A Nightare On Elm Street (1984)

I have a confession to make.  I haven't been spreading my love equally across the great horror franchises.  When I started this blog, I quickly reviewed a few of the original Nightmare movies, but I got distracted by shiny objects and never really got back on track.  In the meantime, I have reviewed every single Friday the 13th and most of the Halloweens.  Out of a sense of fairness, it is high time I returned to the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, and where else should I start, but with the original?

A Nightmare On Elm Street begins with a mysterious figure crafting an all-purpose murder glove in a boiler room somewhere.  Coincidentally, Tina (Amanda Wyss) has a nightmare where she is chased by a mysterious figure wearing a murder glove!  It's always nice when you don't have to wait for plot points to pay off.  Tina runs from this creepy, fedora-and-ugly-sweater-wearing, razor-gloved meanie, but he catches up with her.

Maybe he just wants a hug

Right when he is about to kill her, Tina wakes up screaming in bed.  It was just a dream!  Except...her nightgown has slash marks in it, right where her nightmare man cut her!  Dum-dah-DUMMMMMM!!!  On a side note, teenagers wear nightgowns?  Anyway, Tina's not the only teen having dreams like this.  Her boyfriend, Rod (Jsu Garcia), her friend, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen (Johnny Depp, in his film debut), have all been having nightmares; despite Tina being openly creeped out by her dream, none of her friends comes forward and admits to having similar nightmares because teenagers don't have empathy.

Or props that make sense in their scenes.  What is with the birds by the boombox?

Since Tina makes such a big deal about her dream, Nancy and Glen agree to keep her company while her parents are out of town.  Rod shows up, too, just in time for some sex scenes that sound remarkably like people trying very hard to sound like they're having all the sex in the world.  After Rod finishes pleasing his woman, this happens:

He becomes the Magneto of flesh?

An invisible attacker slices the hell out of Tina and then, just for giggles, reverses her personal gravity; this was done presumably to force her family to clean her bloody footprints off the ceiling, which looks suspiciously like a deck.  That's when things go a little crazy.  The police, led by Nancy's estranged police lieutenant father (John Saxon), assume that Rod killed Tina (...on the ceiling...?) because he was the only one in the room.  Rod eventually gets caught and winds up in prison, but not before admitting to Nancy that he has had nightmares about a man with a razor bladed murder glove.  This blows Nancy's mind.  To be fair, it should.  That night, as she is dreaming, Nancy watches Mr. Razorfingers entering Rod's cell, preparing to kill.  When she wakes, Nancy knows that Rod is in danger, but no one believes that an invisible dream monster is going to attack him.  They should have, because Nancy was right.  After this point, Nancy is a teen on a mission: stop this mysterious dream monster!  Or at least find out who he is!

...before he falls through that latex wall and lands on her damn head!

The acting in A Nightmare On Elm Street is not very good.  In the lead role, Heather Langenkamp is pretty awful and sadly doesn't die (or does she...?).  She didn't annoy me, but she's not very likable and has trouble with any part of her character that can't be described as a "wet blanket."  Amanda Wyss was a little better as Tina, although she was also pretty basic.  Jsu Garcia was one-dimensional, but his one dimension was that of an insensitive rebel-type, and he did that fairly well.  Johnny Depp wasn't much better, with some of his line readings (especially "WoooOOOOoooo") being painful to watch.  On the bright side, his character didn't demand much acting, and Depp at least managed to get the most memorable death scene in the film.

If you're not going to be good in a movie, at least try to die well

Robert Englund spends most of this movie in the shadows as the evil Fred (not Freddy) Krueger.  Freddy doesn't display his trademark humor or cackle much in this first entry, but I think some of the visuals with Freddy are at their most iconic here.

That's a great introduction shot

Still, Englund isn't at his best here, if only because the script is not sure what direction they want the character to go; Freddy is a presence in this movie more than he is an actual character.  John Saxon actually headlined this movie, which is hilarious in retrospect.  In turn, he was about as good as John Saxon normally is --- he's a perfectly acceptable B-movie actor.  Rounding out the main cast, Ronee Blakley was absolutely horrible in every conceivable way as Nancy's alcoholic mother.  In all fairness, her character is terrible.  Still, Blakely should be able to act circles around Heather Lagenkamp (she is an Oscar nominee, after all), and that just doesn't happen here.

A Nightmare On Elm Street was written and directed by Wes Craven, after he read about (I shit you not) Asian Death Syndrome.  The basic idea here is a chilling one: what if the danger in your dreams was real?  As such, Craven goes out of his way to make a menacing villain, and he does so with some great visual scenes.

That's not Freddy.  That's a subtle warning to not date Nancy.

As far as his direction of the actors goes, Craven did a pretty awful job.  I honestly couldn't tell you if this cast had their lines memorized or were using cue cards.  The pacing in the film is okay, but it's a little slow for a slasher movie.  And that's what this is, oddly enough.  There are elements in the plot that could have made this far more suspenseful and frightening, but Craven opted for a simpler (and dumber) take.  I like the basic idea, but it's not very scary, exciting, or unpredictable, despite having the whole dream monster angle.

The special effects in A Nightmare On Elm Street had some definitely good moments, but it's pretty inconsistent overall.  Glen and Tina's death scenes are pretty great, no doubt about it.  I don't know what it is that makes them so memorable --- is it just the fact that they wind up on the ceiling? --- but they definitely stand out in the genre.  I also really like the moments where the audience is aware of Freddy's presence, but Nancy is not, like when he pushes his face in the wall above her bed, or when she is sitting in the bathtub.  Unfortunately, there are also moments like this:

Unless those are expanding dildos coming out from his shoulder, I'm not impressed

Why is it supposed to be frightening that Freddy can walk slowly with cut-rate Stretch Armstrong arms?  There are other moments that are okay, but have definitely aged a bit over the years.

Is that supposed to be silly putty?

On the whole, though, I think the look and feel of the special effects scenes work pretty well, even twenty-nine years later.

