In four movies and four years, Freddy Kreuger has gone from a child-murdering menace into a carnival barker, a friendly tour guide into dream world. The very concept of a franchise is antithetical to the sort of horror Wes Craven had conceived in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Repetition breeds familiarity, formula, fun, all ideas which counter terror. More broadly defined, a franchise even demands multi-media presence, with toys and games and comic books and whatnot – all marketed towards children. By the time Freddy Kreuger starts waving at you in the starkly bright aisles of a 99 Cent Store, his dread is long gone.
By 1988, New Line Cinema was surely overexposing Mr. Kreuger, necessary for them as he was the breadwinner bringing greater mainstream success to the studio. But at the cost of his own credibility. He very literally took on emcee duties on TV’s “Freddy’s Nightmares,” an anthology horror show with Freddy acting as Cryptkeeper – think of it like “The Twilight Zone,” limited to the Elm Street setting alone, and usually only vaguely connected to Freddy himself. (Compare it to “Friday the 13th: The Series,” for proof these two franchises were in direct competition – with Freddy usually winning – throughout the ‘80s.)
On a similar vein is LJN’s 1989 “Elm Street” videogame for the NES. There’s a Friday parallel here too, and the general sense that something of the original Elm Street idea was being sold out.
The theatrical equivalent is A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Freddy, master of dreams (but not the titular “Dream Master”), wholly embraces his role as a master of puns as well, subjecting his victims to extended “Looney Tunes” routines which end in gore. This is horror for a broad audience, broad enough to not actually want horror, but merely a comic adventure tale in horror trappings. Well enough, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors does a lot of that too, and hits the sweet spot of entertainment. The Dream Master misses that, for a combination of errors.
Ignoring tonal issues, there’s the question of content. Dream Warriors told of Freddy’s revenge against the final original “Elm Street brats.” Three of them survived –Joey, Kincaid and Kristen. Rodney Eastman and Ken Sagoes return, though Patricia Arquette’s career took off after Dream Warriors; she is replaced by Tuesday Knight (surprisingly, that is not a stage name), who pictured post-Elm Street success as a singer. To that end, Tuesday provides one track for the film’s nutty pop-heavy soundtrack. But getting back to my point, only three potential victims remain for Freddy, which surely isn’t enough to sustain one movie, let alone a series with an indeterminate number of inevitable sequels still to go. Circumventing this issue becomes The Dream Master’s central concern, though it sadly drops the epic build-up which Dream Warriors culminated.
In this shakeup, redirecting a pointlessly murder-happy Freddy against basically just the Springwood teen populace in general, we get perhaps the template for the most generic Elm Street of all. Now it’s simply Freddy resurrected (never mind how, for now), targeting a generic horror cross selection of high school stock types. He does this for 90% of the movie, is defeated by a Final Girl, and that is that.
Structurally, this is the purest slasher of all Elm Streets, even though tonally it is lighter than ever. The Dream Master delights in placing Freddy incongruously in well-lit, unscary scenarios (the beach, the classroom, the movie theater, the ‘50s diner), which has the effect of neutering Freddy. While Robert Shaye remains as producer (the sole continuing creative voice on hand, along with Robert Englund forever in the Kreuger role), this change in style is perhaps attributable to new producer Rachel Talalay – reference to the future verifies Talalay prefers the grotesquely, unfunnily cartoonish over all else.
Surely their choice of director – Renny Harlin, gearing up inexplicably for Die Hard 2 – does a lot to contribute to The Dream Master’s general loopiness. Harlin is not a horror director, but don’t tell him that – movies like Deep Blue Sea, The Convent and that one Exorcist prequel which shall not be named all provide later examples of Harlin’s notion that scariness comes purely of loudness, bigger visuals…The man is a sub-par Michael Bay. It’s an action approach which favors the likes of, say, Cliffhanger (well enough, at least), but giving The Dream Master such unsubtlety is a miscalculation.
This uptick in budget and chutzpah comes along with a serious downgrade in ambition. It’s very bizarre to see a story recreate the contours of Part One while trying to act larger than Part Three. Without the in-story relevance of Part Three, the increased money just goes towards unmotivated moments of show-offy special effects in standard stalk sequences. So we get random, meaningless moments like a pullback from an auto yard dream to an Earth-wide matte painting of an auto yard. The special features impress how many weeks worth of work went into this shot (and many other moments like it), so it’s a shame there is no reason of any sort for the moment to even exist. Rather, The Dream Master becomes a special effects house promotional reel.
