. Granted they could have easily done so and waited, but there was money yet to be squeezed out, and the idea which has repeated in other franchises. Was the hard reset. You put an end to the era you birthed and let it lay untouched. Revisit the property later and enter a hard reboot. The same would happen with Both Jason and Michael respectfully and it was needed for both them and Freddy. A reset allows you to restructure and reintroduce the character and throw out some new ideas. But before they could do that. They had to finish Pop Freddy. So this would be their main event. The FINAL Nightmare. Freddy would be dead for good. Much like Jason and his big city adventure. This was being marketed everywhere as the last we would see of the dream killer. They even held a fake funeral for Freddy. New Line was going all out  on this one and it was fun to see happening live. Given the running gag of other horror franchises and the fact no one ever stayed dead, well of course no one really bought it. But it was still fun to think of. And ultimately this proved the best decision New Line could make given where the road eventually would take them.

Had they actually ended Freddy with this one.

So welcome one and all to 90’s Freddy, and I do mean, the 90’s.

You can romanticize as people often do the 80’s I get that. But when people began doing that with the 90’s? You could all just fuck the hell right off. There was nothing fun and awesome about the 90’s. Slap bracelets? Yeah sure, have fun with that We had…the 90’s was a time those of us who lived it don’t like talking about. Because it was a body horror generation. I won’t get into it because Freddy is the center star here. But we can just say clothing choices back in the 90’s were the specialist kind of special to exist and no one was happy with it. Then or now.

Fuck it lets get into the story of the movie yeah? Yeah.

Story

So Freddy is back and doing what he loves. No explanations given or asked. He’s just happy to be doing his schtick and chasing down a boy we’ll call Sir John of Doe. The film opens up in a very Escape from New York way giving us a map of the US. Informing us all all the mass child deaths in Springwood and how the town is essentially now a ghost town of aging boomers. Leaving poor John Doe as the last of his kind.

After surviving an initial tickle pickle with Freddy, He finds himself with memory loss and in a new town, wondering aimlessly while trying to escape the terrors in his dreams. He finds himself in shelter for troubled youths. Convincing a very bored child psychologiest, Maggie that they need to do a road trip back to Springwood to uncover his identity. Maggie having just met this kid decides he’s worth the extra attention and she could use a break from her mundane life dealing with shitty kids attitudes. So she checks out the company van and heads off on a road trip. As you do. Unbeknownst too Maggie, she has children escaping with them in the van. Mildly put off by this but with limited choices. Maggi accepts the castaways and they begin exploring the town. Where we uncover Freddy’s turbulent past growing up from an orphanage, That this town is where Tom and Roseanne Arnold settled down and divorced, and that a town void of children is the most peace you’ll ever know and kill for once you past 38.

So As John the Donut explored the important questions with Maggie. Our group of escaped teens begin their time with Fredrick Von Krueger.

As before the kids begin vanishing as Freddy dispatches them. Literally vanishing. That was a new thing from this movie that both mad sense and at the same time, didn’t. It also gives a weird revisit to an inconsistency with Freddy where. Sometimes his attacks in the dream world end up playing out in the real world. Or like in this case. The kids just vanish entirely never to be seen again.

It’s genuinely a weird thing I wish they addressed but anywho. One by one our troubled 90’s youths are being dispatched and we learn a terrible truth about John Doe. He isn’t as special as he thought he was! He’s just a normal ass dumb kid blaming his dreams for all of lifes many, many failures. He also gets turned into a human pin cushion which was worth seeing. See John Doe believed he was the main protagonist in the film, and the son of Fredrick Kroger, heir to the Kroger grocery chains. But alas he was not. He was simply a pawn to help Tom and Roseanne escape the town. Or at least would have been had this been a much more daring film.

So having seen all the town of Springwood had to offer, and losing most of their original group. Maggie and her friend Tracy come up with good excuses for losing three teens to a dream demon and head back to big city town. Unaware Freddy is following them now, ready to open another Kroger in the city.

Once back at the shelter Maggie finds her coverup of the dead teens incredibly easy as no one had any memory of them what so ever! Way to go Maggie! However it troubles her so she seeks insight from Yaphet Kotto.

Long story short, Maggie uncovers multiple things through research and dream leaping. She learns that Alice Cooper was the father of Freddy, which explains a lot. She also learned her father was Freddy and murdered her mother. Which explains a lot. Now thankfully the film isn’t doing what Jason Goes to hell would later do, we don’t get Yaphet Kotto breaking her fingers and explaining Through a Krueger can he be reborn and by the hands of a Krueger can he be killed. Instead we learn that Freddy was given his amazing dream powers by making a deal with dream demon sperm, while Springwood parents burned him alive. Yes Freddy was resurrected to kill kids in their dreams thanks to a deal with sperm demons. These things look like sperm and you can’t convince me otherwise. We of course learn all this through dream flashbacks in the land of 3D which was a main selling point of the film. 90’s 3D was a nightmare no one needs to pay extra for and watch again for fun today.

So our group of troubled youth and bored doctors decide to drag the dream demon into our world and fight him one on one.

Maggie settles her daddy issues with her father, denies her right to the Kroger family fortune and shoves every sharp instrument in the building into him. Before pegging Freddy with a pipebomb, blowing the man up, releasing his demon jizz monsters and ending his legacy once and for all as Maggie announces to us in the cinema, “Freddy’s Dead”

I will grant this movie one thing. The song and montage playing through the end credits was a nice touch.

So for better or worse. This was The last outing we had of Freddy. For now. It was him at his most Freddy. For now. The film had the right idea though. It kept to the roots of the new pop Freddy New Line built and he was frolicking through each kill as happy a man as Freddy could be. Honestly I still laugh today at his taunting of the deaf teen Carlo. Him turning to the audience shushing us while he stalked behind him. Shouting and hollering jumping around. It’s great shit man. And when Freddy is seen pushing out a large bed of nails waiting for John Doe to land on them. How He pushes with effort this huge bed and has to stop. Panting and turning to the camera to sigh. It’s great.

It also was one of the problems some fans had.

Which we will get into.

Now, as we mentioned this film did not follow the previous two films footsteps which avoided their failures. There was no rush to meet an unreal deadline, there was no mad dash to have script pages delivered minutes before shooting. Honestly this was a fairly clean by the numbers production. That isn’t to say it didn’t have its problems. It did. Just thankfully nowhere near the levels of apocalyptic despair they previously put people through. And one of the people working on this film survived that dystopian war camp known as The Dream Master, Rachel Talalay.