What about the horror, though?  For being a slasher movie, the Nightmare movies have always had a fairly low body count, and A Nightmare On Elm Street definitely sets that precedent.  Four people officially die in this movie.  Granted, two of those kills are pretty awesome, but...just four?!?  LAME. Worse than the low blood and gore count is the fact that this film completely ignores the easiest and most fun possibility for horror: the dreams.  Aside from a few bits with Nancy dreaming about Tina's talking corpse, the only dreamscape we see is Freddy's Land of Boiler Room Fun.  Dreams offer so many possibilities and even one good, weird one would have made a huge difference to the tone of this movie.  It might have even added *gasp* suspense to this slasher pic!

Don't get me wrong, A Nightmare On Elm Street is definitely better than most movies starring Freddy Krueger (noteworthy exception: Freddy Vs. Jason).  I just had a memory of it being actually good instead of just promising.  Really, how many horror franchises have a villain that has at least a kernel of justification in his back story?  Yes, he was evil, but the dude got lynched --- that may not be the best reason to kill teenagers, but at least he has a small excuse.  Unfortunately, most of the promising ideas aren't fully formed.  What makes Freddy Krueger stand out from his slasher movie brethren is his personality, and that is sorely missing from this movie.  Well, that and any logic whatsoever when it comes to when Freddy can kill you --- I'm pretty sure that only one person was actually asleep when they died, which makes no sense.  Even considering its many shortcomings, A Nightmare On Elm Street does have a unique feel to it, which goes a long way for the discerning fan of 80s horror movies.  Is it a classic?  I wouldn't say that, but it has its moments.

Freddy Vs. Jason

What better way to finish my month of horror reviews than with the culmination of the two biggest horror franchises ever?  I have already reviewed most of the Nightmare on Elm Street films and the majority of the Friday the 13th franchise, so it should come as no surprise that I was intently looking forward to Freddy vs. Jason when it initially hit theaters.  Neither series had been genuinely scary in over a decade at that point, and it had been even longer since either series had made a quality film, but I went in with ridiculously high expectations.  After all, it's called "Freddy vs. Jason;" how can you screw that up?!?  The plot is in the title, ferchrissake!!!  Then again, Alien vs. Predator sucked, so it is possible to fumble a touchdown.

"Hike!"

Freddy vs. Jason takes place after Jason Goes to Hell and Freddy's Dead.  In case you were wondering, the current status quo for both characters is deceased; of course, that's normal for both characters, so it should be no surprise that they can come back.  Now, if you are unfamiliar with either Jason Voorhies and/or Freddy Kreuger, I'll give you a quick series catch-up.  Jason, a mass murderer in the Crystal Lake area, has been dead and buried several times over the years; for his last five films, he has been a nigh-unstoppable murder-zombie with skin of varying Naugahyde-type textures.  He kills in a variety of ways, but he loves stabbing best of all, especially when he can do it to naughty teens.  Freddy was a child murderer in life, but he became a dream demon in death; he loves to kill teens --- it's never explained why he graduated from children to teens --- but needs them to fear him to gain access to their dreams, where he makes his attacks.  Clearly, these two could probably bond over coffee and murder tales, but the title requires a fight, so let's find out how they get there.

Stabbing a dude with his own weapon is always awesome

This opus begins in Hell, which apparently isn't as full of flames as you may have been led to believe.  Freddy Kreuger (Robert Englund) gives the camera a quick recap of his history, concluding that the parents on Elm Street (his old haunt) have found a way to keep him forgotten in the minds of their children.  That means Freddy is stuck in Hell, which gives Freddy a frowny face emoticon.  I'm not exactly sure why he's upset, since he's a freaking dream demon, but maybe he just wants some more sweet, sweet dream murdering.  How will Freddy remind the kids of his evil-osity?  Obviously, he won't infest the dreams of the dozens of adults who remember him.  That just wouldn't make any sense.  Instead, he tracks down the soul of Jason Voorhies in Hell and (disguised as his Momma Voorhies) convinces Jason to return to life and do some killing on Elm Street.  Interestingly, Jason's Hell consists of him murdering promiscuous teens.  Is this film taking the daring stance that murderers go to Hell and get their own twisted eternal reward?  Of course not; the director and screenwriters are just hacks.  Another interesting point: apparently, Elm Street and Crystal Lake must be located fairly close together, because Jason seems to walk there rather quickly.  Unless, of course, he hitchhiked in-between scenes; if so, I wish that was included in the extras, because it could have been fabulous.  Anyways, Jason starts stalking Elm Street, finds some naughty kids, and starts a-stabbin'.  The local cops try to keep mum on their suspicions, but word gets to the kids that some dude named Freddy is the suspect.  And so it begins...!

"Heeeeere's Freddy!"

As always, it appears that a small group of teens is the center for all the trouble.  As always, the "teens" are actually twentysomethings, but that's an issue for another day.  This time around, it happens to be Lori (Monica Keena) and her friends, Kia (Kelly Rowland) and Big Dumb Tits (Katharine Isabelle).

What the Hell is going on behind her?

Why them?  It's hard to tell.  If Freddy was in the driving wheel, I would argue that he picked them because Lori lives in the same house that his foes from the first three Nightmares lived in.  However, it was Jason doing the choosing this time; I think it was because the house was filled with naughty teens, drinking the booze and having the premarital sex.  Being a stealthy predator, Jason sneaks into the house, gets upstairs unnoticed, waits for Big Dumb Tits to take a post-sex shower, and then neatly stabs and folds her boyfriend.

Impressive.  That's not a hide-a-way bed, either.

This is just the first of many murders (at least fourteen confirmed kills, with another half-dozen presumed dead at the cornfield rave).  Freddy enjoys his resurgent reputation at first, but Jason doesn't stop killing.  What's the problem with that?  Good question, one that is not directly answered by the filmmakers.  It appears that Jason killed someone Freddy was toying with, which set Freddy off to kill Jason, so he could have the kids to himself.  Is that convoluted enough for you?  It gets better.  Lori and her friends figure out exactly what is going on in this movie in a scene that would make Velma from Scooby-Doo proud.

"It makes sense, in a way" - actual hilarious quote from this scene

So what does the Scooby gang do next?  They have an unstoppable zombie-ish killer on their hands, and if they sleep, a dream demon will get them.  The plan is to somehow (with the help of the anti-dream drug Hypnocil) stay awake long enough to get Jason to fight Freddy, and not get killed in the process.  In classic slasher movie style, that turns out to be a tall order for most of the cast.

