A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) New Line/Horror RT: 93 minutes Rated R (language, graphic violence, frightening images, brief nudity) Director: Renny Harlin Screenplay: Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce (Jim and Ken Wheat) Music: Craig Safan Cinematography: Steven Fierberg Release date: August 19, 1988 (US) Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Brooke Theiss, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Toy Newkirk, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Nicholas Mele, Brooke Bundy. Box Office: $49.3 million (US)
Rating: *** ½
I went into A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master with the understanding that it would not surpass the high level of excellence set by the previous installment. As long as it was good, I wouldn’t be disappointed. I saw it opening night at the Barclay Square Theater with my younger brother. The place was packed with enthusiastic teens waiting to witness Freddy Krueger’s latest slaughter of the innocents.
Speaking on which, The Dream Master is the chapter in which Freddy dispenses with last of the original Elm Street Kids. It happens in the movie’s first twenty minutes, paving the way for a new heroine and a new batch of potential victims.
As expected, The Dream Master isn’t outstanding. But it is a lot of fun! Director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) appears to understand the franchise and what makes the movies work. So we get plenty of Freddy scraping his finger knives against stuff and getting off one-liners each time he kills somebody. It’s clear that Harlin respects the source material without taking it too seriously. He doesn’t attempt to recreate what Wes Craven did in the original 1984 movie. This one’s just for fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s mindless. On the contrary, the writing team contributes a reasonably intelligent script that doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator. It’s silly without being an insult to one’s intelligence.
Returning teens Kristin (singer Knight), Kincaid (Sagoes) and Joey (Eastman) have been released from the hospital and are trying to lead normal lives. That is, until the night Kristin pulls the two boys into one of her nightmares. She believes that Freddy is coming back for them, but the guys dismiss her fears as mere paranoia. It turns out she was right. Freddy gets all three of them, but not before Kristin pulls best friend Alice Johnson (Wilcox) into her final nightmare.
Right before she dies, Kristin passes her powers to Alice. Freddy wants to use his new adversary to get to other teens, but what he doesn’t count on is Alice’s inner strength. When we first meet her, she’s this quiet little wallflower with a propensity for daydreaming. That’s about to change in a big way. Alice has a group of friends that includes brainy asthma-sufferer Sheila (Newkirk), tough girl Debbie (Theiss, Just the Ten of Us) and football player Dan (Hassel) whom she has a crush on. Her brother, a martial-arts enthusiast named Rick (Jones, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), was Kristin’s boyfriend at the time of her death. Each time Freddy kills one of her friends, Alice absorbs aspects of their personalities, their special abilities and dream powers. She will be the “Dream Master” of the title. What does that mean exactly? It has something to do with a nursery rhyme Alice’s deceased mother used to tell her as a child. By the end, Alice is something of a bad ass. But will she be able to defeat Freddy?
The Dream Master is full of classic Freddy moments like the scene in which he turns an entomophobic character into a cockroach (shades of Kafka perhaps?) before crushing her to death in a roach motel and saying, “You can check in, but you can’t check out.” In another scene, he asks a boy, “How’s this for a wet dream?” before drowning him in his waterbed.
Englund obviously has fun playing Freddy as he typically attacks the role with relish. With parts 3 & 4, he was definitely at the top of his game. Wilcox does an amazing job as Alice, a wallflower that blossoms in the face of evil.
The characters in The Dream Master are cool. There’s not an unlikable teen in the bunch. Theiss is the second cast member of the 80s sitcom Just the Ten of Us to appear in a NOES flick, the first being Heather Langenkamp.
The visuals and special effects in The Dream Master are great! I’m partial to the scene where Freddy pulls Alice into an old black-and-white movie before an audience of her dearly departed friends. The climactic fight between Alice and Freddy is exciting; she kicks his ass all over Dreamland. Once again, the soundtrack consists of heavy metal music which I think really adds something to the experience. It enhances the film’s already-cool visual sense. I had a blast watching The Dream Master that night as I could tell I was among true Freddy fans. It’s one of my fondest moviegoing memories of the 80s.