So what the hell happened with Freddy’s Dead? A lot actually, and it’s one of the more interesting films I enjoyed researching through the years. Mostly because of what we nearly got, and possibly still should have got versus the movie they released.

Which brings us to the always fun to learn about, early drafts of the film.

Now New Line was never going to admit fault with their Dream trilogy, or that they milked that for all it was worth. In fact they were ready to revisit it again with this movie.

One of the original scripts circling around and considered, would have focused on Jacob-Alices son from the Dream Child. In this story, Alice is killed in her sleep by Freddy, and Jacob becomes a John Connor of sorts. Spending his trouble youth learning to defend himself in his dreams and trying to hunt down and fill Freddy for good in an attempt to avenge his mother and save others from the fate her friends, his mother and his own friends suffer. However our director and promoted Studio Executive Rachal, said fuck that noise. The idea was interesting but, she hated(understandable) the whole convoluted lore part 5 cooked up and most everything to do with those films, and no one was in a rush to revisit Alices dream powers now passed on to another person. So it was not to be.

But they did like the idea of someone hunting Freddy. So that idea stuck around. Resulting in what would have been the possibly funniest and even weirdest Freddy film. The script was coined as The Dream Police, It would feature a task force, developed to deal with, Dream level threats. Like Freddy. So we’d get a dream version of The Fugitive, where Freddy is being chased down by federal dream agents across dreamland in an attempt to evade capture and trial. I mean I get it the man was put on trial in the real world and got burned alive last time. Going through it again in a dream world, well that’d be a whole other level of hell.

Thankfully the idea was canned as, believe it or not. That whole idea would be a hard sell to the audience and even more comical than they would care to go. Which is still funny considering what we’ll eventually get into

Out of every little factoid and interesting behind the scenes treasure from this film, this one. This script remains a grail like nugget amongst fans in the know.

And that is the fabled PeterJackson script for what he called Dream Lover.

Out there on the web, at one time at least. You could hunt down pages of this thing and to my knowledge someone did purchase the script in auction and has since then not been seen or heard of. Much like Spielbergs early draft he did of a very VERY dark E.T. sequel.

Peter Jackson pitched a great idea for a Freddy film and it hurts me we never got this. In his film, Freddy was well known throughout the world. In a very meta tone actually. Freddy was known to everyone and people learned how to defeat him given the many different encounters he’s had in the past. In the film Freddy is presented as ‘Old man Freddy’, an aged senior who no longer is leaping around terrorizing teens in their sleep, but instead is being bullied! Yes, Freddy is the one being tormented in his own world. People went from taking Hypnocil to now taking sleeping pills so they can fuck with Freddy and beat him, torment him and bully the man.

During one such romp through Freddy’s decrepit home, a teenage bully ends up slipping and trapped, actually feeling afraid for once. That fear is what’s always given Freddy his power going back to the very first film. This begins energizing the old man Freddy and be kills the kid. Gaining a soul and power. Freddy is back and ready for payback. Going after the top bullies who tormented him, He ends up kidnapping one of his tormenters and taunting the others to come get him. Trapping them in his dreamworld where once again he is in control.

The studio and director loved the idea, and loved what he wrote. They all agreed this would be a HELL of a Nightmare film for Freddy. But that also is why they turned it down.

It would make a great Nightmare film. But not a finale film.

They committed to the bit of ending Freddy and they just felt Jackson’s script wouldn’t capture that tone but instead act as more of a jumping off point for a new series of films. Which I call bullshit on but I’m no executive. I mean really that would have worked! The idea of a defeated beaten Freddy finding himself again, becoming a menace one last time. You could work it into a finale. But again. It wasn’t in the cards. But its incredibly interesting to know how things would have gone from there. Would this have been the start of Jackson making more high budget horror films? Hell making more horror? As discussed with the host of Reels of Justice when I made a guest appearance, would New Line picking up this film, and him possibly taking over as director had stopped him from making the Lord of the Rings later with New Line? Or would that possibly had given more good faith to his name with the studio to have the films made.

There’s a lot of what if to play with around that and people generally still feel  though this movie did not happen, it still should. I mean Robert is within the age to pull it off but. That still remains a pipe dream.

In the end, they decided to run with the idea of Freddy having a child that was kept hidden through adoption, much like Laurie Strodes children, and would serve as the weapon to bring him to his end.

With a story agreed upon, and a script written and shockingly finished. They were ready to begin.

But that’s when the challenged started.

Firstly there was John Doe. Or rather Carlos. Ricky Dean was cast as John Doe and was meant to be the main figure of the film. However once the guy read the script, he felt in his actors mind that he identified more with the character of Carlos, and decided to step down as the titular character and take a much smaller role. Bold move but the man stuck to his guns and told the studio he was rerolling his character. Forcing the studio to scramble and recast the part as quick as could be.

There was also another recasting unfortunately. See Talalay the director had worked on indie films previously. In fact she worked with a lot of the John Waters crew and films. Given her shot at directing the final Freddy film. She wanted to bring in for their big studio cameo and show the world the true face of beauty one more time, Divine. Yes the lovely Divine was set to be in this film. No she would not replace Tom and Roseanne. She was intended to play the lady on the plane in John Does opening dream sequence. Unfortunately Divine would pass away before filming and had to be recast. Another one of those would have been great moments.

Speaking of our intrepid director. This would mark the first time a female director would step into the franchise. It was a high watermark in her career and a great push for her. However this was not a move met with high praise.

Partly, unfortunately. Her receiving the directors chair was viewed two fold. Some believed a woman was not the proper fit for horror. This thankfully was a minority. But believe in it they did, though they didn’t apparently know about the beautiful horror vampire film Near Dark, or Slumber Party massacre to name a few. They also felt because Rachel worked for the studio, even receiving the promotion to executive. The crew felt she wasn’t trustworthy. If having  womanly parts wasn’t bad enough, the idea of working for a studio plant that would turn anyone over to gulag they deemed not following company protocol. Well that was a bridge too far.

She was a survivor of the Dream Master and the hellscape that brought. She worked on indie films and with John Waters. She was going to deal with this shit. This type of descent could and likely would halt production and filming. She did not forget what she went through on part 4. She decided to circumcise the crew herself and bring in her marry band of misfits she was used to working with.

A victory for Rachel, a new challenge for the studio whom she served.

She began hiring key crew members from the film she worked on with John, a favorite of mine and my sisters, Cry Baby. This was unsettling some on set because these people were more comfortable leaning into campy, bizarre, surreal comedy. Which was a far cry from the dark horror and humor that Freddy was established for by now.