How's the acting?  **pause for several minutes of uncontrollable laughter**  It's "special."  Robert Englund is Freddy once again, and he is obviously loving every minute on camera.  He hams it up quite a bit --- this is definitely Vegas Freddy at his best --- but is still the main attraction, as far as acting goes.  Jason was played in this film by stuntman Ken Kirzinger, and he stabbed things in a satisfactory manner.  The rest of the cast is pretty wretched.  Monica Keena, while pretty and busty, has trouble conveying sadness, anger, fright, frustration, and happiness; she does do a pretty good Grover impression during the last few minutes of the film.

"Pooping face!"

Kelly Rowland made her film debut here, and it's full of one-liner put-downs that wouldn't intimidate fourth graders.

Actual line: "Got yer nose!"

I did love her death scene, though.  Katharine Isabelle is also pretty and busty (although that's a body double in the shower), but her character is really goddamned stupid.  Jason Ritter, while whiny, is probably the best supporting actor in the cast.  Chris Marquette plays the resident nerd character, like he always does in movies.  Lochlyn Munroe plays the police officer who, against all reason, opts to team up with a group of idiot teenagers.  Tom Butler is suitably untrustworthy as Lori's father/the anti-Freddy plot mastermind.   Also, the dead guy in the bathtub is Zack Ward, who was the yellow-eyed bastard bully, Scott Farkus, in A Christmas Story.

How's the direction?  Well, Ronny Yu had success revitalizing the Child's Play series, so it makes sense that he was hired to make Freddy vs. Jason.  Yu is a terrible director, but he knows how to make bad movies enjoyable.  Freddy vs. Jason, while not campy or terribly self-aware, is not too serious.  Instead, it is a fun slasher romp that does its best to give the audience what it wants, the stuff that was promised by the title.  Yu's talents are not of the technical variety, though.  There is a lot of bad editing and Yu clearly doesn't have a solid grasp on how to use POV camera shots, much less the imagination and talent to provide subtle hints when characters have started to dream.  If you pretend that Yu is a master director, the film is even more entertaining.  I was a Teacher's Aide for a film studies class that I had never taken, so I was asked to write a paper on a scene of my choice, explaining the meaning through the cinematography and direction.  It was the funniest thing I have ever written.

I seriously wrote a 13-page paper on this three-minute scene

For instance, in the above scene, Jason beheaded a guy while his son slept next to him on the bench.  Jason must have then cleaned up the mess, carefully balanced the severed head back on the neck (so it could fall into the son's hands), and snuck away to wait for junior to wake from dream land.  Jason is quite the prankster, especially if you pretend that Ronny Yu meant for the scene to be interpreted like that.

Since this is a slasher flick, I should probably mention the special effects.  The practical effects are all pretty solid.  Limbs are lost, arterial blood mist covers many a scene, and the kills are almost all pretty awesome-looking.  Since this is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, that also means that there are many opportunities to use effects to get surreal and creepy.  Some of these are handled very well, like the faces on the missing child posters or the eyeless child.

When the filmmakers get too reliant on CGI, though, things take a quick turn toward the ridiculous.  Kia's nose removal looks pretty bad, but the "winner" in this area has to be the hookah-smoking Freddy-caterpillar.  It looks like a cartoon, which is bad enough, but it is intended to intrigue a stoner enough to follow it into another room --- and it works!  Stupid writing + stupid CGI creature = worst scene in the movie.

Thank goodness it has facial burns.  I wouldn't know it was evil without them.

So the plot is incomprehensible, the acting sucks, and the directing is inept.  How good is Freddy vs Jason?  It is, quite possibly, the most perfect movie ever made.In his book, Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, the co-creator of Mystery Science Theater 3000 argues that Road House is the best film of all time, because it knew exactly what it was.  Similarly, Freddy vs. Jason has no misconceptions; this is a stupid slasher movie designed to entertain through a collection of on-screen murders that are stitched together with a flimsy excuse for a plot.

Bottom left: my personal favorite "death face" in the movie

No one will ever debate that fact.  As such, the ridiculous ease with which the clueless teens manage to decipher Freddy's evil plan is absolutely perfect; it would have taken an imaginative screenwriter six months to connect the dots of this bullshit plot.  Does the audience want to see the characters struggle to figure out the plot, which would draw attention to its ludicrousness?  Of course not!  We want to see Freddy fighting Jason, dammit!

The plot point that I have the most fun with is definitely Lori's comment: "Freddy died by fire and Jason died by water.  How can we use that?"  The quick answer should be "Um, you can't," but the film likes the idea and decides that Jason is afraid of water --- even though he spends a hell of a lot of time in Camp Crystal Lake --- and Freddy is afraid of fire apparently left unaffected by whatever killed him.

So afraid of water that it makes him kill?

How stupid is that concept?  I get it, I get it, they need something for Jason to fear to let Freddy into his dreams, but...water?  Really?  I would have gone with mommy dearest.

Shouldn't this protect Jason from Freddy, then?

On the other hand, this movie gets a lot of things legitimately right.  I absolutely love Robert Englund's facial expressions when he realizes that he has been brought into the real world and is going to fight Jason.  That mix of confusion and fear was perfect.  I also liked that Freddy combats Jason with his cleverness, which is well within his normal character range.  I'm okay with Freddy taking advantage of his smaller size and speed against the lumbering giant that is Jason, but he was almost ninja-like in this movie.  It makes sense, even if it isn't based on his established character at all.  Being a Jason fan, I was also pleased that he had nineteen kills to Freddy's one in this movie.  

Of course, you can argue that Freddy and Jason have no real reason to fight.  If Jason keeps killing, it's not going to prevent people from talking about Freddy, right?  Quiet, you.  The excuse for this premise is necessarily stupid, but that was never in question.  Freddy vs. Jason works so well because it lives up to its premise without sweating the details.  I thought this was a lot of fun the first time I saw it, but in the last thirty or forty times I have viewed it, I have noticed more and more "idiosyncrasies" in the plot.  That might devalue it for some --- and I totally understand that --- but it just adds to the charm for me.  I can't possibly be objective when reviewing this piece of art, but I will concede that it is a piece of Lefty Gold.  Does it deserve the love I give it?  Absolutely not, but love isn't always rational.

