Random Movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

So now we come to the fork in the road. Nightmare 3 has ended. A sequel is greenlit. I would imagine the head honchos at New Line sitting in the conference room thinking about how to best continue the series. I would guess by this point Freddy had become fairly mainstream if I, a six-year-old at the time, had seen a fair amount of merchandise, television promos, and previews for the last films. So, instead of continuing on the path of relative excellence established by the previous film, Bob Shaye turns Freddy into a laughably bad stand-up comedian on a beach, presumably to click with more teens and more dollars. One might say this was a good choice as this film more or less launched Freddy into stardom, but it was at the expense of a good series to that point.

For some reason, I have historically really liked this film in spite of the about-face in technique. It was, and to a point still is, a pretty fun movie to watch but man did it piss me off this go around. I chalk that up to the fact that I cannot say I have actually watched all of the Nightmare movies in chronological order, instead skipping around to avoid Part 2, 5, and Freddy’s Dead. But watching the movie on the heels of its predecessors almost immediately sets it up for failure. In the first sixty seconds, you have many indications that this movie will be nothing like those before. This is not only the first in the series to give Robert Englund the main starring credit, but it also is the first to have the updated New Line logo and feature a typical 80s pop song over the credits as opposed to the score. Granted, these are relatively trivial things but these just forebode the rest to come.



I had remarked in my review for Part 3 that the final third of the movie seemed to start the train of flashy Freddy who was more direct and more entertained by his overly elaborate stunts. Well, this flick takes just that final twenty minutes or so, puts it on ritalin, and breeds it. The relative simplicity of Freddy has now been all but lost as his kills this go around range from the strategic repositioning of a junk yard, encasing Joey in a water bed, deflating Shelia’s lungs and I guess all of the oxygen molecules in her body at the same time. You get the picture.

While the sight of Brooke Theiss turning into a roach is cool and all, could Freddy not have slashed her in the stomach while doing upside-down crunches or smashed her head with a weight-set? Sure he could have but I suspect the producers, and likely the audience too, wanted less suspense and terror but more trailer and quote-worthy scenes instead. Regardless, you can keep the kills but get rid of stupid, wisecracking, beach-going Freddy and we would have a significantly better movie.

The concept itself is one I could get behind if it were done differently. After the survivors from the last film are slowly killed off (why even bother killing Kristen if she’s going to last almost half the movie), Freddy wants to continue but he needs a conduit. So, enter Kristen’s friend Alice who was pulled into Kristen’s final nightmare. As Freddy uses Alice to bring him new blood, Alice is stricken with the guilt that her involvement indirectly has resulted in the deaths of her friends and even her brother.

Alice is a pretty cool character after all. While I had thoughts to amend my plea for her return, she is still the best part of the movie from the development of her character as she progresses from the meek girl afraid of her drunken father to the chick who can take down Freddy with some fancy footwork. In fact, I don’t think even Kristen got as much development or progression of her character and certainly none of the other kids from the previous films, save Nancy of course.

The danger in bringing Freddy into full view was the makeup which I would say is remarkably terrible here. Again, he was fairly prominently featured in bright lights during portions of the third, but it almost seems like the makeup artists were dictated to tone down Freddy’s appearance to match the more audience-friendly nature of this and later sequels. He no longer looks scary or disgusting, he just looks like Robert Englund with a prosthetic nose and a bunch of makeup.

The final showdown was, like the rest of the film, over the top and unnecessarily convoluted but I would say that it worked as Freddy is now dead, the souls of his captured children have been released, and everything is hunky-dory. Until the next one that is.

I really do not want to be too hard on this movie as I liked it before, it still is nowhere near as craptacular as what is to come, and I am sure I will have a burning desire to see the ‘Dramarama-kickboxing’ or ‘Suiting Up’ scenes at some point in the future. The turn this series makes here is still disappointing all the same.