⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Freddy is back and he’s stalking the dreams of a batch of Elm Street youngsters currently residing in the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. Teenage Kristen (Patricia Arquette who has never not been super cute) has found herself there following a nightmare encounter with the beloved child-murdering crispy coot. Ya see, she woke up with a sliced wrist looking a whole lot like a suicide attempt. The facility she now calls home specializes in sleep disorders and the batch of youths she now calls housemates are all suffering nighttime terrors thanks to the razor-gloved demon called Freddy Krueger (Englund). It ain’t easy to convince the staff that a mutual boogeyman is haunting their dreams because adults are just so dang lame. A rising bodycount paints a picture of hopelessness but in comes a dream researcher who knows what she’s talking about (Heather Langenkamp) with an eventual plan to battle the monster she’s well-aware of and end his reign of terror for good. It’ll be a lot easier because Kristen conveniently has the power to pull others into her dreams, which means she won’t be having to make a go of saving the children of Elm Street on her lonesome. A superior followup to the original dismisses a bunch of the homophobic Part 2 and let’s loose with a wild slice of slasher insanity that fully understands how much fun you can have when your boogeyman isn’t weighed down by reality. It all feels like the series finally realized its potential and a returning Craven on the screenplay/EP front may have had something to do with that. Semi-useful adults include a kind but naive doctor (Craig Wasson) who seems to be the only one who can see an elderly nun creeping around, a stern department head, a sarcastic yet sympathetic orderly (Laurence Fishburne) and a returning John fuckin’ Saxon as Nancy’s now alcoholic father. The special effects budget gets some breathing room, Freddy’s past gets a light shined on it, a junkyard encounter with Freddy’s Harryhausen-esque skeleton plays into the climax and Langenkamp’s hair is the best it’s ever looked.
⭐️⭐️1/2
A troubled production leads to diminishing returns in this final entry to the Maniac Cop series with Lustig and Cohen returning (kind of) behind the camera (Lustig’s cut came in at 51 minutes as he walked out on the film and Cohen refused to rewrite his script without getting paid by the producers that wanted something, mainly a returning Davi and not an African American lead… just real salt of the earth people these producers) along with Z’Dar as resurrected killer cop Matt Cordell and Davi as Detective Sean McKinney who believed the nightmare to be over after clearing Cordell’s name of his original crimes. Fat chance. A voodoo priest brings the corpse back not long after he’s finally laid to rest (seemingly just for the hell of it… I mean, the houngan talks a lot but he skips around the point like a teacher at Hogwarts explaining someone’s destiny) and the cop that’s a pain in the ass to stop is walking around and terrorizing the streets of New York once again (kind of). With no vengeance necessary anymore, Cordell is looking for love! Convenient that Officer Kate Sullivan has just been put into a coma during a hostage situation (Hey! It’s Jackie Earle Haley) that went wrong. An unscrupulous news crew looking for a story decide a hero cop isn’t all the interesting and edit footage to make it look like she took the life of a helpless victim. Her reputation for over excessiveness makes it easier to swallow. Her mentor (Detective McKinney) attempts to clear her name while she lies possibly brain dead in her hospital bed. Cordell has himself a crush (Bride of Maniac Cop!) and goes about making sure anyone who slanders the lovely lady cop ends up very dead. It doesn’t take long for Davi to figure out Cordell is back and everyone is in danger. Ted Raimi shows up as a reporter (a nice nod to his brother Sam’s appearance in the prior films), Paul Gleason as a scummy bureaucrat and the always wonderful Robert Forster as a head trauma doctor with loose morals and a bunch of sarcasm. Plenty of footage from the first two beef up the runtime and Z’Dar spends a good chunk of the movie walking around and standing in the shadows. It does not make for the most entertaining of watches… which is a damn shame because a voodoo priest and a zombie bride scenario is so far up my garbage alley that I should have loved this shit but it feels like nobody was all that interested in focusing on the insanity. The series up to this point had been a refreshing mix of action and horror but this one leans heavy into slasher territory, which wouldn’t necessarily be an issue if it was a particularly interesting one and considering they set it up to be just that, the wasted opportunity hits even harder. We get a bit of weirdness, some last-act action and plenty of Robert Davi which I’ll always be thankful for. A missed opportunity that you can confidently place at the feet of idiotic producers.