I came very close to not watching this movie in time for my month of horror reviews.  I consolidated my DVD collection into binders a few years ago, and when I turned to the "F" section, I had an empty spot where Freddy vs. Jason should have been.  Who would I have lent it to?  Who wouldn't have returned it?  Who needs to die?!?  Luckily, I remembered that I got my FvJ copy as part of my four-disc Nightmare on Elm Street collection, so it was on the flip side of New Nightmare.  That wasn't very interesting, but I shared anyway.  Speaking of sharing, here's a list of ridiculously stupid moments that I love in Freddy vs. Jason:

• Teens on Elm Street have absolutely no problem scoring alcohol below the legal drinking age
• Big Dumb Tits, after a few drinks, is going to drive to the liquor store for more beer, claiming she is "totally below the limit."  Except that every state has some sort of Zero Tolerance law for underage kids drinking and driving.
• Big Dumb Tits has sex with the bedroom door open in Lori's house, with other people in the house.  Afterwards, her boyfriend refuses to cuddle because he "hates being touched after."  So...much...awesome...badness...!!!
• Lori's friends want her to have sex because she hasn't had a boyfriend since she was fourteen.  Sure, her boyfriend mysteriously disappeared and her mother died in a tragic accident at the time, but the obvious cure for emotional distress is a hot meat injection.  By the way, she can't be older than eighteen in this movie.
• Sometimes, editing in post-production leaves in special effects without explaining them.  Case in point: the snakes on the bathroom floor.  Deleted scenes show how they got there, but the theatrical version just cuts to the floor and, whoa, snakes.
• The stabbing and crushing of one body, beheading of another and stab wound-caused death is called a sort of "Columbine thing"?  I don't even know where to start with that one.
• While trying to research Freddy Kreuger at the library, the records appear heavily edited.  The researching character's response: "January 18th.  That's the day my brother committed suicide [in a Freddy-related way].  Why isn't that in here?"  Probably because it would have been reported in the January 19th paper.
• The teens motor around in a van with a wizard on the side and black lights in the back.  While that's awesome, the owner of the van has been dead for years and his little brother has been committed to the psych ward.  What kind of parents keep that thing in pristine shape?
• They have a rave in a cornfield.  They all deserve to die.
• My favorite raver is Powerman 5000-looking punk rock dude.  Punk rockers love glow sticks.  And rape.  I learn everything from movies.
  
• After the rave massacre, the surviving kids agree to go home instead of the police.  Because, you know, one of their friends was murdered and they all need sleep.
• The legend of Jason Voorhies has him returning from the grave to kill anyone at Camp Crystal Lake.  Except...he was alive when he did that in Part II...and then he visited the camp in Part VI, but didn't kill any children...so...I'm going to call that legend incorrect.
• The police officer explains the legend of Jason dying and coming back to kill again.  Obviously, we're dealing with a copycat killer.  The nerd says, "no, I saw what he can do, this is the real thing."  Because he knows his undead murderers.
• Hypnocil bottles call for a 1000:1 dilution.  That's practical.
• Freddy asks Jason, "Why won't you die?!?"  Maybe because he's an unkillable zombie murder machine?
• The nerd charges at Jason, wielding an American flag as a weapon.  Sadly, the "Star-Spangled Banner" is not playing in the background.
• Apparently, blood loss is supposed to be a problem for Freddy and Jason, based on how much attention it gets from the camera.  Never mind that they are undead killers, back from beyond the grave.
• You're a stoner, trying to stay awake as you break-and-enter into a secure facility with a police officer.  What do you say?  "Time for a 'J' break"?  Really?  Really?!?
  
• "'One, two, Freddy's coming for you.'  You know why they say that?  Because that's when he comes for you."  Um...at "one, two"?

Zombie Strippers

With a title like Zombie Strippers, you would assume that not much thought was given to the plot.  And you would be right.  No, the allure of a movie with this title is the combination of zombies and strippers, or to put it more plainly, horror movie gold --- gore and nudity, right there in the title!

The important thing about Zombie Strippers is to go past that initial reaction and think about what that title implies.  Yes, there are strippers, and strippers get nekked.  Awesome.  Zombies are gruesome undead creatures that walk the earth, no matter how mutilated their corpses are (unless there's a brain wound, of course).  Zombies are awesome, too.  Zombie strippers would, logically, be naked women with mutilated reanimated corpses.  That is significantly not awesome and not sexy.  And it's the premise for an entire movie.  Joy.

The plot is pretty stupid, even by B-movie standards.  For whatever reason (mad scientist), a small outbreak of zombies is being handled by some government troops; one of them gets bitten and doesn't want to get killed by his teammates, so he scampers into the nearest open building, which happens to be an exclusive strip club run by Ian (Robert Englund).  The place is not particularly hopping, but it is midday, so I don't want to judge.  Ian's star stripper is Kat (Jenna Jameson), who is attacked and has her throat ripped out by the now-undead soldier.  She gets better quickly.  Oddly enough, her first instinct is to get back on stage and strip some more.  She doesn't clean her blood off, but instead dances...dirtier, I guess.  Personally, I didn't see a huge difference in the before and after scenes, but I had the same problem in You Got Served.  I'll just agree with the audience and say that the zombie dance was much more exciting.  It was so exciting, in fact, that these guys only want to pay zombie strippers, even ignoring total nudity in a G-string establishment.  Okay, that's weird.  Here's where it gets weirder: one by one, for reasons ranging from revenge to peer pressure to being a Goth chick, each of the strippers in the club willingly become zombies.

That's right, the strippers all became zombies to become better at their chosen craft.  While I have met a few strippers and they have tended to be two scoops of crazy, that is some dumb stuff.  Luckily, the movie never makes even the slightest attempt to take itself seriously (perhaps you noticed the title?).  Unfortunately, writer/director Jay Lee opted for a campier than Crystal Lake movie instead of delving into dark humor.  The writing is pretty bad; the script is full of really, really, really easy/obvious jokes and really, really, really cliched characters (an intellectual stripper, one doing it for money, the innocent one, the jealous one, etc., etc.).  The acting is pretty awful, too.  That's not surprising, but it's so bad that Jenna Jameson (an aging porn star) and Robert Englund (an aging horror legend) are, without a doubt, the best actors in the film.