For all of The Dream Master’s desires to be a generic Elm Street, it cannot wholly be that, thanks to its need for continuity with the former entries (apart from Freddy’s Revenge, which is a gay, poisonous thing). The first matter is bringing Freddy back, after his mother’s nun ghost spirit assured us Part Three’s means of destruction was permanent. Well…Freddy’s just back, okay? Apparently, some power of his remains in Kristen’s subconscious, and it’s power enough to string together a few standard “scary” nightmares in the endless first 18 minutes before Freddy arrives. It’s also evidently power enough to convince Kincaid’s dog Jason (……………Damn it!) to…to…to…
Okay, we know Freddy’s coming back, otherwise a movie wouldn’t exist. Did it have to be as asinine as, well…
Jason enters a dream, digs up Freddy’s bones, urinates fire on them, then instantly regrets his dogly actions and scampers off to rue what he did. (Rubbing his face in it might’ve helped.)
So…did the dog’s essence grant Freddy new life? Why was he waiting for this specific ceremony to return? It’s amazing somewhere around four writers, with credits ranging from “story by” to “screenplay by” to “based on characters created by,” couldn’t work out something clearer. Especially when Brian Helgeland is evidently the most active member of Four’s writing team – this is the same Brian Helgeland who rightly won an Oscar for writing L.A. Confidential. And this isn’t a pleasant surprise, like Frank “Shawshank Redemption” Darabont doing time on Dream Warriors; there is nothing here to foreshadow Helgeland’s successes to come.
Such as it is, Freddy is back in the dreams of Kincaid, Joey, Kristen. He kills all but the chick right away, with the sort of “bam, who’s next?” pattern more often seen in slashers concerned just with piling on the bodies. Because these guys were there, and needed to die early to get out of the way. That’s because they don’t really fit into The Dream Master’s character template; they are not one-trait stereotypes, but decently rounded characters from a superior film. Better not to dwell on them.
Kristen survives a while longer, despite this, because she is the movie’s (and Freddy’s) conduit to the stereotypes I’ve crowed so much about. Though believe, the instant Kristen’s value is through, Freddy knocks her off in a way that isn’t even interesting.
That’s halfway through the movie, where the mantel of Final Girl is officially passed on to Alice (Lisa Wilcox, and now we start seeing that Friday trend – actors with a future in soap operas – start to rear its head on Elm Street). Follow the macro stories of many a horror franchise, and it’s just the occasional Final Girl passing off the torch time and again…Nancy died when Kristen became available, and now Kristen dies once Alice is around; makes Alice’s long-term future somewhat predetermined.
Anyway, Alice starts out shy and withdrawn (for those horror trained among us, it’s evident from minute 6 that Alice is our heroine, Kristen or no, since Kristen enjoys franchise “sins” like cigarettes and sex). Alice has daydreams – a sure sign they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel re: dreams as subject matter. Alice also has some nascent dream powers – oh god, Dream Warriors really opened a Pandora’s Box with that one. Alice’s powers are like Silar’s in “Heroes,” in that rather than her own skill, she can take on others’.
Alice first gains Kristen’s ability to suck others into her dream – Oh right, you’d better damn just remember that detail from midway through Dream Warriors, ‘cause Harlin sure ain’t able to communicate it. Not with elegance at least. Chuck Russell (of Part Three) made his metaphysics simple, as visual clues like a model Elm Street house make it clear the first time out what Kristen is doing. Harlin prefers two methods of his own – rather, the post-production guys prefer two methods, to shore up Harlin’s shortcomings: Either we get big, cheesy animated ‘80s lightning effects, or simply a big “Whoosh!” noise on the soundtrack. Either one lets us know Alice has siphoned up some new dream skill – which happens every time some new jerk dies. It’s all in service of some trumped-up, made-up notion called the “Dream Master,” which Alice is becoming – Oughtn’t it then be “Dream Mistress?!” (Eh, no, then audiences couldn’t misconstrue the title to refer to Freddy, surely the actual marketing intent.)
The only new Elm Street wrinkle is promoting Alice, and Alice alone, to the status of Freddy Fighter at the end. All her other friends exist only to pass on to her their powers, and die. This is who they are:
Rick (Andras Jones, now an AM DJ in Seattle), Alice’s brother. He is Alice’s link to Kristen (his one-time girlfriend, up until her death), and to all other friends as well – Alice is kind of a shut-in. Rick practices karate, seems obsessed with the Big Bopper because these ‘80s teen movies are made by people who were teens in the ‘50s, and…that’s about it.
The others are all entirely stock types, reduced to single phrases:
Dan (Danny Hassel): The Jock
Debbie (Brooke Theiss): The Jockette
Sheila (Toy Newkirk): The Nerd
Oh, they have fears too (established simply to justify the “whatever” set piece kills the effects guys had cooked up for Freddy), but that’s about it. To think of it, this cast isn’t any larger than Dream Warriors’, so it’s pretty inexcusable how bland they all are. First time an Elm Street has had such blatantly disposable meat. But when Freddy’s kills are all reducable to punchlines (e.g., a waterbed attack inspires “How’s this for a wet dream?”), it helps when the victims have the depth of a “Simpsons” background figure.
