A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

I haven't watched this movie since I was a younger lad in my middle school years. Back then my friends and I would stay at each others houses and rent scary movies to watch, since my parents would never allow that sort of thing. But around every Halloween time we always played Freddy vs Jason or Freddy vs Michael Myers or a combination of every big slasher villain that was well known versus each other in battle, and this was before the actual film Freddy vs Jason came out. Ironically, even though that film has a hell of a lot to do with Freddy it is not included in the nice blu ray box set, but I guess that is for good reason.

Having seen a lot of the later movies in the Nightmare series before watching the other ones, I found this one on re-watch to be a really joyful experience. It had the best of everything I loved about the series, from the fun to the scares, and the plot was pretty atypical for a slasher for that time period.

The film begins with our heroine, Kristen, mid-dream outside of the Thompson house which has served--and will continue to serve--as the series' anchor. She chases a girl into the home and meets Freddy. Ol' Fred is after the last of the Elm Street Children, a specific group of kids who are kin to the townsfolk that burned Freddy alive, and he's managed to lure them to a psychiatric facility.

This is a smart script, folks. For a horror movie with such a concept as dream slaying to put kids into a psychiatric facility that will try to administer them sleeping pills to help them conquer their anxiety is fucking smart. The adults who run this facility don't give a damn about the ramblings of a scary man haunting their dreams. They take the naturalist approach to try and explain this in as down-to-earth fashion as possible. These kids aren't actually being dream-stalked, they just need to be medicated and put to sleep! Fucking gold, Wes Craven. I know you helped write this. The brilliant writing in this movie heightens the tension, because as a viewer you understand what is going on and these kids are all likable enough to where you really don't want them to meet their eventual deaths.

Of course, the film's plot gets even more interesting when it is discovered that each of these children can manipulate their dreams in order to fight Freddy off. So basically they are like super-humans in their sleep with interesting abilities. This might sound stupid to some people, but they really made it work in the movie. 

And the kills? The premise of this series once again shines out its genius, as it ensures that each kill is ridiculously interesting and gory. What the audience sees is what the kids and Freddy are dreaming, and in a dream, anything can happen. This means that you don't have to rely on more tits or overkill-gore to make these movies interesting. Their very premise allows them more freedoms, and that's why the Nightmare series comes out as the ultimate champ of the eighties/early-nineties slasher arms race.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Nancy and her dad are back! Fantastic performers Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon reprise their roles from the first film and work out all the issues that were left hanging. As a matter of fact, this film wraps up the original trilogy of films quite nicely until the fourth kind of destroys that little support structure and brings the house down.

This movie is well worth a watch if you are a fan of the original. Hell, its fair to give them all a watch, because everyone is different and has different tastes, but still. This one is a lot of fun. It gets flack from online reviewers as the first film to make Freddy silly, but I didn't see that as much. Freddy is more terrifying than ever, and the Freddy worm scene is one of his scariest moments for me. He does have what people call one-liners, but they are not really "haha, he said THAT!?" sort of lines like they are in the next couple of films. And they're not really funny. It's like the devil making fun of all your worst traits kind of humor.

I give A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors an A-. It's very nature as a sequel gets it knocked down from an A+, but that doesn't mean anything towards the actual quality of the movie. Peace out.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

This movie was weird. It was weird in a way that when it was good, it was pretty good, and when it was bad, it was pretty bad.

I don't really have too many tiny commentary to make about his film. This was the first time I'd seen it besides bits and pieces on television, and while I had fun when the movie is good, towards the end there were some choices made that I thought were kind of odd.

For one, let's talk about how this film ties into the first. It being a sequel it has to connect back to the first in some fashion. For starters, the main character, Jesse, and his family have moved into the Thompson house on Elm Street. I can't recall off the top of my head if the film gives reference to the fates of the characters from the first, Nancy included, but it makes reference to some aspects of the first film.

Freddy is still around of course, but apparently he can't kill people on his own power anymore. Presumably, we can connect this to the fact that Nancy weakened him in the last movie (defeated him as well) by turning her back on him and not giving into her fear. So Freddy decides to target Jesse, not to kill him, but to corral him into killing people for him. Now, as to how this helps Freddy at all isn't really elaborated upon. Since the series hasn't introduced the remaining Elm Street kids into the picture, we can assume that at this point that Freddy wasn't trying to get Jesse to eliminate them for him. There is kind of an answer to this question, but that will come a little later into the movie. First, let's get back to the set up.