I can't say that the film is without redeeming qualities.  It does have nudity.  And...well...oh!  They made a clever, if not very attractive, zombie upgrade; since zombies are far stronger than normal people (for some reason), an infamous stripper trick involving ping pong balls gets upgraded to billiard balls.  I would never have thought of that.  That's really the best thing I can say about the movie.

Since casting had to cover people who would perform nudity and act, the cast ends up being not particularly good at either, with special effects money wasted on these half-talented "actors."  The special effects in what should be a gory film are uber-cartoony low-rent CGI; this is also a movie that points out that head shots kill zombies, but manages to contain very few head shots.  My biggest problem with the film is the attitude of the strip club patrons.  I get it, naked ladies are fun to watch.  But undead naked ladies shouldn't be.  Isn't finding zombies sexy the stuff of necrophilia?  So, a movie that took great individual ideas (like milkshakes and a nice salmon steak) and combined them to make something unpleasant (like a salmon milkshake), which resulted in necrophilia (like having sex with your salmon milkshake).  Thanks, Zombie Strippers, you tricked me into watching what I can only assume is a documentary on the phenomenon.  I give you one star for not undead nudity and half a star for tricking me.

Wishmaster

When a movie is best known for its cameo roles, you know you're in for a "treat."  A big, steaming pile of "treat."  Do you know anything about djinn or genies?  If you answered "no," then you are qualified to be this movie's screenwriter.  If you answered "yes," then take a deep breath and exhale slowly.  It's going to get worse before it gets better.

Back in the 1100s, Zoroaster (for whom Zoroastrianism is named) is a court sorcerer whose king has a wish-granting djinn (Andrew Divoff).  The king's not very bright, though, so all his wishes turn out disastrously.  Zoroaster captures the djinn within a gem, somehow (I'm guessing cutting-edge science), and reveals that the djinn wants to grant three wishes; after the third wish, the djinn will open the door between dimensions and the evil race of djinn will rule the earth.  First off, my understanding of Zoroastrianism is that their djinn were disease-spreading lady genies, not evil world-ending bad guys.  I'm not a Zoroastrian, though, so I might have misunderstood and there's some grey area that I'm missing.  Or maybe my casual knowledge of an ancient religion is greater than that of a paid screenwriter.  Secondly, how does anyone know about this end of the world plan?  Do djinn have loose lips?  And how hard is it to give someone three wishes?  You know what would work better, instead of having their first two wishes go terribly wrong?  Having them go right, so they aren't afraid to wish.  Djinn: the stupidest of all God's creatures.

That scene takes up maybe five minutes, but it's fairly representational of the movie as a whole: confusion, frustration, and pain.  Flash-forward to the late 90s, where an ancient statue is being lifted off a boat by a crane.  The crane operator is drunk, so the statue falls and breaks.  Oh, and it squishes someone.  One of the dock workers notices a gem in the statue's wreckage.  Why...could that be the djinn's gem?  Sure, why not?  The dude pawns it, and the pawn shop guy takes it to an auction house.  The auction house gives it to Alexandra (Tammy Lauren) to estimate its value.  While examining the gem, she thinks she sees something, but can't get a handle on what.  Alexandra takes the gem to her friend/love-interest Josh (Tony Crane), who can use lasers and whatnot to get more detailed information on the gem.  Josh plans to work on the gem in the morning, but Alexandra convinces him to do it that night.  He does.  The gem explodes, releasing the djinn and wrecking the lab.  Writhing in pain on the ground, Josh is approached by the djinn, who asks if Josh wished that the pain would stop.  He does.  The djinn grants his wish.  That's basically how all the djinn's encounters go from this point on:

Innocent Person: I am apparently a small nuisance to the djinn.
Djinn: Do you wish _____?
Innocent Person: Well, yeah.  That's an inane, only half-serious wish that everyone shares.
Djinn: MWA HA HA!  (Wish is granted in a fatal way for the innocent)

Alexandra learns about the explosion and says, "I think the thing I gave him might have killed him.  Do you know how crazy that sounds?"  Actually, no.  You gave him something and asked him to work on it in the lab that night, and he died in the lab that night.  I'd say that the odds are in your favor.  Oh, and do you realize what you said implies that you gave him a nasty STD?  Gross!  Eventually, the djinn steals the face of a corpse and assumes a human appearance.  Okay, fine.  But the face he steals is heavily pockmarked.  I get that it's the face of the actor that has been heavily made up to this point, but who steals a pockmarked face?  It's like if I really, really needed some pants so people don't stare at the guy with no pants, and I choose assless chaps.  Yes, it's a choice, but it's probably not the best one available.

Because this is a horror movie, the dumb girl (Alexandra) needs to be chased by the monster (the djinn), right?  Right.  But why?  That's where the genius of this screenwriter comes in.  You see, the djinn is granting wishes in exchange for the person's soul, which is why you have to read the fine print on anything you agree to.  Why does a djinn need souls?  To power up his gem.  Yeah, I thought it exploded in the lab, too.  Guess not.  Once the gem is powered up, the djinn needs to grant three wishes to the person who woke him up, which is somehow Alexandra and not the late Josh.  Once the three wishes are granted, he can unleash the djinn into this world.  Why does he want to do that?  Well, according to an expert, "djinn are the face of fear itself."  Oh.  Right.

In a movie like this, it is probably better to not focus on the acting and directing.  Robert Kurtzman is not a good director, Peter Atkins is not a good writer, and Andrew Divoff, Tammy Lauren, and Tony Crane are not good actors.  The special effects are unimpressive, too.  This movie does, however, have a lot of cameos from horror movie icons.  Angus Scrimm (from Phantasm) reads the opening monologue.  Robert Englund plays a small supporting role and, shockingly, is not evil.  Ted Raimi is the guy who gets squished into meat jelly by the falling statue.  Kane Hodder and Tony Todd both get killed by the djinn.  Whenever one of these guys made an appearance, I cheered up.  They might not be major characters in this movie, but their presence signifies that something cool is about to happen.  Well, at least something that should have been cool is going to happen, anyway.