It also directly influenced the film which they had feared. The film under her control was going to lean more heavily into not just corny humor and weirdness. It was going to go full on loony toons. Which also was not well received. Sure Freddy could be and was funny. But going all in on the camp and turning the violence into a joke with no actual terror, removing the horror. Well that was. A choice.

Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an Which would ultimately divide fans in an already tired and divided franchise.

But this was just a little speed bump. The studio gave their trust over to Talalay and they let things cautiously ride. It’s hard to imagine but a film directed by one of their own had very little studio interference where as the last two films were riddled daily with it. Amazing that…

Though the studio did not interfere. Robert Englund did. He decided to do an early pilot for Mythbusters and test out of Freddy’s glove actually could kill or severely harm someone. Actually no he didn’t intentionally do it. He just over stepped his mark accidentally and ended up slashing into the face of the young actress playing Tracy during their dream fight. Lezlie Deane did not die, thankfully. But she had severe cuts on her face which needed immediate medical assistance, a tetanus shot, and resulted in permanent scars across her face. Marking her as the only real life survivor of a Freddy Krueger attack.

Unfortunately for Lezlie. That was only part of her trauma on this film. Her character Tracy is shown to be a boxing, karate gym nut. It’s part of how she deals with her traumatic childhood. As we learn from the film she was abused physically and sexually by her father. During the movie it comes up several times as she is constantly moving to defend herself, quick to anger and the moment anyone touches her, she’s going to respond swiftly. They used it effectively in her dream sequences and at certain parts of the film but it still feels they didn’t go much further with the character which is unfortunate. However. The character was a bit too close to home for Lezlie, as she had suffered similar abuse in reality as her character had. Making matters worse, she had repressed those memories and through filming these scenes, ended up unlocking her own trauma.

She had to deal with these crushing realities on set and during filming which, for anyone is a hell of a thing. It affected her performance during the film and drained her psychologically. After the filming it only grew more present for her sadly. I mean that’s a hell of a thing to discover, or rather recover from yourself, and to then have to play a character who had a similar history while trying to process all of this. And THEN to get cut across your face by a knife glove. She was having a time of it. To say the least.

She was the more severe of the victims during this movies production but by no means its last. The next big fall would come from our new director.

As with past Nightmare films, they shot mostly during the night, while the studio was not bullet training this production. It was still a big studio release and one being handled by a first time director long time producer and now executive. She was working 16 hour days learning the responsibilities that fall on the chair of director while navigating the landscape that felt against her as both a first time director and woman in the franchise that the original crew didn’t trust. When you first direct, regardless what you know or don’t. The studio and others are watching you through a microscope. It’s taxing on anyone. George Lucas during the making of A New hope was hospitalized for hypertension brought on from extreme stress and severe exhaustion.

It wasn’t just the duties of a director being too much for a first outing. It was a lot more. A lot.

The studio still carried its no delays allowed policy. If it wasn’t going to work the first time? Find a work around and move on. The director ended up getting sick during production. She had a violent flu and upper respiratory infection. If she took time off? That would delay the production and every day a studio has to shut down production cost thousands of dollars. She chose to soldier on. Filming and working 16 hours a day filming, managing crew and sets. Wrangling actors and planning out daily shots while being sick as hell and having breathing issues was a recipe for disaster.

On top of normal filming expectations, she also had to deal with the worst part of this film, but a gimmick they demanded for the final Freddy to draw people in.

This film would have its near entire 3rd act finale filmed in 3D.

This meant specialized equipment, new cameras and special setups on set to rig up these effects and shots. A fun thing to do, and I encourage you just for the visual. Google 3D Camera from the 90’s. The things are massive. Shooting one scene required multiple cameras and any time you switched angles meant spending a long time resetting and recalibrating the cameras. This meant scenes took twice as long to film, set up, light and finish. Given the tight schedule? This meant they had to push through even harder, and faster to get these scenes done. Which meant rushing the setup and recalibration of huge expensive equipment. There are two things in filmmaking that cost a fortune and will get you on a special list with studios if you touch or destroy. Cameras and muppets. Genuinely if you touched a muppet on set the puppeteers and crew of Henson studios would flip their shit and tell you just how much those cost and if you fuck them up, it’s going to cost the studio, and take time to fix. Same with cameras. So being told as a first time director, while sick as shit, working 16 hours, “hey we want to film the last 30 or so minutes in 3D. Heres one of a kind heavy as fuck expensive as all sin equipment have fun and if you scratch a lens it’ll cost you your career and life. Have fun!”

All of this eventually got to her and she collapsed from exhaustion. She was taken to the hospital she should have gone to initially, and a line producer was brought in to finish the last hours of filming. She genuinely deserves a lot of credit, studio plant or not. She stuck it out damn near to the end and the act alone should have earned her the respect of earlier detractors.

Honestly because we could use a bit of a laugh, there is one challenge the film had that just. It’s worth mentioning because it’s just too silly not to, and it could have ended up costing them a lot in the end.

The Nintendo controversy.

For some reason. Bob Shaye, the Nightmare equivalent of Moustafa Akkad. Felt it was his duty to work in product placement with Freddy films. He thought it’d be a great tie in with the youth given the popularity of console gaming, to work in a dream sequence where Freddy kills one character in a video game and uses a Nintendo Power Glove to do so.

He respectfully wrote Nintendo asking for their permission to do so and use their glove in the film.

Nintendo said hell to the fucking no!

They weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of having their family friendly console gaming controller used in a horror film where the main villain is a child murderer. So yeah, Bob was told not so politely to never contact them again and keep Nintendo out of his film, and mouth.

Bob Shaye, rather famously told Talalay. Actually ordered her “Fuck’em I don’t care what they want. I’m going to use it anyway. Shoot the scene” And so they did.

With a few caveats. Mostly the very entirely for legal purposes redesign of the glove to resemble something far removed from the Nintendo Power Glove. Bypassing a potential lawsuit with actually using the thing.

How ever. Bob was not done, you don’t tell Moustafa how to use Michael in Halloween, and you don’t tell Bob what he can and can’t do in his franchise. While the Nintendo Power Glove would not make an actual appearance. He made a point to still throw in the lines by Freddy “You forgot the Power Glove!” and the Nintendo tag line “NOW your playing with power!”

It’s a purely little shit move and moment. And he expected a swift kick in the balls from Nintendo. Which given their history of lawsuits. Well the man knew what he was doing and what was coming.

Only no lawsuit came. Once the film was released, people laughed and loved the dumb glove and lines. They loved it enough they went out and bought the damn thing. So his product placement worked, Nintendo made money and they decided no lawsuit for you.

