I Know What You Did Last Summer

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While it’s fun to go back to the good movies from a bygone era, there is a joy to be had in watching the bad movies from a bygone era – especially the ‘90s slasher flick. Considering that the Scream franchise is up to its seventh movie, Chucky slashed up screens for over two decades, and I Know What You Did Last Summer got a reboot last year, there’s clearly something appealing about this eerie little subgenre. So, eager for some smooth-brained suspense this evening, Partner and I curled up and went back to 1997 with the original I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In a small fishing town, after a 4^th of July parade, a group of teenaged friends have a bit too much fun on the beach and accidentally hit a man on the drive home. Terrified that going to the cops will ruin their futures, they agree to dump the body in the harbour and take the secret to their grave. One year later, they are reunited and their guilt comes back to haunt them, as they begin getting mysterious letters and a strange figure with an angler’s hook starts stalking them. They soon realise that someone knows what they did last year… and they’re not going to let them forget it!

While it lacks the charisma of Ghostface or the suspense of Michael Myers, this classic ‘90s slasher is not without its charm. Arguably a modern take on The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, the real horror of I Know What You Did Last Summer is actually manufactured by the protagonists/victims themselves, each one trying to process their guilt and post-traumatic stress…unsuccessfully.

The arrival of the first mysterious note sends them down a rabbit hole of trying to find out about the person they killed, thus hoping to find leads as to who the stalker might be. As they find more clues, discover new truths, and get closer to achieving closure, that’s when the tantalising torment turns violent and fear, paranoia, and grief start to overwhelm them: strengthening the allegorical slasher.

The performances are a little shaky, unless someone is yelling in anger or screaming in fear, and the mystery portion of the story itself is pretty flimsy. The enjoyment of this film definitely comes from its stoic adherence to horror rules despite providing some tongue-in-cheek meta about the genre at the beginning. It’s always fun to just groan when the helpless girl runs in the opposite direction of where she should be going or calling which character will be killed next and how. And simple tricks like narrative misdirection and jump scares still serve to make us flinch and exclaim in mild surprise when the ‘twist’ happens.

Image credit: Medium

I Know What You Did Last Summer is by no means amazing, but it’s a film that does have some intriguing layers to it, making it a perfectly enjoyable Friday night popcorn movie.

Director: Jim Gillespie, 1997

Cast: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Ryan Phillippe, Anne Heche, Johnny Galecki, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, & Muse Watson

Dementia 13

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Ever wondered what Psycho would be like if it was a B-horror movie directed by Francis Coppola and produced by Roger Corman? I’m guessing you probably haven’t but for anyone who’s mind has actually wandered that road you’d need look no further…

It begins with a shady villainess’ plan to manipulate her would-be mother-in-law into changing her will. After her husband suffers a heart attack Louise (Luana Anders) is furious that she’ll be left nothing while the Haloran fortune is given to a mysterious charity under the name of ‘Kathleen’. However, her scheme is cut short when she’s killed by an axe-wielding figure. When a local hunter also goes missing it becomes apparent that there is something haunting the Haloran Castle and as more strange incidents start to happen the family’s doctor (Patrick Magee) makes it his mission to solve the riddle and find out what really happened to Kathleen Haloran.

A very Hitchock story without any of the visual sophistication and flair, this schlock thriller is actually quite amusing –until the ending. Watching a movie like this makes you realise just how important the ending is to a horror film. The best movies end on a note of lingering danger: Psycho with the skeletal face of Norman’s mother morphing over his own, Nightmare on Elm Street with Freddy dragging Nancy’s mother through the transom, Silence of the Lambs where Dr. Lector says “I’m having an old friend for dinner”… 

Good horror movies hinge on their endings and obviously bad ones don’t mind so much. The abrupt answer to all the riddles mixed with the single-line explanation of a very loaded question –all this coming after a ‘climax’ that is not so climactic- does have the affect of leaving one in a state of ‘huh', despite being a very gothic structural trope. 

Image credit: IMDb

Aside from that detail, the film actually boasts some solid performances, a fair amount of mystery, and a few cleverly constructed red herrings to minutely throw us off the track. There’s enough gore in it to make you cringe –impressive as this was made in the ‘60s- and the playful banter between the paranormal and the psychological is rather enjoyable.