Wishmaster is the sort of movie that simultaneously bores, underwhelms, and confuses viewers.  It's boring because the script is wretched, the pace is slow, and the characters are unsympathetic.  It's underwhelming because the deaths, while fairly creative, aren't very cool and are often just odd.  It's confusing because the explanations given for djinns are don't jive with common knowledge.  It's like they made Saint Peter into a brain-eating zombie gargoyle; while it's possible that there are some texts that support such an interpretation, it's not the general consensus.  I know next to nothing about djinn (I did take a quarter of World Religion at the College of DuPage), and that was still enough to realize how arbitrary this movie's take on them was.  Still, this movie did bring Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhies, and the Candyman into the same movie, so it's not all bad.  It is just almost entirely bad.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Metafilms are, almost by definition, kind of obnoxious.  Any time a movie is about the making of a movie, you know that the filmmakers are trying to be overly clever.  Usually, this requires a great script and director (see Adaptation).  Wes Craven, the writer and director of New Nightmare, is neither.  Don't get me wrong, I like the guy; I don't think anyone can make a convincing argument that his entries in the A Nightmare On Elm Street series are not the best of the bunch.  This movie, though, tries something new and doesn't quite pull it off.

Ostensibly, this move takes place in the "real world."  The actors (at least, all the Nightmare veterans) all play themselves.  Freddy Kreuger is not a creature of dream, but a character created by Craven and played on the screen by Robert Englund.  Heather Langenkamp is the primary character, but John Saxon, Tuesday Knight, and many other actors and producers from the series have small roles.  Essentially, Freddy Kreuger is trying to leave the realm of fiction and enter reality.  Something is different with Freddy, though; this is not the clownish "Vegas Freddy" of the past few movie installments.  This Freddy is meaner, with claws that appear to be a part of his body.  Wes Craven (the character) theorizes that this new Freddy is actually an evil dream entity that the masses have equated with Freddy Kreuger.  Since that is how the world sees this entity, it has assumed the guise of the Freddy character.  Craven believes that the only way to keep the entity at bay is to use art (in this case, a movie) to express the violence and evil that it wants to perform.  This will temporarily sate the entity's lust for carnage, until another movie can be made to keep the entity trapped in fiction.

No, really.  That's the plot.  If there's one thing I can safely say about this movie, it is that it does not insult the audience's intelligence...just their suspension of disbelief.

One of the downsides to making a Nightmare movie featuring the actors from past Nightmares is that those actors were never very good.  It doesn't matter that Heather Langenkamp is playing herself, she is still an awkward actress.  That's far more enjoyable to watch than Wes Craven's struggle to convey an emotion beyond "vaguely tired."  I've seen him in interviews, so I know a little about him...let me tell you, I have never seen somebody struggle so much to convincingly play themselves in a movie.  While this may sound strange to those unfamiliar with the Nightmare series, Robert Englund is clearly the best actor in the film.  He is the only actor that seems comfortable playing himself and he delivers as both the buffoonish Freddy and the new, improved "Super Shredder"-esque Freddy.

This is the seventh installment in the A Nightmare On Elm Street series.  By this point, Freddy had already done pretty much everything he could do.  He succeeded in killing all the children of those who lynched him, he became a dream demon, he he expanded his audience from the Elm Street kids to all kids, and he had been (allegedly) definitively killed.  I get it.  The series needed new life.  This, though, feels more like a homage than a horror movie.  Most of the kills (while done pretty well) are direct references to the more famous Nightmare scenes.  The plot tries to be grounded in reality but must come up with overly complicated justifications for key plot points at the same time.  I admire Craven's attempt, but it just doesn't quite work here; the effort paid off better when Craven fine-tuned this concept in Scream.  The big problem with this movie isn't the metafilm plot, though; the problem is that the previous movies were not good enough to support a clever (if flawed) metafictional homage to them.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

 

"Terror Beyond Your Wildest Dreams," eh? That's not only a bold statement, but a presumptuous one, too. Who knows what is even in my wildest dreams?  Oh, that's right...Freddy Krueger.  Who's Freddy?  Here's a quick recap: Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund) is a basically a powerful aspect of dream that can kill people in their sleep.  In particular, Freddy seeks revenge against his murderers by killing their children in their dreams.  In A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, Heather Langenkamp returned to the series (she was the main actress in the original film) to help a group of kids being terrorized by Freddy; together, they managed to find the mortal remains of Freddy, sanctify them, and bury them, thereby "killing" Krueger. Langenkamp and three other kids managed to survive, but they are the sole survivors of the children whose parents killed Freddy Krueger.

One of the survivors, Kristen (played by Patricia Arquette in the last film), is played by Tuesday Knight.  Don't be fooled by her possibly porn-industry name; the girl is a true triple threat.  She is an actor, an amateur smoker (when she pretends to smoke cigarettes in this movie without any smoke...now that's acting), and a semi-professional singer.  Yes, that is Tuesday singing the opening theme to this movie and, yes, she is probably looking for work as we speak.  She didn't last long in this movie, that's for sure.  Deciding that there was no reason to actually stay dead, Freddy chooses to come back to "life."  The scene involves a dog peeing flames and his bones growing muscle tissue; the logic governing this course of actions is never actually explained.  Well, Freddy makes quick work of Kristen and her two other fellow Dream Warriors survivors, thereby succeeding in his mission to kill the children of those that killed him (although nobody ever mentions Langenkamp for some reason, shouldn't she be considered a survivor?  Okay, I'll shut up).  That's not good enough for Freddy, though; in this film, he branches out from simple revenge to harvesting souls.  It's nice to see a grown man that can change careers so easily!

Oh, before I forget, Kristen manages to use her dream powers to pull a friend into her last dream and transfer the dream powers to this new girl, Alice.  You might wonder why...or how...but you shouldn't.  If there's no explanation for how Krueger returned, you can be reasonably sure that the transference of one-of-a-kind supernatural powers between friends through a dream is not a priority; basically, the writers are assuming that, if you believe in dream-dwelling serial killers, this will not be a hard pill to swallow.