With Talalay recovering, and filming wrapped. The movie was edited with Talalay and presented to the last former Hurdle that tore the last film several new assholes.

This was the beginning of a new era and power move by New Line and Talalay. Knowing the film would likely be scrutinized. They pre-emptively edited some scenes. Knowing they would hold onto these scenes for home video release and later in what would be dubbed Directors Cuts of the film. Other studios began tricking the MPAA with this move as well. Discovering they could, though it was heavily frowned upon and was fought at times later on, edit back in scenes removed on VHS releases. This itself caused issues but only when it really stuck out, and in some cases like with Basic Instinct where you had full coochie being displayed under an R rated opposed to a proper rating.

However some scenes did face a light trimming from the MPAA. Mostly the exploding head of Carlos. Otherwise the film was given a pass, which was a blessing. But not really a surprise.

If you recall from what we discussed in the Friday the 13th films and their unholy slaughtering with the MPAA, the organization specifically stated violence was okay as long as it was fantastical and more so if it was cartoon or satirical.

Given this film was completely shot as a live action Loony Toons cartoon during dream sequences. They got a pass on a lot of the kills. Which even then weren’t dark or disturbing, let alone Bloody. The most blood in fact you see in the film comes from the television flooding with blood during Spencers dream sequence. And the MPAA had a long standing battle with exploding heads. Even when this one barely had any gore to it. So the film walked by with just a tiny stumble and got cleared with its R rating.

The final Freddy film was released in theaters, people flocked to be a part of the spectacle. Both in saying farewell to Freddy and the idea of having some 3D freddy fun.

As before and repeated with these films. The budget was close to the previous film, coming in at around $10 million, and overall the film made $35 million. It financially was a success, not nearly part 4 levels but still far better than the last instalment.

The film survived with little interference and no large fights for a change. A pressing schedule for a first time director, and an actor being attacked by Freddy. But it would not survive the audience and critics.

This film though serving as Freddy’s finale, meant to unite the fans in one last adventure in dreamland. Ended up dividing them further. Freddy already had his detractors in those that yearned for scary Freddy and hated comical Freddy. While they also had fans loving funny Freddy and thinking scary Freddy was boring. This movie kept those two camps firmly carrying their flags. However it also caused a huge rift within those groups and new fans. The turn from dark humor into full on cartoon violence was not well received by everyone. Even supports of fun Freddy found the movie way too campy and more than they cared to handle. Today the film still sets firmly in that you either love it, hate it, or tolerate it. The film also suffered a trend reserved for a few select films, in that it severely aged itself. Even if it was doing so in good humor. Like the cameo with Johnny Depp doing his famous at the time anti-drug PSA. It was funny seeing because growing up we had to go through not only all of those dumb ass commercials. We had D.A.R.E. coming to our schools talking to us about drugs. We also had the obligatory television show episodes that dealt with drugs and told us how bad they were. I still remember DINOSAURS and wondering why Robbie had to talk to us about ‘While what we did was funny, drugs are no laughing matter’ speech, and later addressed the war in Iraq. No one thankfully after the 90’s had to put up with this shit, and it stands now as a reference no one really gets. Same with Roseanne and now famously ex husband Tom Arnold. At the time Roseanne was a huge sitcom everyone loved and watched. Seeing her pop up in a horror film was funny for a chuckle. Now its just an awkward weird moment that sticks out and went nowhere. Add to this the famous Power Glove scene. I mean. Shit you can enjoy Princess Bride and chuckle at the thing opening with a boy playing an 8 bit video game. But this movie committed to the bit and made it a full sequence. Is it enough to kill the movie? No not at all. But it makes for cringe and reminding you, as if the outfits and hair, and music wasn’t enough-that the 90s was a time and place best left desecrated and buried ass up in the middle of a salt field.

But coupled with the cheesy 3D effects and gags of sticking things in your face, knowing once you rented the film it would look awkward as fuck, and still does. The ugly early CGI and, because it was a living cartoon, the over the top Looney Tunes sound effects. All of it was just bad.

Which says a lot given the other movies are flooded heavily with 80’s life blood. But see again. The 80’s was a decade we knew, lived, and people were okay with. So it gets the pass. The 90’s was a fucking nightmare in every sense. So people can accept the nut hugger gym shorts of Freddy’s Revenge, and the George Michael Posters along with nerds playing wizard dice games reserved for outcast. But no one. Not a single soul can accept the style and grunge of the 90’s.

In the end it wasn’t really the studio, or the MPAA. There was no ego that brought Freddy down. It was a general growing out of interest. People began to lose interest with the Dream Master, Dream Child films and though Freddy was fun and the idea of his death was worth checking out. It wasn’t a uniting for a fitting end type finale. It was more like Bender with his camera saying “Neat” and taking a photo before moving on.

It’s a fitting way to end the franchise to be fair. Don’t have people go out hating the movie like they did with Halloween Ressurection and people not giving two shits about Jason X. It’s a win if you can end the show like a has been celebrity signing autographs at a comic convention waiting for people to come up and buy an autograph for $60 bucks instead of people ignoring you entirely.

The film, though. Again if not for what was yet to come. Would have served as the great catalyst for Freddy vs Jason. Freddy was dead and gone. Sent to hell, free of the dream demon sperms. Jason would in his next film go to hell directly. The two forces would find each other and begin their epic battle. In fact when this movie came out? Not long after New Line acquired the rights to the character Jason. So it was all set and ready to go. They just finally needed to settle on a script. Unfortunately though. Wes Craven set down his glass of wine, turned off Scream and said he would like to have a word with the manager about Freddy.

Only, not really Freddy. But close enough.

Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare

I have never hidden the fact I have a bone to pick with this movie. As I recently mentioned I even appeared on a podcast, Reels of Justice to condemn this film. It was either that or defending Part 3 as being the best of any horror sequel. I chose what I felt was a solid case to make versus an easy victory.

I chose poorly, I can admit, humbly. That I was not as prepared as I should have been and when I started going off the cuff, I lost my way and my arguments weren’t as strong as they should have been. At one point I was dug into as being someone that hated the film because it wasn’t holding my hand and giving me what I wanted. It was funny, but it also stuck with me because that is the one thing I champion against with criticizing and critiquing films. So the fact my arguments came off that way well. I’ll do better the next time I am lucky enough to return. I also want to give thanks to those guys and the acting attorney who schooled me. I learned a lot from them about the film I didn’t know before and I appreciate that a lot. They really know their stuff and I highly recommend giving them a listen, they deserve it.