Starring: William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton, Mary Mitchel, Patrick Magee, Eithne Dunne, Peter Read, Karl Schanzer, and Ron Perry

Dr. Phibes Rises Again [PG]

For three years, Anton Phibes has lain in peaceful slumber beside his dead beloved. But now the moon has reached its proper perch and he has risen again with a plan to resurrect his wife Victoria. He travels to a secret lair in Egypt where he hopes to discover the River of Life that will wash him and Victoria anew with eternal life. But his plan becomes a race as another man obsessed with eternal life is after the same thing and hot on Phibe’s trail. 

I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first movie, but I do have to concede that, despite its bad editing and heavy-handed Vincent Price monologues, it’s still a fun and bad-but-in-a-good-way cult movie. The Dr. Phibes movies you come to love because they are so outlandish and really very stupid in a number of ways, but that just adds to the humour and the fun of them; like Batman & Robin. 

Where the film falls down here is, as I mentioned, in the bad editing and the heavy monologues given to Vincent Price. 

Whilst Price is a wonderful actor with a penchant for the theatrical and a voice that one could hear reciting both Poe and Shakespeare simultaneously, some of his monologues were just horrible and a waste of his breath. Further hilarity gets added to them as Price delivers them with such gusto and somewhat clichéd theatrical passion that they just become funny. Not to mention the amount of times the writers had him repeat himself, which got a tad tedious to say the least: “my sweet Victoria, my beloved, my sweet beloved, my beloved Victoria” etc, etc, etc, yawn. 

And then the story itself was pretty weak and there were a number of parts where you felt that the writers came to a ravine and had to quickly build a makeshift bridge. 

Then there is the editing. Now, I am in two minds about this because on the one hand it’s very jaggedly put together that half the time you feel as though you’ve missed some crucial action: this-guy-was-on-one-end-of-the-room-and-now-suddenly-he’s-on-the-other type thing. But on the other hand, its jaggedness and the general amateurish and no-hearted way it’s just thrown together sort of makes it funny. The editing is so bad that you cannot help but laugh at it. 

This, mingled with the many scenes that feature Phibes practically conjuring ridiculous machines out of thin air –seriously, where do you get a giant fan in the middle of the Egyptian desert?-  just make the entire thing quite laughable, but in a good sort of way. You’re repulsed by how bad it is, and yet you can’t look away. 

Much like the creative murders that occur, which is a positive point that carries on from the first movie. It’s nice to see that Phibes hasn’t lost his sense of creativity in three years. Just as before, the sets are epic and pretty impressive, the costumes are immaculate, there is still a Hitchcockian humour that comes from the bumbling ineptitude of the authorities, –even more so in this one actually- and the use of music is still very fascinating, particularly the reprise of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, which Price himself sings. 

Starring Robert Quarry, Beryl Reid, Valli Kemp, Peter Jeffrey, Fiona Lewis, Terry-Thomas, Hugh Griffith, John Cater, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, John Thaw, Keith Buckley, and Peter Cushing, Dr. Phibes Rises Again is a so-bad-it’s-good cult movie that I can see myself coming to love the more I watch it. Filled with violence, action, murder, suspense, romance, and comedy, I wasn’t impressed, yet I could not look away.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes [M]

A string of murders have occurred, each more gruesome and strange than the next. For Inspector Trout of Scotland Yard, it cannot be coincidence that the victims are all medical men who have worked together over the years. Trout soon discovers that there is one particular case that involved nine doctors, where the patient sadly died. Thus the case becomes one of serial killings in the name of revenge, but the only plausible suspect is the husband of the deceased patient, Dr. Anton Phibes. Unfortunately, the plot thickens for Trout as he discovers that Phibes was reported to have died years ago. 

Definitely a step up in the Vincent Price cult movie collection than bloody Witchfinder General, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a vibrant, weird, and twisted movie that features the grandeur of Kubrick’s The Shining and A Clockwork Orange and the creatively twisted murders of Se7en. I think the best way to discuss this movie is to look at in terms of how it reminds me of other, similar films. Aesthetically, it’s the got the cult vibe of The Rocky Horror Picture Show though nowhere near as musically entertaining or character rich. 

The simpleness of the story allows for creativity to flourish in areas such as set and costume design, which both deserve a round of applause. The sets were incredible, each more grandiose than the next with modern taste appearing in the homes of one of the victimised doctors and old world decadent grandeur done up to appear camply contemporary in the lair of Phibes himself. The costumes are just as vibrant and colourful, particularly those of Phibes’ female accomplice who never says a word, but glides about in these beautiful costumes. 

