A Nightmare on Elm Street countdown, day 1: Freddy's dead, and I don't feel so good myself.

[yendi]

We're not kicking off the series with the well-intentioned, but miserable, second movie. No, bad as that was, little compares to the awful combination of mediocre kills, a plot that resembles a bad spy movie more than a horror flick, and the wretched acting found in the attempt to really, truly end the series known as A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 6: Freddy's Dead.

Concept: Freddy has killed his way through Springwood, and is down to the final kid, who might just be his own progeny (because you know how Freddy was all about the hotties when he was alive, and had a woman in every port). Apparently, Freddy's trapped in this one-kid town, unless he magically rides out on the dreams of a Springwood resident. Why would real-world geography in any way affect a dream-master's ability to find victims? Well, um, shut up! Stop making fun of the screenwriters, who were paid at least two bunches of shiny bananas for this script. And it shows.

The one surviving kid escapes town and, naturally, ends up at a home for wayward teen victims. While there, he manages to catch the eye of Maggie Burroughs, the hottest and least believable person with "Dr." before her name this side of Christmas Jones. She also has been having weird dreams, but dismisses them. Hottie Doctor and Kid Krueger head back to Springwood to face off against Freddie, while three annoying victims stow away in the van (security at the home for victims is lax, which is why it's a home for victims, not survivors). After a random meeting with Rosseane Barr and Tom Arnold (truly the scariest moment in this movie), our heroes enter Freddy's House of Doom, and the whacking commences. Soon, we discover, much to Kid Krueger's dismay, that Freddy's child is actually Hottie Doctor, and the Kid formerly known as Kid Krueger dreams his last dream. Thanks to his daughter's magical powers of father-carrying, or whatever, Freddy has now escaped. Oh noes! Will all the world's kids now dream of Freddy and die horribly gimmicky deaths? Only time, and the final 45 minutes of the movie, will tell.

Body Count: Three. The whole concept is that Freddy's run out of victims, after all.

Really bad kills:. Two. First, we have Carlos, who wears a hearing aid, and therefore has to die in a hearing-related way. Freddie gives him an extra-strength dream hearing aid, runs his claws over a chalkboard, and Boom! It's sillier than it sounds. But not as silly as the death of Spencer. Spencer gets sucked in a cut-rate Nintendo world, where he's tossed around, forced to jump all through the house, and eventually killed by Freddy while wearing a version of the old Nintendo Power Glove. The graphics were bad, even for the times, and the concept is just lame. It's pretty much a straight rip-off of the much better comic-book kill from the previous movie.

Really Good Kills: One. That would be our John Doe/Kid Krueger. In a dream, he's falling, but has a parachute. Then Freddy not only cuts the chute, but wheels a bed of spikes under the poor kid, so instead of just dying by hitting the ground, he also gets impaled. Gotta love it.

Freddy's quips: Although this movie tries to give Freddy some good lines, he really only gets one: Upon being told that he's now no longer in Spingwood, he says, "Every town has an Elm Street." Runner-up is Freddy's final line. Just as he's about to meet his doom at his daughter's hands, he turns to the camera and mutters, "kids."

Celebrities: Our heroine is portrayed by Lisa Zane, best known for sharing parents with Billy Zane, and bodily fluids with Heath Ledger. Spencer, our videogaming victim, is recognizable as TV's Breckin Meyer, who should soon vanish from the public eye once his seventeenth movie in a row bombs. "Doc" at the clinic is played by Mr. Big himself, Yaphet Kotto. And we get silly cameos from Johnny Depp, Alice Cooper, Roseanne Barr, and Tom Arnold.

Denouement: In a shocking twist unheard of since the first movie, Freddie is dreamed in the real world, where he is killed with ease. Yawn. But wait! They're using 3D special effects! How cool is that? (Hint: Not very.).

Miscellany: Director Rachel Talalay would go on to give us Tank Girl, which I adore, but everyone else hates. The screenplay itself was written by Michael De Luca, who also wrote The Lawnmower Man and Judge Dredd. A track record like that speaks for itself.

In terms of Freddy mythology, this completes the picture of his life, informing us of his wife and daughter, but it feels like a tacked-on backstory. In fact, instead of helping to explain or flesh out his character, it simply muddles up the story of his life.

Overall: This is a by-the-numbers movie produced by folks who can't count past three. We get gimmicks (3D! Roseanne!), derivative murders, crappy continuity, and some of the worst acting in the series. Avoid this movie.

