As the ‘90s rose up, and the slasher movie became déclassé (until Scream). The big franchises – A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, mostly – struggled to wring out some final profits. That word “final” is instructive, as both set about creating their (falsely) final entries. All this with one ultimate goal in mind: Freddy vs. Jason. First proposed by Friday’s Paramount in 1987, that lofty Holy Grail of slasherdom was now achievable, ever since Elm Street’s New Line has acquired rights to the Friday franchise after the abysmal Jason Takes Manhattan.
Elm Street has weathered its own Manhattan equivalent (unintentionally, as no one – Producers aside – ever sets out to make a crappy, unsuccessful movie) in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. Desperate, House of Frankenstein-esque actions were called for. A crossover was necessary. But rather than just flat out make that, why not maximize profits, lie to your audiences, and devise some “conclusive” entries first? So that’s what New Line did. Friday got completely continuity-raped in 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Two years earlier was its titular Elm Street brother – Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
“The makers of the first return to bring you the best” – I’ve possibly gotten that a little wrong, as I’m working on memory from 1991. Besides, that tagline is another lie – not legally, but hardly anyone would consider director Rachel Talalay the puppet master behind 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. She may well have been around from that stage (in some management position at New Line, most likely), but I can only trace Talalay as far back as A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, where she started taking Robert Shaye’s responsibilities as producer. That entry marks the series’ true descent into outré, cartoony madness, and if you were unsure if that was the Talalay influence or not, Freddy’s Dead does its damnedest to reassure you. It is the logical end statement of Freddy Kreuger’s Flanderization, as he emerges a full-fledged Bugs Bunny.
To call Freddy’s Dead cartoony would be an understatement; this is the Looney Tunes aesthetic writ large in live action (not a wholly awful thing, on the face of it), and grotesquely married to a series of ghoulish bloodbaths. For its sins, Freddy’s Dead is the sole Elm Street I’ve seen fit to tag as comedy. If The Dream Child was the horror equivalent of “wakka wakka” comedy, Freddy’s Dead IS “wakka wakka” comedy, all flailing desperation and honest-to-goodness endless minutes of “sproingy” sound effects, all in service of Freddy Kreuger’s ostensible final days. I mean, what kind of horror movie ends its first scare sequence with this?
That comes at the end of a totally deranged nightmare, which invokes that gremlin episode of “The Twilight Zone,” and Freddy’s entrance comes in the shape of a Wizard of Oz plagiary. “A Night on Bald Mountain” forms the soundtrack, and most events suggest Talalay was most recently impressed by Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
To tell a semi-comprehensible tale (not that Freddy’s Dead succeeds at that, but bear with me), it was deemed necessary to drop that whole self-defeating arc of the past three movies whereby Freddy Kreuger was ultimately sequestered in the dreams of a fetus (seriously). Though they did consider the obvious post-Dream Child sequel route, promoting that born fetus Jacob to lead, and killing off long-time Final Girl Alice for the sin of one sequel too many. But that didn’t happen, so we can relax. They also didn’t film an alleged script by Peter Jackson, which reportedly intentionally makes Freddy a cowardly, bullied-upon weakling.
Rather, it’s now “ten years from now,” meaning Freddy’s Dead takes place in 2021! No…wait…maybe 2001. At any rate, it’s a sufficiently long time since the last entry, so just toss out all that continuity. Pre-credits titles (usually a sign the plot was deemed too confusing by test audiences) suggest that the Freddy-ravaged town of Springwood (Ohio) is now totally devoid of children and teenagers…except one: John Doe (Shon Greenblatt, whose name alone sounds like a cartoon sound effect). Following Freddy’s wannabe Chuck Jones torment (which even lasts as long as a standard Roadrunner cartoon), John Doe is dispatched beyond Springwood’s borders, the not-subtle hint being that Freddy has sent him afield to rustle up new victims.
Freddy seemingly cannot travel beyond Springwood, because metaphysical dream spirits are naturally contained by civic boundaries. And because bad stories are easier to tell while invoking amnesia, John Doe now has amnesia – from thwacking ker-boink against a rock upon nightmare expulsion. But with unerring teendar, he stumbles his way to the Recovery House Youth Shelter (ooh, creative name!), a treasure trove of necessary teenaged targets™ - Freddy’s Dead does no better than The Dream Child, body count-wise (3), so I shan’t even consider today’s ciphers until their extended Looney Tunes routines.