You can guess the plot from here.  Alice uses her new powers to stop Freddy, but not until he has killed most of her friends.  But, right before the end, there's an interesting idea.  According to some ancient mythology, there are two gates to the realm of dream, a good dream gate and a nightmare gate.  Each has a guard.  It's implied that Freddy is the guardian of the nightmare gate, while Alice (and, presumably, Kristen before her) is the guardian of the good gate.  Okay, that's not a horrible way to enrich the history of Freddy's character.  But, of course, that's just an idea that I developed, based on maybe two lines in the actual film.  A teacher mentions the gates in passing and Freddy later says that he's guarded his gate for a long time.  Oh, well, so much for ideas.  Speaking of clever ideas, guess what defeats Freddy this time around.  Go on, guess.  That's right, a mirror.    For a movie about dreams, there's not much creativity here.  I'd like to say that this is director Renny Harlin's worst movie, but that title is owned by The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

That's really the big problem with this movie.  Doesn't anybody want to think out of the box for this franchise?  Where are all the one-liners?  Where are the cool dream deaths?  Here, we have not one, not two, but three people die from Freddy stabbing them in the stomach!  Another dies by drowning!  Another by asthma!  Really?  Look, I understand that this is the fourth movie in a series, but that means that the deaths and insults should be getting more gruesome and creative.

Oddly enough, The Dream Master was the highest grossing film in the series (until Freddy Vs. Jason).  It was also the only movie to have a video game released in conjunction with it; along with The Dream Warriors, this was the basis for the truly horrible game for the original Nintendo console.  It even had a Fat Boys song on the soundtrack that featured Freddy rapping:

Sadly, this is also the first Freddy movie that doesn't really try to scare you.  It's kind of like Freddy got a horror movie "pass for life," where his scariness is always assumed and never requires proving.  From this film on, Freddy is less of a monster and more of a performer.  So, I guess you could call him "Vegas Freddy" or "Fat Elvis Freddy."  Another weird thing about this film is that there is no direct connection to the "Freddy house" that appears in each movie.  In the first two movies, the characters living in the house were terrorized by Freddy.  The logic in the first movie was because Freddy wanted his revenge, but it's less clear in the second.  In the third, Heather Langenkamp returned and Patricia Arquette dreamed about the house.  Here, though, and in every subsequent movie, the house is abandoned.  None of the kids after The Dream Warriors even recognize the house, much less live on Elm Street.  Why is this house used in every movie?  It's even implied that this was Freddy's house, but it wasn't.  Sorry if I'm paying too close attention to continuity, but it's odd to have a recurring image that has no real relevance.

While there isn't much to recommend this movie, I did like the effects when Freddy died and finding that Fat Boys video made me smile.  I also liked the fact that, by killing all the Elm Street kids, Freddy essentially won.  But, god, it is terrible.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

"They saved the best...for last."  Riiiiight.  That statement isn't correct in any way, shape, or form.  Not only is this not the best Freddy Kreuger movie, it's not even the last.  Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is the sixth installment of the A Nightmare On Elm Street series, and it takes the nightmare-dwelling slasher flick star and propels him into the future...for no particular reason.  No surviving characters pop up in the film, so the placement in the future is completely arbitrary.  Unless, of course, this "ten years later" refers to ten years after someone watching it...which means it is dependent upon viewers to happen.  So, if I was the last person to ever watch this movie, then in ten years, I would be indirectly responsible for the events in this film!  God, that's a depressing thought; I'd sure hate to share the blame for this crap with director Rachael Talalay (who also directed Tank Girl).  The sad thing is that there is an outside possibility that I will be the last person to watch this movie.

So, who wants to hear the plot?  Anyone?  Show of hands?  Yeah, me neither.  While the plot is unimportant here, there are a lot of revelations that add (and detract) from the Freddy mythos.  For instance, we learn that a young Fred Kreuger was still a sociopath; we watch him kill a schoolroom gerbil with a large hammer.  Why was there a large hammer available to young Kreuger?  Um.  Maybe it was "Bring Your Favorite Weapon" day for show-and-tell?  We also see Kreuger teased by kids chanting, "Son of a hundred maniacs!" over and over.  Leave it to the innocence of schoolkids to turn a tragic origin, where a child's father could be any one of the hundred violent inmates in a psychiatric ward that repeatedly raped his mother, a nun, and turn it into a fun little chant!  Kids say the darndest things!  And who told the kids about that, anyway?  Did somebody's parents teach them the joys of taunting rape victims?  Presumably, yes.  Later, as a teen, Freddy takes to self-mutilation as a way to handle (and enjoy) the physical abuse that his adoptive/foster father (played by Alice Cooper) heaps upon him.  Oh, and Freddy murdered his own wife, after she discovered evidence that he was murdering the kids of Elm Street.  Oh, and he did it in front of his heretofore unmentioned young daughter.  Now, from a writing perspective, it's a totally valid idea to create some history for Freddy's character that helps explain why he was so evil, and maybe even make him a little more sympathetic.  A good way to do this would be to show him being tormented as a child in school, or to see him being beaten by the only father he knows.  A bad way to do this is to show him being a sociopath from day one.  I'll give the screenwriters credit for making an effort, even if they totally undercut themselves.

Well, I would give them credit, but then they decided that, when Freddy was about to be burned alive, he was approached by Dream Demons who promised Freddy eternal life and the ability to continue being evil in exchange for...um...well, nothing.  Demons: not driving as hard of bargains as you might expect.

Another good idea stems from the fact that no returning characters, aside from Freddy himself, are in this film.  This allows the writers to show a Springwood, Ohio (where Elm Street is) where Freddy has run amok, killing every child but one in the town.  This, reasonably, drives the parents crazy.  However, nobody outside of Springwood seems to know about the tragedy of the town.  Not very realistic, but this is a movie with a recurring nightmare man, so I'll let that pass.  This means that nobody knows about Freddy or how to defeat him, which leads to a novel concept: if you grab Freddy in your dream and wake up, you can bring him into the waking world with you. Outside of dreams, Freddy doesn't have power, so he can die.  Although, if you fail to kill him, can Freddy return to dreams?  I don't see why not.  And Freddy still has a lot of dream powers in the real world, for some unknown reason, including physical transformations, healing, and more.  But a pipe bomb?  That'll kill him.  Seriously.  So...plot holes?  Got 'em right here! 