Comments

[jmspencer.livejournal.com]

Ashamed as I am to admit it, until 2 years ago, this was the ONLY installment of the series I had seen. I've now added the first movie and New Nightmare to the list (both excellent, in my opinion... I look forward to seeing what you have to say about them), as well as FvJ.

I remember the 3D bits as being kind of cool... but then again, the movie was released just shy of 2 weeks prior to my 10th birthday, so really, I wasn't in much of a position to make informed decisions on the matter.

Now... I may be confusing it with another movie, but I seem to recall Freedy not being so much killed with "ease" as he is with "a pipe bomb pushed into his chest before being detonated"

[fujerica.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with your assessment. The plot for #2 actually had some unique elements, some that COULD have worked, but the execution sucked. The plot for #6... well.. it wasn't even pretending to be scary any more. I amde it through half of it before just turning it off.And for the record, I liked Tank Girl.

Don't forget that Johnny Depp also appeared in the first film -- makes me wonder if he really hadn't had enough.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I just saw the sixth movie as a Kafka-esque reinterpretation of the Freddy Krueger mythos.

Of course I was comparing it to the deadly dull fourth and fifth installments.

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

tank girl is one of the funnest guilty pleasures ever.

[aurora-lamour.livejournal.com]

I do often use the line "every town has an Elm Street" though.

[christianaellis.livejournal.com]

See, I'll agree that this was certainly one of the least of the series, but I came to these films relatively late in life, (really relatively, because I'm only 27 now,) and I never really found ANY of them to be 'actually' scary.

As a result, my primary enjoyment of these films has always been to laugh at the cheese, with the occasional quality kill or whatever as a bonus. So I'm not inclined to be as hard on this one as you are. Still, agreed, it's one of the worst of the series by any standard.

[jhim.livejournal.com]

Bravo. I was totally expect the second movie to be the first on your (s)hit parade, but yeah... this one really bit.

[ersatzinsomnia.livejournal.com]

Tank Girl, which I adore, but everyone else hates

Not everyone... I love it too, in all it's wacky weirdness. I always thought of it as "Jim Henson collides with the Road Warrior".

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

I love Tank Girl in all her incarnations. Probably wouldn't love the film if I'd read the graphic novels first, but hey, I've always been a backward child.;)

Gessi

[lordrexfear.livejournal.com]

Worse 3D ever...and well written overview, cept for one bit.

What the fuck are you takling about concerning Breckin Meyer? His top films all MORE than exceeded sales and reached pay off way over budget.

Garfield, Herbie, Road Trip, Go, Rat Race, not to mention he's a regular on Robot Chicken.

Name the bombs here? Unless you mean bombs in terms of quality. Which in that you'd be wrong too. Garfield and Herbie are better than they have any right to be!

[belgatherial.livejournal.com]

Director Rachel Talalay would go on to give us Tank Girl, which I adore, but everyone else hates.

I love it too!!!

[robyn-ma.livejournal.com]

'Director Rachel Talalay would go on to give us Tank Girl, which I adore, but everyone else hates.'

I'll just add my voice to the numerous refutations of that statement. Tank Girl needs prompt re-evaluation. It's great fun, and brilliantly set-designed by future director Catherine Hardwick.

And, hey, Talalay also produced two John Waters flicks. She also directed an episode of Band of Gold, an addictive British miniseries shown on HBO in the summer of '95, featuring a really young Samantha Morton. There's a cool interview with her here (http://nightmareonelmstreetfilms.com/nightmareinterviewsrachel.html), wherein among other things she talks about the difficulties of adapting Preacher to the big screen. Apparently she'd been involved with all the Nightmare flicks from the beginning, in one way or another.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

I too loved tank girl, but then again, I was tank girl.

[jennasuze.livejournal.com]

I hate horror movies, particularly those of the serial variety, yet still find these reviews of yours very entertaining. It's like getting the inside scoop on the stuff everyone else knows without actually having to watch them!

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Rachel Talalay rocks! Though I didn't like Tank Girl. And it's not that I didn't respect it as a movie. I'm sure it was very nice. It was me. I just wasn't ready for that sort of movie or something. We parted amicably.

You totally left out the part about the three dream demons, which were later used in the comic book.

I'm reading this review second instead of first, since I somehow missed this one earlier. So again I must point out how interesting it is that we latch on to different points of the plot. I had no problem thinking that with the years since part 5, Freddy found a way to break free of Hell, or his mother's prison, or whatever, and expanded his realm of power to encompass all of Springwood...and was stuck there.

The Freddy mythology fascinates me. There's such potential for a really good supernatural urban fantasy story.

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

"Now you're playing with power!" Best Freddy line ever. Or best Freddy appropriation of a corporate slogan.