Of note is a shelter worker, Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane, sister of cool guy Billy). She suffers frequent half-glimpsed dreams and flashbacks, which is a movie’s way of suggesting there’s a plot twist coming up. A really stupid plot twist, since we pick up on that thread right quick – namely, Freddy Kreuger had a kid. At least it’s not exactly the same dumbass sister twist as in Jason Goes to Hell or Halloween II, but why are family relationships always a sequel’s de rigueur fallback?! For what it’s worth, John Doe thinks himself that offspring, but his lack of a proper name or secondary characteristics suggests otherwise. It’s so obviously Maggie, even at this stage long before the “twist” is even suggested.
Whatever. Soon enough Maggie transports John Doe back to Springwood, responding to a newspaper clipping in his pocket. For inanely justified reasons, the shelter’s massive teen populace of three has stowed away with them. And with a continuity gap between sequels (making Freddy’s overall body count impossible to ascertain), the dream killer’s powers can be rewritten again, so that Freddy now has apparent power over waking life in Springwood as well. Hence the adults, presented with a childless Children of Men scenario, go the “Twin Peaks” route instead – and lest a 1991 viewer miss the point, the characters spell this one out. As further evidence of Freddy’s dread influence over reality…
YAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!
Okay, what is a Tom Arnold, Roseanne Barr cameo supposed to accomplish in an Elm Street sequel? Actually, what’s the deal with the creeping jocularity to begin with? Surely they intend yucks and hyucks both, but it unmistakably shatters Freddy’s menace when he literally capers about, plays to the audience and gives the occasional “Ain’t I a stinker?” look. Though when you probe the back story of every character, and find pedophiliac sexual rape/molestation as the shared factor, it becomes pretty hard to chuckle at all the “boinga boingas” as well. This beast is tonally all over the map – speaking of maps, one of those navigational tools gets press-ganged into horror and/or comedy, as the movie ineptly replays a visual gag invented by Buster Keaton (the ever-expanding map gag). I loves me some Buster Keaton (Looney Tunes too), and misuse of their tropes is just a marvelous example of why not just everyone can play in that ballpark.
Maggie and John Doe separate from the teens to explore that upcoming fatherhood twist some more, accompanied by a wide angle lens and a complete disregard for the laws of causality. We stick with the three teens. Finding themselves trapped by Springwood’s antilogic, they make the unassailable decision to hole up for the night in 1428 Elm Street – the house that Freddy built, if you will. Not that they have any way of knowing, as all knowledge of Springwood is forgotten in the outside world – another mind-expanding new manifestation of Freddy’s powers. This is where Freddy’s Dead comes into its own, with preplanned stalk sequences that totally go for broke in the wakka wakka wakka ker-sproing ker-blat vrrrooot boink splat dong whoop whoop whoop sweepstakes.
First up, it’s Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) – and by Part Six, they’ve even stopped giving their victims last names, one thing Elm Street always held over its inferior cousins. Carlos is partially deaf, so naturally Freddy seizes upon that opportunity. (By the way, Carlos is dreaming – not that it should be mentioned, but at this stage we must state the obvious.) Let’s see, how does this go down?
First Freddy attacks Carlos with a ridiculously large q-tip – ear rape is played for laffs. We know laffs, because the Foley artists use all these non-diagetic onomatopoeic “bfsgl sgiohdfx vkhx” noises to cue us in. It’s like 3 Ninjas all over again!
Freddy deafens Carlos more, then runs through a silent capering, one step away from actually smashing cymbals behind Carlos’ head. Honestly, guys, why not just go whole hog and bring in the marching band? It’s not like Freddy’s credibility is intact.
Then Freddy restores Carlos’ hearing – only too much! Noises amplify. Freddy drops tiny things like pins from great heights, as Carlos catches them – as a cartoon character would the falling china plates. No comment, I’m just interested in seeing how this stuff appears when written. As a capper, Freddy produces a chalkboard comically out of thin air and runs his finger-knives across it (‘cause it’s always gotta go back to the glove). Carlos’ head explodes. The viewer’s head is pretty close as well.
Well, that’s over, and Carlos is gone – and I mean gone, as in vanished. Physically nonexistent. And beyond Springwood’s borders, his very life has now never happened, even to his parents.
