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One of the things that differentiates the Nightmare films from the Halloween and Friday the 13th ones is that there are fewer bad films in the series. I'm sure that today's film is someone's favorite; it's certainly a damned fun movie, and has some of my favorite characters. It's just not as good as the three remaining films in our countdown. We're looking at A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: The Dream Master.
Concept: After being killed for good in the last movie, Freddy returns when, in a dream, Kincaid's dog pees fire on the consecrated ground in which Freddy was buried. Naturally, this allows Freddy to return, teaching us the valuable lesson that dogs who pee fire can cause the death of their owners. Kincaid learns this lesson too late, as do the other survivors of the last movie. As Kristen's about to die, she manages to transfer her "call people into dreams" power to her friend Alice. This means that Freddy now has a whole new group of classmates to pick off, and he starts to do so. Will Alice and her friends manage to kill Freddy for good this time? Let's find out.
Kills: Six.
Really Bad Kills: None.
Really Good Kills: After the stabbing of Kincaid (which was routine, although I liked the character a lot), Freddy uses Joey's horndog weakness to stab and kill him in his waterbed, and then quickly dispatches Kristen in the furnace (which is just a horrible way to go, imho).
Freddy's first kill amongst the new bunch is poor, geeky Sheila, an asthmatic who falls asleep in class, and gets the kiss of death from Freddy, who sucks the life right out of her.
Next, Alice's brother Rick, a martial artist, is assaulted by an invisible Freddy in a dream. Like all great martial artists, however, Rick is capable of merely sensing where his opponent is, and manages to kick Freddy's ass. Until Freddy changes the rules, that is. One flying metal glove, and Rick is impaled.
Finally, there's Debbie, who dies one of the most memorable deaths in the series. While doing bench presses, the fitness freak micronaps for a second, and there's Freddy, offering to spot her. However, he pushes down on the bar, causing Debbie's arms to start splintering. Instead of just breaking, however, the bones morph into bug legs, and Debbie (who has already been established as being afraid of insects) starts to morph into a cockroach. As she morphs, she gets stuck to the floor, and the screen pulls back to show Freddy holding a roach motel. He squeezes his fist, and Debbie gets squashed.
Freddy's Quips: That last scene features one of Freddy's best commercial endorsements, as he shouts, "You can check in, but you can't check out." He gets good quips for most of the other kills, too. After stuffing Joey into his own waterbed, he asks, "How's this for a wet dream?" And before killing Sheila, he goes (with typical Freddy style), "Wanna suck face?" You just know he was a stud in high school.
Notable Celebrities: None, really. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment with Linnea Quigley. But that's it.
Denouement: After failing to save Debbie, Alice and Dan chase Freddy down at a dream church, where, after the usual series of confrontations, Alice figures out that the proper way to beat Freddy is to show him a mirror, because evil can't stand looking at itself, naturally. So she shows him a mirror, Freddysees a version of himself with a goatee sees the evil in his soul, and explodes, freeing the good souls he'd trapped. The end. But wait; could that be a reflection of Freddy we see in a fountain at the end? Nope. All is well, and Freddy has been eradicated from the world for good this time.
Miscellany: Director Renny Harlin would go on to make some fun movies, like Deep Blue Sea and Die Hard 2, and some stuff that blows, like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Exorcist: The Beginning. The screenplay was written by the Wheat Brothers (who wrote some awful movies, but also gave us Pitch Black) and Brian Helgeland, who would go on to write teh screenplays for LA Confidential, Man on Fire, and Mystic River (the less said about the movies he's actually directed, the better).
Overall: This is, at its core, a damned fine slasher movie. It's well-done, it's got some good characters, and it's certainly one I enjoy. But it could have been so much more. We get no attempt at adding any sort of knowledge to the Freddy mythos, Add to that a beginning that just screams, "hey, we have no idea to get Freddy back after that last movie, so we're using a pissing dog," and an ending that isn't much better, and it's hard to elevate this flick past the three we'll look at later this week. Still, it's a damned fun movie, featuring some of my favorite characters in the entire series and some damned sharp dialogue.
Concept: After being killed for good in the last movie, Freddy returns when, in a dream, Kincaid's dog pees fire on the consecrated ground in which Freddy was buried. Naturally, this allows Freddy to return, teaching us the valuable lesson that dogs who pee fire can cause the death of their owners. Kincaid learns this lesson too late, as do the other survivors of the last movie. As Kristen's about to die, she manages to transfer her "call people into dreams" power to her friend Alice. This means that Freddy now has a whole new group of classmates to pick off, and he starts to do so. Will Alice and her friends manage to kill Freddy for good this time? Let's find out.
Kills: Six.
Really Bad Kills: None.
Really Good Kills: After the stabbing of Kincaid (which was routine, although I liked the character a lot), Freddy uses Joey's horndog weakness to stab and kill him in his waterbed, and then quickly dispatches Kristen in the furnace (which is just a horrible way to go, imho).
Freddy's first kill amongst the new bunch is poor, geeky Sheila, an asthmatic who falls asleep in class, and gets the kiss of death from Freddy, who sucks the life right out of her.
Next, Alice's brother Rick, a martial artist, is assaulted by an invisible Freddy in a dream. Like all great martial artists, however, Rick is capable of merely sensing where his opponent is, and manages to kick Freddy's ass. Until Freddy changes the rules, that is. One flying metal glove, and Rick is impaled.
Finally, there's Debbie, who dies one of the most memorable deaths in the series. While doing bench presses, the fitness freak micronaps for a second, and there's Freddy, offering to spot her. However, he pushes down on the bar, causing Debbie's arms to start splintering. Instead of just breaking, however, the bones morph into bug legs, and Debbie (who has already been established as being afraid of insects) starts to morph into a cockroach. As she morphs, she gets stuck to the floor, and the screen pulls back to show Freddy holding a roach motel. He squeezes his fist, and Debbie gets squashed.
Freddy's Quips: That last scene features one of Freddy's best commercial endorsements, as he shouts, "You can check in, but you can't check out." He gets good quips for most of the other kills, too. After stuffing Joey into his own waterbed, he asks, "How's this for a wet dream?" And before killing Sheila, he goes (with typical Freddy style), "Wanna suck face?" You just know he was a stud in high school.
Notable Celebrities: None, really. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment with Linnea Quigley. But that's it.
Denouement: After failing to save Debbie, Alice and Dan chase Freddy down at a dream church, where, after the usual series of confrontations, Alice figures out that the proper way to beat Freddy is to show him a mirror, because evil can't stand looking at itself, naturally. So she shows him a mirror, Freddy
Miscellany: Director Renny Harlin would go on to make some fun movies, like Deep Blue Sea and Die Hard 2, and some stuff that blows, like The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Exorcist: The Beginning. The screenplay was written by the Wheat Brothers (who wrote some awful movies, but also gave us Pitch Black) and Brian Helgeland, who would go on to write teh screenplays for LA Confidential, Man on Fire, and Mystic River (the less said about the movies he's actually directed, the better).
Overall: This is, at its core, a damned fine slasher movie. It's well-done, it's got some good characters, and it's certainly one I enjoy. But it could have been so much more. We get no attempt at adding any sort of knowledge to the Freddy mythos, Add to that a beginning that just screams, "hey, we have no idea to get Freddy back after that last movie, so we're using a pissing dog," and an ending that isn't much better, and it's hard to elevate this flick past the three we'll look at later this week. Still, it's a damned fun movie, featuring some of my favorite characters in the entire series and some damned sharp dialogue.