In so, so many ways, The Dream Master seems at odds with the inherent strengths of an Elm Street movie, like an Alien sequel speeding up the incubation period for a self-defeating faster pace – I’m largely thinking of AVP here. The premise (die in your sleep) is potent because of how inescapable it is…something Part One milked nicely with its extended periods of waking. The Dream Master would prefer knocking off half a dozen characters in the span of…four days. To accomplish this, the characters need to be narcoleptics. For example, once Alice has become the unwitting vessel for Freddy’s extended attacks, she realizes her friends will only die if she’s asleep simultaneously. Does she try staying awake? Not really. She zonks off multiple times a day (hell, not even I do that!), almost as though she likes absorbing their powers.
It’s a lot to ask that these people are constantly asleep, even once they realize that’s like inviting death. (The Part Three kids would’ve created a sleep rotation, so Alice is never dozing when they are; the notion never occurs here.) Harlin starts blurring dreams and reality towards the end – because an Elm Street movie demands such blurring, especially when the dreams are otherwise so baroque as to negate the possibility of false scares in the real world. He does this without understanding, until we must accept that multiple characters are falling asleep simultaneously while driving.
And you’d think someone in town would find daily unexplained teen deaths a little strange. Excepting but two murders – excusable as smoking in bed and asthma – there is no explanation for these fatalities, and yet they’re disregarded as, oh, just commonplace everyday occurrences. In Springwood, maybe…
Some of the ideas in here may individually be interesting ones. Like a scene where a mother inadvertently dooms her daughter with hidden sleeping pills. It’d work too, perhaps, except the daughter hasn’t skipped a single night of sleep yet. Giving Mama no reason to drug her, beyond vanity. See, that rushed, Harlinesque pace severely undermines things. Making an action movie out of people sleeping is a foolish notion – and I of course ignore Inception with such a sweeping statement.
Really, The Dream Master is little more than a bunch of set pieces, special effects…I think I’ve said all this already. But in repeating myself, looping around the same tired idea again and again, I hope to replicate the effect of watching this movie – something which is ever so easy to do when recounting (well made) crappy movies!
Okay, so the main body of The Dream Master is a plodding affair, though Freddy himself does his dangedest to make things interesting. The ending could still hold promise. But can a movie which births its villain with a fire-pissing hound dog hope to silence him in a more logical manner? No. No it cannot.
Upon climax time, and complete ascent to Final Girl, Alice goes a little overboard. She misses her genre entirely, and does an action chick suiting-up montage, complete with weaponry: nunchucks, homemade bug zapper device (!), iron knuckles…sleeping pills. Most of these items are trinkets Alice has collected from those now dead – the former scenes of her acquiring the relics are oh so awkward in their struggle to mask this intent. The same goes for how Alice removes another photo from her mirror upon every death – it’s like how a video game might show one’s progress, so it’s no wonder The Dream Master was LJN’s main inspiration. It’s painfully evident Harlin has no desire to make a horror movie, and is unwilling to learn. And with Alice’s final cry of “Get away from him, you son of a bitch” – yes, Harlin, we’ve all seen Aliens, thank you – she leaps through her mirror (asleep), and into battle.
That mirror thing is no accident. Mirrors are never accidents in movies, as they’re the easiest visual metaphor possible. At random moments throughout the movie, Alice has recalled little bits of an old nonexistent Dream Master poem. At battle’s height, she recalls all of it, including the sudden, left field, completely-out-of-Helgeland’s-ass way to kill Freddy – show him a mirror. His own reflection, you know, the whole Medusa thing. Never mind Freddy’s admired himself in mirrors in this very entry. But throw enough loud noises in, Harlin, and let those FX guys devise a multi-minute body-horror death effect for Freddy, and you’re good to go – apparently.
To look at the series as a whole, The Dream Master seems a mistake – a wholly different mistake than Freddy’s Revenge, and far more entertaining, but perhaps more damning in how it affected series tone. But there’s no arguing its mainstream appeal served a purpose, as its $74 million U.S. gross is well over double Part One’s take – these things keep on doing better with each sequel. There’s perhaps just enough horror here for an unseasoned movie-going teen to handle, while he’s more busy snogging his date or scarfing popcorn or whatever primary activity he’s engaged in. Only a single demise – a Freddy-based recreation of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” as I cannot glance over The Dream Master without mentioning the cockroach scene – is the thing of true nightmares. The rest is just…some sort of amalgam.
And if you question the filmmakers’ intents vis-à-vis Freddy, there’s always the end credits to put things in perspective. Robert Englund, in character as Freddy, performs a rap with the Fat Boys. Employing the same tactic as Leprechaun in the Hood is not a good move!
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
• No. 2 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
• No. 3 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
• No. 5 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
• No. 6 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• No. 7 Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
• No. 8 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 9 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
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