Freddy's ultimate plan in the film is to manipulate events so that his daughter will return to Springwood.  Once there, Freddy will hop inside her and...control her?  Or live in her subconscious?  Or what?  That's left a little fuzzy.  Regardless, she will act as a transport for Freddy, so he can find children of different towns and create new Elm Streets.  After all, he cackles, "Every town has an Elm Street!  MWA HAHAHAHA!"  Why couldn't Freddy leave Springwood?  Isn't he demon-powered?  Well, yes, but Dream Demons aren't allowed to cross the street without holding the hands of a grown-up.  What?  I can't make up dumb rules, too?  Why does Freddy need to establish more Elm Streets?  He hasn't been limited to Elm Street since Nightmare Part 2! 

This Nightmare has only three kills in it, so there's not a lot to distract from the plot.  On the plus side, one of the deaths shows a head exploding.  Anther has a young Brekin Meyer (mediocre actor and co-creator of the excellent Robot Chicken show) being controlled by Freddy, as Freddy plays a Nintendo-style game console.  Brekin's death isn't noteworthy, really, but Freddy does manage to fit in a Nintendo Power Glove joke, which I rather enjoyed.  There are a few cameos that are noteworthy, too, aside from Alice Cooper.  Being the "final" Freddy movie, Johnny Depp made an appearance, since the first Nightmare was his first movie.  Also, Tom Arnold and his then-wife, Roseanne, popped up as Springwood residents; Roseanne impresses as an obnoxious woman with a loud mouth, showcasing the acting chops of a bar of soap.  Former James Bond villain Yaphet Kotto also has a small role in the movie, but he's basically a plot device, so he didn't add much.

Overall, this is a bad, bad, movie.  It's not as bad as part 5, though.  It sure isn't good, either, but there are some bright spots.  The poor plot manages to make the smart choice to ignore continuity with the preceding films, which allows viewers insight into Kreuger's character.  Not great insight, but more than ever before.  I'll be honest, if it wasn't for the Dream Demons, I would say these character insights weren't terrible.  Yes, this movie has a bunch of characters that you don't care about.  Yes, this movie has a movie monster that is not scary at all, but instead aims at being allegedly funny.  But the saving grace for the film is Freddy himself.  Robert Englund is not a great actor, but you can tell that he loves every second of every scene of every Nightmare.  If this was, indeed, The Final Nightmare, I will admit that he had a pretty good performance in a film otherwise devoid of anything approaching acting.  So, that's one star for Englund, one star for a moderately creative (if terrible) character history for Freddy, and one star for a Nintendo Power Glove joke.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

 

If you didn't know anything about movies, you might assume that, if the fifth film in a franchise is released, it has the daunting task of living up to its predecessors.  Thankfully, horror movie franchises go out of their way to correct us of such thinking.  Why make good sequels when you can just make the first one look even better by comparison?   I think that may have been the director's plan when making The Dream Child.

For those of you who haven't seen all the Nightmare movies (shame on you!), here's what you missed: Freddy Kreuger was a child killer who was arrested, but was not convicted due to a never specified "technicality."  The Elm Street parents didn't like the idea of Kreuger going free, so they burned him alive and hid the remaining evidence of their deed, because mob rules and hiding evidence are the symptoms of truly justified individuals.  It's interesting that his lawyer was not murdered as well; maybe he was, though, and he just litigated the parents... from beyond the grave!!! Somehow, Freddy mysteriously became a creature of the dreamscape and sought revenge against his killers by striking against their children.  At the end of every movie, some kid figures out that their fear gives Freddy his power, so they find some way to banish him forever...or until right before the credits, so you can totally tell that there's going to be another sequel.  

Well, in A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Freddy finally kills off the remaining original Elm Street kids.  End of story, right?  Well, it turns out that Freddy is greedy and wants power, so he continues killing kids in their sleep, although now completely without the justification of the original movie.  The Dream Master ties directly into The Dream Child, with the character of Alice Johnson starring in both.  Alice has the power to bring sleeping people into her dreams, or to enter another person's dreams.  This allows her to fight Freddy with friends; in the last installment, Alice trapped Freddy within herself and basically locked away the key.  If he can't beat her, the Dream Master, he can't escape into the dreamscape and attack others.  It's all just that simple, and by "simple," I of course mean "horribly convoluted."

Alice gets pregnant in The Dream Child's opening sequence.  Presumably (although never explicitly stated), her unborn child has inherited her powers.  That means that, since babies are stupid and weak (I'm paraphrasing the screenwriters here, this is not necessarily my opinion), Freddy can influence or even assume control of the fetus' power to enter the dreams of others.  And since fetuses basically sleep whenever their moms are moving around, that means that Freddy can attack even when Alice is awake.  I'm pretty sure the movie makers would have loved for that last sentence to end in an exclamation mark, but it's all I can do to just mock this movie.

In a Freddy movie, you basically look for two things: creative death scenes and Freddy's terrible jokes.  This movie doesn't do much for the former and the best death scene has a comic book nerd becoming a super hero to fight off Freddy... and getting owned a minute later.  I'm pretty sure that only three people died in this movie, too, which never helps a crappy horror sequel.  On the bright side, the main theme won a 1990 Razzie for worst song:

Bring Your Daughter...To The S...

Now, so far the movie doesn't sound too bad.  Not good, by any means, but not terrible.  But it is terrible.  The script is awkward, like the screenwriters were sixty year-old Soviet political prisoners, locked away since 1946 and had never met a teenager in their lives.  We get to see the implied rape of Freddy's mother, a nun, by "one hundred maniacs."  It's off-screen, but gang rape is rarely in good taste.  We also get to see Freddy as a fetus, looking like a heavily scarred tadpole; not scary, but definitely disturbing.  The kids in the movie are a motley crew, again probably because the writers had never met teenagers but heard that The Breakfast Club was pretty characteristic of social groups.  The movie is terribly edited, too; in order to avoid an X-rating (which, trust me, it never even came close to with the final cut), the director allegedly had to make a lot of last-minute edits.  The problem was that the director (Stephen Hopkins, of Predator 2 fame) never bothered to make sure what was left fit together.  The viewer is left with props popping in and out of scenes with no explanation and bits of character-building taken completely out of context.

Don't get me wrong, I love horror movies for the good and the bad that they can bring to the table.  This one just leaves the "good" table bare and piles loads upon the "bad" one.