Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

 

Director: Rachel Talalay

Screenplay: Michael De Luca

Cast: Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger; Lisa Zane as Maggie Burroughs; Shon Greenblatt as John Doe; Lezlie Deane as Tracy; Ricky Dean Logan as Carlos; Breckin Meyer as Spencer; Yaphet Kotto as Doc

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

Now I'm playing with power!

I wanted to view Freddy's Dead out of context of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. No original film, no other sequels to compare to, just looking at Freddy's Dead as the infamous film of the original horror franchise. Even Part 2, Freddy's Revenge (1985), has had a re-evaluation of its blatant and credible gay subtext. Here, as well, I wanted to look at the one film from the series helmed by a woman, Rachel Talalay, whose involvement with the franchise and New Line Cinema would have made her a great choice to step in to finish off this franchise in any role. At first, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, than Freddy Krueger himself in a parody of the franchise's use of opening credit quotations, it was clear that this would be a goofier and irrelevant send off to a figure who, by this point, became a pop cultural star despite being a fictional child killer. In context, Freddy's Dead alongside being the result of this strange cultural cache the films have, despite that icky paradox, was always bolstered by context for me. When binging the franchise beforehand, where I even have a soft spot for Part 5, it could be defended as the necessary evil to heighten the plot of Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), a fourth wall breaking but serious reinterpretation by series creator Craven, where the sillier sequels are talked of in the film as part of the "real" people becoming involved, with Krueger being a "real" character mythologized in these films to prevent him crossing over into the real world.

It however is established, when Freddy Krueger is introduced parodying the Wicked Witch of the West of The Wizard of Oz (1939), in a witch's hat and riding a broomstick, that this is no longer a scary figure but a comedic antihero. The tone of the comedy in this in its broadness eventually became awful to sit through in its tone. Even with Krueger wearing sunglasses on a beach in part 4, in 1988, you still had some semblance of the horror of the premise, but here there is something really tonally out of place. That this is a bigger budgeted film for horror, for a franchise, has to be factored in. This is worth bringing up here now, as pulling the curtain back, I have reached a point as a horror viewer (and a viewer in general) my tastes have sided to areas like no budget filmmaking and outsider art. Much of this area is cinema many would not defend, but has the virtue that it is regional and of an individual's personal influences, when even their ill thought-out comedy and tonal shifts factor in. Here, even with Talalay involved, I find Freddy's Dead really contrived, and to the point you cannot even argue for personal pleasure, but that it is disjointed and painful.

It also has the awkward factor of trying to sustain this franchise, by having lore newly added that feels overcomplicated. This is set up with a good and morbid idea, as Freddy Krueger has killed every teenager and child in his region baring one, who is sent out into the world, and falling into the presence of Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane), a councillor for troubled youths, who Krueger wants to prey on. What happens does nod to Dream Warriors (1987) with its group of young adults trying to fight Kruger, the third film and the one, I will be honest about, that for all its love in the franchise is for me probably the influence for how Elm Street as a franchise transitioned as it did. That could have however been worked around, especially whilst I view it as one of the less interesting sequels, Dream Warriors was good in context, and this in having the potential to go somewhere, with the likes of Yaphet Kotto in the cast, as a therapist with barely enough time to help the kids nor paid enough, and a morbidly exaggerated take on the town Krueger less childless, a place of deranged adults who wander their fairs and classes out of trauma.

What happens instead is how, baring the 2010 remake, this does become the worse of the franchise as even its dream sequences are not great. Elm Street had one huge virtue over other horror franchises from this time as because of its premise, a killer that attacked victims in their dreams, there were no rules in what you could do as long as the special and practical effects teams could conceive it. Even if the later films had shaky moments, like invisible martial artists and a dog peeing fire to resurrect Krueger in Part 4, that film by itself also had a déjà-vu sequence repeating a scene, or the likes of what Screamin' Mad George, a Japanese practical effects artist, brought to that film with the likes of the roach hotel sequence of someone turning into a cockroach. Here there are some creepy and inspired touches, such as the motif of an entire suburban house falling from out the sky in a reoccurring dream, but you get some terrible content.

By Dream Warriors, still a good film Dokken and all, you started getting the change, despite being a fictional child killer, of Freddy Kruger being cooler than the rest of the cast including the heroes. Thankfully, over the sequels, the films were still concerned with their protagonists, and it just meant Krueger started making wisecracks. Eventually however, alongside this being to blame for so many villains in horror films at this point making jokes, this perceived image of this character has completely taken over here, and even if you had levity in the previous films, here the line is blatantly crossed. Not even having cameos by Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold, a then-married comedic couple from the TV show Roseanne (1988–1997), could be seen as the lower aspect, but how this stops trying to take itself seriously and how this even includes Robert Englund, despite his hardest returning as Krueger, playing a buffoonish version of the character.

Englund does his hundred percent, but for such a good actor in this world of genre cinema, this is beneath him, traumatising a deaf teen by cartoonishly scratching a giant blackboard, or that this film explicitly references the Power Glove, a misguided project by the video game empire Nintendo. The entire video game nightmare really emphasises where Freddy's Dead lost me entirely on this viewing, a reminder that whilst New Line Cinema have done a lot a good in their existence, they are a company whose batting average with the ideas they have can easily split into the cringe worthy. Here it is awful, knowing this was made in a time when the Power Glove, a way to play NES games on a glove, was once a sellable premise, alongside the fact that the sequence emphasises the bad ideas of the whole film, from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, even if a good song, feeling out of place or how the animation in the dream sequence is terrible.

This really presents a slippery slope that, at the time they decide to finish the franchise, they make many really self congratulatory decisions which feel misguided. The plot adds content, as happens in longer horror franchises, which neuters the original premise, as these franchises have an unfortunate habit of trying to explain the evil of their leads, in this case dream devil worms being behind Krueger's abilities to enter dreams. That and the huge tonal issues this film has as a result, such as the tragedy of a character dying contrasted by it being causes, out of a cartoon, of falling on a comically large bed of spikes pushes by Krueger in the middle of a road. Tonally as well, one of the hugest leaps comes in mind of the character Tracey (Lezlie Deane); standoffish, uncomfortable being touched, she is explicitly a victim of sexual abuse from her father, but attempting to use that for her nightmare sequence, unlike one of the earlier films, it really out of place here with the comedy.

It does not feel as a film enough of a spectacle, and even that feels at odds when, whilst for practical effects for the sake of them, this lacks most of the imagination of the previous ones in this series too. What it does end on, even if trying to including a back-story about Krueger's life as a married man, is ultimately throwing the kitchen sink of even a 3D glasses gimmick. This is signposted by a pair inexplicitly onscreen just for the moment, when Lisa Zane puts them on, you the viewer have to put them on, and it feels out of place especially when you cannot watch the film as intended. Back when I watched this within binging the original franchise, Freddy's Dead had a symbolic meaning of worth, that here with the bloat of the franchise, New Nightmare was explicitly about Freddy Krueger being a "real" demon that was kept at bay by horror sequels, giving this meaning. Watched by itself, this is bad, really bad, and it hurts to experience it without the softening blow of the accidental virtue it added to the film afterwards. Even with this having end credits going through the films of before, this definitely was not a great send off to this franchise, having needed a send off which thankfully lived up to something more meaningful.