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Ten years have passed since that fateful night in Haddonfield, IL and the public has been able to relax thanks to Michael Myers being in a deep coma. However, during a transfer between facilities, Micheal awakens when he learns that he has a niece residing in Haddonfield. Welp, those bodies start dropping as the singular-focused killer makes his way to the last member of his family. His traumatized niece Jamie (an impressive performance from Danielle Harris) who he shares a psychic connection to or some shit, her adopted sister Rachel (Ellie Cornell, crafting one likable-as-all-hell teenager who never comes off as false) and his very own Captain Ahab Dr. Sam Loomis (Pleasance, relishing this time out as the obviously unstable monster hunter) are all that may stand in the way of the unkillable murder machine causing another seasonal ruckus. There’s plenty of attractive elderly youths put in the path of The Shape and some well-crafted (if inexplicable) shots (I mean, the murder silhouetted by the light from the large window is fantastic but i feel like a giant fucking window should have been the first thing you fortified when securing your home… but I’m a stickler for safety) to make this fourth entry in the series an incredibly enjoyable time. That ending is near perfect as well and is only let down by the next entry… something that Halloween: Resurrection would repeat more than a decade later (although its nowhere near as annoying thanks to H2O’s ending not hitting as hard but it’s way more insulting to the viewer’s intelligence thanks to Resurrection just being the way it is). There’s some pacing issues and one of the worst vigilante mobs in cinema history (not only do they kill an innocent man, they seem to have no spatial awareness, give up upon the first opportunity and outright fail at everything they set out to do). It also begins the trend of diminishing returns when it comes to presenting a terrifying maniac. The mask ain’t the worst but it’s a far cry from the first two outings. You can still tell this film was at least trying to be more than standard slasher fare without resorting to the ridiculous nonsense that was about to drop in the next entry.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Delightfully insane offering from the Halloween series that was too ahead of its time to be appreciated in the moment and due to this failure on the part of the audience (it was the lowest grossing box office of the franchise [still making a profit, though] and was critically panned), forced the series to revert back to the slasher tomfoolery of Michael Myers. Which is fine, because I still enjoy his stab-happy shenanigans and I think this outing being the lone deviation from the series makes it all the more lovable. His royal badassness Tom Atkins plays a doctor who stumbles upon an unlikely conspiracy perpetrated by the evil head of the Silver Shamrock Novelties company, Conal Cochran (a charmingly sinister Dan O’Herlihy). The mad man is planning on causing mass panic and death by utilizing computer chips containing small pieces of the magically charged Stonehenge boulders (stay with me, now) to unleash hell on any poor soul (mostly kiddos) wearing his company’s best-selling masks. Now that is one fucking insane plot. Atkins comes into the fold after the mysterious death of a man in his charge leads to he and the dead guy’s daughter digging deeper into the mad plot which includes exploding masks, creepy crawlies, magic lasers (?), a catchy commercial jingle, Tom Atkins mustache, ancient rituals and android assassins. Nancy Loomis (Kyes) also has a cameo and I will always appreciate her having screen time.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A family moves into the Thompson house (that’s 1428 Elm Street) and effeminate son Jesse (Mark Patton and if you haven’t seen Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, I highly recommend giving it a watch) immediately begins to have nightmares of a crispy fiend with a razor-tipped glove (Robert Englund, thankfully back) after setting up in Nancy’s former bedroom. Instead of slashing the young man while he sleeps, it seems Freddy needs him as a vessel to carry on with his sinister shenanigans in our world. His girlfriend Lisa (cute as hell Kim Myers who would later turn up in another odd franchise sequel Hellraiser IV: Bloodline) is concerned for Jesse’s sanity as his fears that “Freddy is trying to get inside of me” don’t paint the picture of mental health. A limited supply of victims include Jesse’s hunky frenemy Grady (Robert Rusler), who Jesse runs to after being disgusted when Freddy pops up while he’s about to have sex with his girlfriend and an asshole gym teacher (the always welcome Marshall Bell) who is into S&M, hangs out at downtown gay clubs and gets bound bare-ass’d and whipped in the school showers… hmmmmmm? Eventually Freddy manifests (in a jaw-dropping and literal “out of body” experience) and causes some serious damage. Clu Gulager and Hope Lange are there as Jesse’s parents (blaming drugs and mental illness for their son’s “queer” behavior) and Englund gets a human cameo as a nightmare sequence bus driver. Nancy’s diary is literally pulled out of the closet to offer up some clues to our hero’s recent trauma right after Jesse is caught by his mother and girlfriend performing a thrust-heavy dance while cleaning his room… hmmmmm? It just comes off feeling like a gay panic film shoehorned in as an Elm Street sequel where the evil “monster” inside is finally stopped by heterosexual love courtesy of the protagonist’s girlfriend. That’s right fellas, the best way to repress those sinister urges is to get yourself a lady! It is refreshingly strange for a sequel to a box office success, especially something coming out of an 80’s slasher flick but on top of the icky vibe of homophobia (I could be reading too deep into things), it also comes off as being different because of being a bit underdeveloped thanks to a rush to make more profit off of a hot commodity.
