![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/A-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-4.jpg?resize=620%2C348&ssl=1\")
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A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master<\/strong>\u00a0 (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, frightening images, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Renny Harlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce (Jim and Ken Wheat)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Craig Safan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Fierberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 19, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny Hassel, Brooke Theiss, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Toy Newkirk, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Nicholas Mele, Brooke Bundy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $49.3 million (US)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I went into A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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\u2019s latest slaughter of the innocents.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Speaking on which, The Dream Master<\/strong> is the chapter in which Freddy dispenses with last of the original Elm Street Kids. It happens in the movie\u2019s first twenty minutes, paving the way for a new heroine and a new batch of potential victims.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0As expected, The Dream Master<\/strong> isn\u2019t 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\u2019s clear that Harlin respects the source material without taking it too seriously. He doesn\u2019t attempt to recreate what Wes Craven did in the original 1984 movie. This one\u2019s just for fun, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s mindless. On the contrary, the writing team contributes a reasonably intelligent script that doesn\u2019t pander to the lowest common denominator. It\u2019s silly without being an insult to one\u2019s intelligence.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Returning 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Right 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\u2019t count on is Alice\u2019s inner strength. When we first meet her, she\u2019s this quiet little wallflower with a propensity for daydreaming. That\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cDream Master\u201d of the title. What does that mean exactly? It has something to do with a nursery rhyme Alice\u2019s 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?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The Dream Master<\/strong> 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, \u201cYou can check in, but you can\u2019t check out.\u201d In another scene, he asks a boy, \u201cHow\u2019s this for a wet dream?\u201d before drowning him in his waterbed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Englund 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The characters in The Dream Master<\/strong> are cool. There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The visuals and special effects in The Dream Master<\/strong> are great! I\u2019m 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\u2019s already-cool visual sense. I had a blast watching The Dream Master<\/strong> that night as I could tell I was among true Freddy fans. It\u2019s one of my fondest moviegoing memories of the 80s.<\/p>\r\n A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master\u00a0 (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, graphic violence, frightening images, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Renny Harlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce (Jim and Ken Wheat)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Craig Safan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Steven Fierberg\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 19, 1988 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Danny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-sequels-remakes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/A-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-4.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1118,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/1118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/A-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-4-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C965&ssl=1\")
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