Of course they didn’t change my opinion what so ever!

So lets get into it shall we? Because this is a curious film to get into and talk about. Mostly because of how it functions and presents itself. For this movie to happen a lot of grudges had to be set aside and peace made. Specifically between Craven and Shaye who had a creatively difficult relationship stimming all the way back to the original film.

I joked before about it but Bob Shaye really was the Moustafa Akkad of the Nightmare series. He saw the franchise potential in Freddy and wanted to keep it going, where as Craven wanted a one and done picture.

Funny enough a lot of the memorable and creepy scenes from the original film are thanks to Shaye He and Craven fought each other a lot on the original over scares in the film and ultimately its ending.

Freddy above Nancy’s bed knocking the crucifix down and reaching down to her? That was Shaye. Craven wanted to use a mechanical rig to achieve this. He wanted them to build a high end mechanical rig to pull off the practical effect. However Shaye suggested the more practical idea of using a sheet stretched out and Robert pushing against it. There was also the marshmallow staircase that Craven wasn’t a fan of. He thought it would be cheesy but Shaye thought it’d come off tense and add to the scare factor with the dream world traps Freddy would set. The man was right.

But most famously thanks to Sheye we had the twist ending. Wes wanted the film to end with Nancy driving off with her friends and a dream like haze over the camera. The image of a surreal dream coming to an end and hope triumphant over darkness. Shaye like Moustafa saw the franchise in front of him. He’d seen what Paramount did with their ending of Friday the 13th and knew they could turn this into a Franchise easily for New Line. So he pitched the idea of Freddy coming through the door taking the mother, the Freddy striped convertible and realization Nancy hadn’t defeated Freddy. Wes hated the idea, fought against it a lot. A. Lot. But ultimately Bob ands New Line won, granting us where we are now, talking about the next film in a long franchise. Even though Craven didn’t want a sequel, let alone three, then four, then five of them. However Shaye had reached out to him asking for ideas and Wes would grant some ideas but ultimately every time, Shaye shot them down. Likely because most of his ideas would end the series.

But here New Line sat. The 10th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street on its way. They’d killed Freddy off and laid him to rest. But Bob was considering the options of how to celebrate the films anniversary. Given the lackluster response and runaway train productions of the two previous films. They needed to try something new. So why not reach out to the original creator for this one?

So they did. Shaye reached out with a six pack and an olive branch. Approaching Craven, talking with him and pitching the idea of one more film. Craven was happy to do so. Even if the studio had no idea what they were about to awaken and put on screen.

The Story.

Welcome to meta-town Los Angeles. The film follows Heather Langenkamp as she is set to make a big screen return in a new Nightmare on Elm Street film as Nancy. As filming is underway Heather begins experiencing horrible nightmares of a darker more evil Freddy, killing crew members and taunting her through dreams. The film balancing her film life and real life challenges, from obsessed fans to stalkers, and a mild commentary on censorship and violence on screen in regards to the youth.

As the story moves along it seems Freddy is trying to break out into our world. Using Heathers son Dylan. Now he’s not doing as Alice had to suffer through and trying to posses her child. That was Freddy. This, is not.

As Wes Craven tells us in his turtleneck, sipping tea, on the sofa in his luxury home, looking and sounding like a professor explaining the craft of writing, a writers responsibility, and the life they breath into ideas. He gives some of the most pretentious dialogue to let us know that. Freddy is essentially a demon. A real presence that has attached itself to the character and enjoys Freddy enough to attach itself to the character and films. Wanting to break free of the genies bottle and into our world. Essentially. He spends most the time giving himself a Godlike Auteur presence, casting himself as an oracle prophet who controls reality through his typewriter, the true strength and magic of a writer. After years of Freddy being a comedian who made us laugh, he felt the creator needed to remind us the real beast he created and how this creator birthed a cosmic entity, carrying the large mass of ancient mythology on its back with all his lore. His words giving shape to this entity that became the demon and the films keeping it at bay.

For the casual viewer it’s a lot to take in and for fans, having the man who walked away from the franchise explain to you the jokester you loved and enjoyed growing up watching was none existent and the deeper created mythological evil he gave us was the true terror well. No one likes having their film explained to them, let alone getting a lecture on how they’re enjoying their heroes wrong.

But I digress…

The demon has a mission. It wants out of the films and into our world to wreak havoc, or something. So it must do what Freddy never did(but did in the 3rd film) and kill Nancy. So the demon kidnaps little Dylan and uses him to lure her into his realm. Whether it’s a dream world or hell, who can say. Because Freddy operated in dreams and this isn’t Freddy, but we’ll just say it is the dream world because that is safer than saying Heather took a literal handful of pills to rescue her son by falling asleep versus dying and going to hell to retrieve her boy.

Heather and the demon have a final battle and thanks to having been read Hansel and Gretel growing up. Dylan was able to trick and trap the Freddy demon into a furnace where he gets shoved into and burned alive. In dream hell. Heather saves her son, returns to the world of the living and decides to read the finished script of the movie to her son, where before she was against letting him be introduced to violent stories. Ending with a whimsical jaunt of music, and artistic film enjoyers huffing their own farts snapping their fingers in applause.

This is the last time I am going to get to talk about this movie, and I’m going to take that moment and air out a few things.

This movie whether you love it or hate it. Is pretentious and more a director giving a commentary on the state of horror than he is about saving his creation. It has interesting ideas, sure. The idea of doing meta horror wasn’t exactly a thing at the time. He ultimately admits he used this film as a prototype for it before making Scream which perfected his meta horror genre.

Wes had said and made it known before that, like Carpenter with Halloween. He was not a fan of the sequels and what they did with his creation. Granted that Akkad kept Michael to his core and how Carpenter crafted him. Where as Bob wanted to reinvent him and make an acceptable to the masses horror icon that would make money. 

The series creator wanted to undo the damage he felt was done to his nightmare child and return to a darker, scarier Freddy. By removing Freddy.

Wes Craven, when approached to return hesitated because he didn’t want to make another sequel. Especially since he despised wise cracking Freddy as created by Sideshow Bob. So he told them he would return, but only if he could make something different. A meta film about what happens when you turn an ancient demon into a pop culture joke. What happens when the monster you create haunts the cast and crew who made it long after its creation.

If you are picking up a distinct fragrance, that hints of boiled mushrooms and broccoli…Well…

Respect was going to be placed on the name of this demon that envied Freddy and loved Wes’s creation. He would be scary, serious and a constant threat. He would wear Freddy’s iconic sweater, hat and his own razor gloved hand. He’d wear a trench coat and the scariest thing of all, leather pants.

