"How sweet, fresh meat." - Freddy
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) is another interesting installment in the series. It brings back three recurring characters, Kristen (Tuesday Knight), Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Easemen). Now if you're going into this movie to see Patricia Arquette, you're out of luck. There has been an actress change for the Kristen character. They had to recast her, because according to rumor, the studio would not pay Patricia Arquette the money that her agent asked for. Honestly, I think it mostly had to do with the intense working environment she had endured during the last film. Regardless, we have new characters. There is the main protagonist, Alice (Lisa Wilcox), her "supposed to be" twin brother Rick (Andras Jones), the hot jock Dan (Danny Hassel), the nerd Sheila (Toy Newark) and the tough girl Debbie (Brook Theiss). They are an interesting cast and are pretty convincing in their perspective roles. It seems a little awkward with the OG cast returning, because it's not the same actress playing Kristen as the last film; however it does seem fitting. Now to get a bit of the plot out of the way, Kristen is still stuck in Freddy's Universe waiting his return. She refuses to believe that he's gone for good; mean while Kincaid and Joey are trying to move on with their lives instead of living in the past. As you you slowly see that she was right, and Freddy was going to make his return.
As mentioned in the previous installment, each character has a different type of skill. Kincaid has strength, Joey finds his voice (still bizarre) and Kristen has the ability to pull people into her dreams. The new "Final Girl," Alice, begins to obtain this power along with the others from her friends as Freddy takes them away one by one. This is both an interesting concept and a bizarre one to grasp. For this one, it appears they tried to take a supernatural approach which works yet it doesn’t work at the same time.
Each death is set up in such a way that you know how each character will die. Debbie is afraid of bugs. So later in the film, she gets turned into a bug. Sheila has chronic/severe asthma, so Freddy gives her an asthma attack. And finally, Rick, who you see practicing karate earlier in the film, and that’s exactly how he dies, via Karate Kid style.
Now Rick's death is pretty interesting as it went through many different phases.
First he was supposed to survive the movie; which would have made a lot more sense. However, they already filmed his "death set up" scene and his funeral so they had to kill off. Personally, I think they should have just cut that scene all together and had three survives, but I digress. So they have to kill Rick. Now in the early days of filming, Rick was supposed to be in an elevator, where the floor drops and he just falls into the depths of hell. However, they didn’t feel it was a fitting enough, because they already set up that he was a "karate master". So he was sent to Karate School, but in the end, they just had him fake which looks really cheesy. Also interesting little fact about his death scene. The actor who plays Rick, had appendix surgery a week prior to shooting that fight with shadow Freddy. Well, he ended up ripping his stitches during the scene, he was bleeding and had to go to the hospital. So yeah. This goes to show hard this actor went to make the scene look real and legit. A final interesting fact is that Rick is the ONLY character who gets killed by "invisible Freddy" so it's just Freddy's glove that kills him. The reason for this is because it's supposed to be the whole Karate thing and being so quick to fight, or something like that. I just find it fascinating that so much information could be found on just one scene. It makes you think that they put a lot of thought and time into creating this scene, because it is iconic and symbolistic due to the fact that it is Alice's "Twin" brother.
While these characters are fitting for their roles and there is a sort of sympathy for them; I still I believe that they should have had at least one of the 3 OG characters survive until the end, like Nancy in Part 3. But nope, they were killed off within the first 25 minutes of the movie. Also you don’t get to time fully understanding the new characters and see them develop; which makes no sense. The reason Dream Warriors was so successful is because they brought back a main character from the original film, Nancy Thompson. Like for example, it would have made sense for Kristen to be the soul surviver and have the final showdown with Freddy instead of Alice. The whole point of these kids from the 3rd installment was due to the fact that their parents were the reason Freddy was burned. But then again, wasn't it Nancy's mother who was involved in killing Freddy back in the first film? Anyway, so without those kids, Freddy has no reason to get revenge or anything like that; but regardless, Alice is a good foe for Freddy. She does has the same aspects as Nancy and refuses to let him take her down.
Now Renny Harlin is a really great director. After this film, he went on to director Die Hard 2 and a few other famous films. He did a great job directing, I just felt this movie had a few plot holes as well as some minor issues. The characters are disposal, and no original characters from the 3rd film survive until the end. However, the special effects in this movie are phenomenal. My favorite is the pizza with all the faces on it, simply because it’s it just works. Also Debbie’s transformation to a bug is probably one of the grossest scenes I’ve seen. I thought The Thing was gross, until I saw this scene!! It's always shocking to see how many different sequences it took to make this happen. Each time a body part fell off her was a different effect and sequence. Crazy.
This movie does have some cheesy moments and some of the special effects don’t really look good, but regardless for an 80s horror film, it works. This movie does NOT take itself too seriously, because Freddy’s one liners are hilarious. He’s nothing like Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. He just messes with your mind on a psychological level before he kills you. This is why I love Freddy.
All in all, this was a good installment in the series. It was a financial success and a success with the fans. It is regarded as one of the best sequels. I give it a stamp of approval and I recommend you check it out!!
IMDB: 5.7/10 || Rotten Tomatoes: 55%
Coming up next is The Dream Child; which is not my favorite. It’s probably going to be a very short blog, because there is literally nothing to say about it.
Sleep Tight,
A Nightmare on Movie Night
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