Elm Street was a quiet little space nestled in the heart of Springfield, until Fred Krueger showed up. Krueger was a known child molester and killer who turned the town into a legend. The parents of the slain children gathered to destroy Krueger. The tortured and set him on fire, killing him in the process, but he returned. Not from the dead, he returned in the dreams of the kids in the town. He haunts and teases them, always controlling what they do as long as they are asleep. The kids in the neighborhood try to keep one another awake, whether it be coffee, staying with one another, or more sadistic was such as cutting themselves, their goal is to stay awake as much as possible. Freddy will get them in their sleep. His unique ways of murder is inventive yet effective. We are delving into the series and the most creative ways Freddy disposes of the teens living on Elm Street.
This is part two of two of “Sweet Dreams: Best of Nightmare on Elm Street”. The final five of the anthology featured Alice Cooper, Rosanne Barr, Iggy Pop, Kelly Leak from “The Bad News Bears” and kids being killed in video games. Only in the horror genre is this acceptable…or maybe professional wrestling.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
The number five was omitted in the promotional material as the movie was billed as ” A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child”. Set one year after the last, Dan and Alice are in a relationship and Freddy is nowhere to be found. Alice is then shown in a shower with a nuns outfit on and the name tag “Amanda Krueger”. She is attacked by lunatics at the asylum, but she wakes up.
Alice graduates from high school and her friends are introduced as Greta, Mark, and Yvonne. Alice dreams again and is next to Amanda in the asylum while Amanda is giving birth to her baby. It is delivered and escapes. The baby runs to Freddy’s clothes and turns into an adult Freddy. Amanda tries to help Alice, but Freddy closes her off from Alice. Alice awakens and is seen at work. Alice calls Dan, but as he goes to see her, he falls asleep and turns into Freddy who slams into a tanker truck and dies. Alice’s friend Mark turns into paper and slashed to bits by Freddy! Awesome! The ending is a crazy mess about Amanda and absorbing souls, ugh.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
This “Nightmare” was a comedy/horror movie that was quite entertaining. This movie is ten years past the last and Alice and her son Jacob have not seen or heard from Freddy during that entire time. They leave Springwood, Ohio and hear that every teenager is dead from murder or suicide. One teen survives, but is dropped from a plane that is about to take off and chased by Freddy and becomes Freddy’s messenger. The boy is found by police and given the name John Doe by Maggie Burroughs, who becomes his caregiver. Tracy, Carlos, and Spencer are introduced to John Doe. They take a van to Springwood to find out about their nightmares. Maggie sends the teens back for safety, but they keep going in circles and can’t leave Springwood. They finally find a house, 1428 Elm Street, Freddy’s old house. Freddy uses Carlos hearing aid to make his head explode by turning it up and scratching his razors over the chalkboard. Spenser is pulled into a video game. Tracy and John try to save him, but they fail. Freddy comes to John in his dream and tells him that his child was a girl and he was using John to get to her. Freddy finally gets inside Maggies head, literally. She returns to the asylum where no one remembers the kids. Doc, the orderly remembers though, because he is free of Freddy’s influence. Doc beats Freddy down and rips a piece of Freddy’s shirt and brings it to the present. That’s the breakthrough of the series. You can bring him to the present and kill him. Maggie enters a dream state and puts on 3-D glasses (the audience is supposed to put on the glasses at the same time). She enters Freddy’s childhood. She sees him as being taunted by children and killing animals. He is then a teenager and kills his stepfather. He learns to control his pain at that time too. He then is a young adult and kills his wife in front of his daughter. Maggie grabs him and tries to bring him to reality, but he disappears. Maggie is told by the unburned Freddy that she was his daughter and that he never meant harm. She begins to fight with him one on one and he says she will die. She gets the best of him and stabs him with his own claws and Tracy hands her a pipe bomb that she shoves in his guts and he explodes into tiny bits. Is he gone forever? There were tons of cameos, but I will surprise you, by not revealing them.
Wes Cravens New Nightmare (1994)
This one has nothing to do with the series. Robert England is Robert England and Heather Langenkamp is Heather Langenkamp. The lines of reality is blurred in this movie. It starts with real director, Wes Craven and the crew behind the scenes in the movie. Everything is reality, or is it? Freddy’s claw starts killing the crew and is headed to Langenkamp’s son, Chase. She screams and goes for him as an earthquake begins. Snapping back to reality, Chase is only scratched by the effects of the earthquake, or was it Freddy? Heather and Robert are guests on a morning talk show to discuss the 10th anniversary of “Nightmare On Elm Street”. Heather is disturbed by England as he comes out as Freddy. Her son Chase is killed in a car crash, but as she identifies his body, there are scratch marks on him. Was it Freddy? Heather tries to get help from Wes Craven ,but he tells her that he doesn’t know much more than her. Heather must fight Freddy to the death in his home turf. She locks him in a over to burn. Heather and her son find a script after killing Freddy that describes the next film.
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
This was the crossover that everyone wanted. It was teased earlier in the Jason movies, but this showdown between the heavyweights of horror was real! This was Robert England’s final appearance as Freddy. R& B singer Kelly Rowland appeared in this film and did a good job of being a victim. Freddy manipulates Jason in hell as he portrays his mother to bring them to the surface. The movie has the same dream and pills episodes that every “Nightmare” film had. It seems the teenagers are all the same through the years. The movie starts in Springwood and ends up in Crystal Lake. Jason and Freddy battle to first kill the teenagers, then each other. Both characters are “killed” by each other and the final survivors. The ending shows Jason walking out of the lake with Freddy’s head in his hands like he won, but Freddy winks and laughs, showing they both survived.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
The newest addition to the Elm street line, Jackie Earle Haley portrays the crazed and demented dream killer, Freddy Krueger. The same plot is pretty much used in this one as the first with Nancy being the heroine. The cool thing about this remake was the creepiness factor was full on with Haley. He is a little shorter than England, but his make-up was closer to an actual burn victim and his voice was harsh and raspy. He moved more creepier too. Robert England played a killer with a comedy twist, but Haley was a straight killer. Freddy isn’t killed in this reboot, so we may see another in the works. “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was a successful line of horror films and the premise was fresh at the beginning. After so many though, things started to become repetitive and predictable. Sometimes enough is enough and too much can be a bad thing.
You might also like Best of Nightmare on Elm Street Part 1.
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