This had people a bit confused. To say the least.

But it still works. For what it is. Which isn’t Freddy.

It’s a demon, a creature which wants to emulate Freddy.

For a Nightmare on Elm Street, more specifically the 7th film in a long established series. This was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of fans. Especially when you are marketing a new villain and film, toward the fanbase on the franchises anniversary.

Jason Goes to Hell gave us a Friday the 13th with Jason as a side character in his own film that we never see materialize until the very end. It didn’t go over well with people because it was overly silly, killed a lot of the lore and made Jason into the creation of a deadite instead of the mongoloid nearly drowned child of a disturbed serial killing mother.

New Nightmare gave us a new world with none of Freddy’s rules, and Freddy without being Freddy. It’s a bold move to do that late in a series and had it been done earlier in the series? It easily would have been ripped apart. But this came out during a time of change in horror where Scream would later dominate because it held a mirror of perception to the face of the fans and used the essential rules we know of these films in a much more real setting which made it seem new and fresh. This film tried doing the same and sacrificed the titular character in place of a demon that served as both a metaphor for what is created and fed off of, changed through more films and its fanbase. It’s a meta film prototype marketed as a fresh Nightmare on Elm Street film, while trying to masquerade as a horror film when it’s more made as a higher brow take on horror.

Yes I feel it is pretentions, yes I and others wish it had been another Freddy invested feature. But it isn’t what made the film fail for me or others. And it certainly wasn’t because of not getting what you wanted and having your expectations subverted. It’s the fact this, as a Nightmare on Elm Street film does not work. As its own thing? Absolutely. I mean it is, as was pointed out to me as well, even in its title. A new Nightmare. Not Elm Street.

Again. As its own thing? Sure, go for it, it works. But what the film felt like, how it was marketed versus what it was in the end. Is a farse of the franchise and someones attempt to end what they wanted done after the credits in their first film. It simply doesn’t work and to the best I can do here, I’ll explain. Drugs will not be needed but they can certainly help.

The Entity vs Krueger

Freddy worked because he was real. Freddy was a child murderer, a dirty small town monster lurking among the towns people praying on their children. He put the town on edge and struck fear in parents everywhere and when he was released after finally being caught, and the parents took their vengeance on him. It felt real and it spawned a curse. He returned because of their vigilante justice and his evil, to torment the children of those who killed him. The parents were wracked with guilt over taking a life and covered this up. For years after when their children were allowed to grow up without fear? Only to have the killings start again and to hear the name Freddy Krueger. It awoke that fear in them again.

We saw with Nancy’s mother the result of her guilt, Leading to alcoholism and a split from her husband. The film showed us right through into the 3rd what this did, what Freddy did to their family. The fear of this monster. Created by the very parents who tried stopping the real monster, created an even more powerful one they were unable to defend their children from.

That is the base. The core of Freddy, his psychological Terror. It was played out to its absolute best and fullest in Freddy vs Jason when you are shown the entire town of Springwood had taken drastic steps medicating their kids, wiping out the memory of Freddy to keep them all safe. Even when the film was comical it still gave us the sincere feeling they absolutely would do anything to keep his name from even being muttered and they put away anyone, teen or otherwise who said his name and even mentioned a figure like him. That is Freddy and his power. The presence he carried both in the real world and the dreamworld.

New Nightmare tells us this never was. It was a film like any other in our world. By retconning the premise. Freddy’s core-claiming Freddy was never actually a human child-killer, but merely a temporary skin worn by an ancient shapeshifting…thing. It strips him of his human malice and tells us Freddy was never anything to fear from the start. They took a very real, terrifying villain and transformed him into a cosmic, mythical entity abstract of his character. Much like how Wes felt they took his creation and turned him into a wise cracking joke instead of the dirty old man he saw from his window as a child digging through his trash.

Instead of Heather fighting a specific, sadistic killer that KNOWS her name, KNOWS her history. She is instead fighting a generic primordial demon that is simply executing a checklist for cross dimensional travel into our world. By changing Freddy from who he was and into this shapeshifter, it trades intimate human horror for abstract folklore and a generic possession “It wants in our world” story.

Freddy is a presence that was always felt in his films, but none more stronger than the first film. There is an escalation with Freddy and the stakes are always clear and become more dire. This film and its monster worked more ambiguously with a weaker escalation by altering the rules to a much more messier concept.

Freddy works off the franchises core strength of creative dream logic. If you fall asleep, he can hurt you-and if you die in your sleep? You die in the real world. Shifting from trapped inside creative dreams and a world we feel safe in of our own creation, to a mother dealing with a sick possessed child, the film pivots away from its core specific mechanical identity that defined the entire franchise and moved into a different subgenre full of its own tropes.

Moving from established rules and mechanics of how Freddy worked to something else-something new? Sure it can work. But the execution in the film was poorly, weakly executed. Simply because the demon operates on incredibly, glaringly vague and constantly shifting parameters.

Stick with me here.

The demon can manifest claws into the real world to kill Chase while he is driving. Silence yourselves I know the film shows he was beginning to struggle to stay awake. You can argue yes he dozed off and demon thing killed him. But this isn’t Freddy who operates in the dream world. That’s just in the film. Not our reality. This thing would have had to manifest itself into our world to do this. Now, the stronger argument? Wes’s own rules. This is a smart possession horror. This isn’t a silly sequel in a franchise it’s a new nightmare set in our real world reality. The film waves off the fact this man was murdered and our cops are played as incompetent. If a body is brought in, from a traffic accident. With 4 distinct razor sharp claws dug in and dragged down his chest. With no debris from the crash present having done so? They’d be investigating this immediately. It would be classified under suspicious circumstances. Add to this the double homicide of two crew men who were ‘killed by a set malfunction’ which was the glove, a 4 fingered mechanical device killing them. That makes this three homicides within 24 hours. Is it nit picky and are you smirking at how that’s a stretch? It isn’t when Wes has set this film in our world operating off of our rules. The whole concept was pitched as what if this happened in the actual grounded world?” The film handles it by ditching its own rule set and just waving it off, dismissing it as “Hey it’s freddy, don’t worry about it.” But it isn’t Freddy. You established clearly this is not Freddy. It’s a demon. A demon bound to its trapped ‘genies bottle’ dimension wanting into our world.

Which brings in another point people have made before and further strengthens the weakness in this plot and how the monster works. Perhaps the cops did not investigate the murders. Which are obvious murders. Because the demon is influencing them. His presence is vast and far reaching that if it is able to influence Wes Craven to write a new movie for it to be brought back.

