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


After a rushed and not well-received sequel New Line brought back Heather Langenkamp and much of the magic of the first film with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  Robert Shaye, producer of the series and CEO of New Line, knew it was the right time to seize the opportunity and get another Nightmare film out quickly.  With a script penned in days by Brian Helgeland and a looming writer's strike, as well as special effects being worked on before the movie started filming or even had an ending, Shaye hired a young Finnish director named Renny Harlin to direct the fourth entry in the series, which would go on to become the highest grossing and one of the most popular.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is thought to be dead after being buried in consecrated ground.  However, Kristen (Tuesday Knight) is still having nightmares, as well as pulling in Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) and Joey (Rodney Eastman), the other survivors of the previous bout with Freddy.  Kristen's fears are right as Krueger is resurrected in a nightmare and proceeds to take revenge for being banished.  

The new spate of killings in Springwood leads to Alice (Lisa Wilcox), the sister of Kristen's boyfriend Rick (Andras Jones), to believe that Kristen was right about Freddy.  Soon, he begins to use Alice to bring her friends into her dreams so he can attack them.  What Krueger doesn't know is that with each soul he takes Alice gains their power and, as she becomes stronger, she finds a way of turning his evil against him. 

The second film can still be ignored, and both A Nightmare on Elm Street and the third movie work together to tell a decent story and put it all to rest.  No one really expected that to be the end, so a fourth entry was no surprise, and it is also no surprise that at this point the special effects and Freddy's one-liners became the central aspects of the movie.  Harlin's decision to go for thrills instead of chills works well, as this does have two of the best kills - one involving a junkyard planet, another one with a character turning into a cockroach - of any of the movies.  It also features the best killing of Freddy in all of them.

This is Englund's favorite, and it is obvious the third movie allowed him to get further into playing the character, even as the movies embraced more humor.  Patricia Arquette opted to not return, and Tuesday Knight does a decent job as Kristen, but this is really Lisa Wilcox's film as she evolves from a shy, frumpish wallflower to one of the best final girls in the series.  In a rare turn of events for a movie of this type the majority of the supporting cast is decent and not as annoying as one would find in most slasher films.

I still like Dream Warriors better, just because it feels like a superhero film in some places and Freddy is still walking a line between comic relief and true evil.  The Dream Master also has lots of random silliness outside of Freddy, like how he is brought back to life, and the daydreaming aspect of Alice's personality is never exploited in a way it could have been.  There are also some effects that just don't work, such as the hole in Freddy at one point and the burn makeup on Kristen.  There are elements of body horror, and for that Screamin' Mad George is brought in to provide on that end.  

This was the turning point in the series and, unfortunately, things began to go downhill quickly after this entry.  It made the most of any in the series so of course it made financial sense to continue, but pretty much the best ideas for both the kills and how to present Freddy Krueger ended with this one, although I never despised the fifth entry as much as many fans of the series. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
Time: 93 minutes
Starring: Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Andras Jones, Danny Hassel, Robert Englund
Director: Renny Harlin

 

Comments

  1. PT DillowayOctober 3, 2024 at 9:07 PM

    I've only seen the first two; they never seem to pop up on streaming.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Eric WincentsenOctober 3, 2024 at 10:14 PM

      I can't remember who owns them now, but they don't. For the remainder of the series I just found a DVD collection for a couple bucks at the town thrift store.

      Delete

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