Nightmare on Elm Street 4

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

Directed by: Renny Harlin
Written by: Brian Helgeland, Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat
Starring: Lisa Wilcox, Robert Englund, Danny Hassel, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Brooke Theiss, Toy Newkirk, Nicholas Mele, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman

Okay. So. Part four. Great. This one has a really stupid title too.

Anyway, in this outing, the Fredmeister gets brought back to life by a dog so he can come kill the people he missed in Part 3. He accomplishes this. And then Patricia Arquette's character from the last movie (not Patricia Arquette this time - now it's Tuesday Night or whoever) transfers her mystical powers into this other chick (teh Dreem Mastor. Teh Dreem Mastor gets her own little rhyme (well, actually, it's a prayer with the word "Lord" taken out and "Dreem Mastor" put in)). The cycle starts again.

Um... this one isn't as good as the third one. Yes, there are some pretty imaginative dreams/deaths (one girl gets transformed into a giant cockroach after reading too much Kafka (sort of). Cool), but the series is just getting a little tiresome. I mean, they're kind of starting to stretch the whole thing. Like, after all the Elm Street kiddies are dead, wouldn't you think Fredster would just sort of knock it off? Nope! There's a whole excuse for why he doesn't quit, but I'm not going to go into that.

Okay, so maybe he likes killing people, but... well, he so often gets the shit kicked out of him. That's bound to get a little discouraging.

But then, what does he care? Not only is he dead, he's also fictional. More importantly, why do I care? Because I have no life. This is a sad realization for me.

Anyway, enough about my life or lack thereof. The most atrocious thing about this movie was the music. The music in the other ones was bad too, but it's starting to seep into my brain right about now. The acting was pretty bad, too.

And Wes Craven wasn't involved, so you know that can't be good (so far the ones with him have been better). This was a few steps up from Part 2, though.

And if I may just bring this up, the way Frederino gets it in this one is really, really cool - all these little people sort of pop out of his chest and rip him apart. Freeky shit, man. It was groovey.

Anyway, I have the fifth segment to look forward too. As far as I can tell, it's about a haunted fetus or something like that. Ew.

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