If it can reach into our world and murder people

If it can trigger an earthquake and slash Heathers walls with Freddy like claws

If it can manifest as multiple Freddies into our world

If it can clearly drag a woman to the ceiling of a hospital room and kill her without the need for sleep

If it can manifest an army of Freddys, a glove from the sky and begin physically manipulating an awake child in our world over traffic

If it can pull Dylan into its realm and leave a door open for heather to follow

Are you kind of getting it?

A demon, claiming to be trapped within its realm, a genie in the bottle. But it has the power and reach to perform all of these feats. To clearly influence mass crowds of people and physically interact with our world. Exactly what importance then is Heather and how exactly is she keeping it from entering into our world when it very clearly already is?

But. Somewhere in the crowd. I hear a voice. What’s that? Freddy did the same in his own franchise? In part 2??

Yes. Yes he did. Freddy manifested himself into our world, well his world without the need for sleep.

During the pool party leading to the climax of the film. Freddy has manifested into our world as a being. He got his strength from Jesse. Each kill made gave him strength and allowed him to further possess Jesse. “You’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain” Freddy came out into the world and attacked Jesse’s not girlfriend because he was gay. Freddy needed an anchor to appear in this world and Jesse was that anchor. So he attacked the girl, then went out to the pool party and began attacking everyone. Eventually they try fighting him and nothing works. He Homer Simpson walks away into the bushes, setting them on fire and vanishes to an industrial factory. There was no meta world high brow horror. It was slasher film logic. He had a clear conduit into our world.

This demon had none. Oh, what? Dylan? Could the same case be made that his possession of Dylan allowed this? No. Because he was already manifesting himself far before that. It was incidental. The movie wanted to be smarter than it was by establishing new rules that gave Wes a smug look by subverting expectations. By following another established group of tropes that didn’t work within his own world he helped create and took years establishing itself.

But again the argument is. This is a new nightmare. It’s not elm street, the franchise. So how exactly does that work? You tell audiences to forget years of an established franchise and character and watch a new character obsessed with the character you love. Only the threat its supposed to possess has no grounded rules it follows let alone stakes. Its freely moving around in our world, but wants to be in our world. It needs to kill Heather to enter our world, but its already in our world. It wants to kill people and cause terror in our world. IT’S ALREADY DOING IT!!!

The whole idea is pointless and makes no sense.

But the biggest sin this film commits is the same Ridley Scott faced with Prometheus.

The Climax.

Setting aside the weak rules and supposed wall keeping this thing from our world. This is as Wes and those before him in other Franchises have all stated. A return to real terror. This was not going to have a quipping Freddy, a comedian Freddy you could laugh at.

And yet, the climax exist. Every appearance of the demon as Freddy, it’s comical. I don’t mean in design or leather pants. I mean in its taunting of Heather. From the face it makes popping from her husbands coffin, to his joking with Dylan before killing the nanny.

The shapeshifter goes from a supposed shadow threat lurking around, to a flat out clown by the end when it starts roleplaying Hansel and Gretel. A trail of snacks and pills, the demon shouting “Come here I got some gingerbread for ya”, the comical tongue whip and his face when he sees them trying to stab it then cut it off.  It’s facial expressions between that and its hands removal…This is a multi-dimensional demon. An ancient being of immense strength and from a land of pure unadulterated evil. And it gets tricked into a giant furnace. Which it designed, and could not escape.

Freddy. When defeated. Each film when the final fight comes. Each film drops a small seed hinting at how he can be defeated. A goal. A way to strip him of his power and defeat him.

This real evil being in our world, from an actual factual dimensional hell. Is defeated in its own realm with no real idea how to do so, or if it would work. Past just sheer dumb comical luck.

Ridley Scott wanted to make a Prequel to ALIEN. What we got was a smart scifi film detailing the engineers as he saw them and telling a new story within his universe, which is shared with Blade Runner by the way. It was new and used more grounded tech to make it seem more real. The film abandons its concept once it remembers this is supposed to tie into ALIEN. So we have a gigantic oversized face hugger face fucking an engineer and giving birth to a proto xenomorph in the final seconds. Where the rest of the film was content on removing itself from the first film. By a few hundred years and in its story. It felt tacked on and like he genuinely was reminded by the studio what he was supposed to be making instead of playing around in his world. Is it still a good movie? It’s interesting, until the climax. Same case with this film.

I said this was going to be likely the last time I get to talk about this movie. So I had to get that all out because I really feel this movie, as part of the franchise is so far removed as to not work what so ever.  From it’s premise and weak established rules, to the idea it was a return to Freddy being scary. When it’s not even Freddy.

It just doesn’t work, for me. And a lot of people including critics, all of whom likely can and have made smarter arguments.

So when I say it’s a bad Nightmare movie? I mean it in the same sense as Friday the 13th 4 when they removed Jason and brought in a copy cat. It’s interesting, sure. But a bad entry in the series. But still not the same as this. This was, as I was reminded, and everyone keeps saying when defending it. Not a Freddy movie.

Which is. It’s core issue. It’s why fans hated and turned on John Carpenter for making Halloween 3 and giving them evil irish people using druid magic and cyborgs. You make an interesting, completely different film in the middle of your established franchise. Yeah people are going to be upset they didn’t get what they were expecting in a film labeled HALLOWEEN 3.

It doesn’t make you unrealistic, hard headed or simple to expect what you were told you would get. You say you were tired of the sequels being silly so you want your character to be a truly scary threat again? Good lets see it. Instead you turn them into a demon that’s still joking around. Don’t like it? Well you didn’t get it and we can’t help you.

It’s a poor excuse and a bad execution to toss out in the middle of an established franchise, with an established character an entirely new creature tying it to your creation, getting away with it by saying ‘It doesn’t take place in the film world but our world, so it works”

Well for some people it does. Obviously. But for others it doesn’t. Strongly doesn’t.

I don’t hate it. I hate what it was calling itself and felt it is out of place. The best comparison for this film I feel, after reflecting and hammering out another ungodly near 60 pages now. Is something that more films have done and suffered unfairly from. But also deservedly.

I think the most famous example? Would be Dawn of the Dead remake.

A classic Romero zombie film. People trapped in a mall, battling to survive, fighting their own kind on top of an unyielding undead force. The movie divided fans and claimed new fans. They changed everything about the zombies and the dynamic of the tight knit group of the original. Zombies could run, baby stillborn babies turned zombies, people turned quicker, a larger group with people you didn’t genuinely care for and more chaotic action. Fans hated this because it was different, while others embraced it because of its brutal intensity and new fresh take on zombies.