So poor, unfortunate Jesse has just moved into a new town and a new school, and right off the bat he has to deal with a nice girl who has a crush on him, and a dead serial killer dream manipulator who wants him to kill people.

The Temptation of Jesse moments are where this film really shines. The kills are effective enough to keep audience interest, but its the moments that Freddy is mind fucking Jesse that the movie REALLY shines. There's a fantastic scene wherein Freddy literally rips himself out of Jesse's body in order to kill Jesse's new best friend Grady. The SFX are fantastically done, and the nightmarish imagery immersive.

Jesse has the unfortunate luck to keep discovering himself near the site of murder crimes that he has dreamed about, wearing Freddy's glove that he found in the basement. This is where Freddy's motives become clear. He doesn't want Jesse to just kill for him. He wants Jesse to surrender him his body so that he (Freddy) can continue his legacy of killing kids and teens. I guess people like to think that this was dumb, but given the fact that the extent of Freddy's powers at this point hadn't been elaborated upon and the fact of all the shit he can do in the later sequels, this shouldn't be a point against the movie like I always see it is on message boards and the like.

Where the film ultimately fails is the ending. So far, it had done a decent enough job as a Nightmare sequel, and you really feel sorry for Jesse as he is psychologically tormented. But when Freddy takes control of Jesse's body near the end of the movie, its not just Jesse running around with the glove on and a crazy expression on his face. No. It's literally just Freddy.

This is why this is a bad thing: why would taking over someones body make them look like Freddy? It doesn't REALLY make a whole lot of sense, but above all Freddy just running around a pool of screaming idiotic teenagers like he is some spooky mascot at a Halloween event is just the movie going out of its way to ruin the terrifying monster its been building up this whole time. And the fact that SO many people see Freddy who don't get killed off? You'd think the whole town ought to know by the next few films (and I actually partly also blame the next few films for not elaborating on this. I mean, even adults see him, for goodness sakes).

After this, the movie settles back down and is okay. Lisa rescues Jesse from inside Freddy by appealing to Jesse's heart, and he's able to regain control of his body as Freddy disintegrates from all the love. There's a happy en--oh, no wait. Girl was stabbed through the chest on the bus at the end. Well, maybe next time.

This film was decent. But the climax really undermines the rest of the film in a bad way. Apparently there's some homosexual subtext as well. I guess I could see where they are coming from but it kind of seems like they are demonizing it in a way. So Jesse is struggling with his own sexuality, trying not to let it bubble to the surface? Are you saying homosexuality is a bad thing? I'm sure that would offend someone who is openly gay, or maybe not. Maybe the point is not that its bad, but that the movie is trying to give its audience a look into the mind of someone struggling to out themselves. Maybe the movie accurately reflects what it is like for someone who is unsure of just how to express what is inside of them. Regardless, the movie could have done better with a few of its elements. Freddy is still terrifying here until the end, and the nightmare imagery is still fantastic, so that's that.

I give A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge a C+. Better luck next time, Fred. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Thinking back on it, it's kind of ironic how the first Nightmare on Elm Street film I watched was technically the last. I grew up in a Christian home, and I still profess to be a Christian, but my mother was the kind of person who didn't really allow the stuff of the occult into our home. One day I was watching Psycho III on television and my mother wouldn't let me watch anymore after she caught me pretending to be Norman Bates, stabbing people left and right. So I never got the opportunity to rent horror movies and enjoy them in that manner.

Another point of irony is that I always caught horror movies on the television during AMC's Halloween run. One night, I was lucky enough to catch Freddy's Dead playing on the channel, and I got a chance to watch it from beginning to end, edited for TV of course.  I remember it being a lot of fun back then, but even know it was my first time seeing an actual Nightmare film, I've known all about Freddy from when I was a kid.

Years later, I nabbed the opportunity to see the original, and I was dazzled by how great it actually was. Regardless of what horror fans of old think, these films really do have a place in the pantheon, next to the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s and the atomic creations of the '50s, to the more down to earth, frightening next door neighbor types of the '60s, including Peeping Tom, Psycho, and Night of the Hunter. Freddy is a horror icon, and his terror will survive for years to come.