Oh well…Spencer, you’re up (Garfield’s Breckin Meyer)! Spencer is a stoner and a video gamer – double characteristics! Drugs get utilized first, in the most obvious of ways: with “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” This movie has a moronic soundtrack, which includes a title track by Iggy Pop to rival Alice Cooper’s tunage for Jason Lives – not to be outdone, Cooper even gets a cameo here, to no end, as Freddy’s Dead’s Freddy’s dad. Okay, what is with the cameos? Oh, here comes another one – Johnny Depp, the franchise’s most famous actor. Freddy hits him with a skillet – they avoid the gag about eggs covering Depp’s eyes, and again I must ask why withhold that final punchline when you’re almost there.
Video game time! Video games ala 1991, meaning…well, it would’ve looked dated even upon release, as the SNES was the new norm. In fact, no video game resembles this sort of “Dr. Katz” “Mario Paint” animation which fills five minutes of Freddy’s Dead. Why must all filmmakers misrepresent video games so?! To actually see Freddy Kreuger in “Super Mario Bros.” Level 1-1 would be a welcome (if idiotic) sight, a marvelous pop culture mash-up, which this doesn’t really accomplish. And there’s this one phrase, “Be like me,” which is uttered ad nauseum (as in thrice per second) for the entirety of Spencer’s gameplay. See the sort of comic hopelessness we’re working with?
But wait, there’s more! In the real world, a sleeping Spencer is manipulated into becoming…the Human Spring! Imbued with the essence of 48 Super Balls, Spencer bounces and sproings and dwoinks and ker-foozles his way all about 1428 Elm, as Breckin Meyer simply sports a quizzical expression upon his pus. As the other characters smack him and each other with large bludgeons. As with so much of Freddy’s Dead, whatever unlikely charm this scenario might’ve boasted is ruined through pacing – For a full, unexpurgated two-and-a-half minutes, we watch slack-jawed and wordlessly as Spencer runs through an Inspector Gadget scene, a Krueger-esque Son of Flubber. ONLY Kung Fu Hustle has done this kind of thing well (that and Steven Chow’s other work). It’s hard to even picture the thought process which led to this becoming the signature moment of Freddy’s swansong.
And Freddy’s one liners?
“Now I’m playing with power!”
“You forgot the Power Glove!”
“I beat my high score!”
If those mean anything to you, you’re the exact same age as I am.
Two lunacy-fueled deaths complete, those remaining – John Doe, Maggie, and a boring girl called Tracy (Dallas Cowboy cheerleader Lezlie Deane) – hightail it the hell out of Springwood. This disturbs me, as it means an end to complete Bizarro World nuttiness. Don’t get me wrong, this stuff is riddled with flaws, but it’s entertaining – the most purely entertaining Elm Street since The Dream Warriors. Yeah, I’ll take wholehearted awfulness over the indecisive dreck of the past two sequels. But upon departing Freddy’s municipality, his zany powers wane…and we get the final of this film’s few, few, few deaths.
John Doe squares against Freddy, where Freddy reveals once and for all that John Doe is not his son. Nothing too surprising there. John Doe perishes, tumbling from great heights precisely in the way Wile E. Coyote does – we’re short simple a “Yipe!” sign, and an understated poof cloud. Instead, Freddy off screen teleports in specifically that Daffy Duck sort of way, in order to wheel an Acme Brand bed of spikes underneath John Doe. Yup. And panting, Freddy stares knowingly at us. I’ll be honest; I laughed. God knows what Robert Englund made of all this.
Ensconced again at the youth shelter, Maggie and (checking my own notes) Tracy endure some seriously underperforming Freddy nightmares. Because Freddy hitchhiked his way out of Springwood in Maggie’s mind (which – naturally – is conveyed with a big, embarrassing special effect, the series’ raison d’être), he has potentially the entire world now to terrorize – in dreams. As he justifies, “Every town has an Elm Street” – damn it, those short-sighted city planners have doomed us all! (My home town growing up had an Elm Avenue, so I was safe.) Though Freddy does nothing with his newfound freedom except get smacked around by Maggie, Tracy, and also Yaphet Kotto (!), so it’s hard to feel any sense of desperation in this final act.
