Freddy's Wonderland

 

The Nightmare Cathedral is what I call it

I totally get it. I went through a few pages of Letterboxd reviews and it did amuse me how all over the place the feelings towards A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) turns out. This is very polarizing, considering the sequel it followed. To reiterate, I did feel "Dream Warriors" felt right as a closing chapter to the Nightmare series, but Robert Shaye -- in this fourth film as a very boring teacher who looked as if he wanted to be anywhere else but in the classroom -- saw potential millions. And the mile around the block waiting to get in to see "The Dream Master" proved Shaye was right. He capitalized on the buzz off "Dream Warriors"...for better or worse.

I read one criticism after another and nodded my head. A lot of them I can't defend. And yet, as I told my daughter, who couldn't wait for us to revisit this so soon, the film is such damned fun to me. It really has no reason for being...it shouldn't really exist. It brought Freddy back ridiculously. Tuesday Knight will always divide fans because they just associate Patricia Arquette so closely with Kirsten. The "ghost Freddy" karate kid scene with Andras Jones remains cringe. It is VERY MTV...ugh, I can't fucking help it, the nostalgia just affectionately cuddles me into submission. Death by waterbed, a planetary junkheap where Kincaid has nowhere to run or escape, poor Deb turning into a cockroach, Sheila "deflated" through suck-face, Tuesday's frazzled Kirsten kicking the bucket early in the film without much of a real fight against Fred; the kills Harlin stages are all over the map in terms of how memorable they are. I still believe, after so many multiple revisits, that Harlin's energy and flashy style does keep me invested. I can totally get those * star reviews and ***** star reviews. And you can read where the very same scenes and moments appeal to some while turning off others. It is truly fascinating to read through so many different reactions. 

I told my daughter that the theater / nightmare Crave Inn sequence is my favorite altogether setpiece, while the art design of the Nightmare Cathedral and how Harlin shoots action inside it between Alice and Freddy -- although actually quite brief, all things considering -- remained entertaining enough. The use of broken stained glass in order to free the souls Freddy had taken from all those Elm Street kids and tear him apart is about as wacky as the dog fire piss (from Kincaid's pet, Jason; heh) that resurrected Freddy to begin with. And that is the big problem...Fred was killed properly in the previous film, buried and consecrated. It looked like Harlin's film just really had to just say, "Fuck it". So when you see critics of this film shit on it with, "Why?" I can fully understand their sentiment.

Still, damn it, I thought about pulling it up early Saturday morning for yet another revisit. Each of us have that guilty pleasure, I guess. This film is one of mine. I'm not guilty about it, even as I realize "The Dream Master" is blamed for the results that came after it. Robert Shaye driving young, hungry filmmakers to quickly release further sequels within a cruelly small window. Limited by that space, Harlin nonetheless delivered quite a spectacle.