Very similar films. Core changes to what we had known and were expecting. Critical division with the audience you were hoping to please and surprise. Both had an easy fix if you think about it.

Take the premise of both films. Tell it to someone. Sell them on a movie, about a demon that is trying to break into this world through horror films that drew it out from its dimension into our world and how it is fighting to free itself.

Remove Freddy from it, remove it entirely from the franchise and let it be its own thing. An original IP.

Same with Dawn of the Dead. Take the film, give it a new title, completely removed from the series as a remake or reboot. Let it stand as its own thing. I promise you an entirely different reaction.

To have people tell you this is the best of the elm street films. Which they do say, is false and unfair. They and critics hail it for being different and removed from the series. But include it in the series its removed from and tell you to enjoy it by embracing the new and forgetting what you want, what you were sold and lied about, and just enjoy a new experience completely removed from the franchise it is a part of.

Sure Jan.

There were so many places this film could have gone. But it simply didn’t. There were interesting ideas they could have played with but didn’t. The demon just wasn’t fleshed out. You had Robert Englund in the movie as himself, and did nothing with him. These actors play themselves and are never utilized in any way that would have added to the tension. I like the idea the demon had to remove everyone in its way, which would mean the cast and creators of the franchise. Use Wes to create a doorway with the script. Have the demon kill Robert Englund so it can truly become Freddy, and have it face off against Heather as its newly crowned identity as Freddy. Anything but what they did. It could have been scary. But it wasn’t and never got even to the point of a jump scare.

My standing aside, was the film actually a success? No.

The film cost roughly $8 million, keeping the budget as usual close to the chest. After its theatrical run ended the film make a whopping $18 million. It was the lowest grossing film in the entire franchise.

Did the MPAA step in and slice away at it? No, What about the studio famous for butchering and its mountains of alleged cocaine? Not one bit of interference. How? Why? Well. Casting Bob Shaye to play himself does kind of put the studio at a bit of a stand back and let it happen position.

Critics and fans were divided. Hugely divided. Some critics raised a glass over the high brow smart take on horror calling it a welcome change to a tired predictable genre. While other critics tore into its comedic tone, lack of threat and severe lack of Freddy. They found the plot and film boring, and  they along with fans hated Dylan. Child actors get it rough, they either nail it or they come off cringy and unwanted. Any time you put a kid in your movie, it’s going to divide audiences. See The Mummy Returns for proof on that.

The praise the film received was less to do with it being an original ‘horror’ film and more to do with its take on the horror genre as well as the toll it takes on its creator and stars. So they enjoyed the message and what It represented, while fans embraced it as a needed change from the old and tired. It just wasn’t praised for its character. It felt unneeded in a franchise that had been laid to rest with Freddy’s Dead,

But I can still see it working. Freddy died in the films, this thing was mad. But the film itself retcons a lot of the sequels openly so it becomes more an implied thing left to you the viewer to insert. Which is still an argument I don’t like when it comes to film criticism. When you the viewer are left to fill in the pieces and give weight to the script and concept where the director and film didn’t bother to do so. The points become moot and rely more on subjective opinion which goes nowhere. People make the argument the reason the demon is able to interact with our world is because the sudden disappearance of Robert Englund from the film. They believe the demon killed him or possessed him ultimately becoming Freddy so therefore it had a foothold in our world which is why by the time it got to Dylan it didn’t need to rely on sleep like earlier. Well again like I mentioned it’d be cool if that were the case. But nowhere in the film, or the script do they even suggest it. So it just becomes, like a lot of arguments made, fan made subjective opinions. It’s why I try not to get to into it with debating surreal films because you need a different set of eyes with that and believe me people will make some crazy ass near biblical like theories on those films and call you simple minded for debating them. I’ve had to debate my sister and Adrian several times with why I dislike some surreal films but embrace others. I don’t hate them because I don’t get them, or because I want a traditional experience. I just look for it to be entertaining, and make sense. Which again and for the last time. This film isn’t the worst thing ever. It’s just a poor sequel that would do better as something other than the skin it tried sliding itself into. The whole meta horror thing is an interesting take. But it also grew to fall into the same tropes and plot holes as what it tried to rise away from.

I apologize if I repeated myself and went off. I just have a lot to say when it comes to films in these franchises. Much in the same way even though I’ve left Star Wars behind largely from where I was with it. I’ll still sit down and talk for hours on end about the films, powerful scenes and subjective topics on it. It’s fun discussing film but when it comes to trying and looking for the exact words. It can be a struggle and that’s why for me writing is the easiest. It would likely READ better and more coherently if I edited this shit. But fuck that. It’s all Gonzo baby, and that’s what I do best.

So did this film kill off the franchise? For a time. New Line was working on bringing Jason and Freddy together and were finally getting closer to that reality. Scream was about to hit and reshape and revive the horror film industry. The MPAA was finally at its end with horror and the two parted ways.

We got a truly great send off for Robert Englund’s Freddy with Freddy vs Jason. The movie gave both groups of fans everything they could have ever asked for. I’m thankful it didn’t get more sequels. After that we had the remake of Friday the 13th,  later on the Nightmare on Elm Street remake as well.

Now THAT film I can say I hate. That film needed a shapeshifting demon. It also needed a lot more. But that’s a film I’ll review when we cover remakes and reboots.

For now at the end of this franchise. It didn’t suffer nearly what Halloween and Friday the 13th did. But it suffered differently, and in some cases a lot worse.

Honestly I’d prefer a protective egotistical producer over what the studios did. Hell either of those two are still preferred over the MPAA and the power they were given and should never have had. I can say I’m still happy to be a fan of Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy was my hero growing up and I’ve seen all the films enough to quote it and laugh while watching it. True I don’t watch this one nearly as much as I do the others. But I still do get curious and have to wonder, will it hit differently the older I get? Will it have aged better?

Nope! Mind not chained lol

But getting to discuss this film and have someone defend it to me, and make me consider things I hadn’t before? I will always appreciate that and urge people to listen to those guys on Reels of Justice. Even if they again. Did not validate my parking.

As we come to a close with Freddy and his end. We now come to our final article. One that I can say I am not looking forward to what so ever. Which is fitting. Because of all franchises. Ones I love and ones I can’t stand, and some I wonder how the hell they keep going.  None of them compare too or come close to the absolute abysmal hell that is, the Hellraiser Franchise.

Prepare for that, and thank you again if you’ve stuck it out this far. I do appreciate it.