If we ignore the three more Freddy Kreuger movies to come and accept this as the final entry, it’s about damned time Freddy’s Dead starts doing something to justify that title. So with time running out, Freddy’s Dead must do the following: A) fill in any and all back story and B) decisively kill Freddy in a way which satisfies everyone.
Good thing they’ve got Yaphet Kotto (as Doc…just Doc), playing the same basic role as Steven Williams in Jason Goes to Hell: “The black guy who inexplicably knows everything about the killer for no reason.” As a dream researcher/Mr. Plot Fixit, Doc advises Maggie use her “whatever” dream skills to enter Freddy’s subconscious (this bit is a lamer variation on the ending to Being John Malkovich). With all this high-falutin’ talk, and the magical mumbo jumbo which has felled Freddy in the past, Doc’s solution is merely this: Draw Freddy into the real world, where he is mortal and powerless, and murder him. Hmm…that’s the exact same scheme they hatched up in the first Elm Street, only now the series is literalistic enough no dream-within-dream twist is gonna save Freddy. And as in Part One, major points off for removing dreams and surreality from your climax.
Ah, before Maggie falls asleep, Doc grants her a boon of 3-D glasses. That’s your cue, theater patrons! Don your 3-D glasses now! Indeed, in Freddy’s Dead’s final ten minutes, it tacks on the third dimension, in that money-desperate Friday the 13th Part III sorta way. And you gotta love the inelegance of Yaphet Kotto simply handing 3-D glasses to Lisa Zane in film. His only explanation: “In dreams, they can be anything you want.” Sure, Yaphet… (Watching the thing at home in 2-D, a lot of what follows simply doesn’t make sense. But what else is new?)
So Maggie wanders aimlessly through a panorama of Freddy’s mortal life, leading up to his burning by the parents of Elm Street. We get paltry glimpses of his childhood, teen years. We see Freddy murder Maggie’s mother (off screen, actually), filling in the final detail of her flashbacks. And upon Freddy’s torching, we even see…
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm…So, those three puppets there, assisted with 1991 CGI, they’re Dream Snakes – ancient evil dream entities able to bestow Freddy Kreuger powers upon any randomly passing Freddy Kreugers. So the source of Freddy’s dream powers is at last revealed, though it was always more satisfying when he simply was. And tying him in with comically-screaming Muppets, and some faux-Joseph Campbell hoohah about demons, perhaps shatters series-wide credibility far worse than Tex Avery wackiness.
Okay, so we’ve gotten all that crap (and Alice Cooper’s cameo) out of the way now, so it’s time to bring Freddy out of the dream and kill in. Upon waking, the world is still in 3-D – so Maggie assures us, reaching out in an attempt to pick my nose while intoning “I’m seeing things as I did in my dream.” Translation = Freddy is nearby. And arming themselves with the youth shelter’s weapons cache of maces, machetes and ninja throwing stars (what, was our disbelief not dully challenged already?), Maggie, Tracy and Yaphet Kotto descend upon the Fredster down in that most frightening setting of all – the storage locker!
Maggie’s solo fight against Freddy is really stupid. He doesn’t even get a shot in! I mean, he loses his glove – early! If Rachel Talalay was trying to thoroughly castrate the character’s legacy, mission accomplished. And the ultimate, final, no-backing-out decisive means of killing Freddy once and for all? A pipe bomb. That’s why assorted Final Girls before could never succeed; they never used pipe bombs!
To unequivocally signal the cast and crew’s shared distaste for this task, the instant Freddy’s dead, Maggie announces “Freddy’s dead.” The end. No epilogue, just that Iggy Pop tune as everyone makes a hasty retreat. And all that footage over the credits, of Freddy’s greatest moments in the past (and also Freddy’s Revenge), really cement the specific devolution his franchise has taken, now that we can see legitimately blood-curdling terror alongside Porky Pig shenanigans.
Ignoring that final act, the majority of Freddy’s Dead is the sort of detritus the series has been moving towards ever since The Dream Master. There’s nothing here which would entice an audience, and it’s only for that word “Final” that The Final Nightmare enjoyed a slight increase in box office over the flaccid Dream Child. But as with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, finality breeds success, and success breeds follow-ups. But New Line had a plan in place here – As already stated, do the exact same damn thing with Jason Goes to Hell, then “shock” us all with Freddy vs. Jason. The only thing they couldn’t account for was how danged impossible that project would prove to be.
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. 4 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
• No. 5 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
• 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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