A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Part 4 here is where this series really started guzzling out of the toilet, but people are reliably stupid so naturally it was the most successful entry yet. And I am in part to blame, because this is the only Nightmare on Elm Street I ever paid to see in a movie theater, although in my defense my date insisted and she did give me a handie right there in the balcony. So fuck it, that was totally worth $5.25 times two, or however much movies cost back then. I wouldn't know, since she put the tickets on her credit card and I "forgot" to pay her back. Hey, it wasn't that good of a handie.
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| I begged her to finish me off at this exact point in the movie, but she wasn't having it. |
So, in a "fuck you" on par with Alien 3, the hot blonde from Dream Warriors returns, only to be portrayed by a new actress who's not quite as hot. Although she does a fair job of rocking a bikini top at one point, so I suppose I can let this slide. Less forgivable: all the kids who survived the previous movie are ruthlessly killed off before this one is even half over, beginning, naturally, with the black guy. (Speaking of black guys, they really should've included a scene where Freddy finishes off the Fat Boys too, seeing as they also recently infuriated him by escaping his clutches. That would have been both thematically appropriate and hilarious.) It's an unapologetic middle finger to everyone who liked these characters, but in this movie's defense at least these early scenes are effectively creepy, and I did like some of the imagery, like the dog pissing fire (symbolically pissing all over the previous movie, I guess), and the corpse discovered floating inside the waterbed. Even the one-liners still lean more towards "badass" than "Henny Youngman" at this point:
Victim: "I'll see you in Hell."
Freddy: "Tell 'em Freddy sent ya."
But once Freddy has wiped the slate clean and starts in on the next batch of kids, this movie becomes a completely different animal. I'm not sure what kind of animal, exactly, but definitely one that eats its own shit. Seriously, it's like someone threw a switch because the idiocy kicks in the instant we're shown the graves of his final Part 3 victims, who are buried right next to each other and next to two previous Freddy marks, even though almost none of these people are related. Is this just a mind-boggling coincidence? (Studio Audience: "That's incredible!") Or are we to understand that there's a special cemetery reserved exclusively for victims of Freddy Krueger, like the one in Zermatt that's reserved for people who died climbing the Matterhorn? Either way, it's pretty stupid. Ah, but this movie has just begun to stupid: wait until you see the bit where the dead kid pops out of his coffin for an American Werewolf in London-flavored monologue, which to be fair might have worked if said kid wasn't portrayed by the worst actor in this entire fucking series. From here, it's just one long, slow slide into suck:
Horror movie producers refuse to accept the fact that pizza isn't scary. In one nightmare, dead people appear as toppings on a pizza. Look, horror movie producers, what is it going to take to convince you that pizza isn't scary? It's not scary when it comes flying out of the refrigerator (976-EVIL II), it's not scary when it grows a face and bursts into song (House IV), and it's not scary here. Pizza = NOT scary. Got it, assholes?
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| "No! No! Please! Help us! So stupid! Please! Our careers! No!" |
"I spilled a beer on the DVD player and now it always does this." There's a sequence that repeats itself several times, which is probably meant to be disorienting but in practice just makes everyone think that the DVD is skipping.
Roaches check in, but they don't watch the in-room movie. Because it's Nightmare 4. The chick who's afraid of bugs turns into a giant cockroach and then dies in a giant Roach Motel. It's just like Kafka! Except, you know, stupid.
The nonsensical resolution just falls out of the screenwriter's ass. The nonsensical resolution just falls out of the screenwriter's ass.
In short, fuck this piece of shit.
Freddy Krueger will return in Moonraker.
The Mr. Satanism library. Finally, someone puts movies in their place.
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