But lets REALLY dig in. A Nightmare on Elm Street concerns Tina--oh wait she's dead, never mind. I forget this is a Craven film. He always makes you think that the main character is Person A, but then that person dies early and you're left with Person B. In this case, Person B is Nancy. Nancy is an all around nice girl. Maybe she's as promiscuous as Tina, but she's never really given a chance to let her sexuality shine when she is pushed into such stressful circumstances. You see, her friends are dying one by one, killed in their sleep by a man they've all seen in their dreams. And they don't really know why its happening.

And of course, they all die in horribly painful, brutal ways. You see, Freddy gets his powers from their fear, so instead of just killing them out right, he stalks them in their dreams, much like how Jason or Michael would spend the first 45 minutes of each film stalking their films in real life (Craven taking the tried and true formula and evolving it to suit his needs.) He gives them little slashes of pain now and then, and then when he makes them feel absolutely powerless to stop him, he kills them in the most bloody way imaginable. He guts Tina and drags her across the ceiling, he suffocates and breaks the neck of Rod while he is in jail for Tina's murder. He sucks Glenn into his bed, does God knows what to him in there and spits out ALL of his blood...

It's hard to technically "review" a film I've seen before, many times. I was tempted to go off the beaten path and talk about some deep ass shit, but this is a review, and I am planning on going deeper into the films as a whole after I review them all individually.

I give A Nightmare on Elm Street an A+. It's a classic. If you haven't seen it and you enjoy horror movies you've got issues.

I've been having Nightmares

From the moment I opened my wife's Christmas present this past Christmas Eve, I realized I was dreaming. We decided to open up our gifts on the evening of Christmas Eve instead of the next morning, because I had to be at work early. The gift was wrapped in gold, if I recall correctly, and was shaped like a blu-ray. I just couldn't quite figure out what it was.

It turns out that my wife is a frickin' evil genius. The gift was something I wasn't really expecting, but which I could appreciate very much: My wife had bought for me the complete Nightmare on Elm Street Collection. I'd practically watched the whole series before, more or less. I've seen the first film many times, and I'd seen the third, Freddy's Dead, and New Nightmare, and bits and pieces of Freddy's Revenge, but to have them all to watch and enjoy at any moment was almost a child hood dream come true.

I know I always go into great detail about those precious moments, when, as a kid, I would accompany my mother to the grocery store where they had a movie rental in the center. While she shopped for her food I always rushed to the rentals to look at horror movies. It was almost like pornography for me, because I had to make sure for some reason no one in my family knew what I was looking at, lest I get into trouble. Looking around making sure I'm not watched, I would peruse the different horror movies on the shelf, seeing movies that would actually haunt me for the rest of my days until fairly recently: Return to Horror High, the many Friday the 13th movies, Night of the Living Dead and its two sequels (since Land hadn't been released yet) and of course, Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

The three movie series that made up the biggest parts of my horror movie Muse were the Halloween series, the Nightmare series, and the Friday the 13th series. I was fascinated with the different movies, and in my head I always imagined that they got scarier and scarier and more mind-bogglingly terrifying as they went along. Of course, what I realize now is that some movies can actually be quite hard to swallow in terms of their subpar quality, and indeed past a certain point these series kind of fell from their high mountains.

However, the one that is the most consisten in terms of actual good quality are the Nightmare films. Their sequences of dreams and Freddy's nightmare land that makes an appearance in almost every installment is still kind of terrifying despite the fact that the movies get a little bit cheesier as they go along. It's the imagery, and not Freddy's countenance that carry the sequels as they continue. Despite his character becoming less frightening, his mind is still a terrifying place where he puts each of his victims, and the moments where he shares with the horrified characters the souls of those he has imprisoned in torment forever are still very frightening.

Jesus, this is just an introduction and its gone on far too long. Anyway, the point of all this is that I have committed to sitting down and watching the series in order over the next couple of nights. I've watched through the third installment, so I'm going to try to write up some thoughts on the films for now and then continue my watch, but I'm having a blast so far, and when I get to talking about each movie individually I'll be able to better bring up some key talking points I want to discuss.

I hope that you'll look forward to: Inception: The Horror Series.