⭐️⭐️1/2
Another day, another scuzzball getting his ass stuck in an ugly-tinted afterlife awaiting final judgment for all of his sins. Luckily, our scuzzball is played by Dean fuckin’ Winters and I’m always happy when he shows up outside of those “Mayhem” commercials. He’s a stockbroker with amnesia following a car accident which has put him in the hospital and caused his wife Kirsty (Yes! A returning Ashley Laurence) to go missing (although he’s convinced she drowned but no body, no crime). He suffers intense headaches, horrific visions and his memory has gone to shit, which has the two detectives looking for his wife (or the fate that befell her) pretty damn suspicious of the man. Trevor attempts to piece things together on his own and it begins pointing in a troubling direction, a direction that contains his sleazy actions, the Lament Configuration Box and the dangerous creatures it calls forth. Much hornier than it’s been for a long time and it at least attempts to tie it in to the original, even if it feels a tad half-assed thanks to the lovely Ashley Laurence being relegated to mostly flashbacks. The cast is solid across the board which helps because it takes itself ridiculously serious for such a predictable plot (even though the ending is the right twist) but that’s to be expected following the unnecessarily grave Inferno. Lighten up team! We’ve all seen Se7en… we can be a little lighter in our material about bdsm killers and leather-daddy demons. “If there is a pain in your head… it’s in your head.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wes Craven puts the supernatural at the forefront of his entry into the slasher subgenre and changes horror flicks forever. No hulking and silent brute with a fetish for sharp instruments, his killer Freddy Krueger (the irreplaceable Robert Englund) is a child murderer with a dark sense of humor who got his ass murdered by local parents after he killed some kids. They burnt his sick ass to a crisp but evil like that can’t just die so now he’s back, inhabiting the dreams (also a boiler room that looks like it’s somewhere below a lower level of Hell) of the children and slaughtering them with his razor-tipped glove as they sleep. Hard to protect yourself when you’re catching some Z’s. Nancy Thompson (the lovely Heather Langenkamp) is the high school hero who has a lot to worry about when her friends start getting wiped out as Fred brings the bad dreams and makes ‘em permanent. When her bestie Tina (a really good and super cute Amanda Wyss) gets murdered in a wonderfully horrific set piece, the blame gets put on her boyfriend and Nancy’s cop father (John fuckin’ Saxon) doesn’t want to hear any of this nightmare killer bullshit. Looks like it’s gonna be up to Nancy and her boyfriend Glen (babyfaced Johnny Depp) to save their own asses… maybe just Nancy, her boy-toy proves to be pretty useless. A horrifying slasher thanks to a distinct look for its antagonist and some wonderful nightmare imagery (stretching arms, shapes in the wall, Tina in a body bag and soggy stairs) really add to the stalk & slash antics. Also helping things is the small batch of victims/friends being terrorized, letting us get to know and like ‘em. Lin Shaye pops up as a teacher and Charles Fleischer as a doctor. Some weak performances and a limp ending don’t really detract that much thanks to an innovative story that birthed a horror icon.