On top of this, special applause must go to the makeup team for their achievements in the deformity of Phibes and the make up job on Price that made his face believable, but at the same time fake. And then there is the work that went into all the corpses. Each murder is inspired by one of the ten plagues: boils, bats, frogs, blood, hail, rats, beasts, locusts, first born, and darkness and the effort of the makeup team, art department, and prop design team that was put into all these deaths was really striking and memorable. 

Then we have the music, which serves wonderfully to bring another level of weirdness into the mix. Indeed it was the music that made me feel a bit like I was watching The Shining in that we have these pleasant, jazzy tunes playing against this very twisted and strange tale of violence and revenge. Plus, they are recognisable tunes such as Dark Town Strutter’s Ball, All I Do Is Dream Of You, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which bring this uncanny edge to the film. Not to mention the constant organ music that makes one expect to see the Phantom of the Opera appear at any moment. 

Whilst the story is simple and executed in a very generic sort of way with relatively mild performances and a little bit of Hitchcockian humour that infused his British films such as Frenzy, ultimately The Abominable Dr. Phibes is quite an enjoyable cult classic in which a modern movie watcher can pick up hints of later films such as Soylent Green, The Shining, Se7en, and A Clockwork Orange. 

Starring Vincent Price, who does some impressive throat work, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas, Virginia North, Peter Jeffrey, Derek Godfrey, Norman Jones, Aubrey Woods, John Laurie, Maurice Kaufmann, Barbara Keogh, Sean Bury, and Susan Travers, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a delightfully weird movie that well deserves the status of cult. Filled with creative murders, drama, suspense, and a little bit of refreshing humour, it’s surprisingly quite enjoyable.

Scream 4 [MA]

Sidney Prescott has come out of the shadows about the ordeal and trauma of the Woodsboro Murders and written a book. For the first time in years she’s returning to Woodsboro to promote it, but all too soon she’s regretting that decision. The town’s teenagers ritually celebrate the murders and the Stab movie franchise that came with them, but as soon as Sidney returns someone takes it one step further. Soon teenagers are being murdered again and a mysterious caller is once again threatening Sidney. 

Original screenwriter Kevin Williamson returns for the final instalment of the Scream saga. Not quite a reboot, as it is still strongly linked to the preceding movies, Scream 4 brings the franchise into the 21^st century, complete with a new load of meta including meta about being meta and the original survivors struggling to solve the mystery the old fashioned way in times that have definitely changed. 

It’s classic Craven and Williamson nevertheless and stands up as a decent horror movie. In this movie, the fresh ‘90s metafictive humour of Williamson is still there, however it gets elevated to the next level as the film caters towards a modern audience of movie-watchers. 

Cinema buffs are no longer enthusiastic fanboys like Randy, theorising about the generic patterns of the horror genre, these kids are more academically minded and critical when it comes to the movies. The scope of cinematic enthusiasm is neatly summarised in a scene where Gale explains the theories of the local cinema club to Dewey, ending with the line “how meta is that?!” to which Dewey replies “what” and Gale says “I don’t know, that’s what the kids said.” 

Not only does this movie depict a new class of movie buffs, it chronicles the struggles of the original survivors: Sidney, Gale, and Dewey to find their own places within this movie itself. What’s fascinating to watch is our original heroes try to solve the case the way they did in the old days and realising that a decade has really changed the times. 

Suddenly, these guys aren’t as special as they were before: not as smart, not as brave, not as cunning. This then makes the movie more than another slasher flick, it’s a film about the clashes between generations: the out with the old and in with the new so to speak. But what’s great about it is that our heroes really try to stand their ground and it proves to have some great character development. 

As can be expected with a modern ‘reboot’, the gore factor is upped a little and the makeup and costume effects prove to be pretty spot on, especially in the depiction of a lot of blood: it’s not as red as the days of old and there’s a little bit more realism to it. 

Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Emma Roberts, Alison Brie, Hayden Panettiere, Marielle Jaffe, Marley Shelton, Erik Knudsen, Rory Culkin, Nico Tortorella, Anthony Andersen, Adam Brody and featuring appearances from Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin, Scream 4 is just as fun and thrilling as its predecessors. 

Filled with action, suspense, blood, drama, comedy, and a bit of a twisted ending, it still delivers all the expected fun and feelings of a horror movie. It’s a Scream movie and you get what you expect from a Scream movie, there is really not much more to be said.

Scream 3 [MA]

For many people the Woodsboro murders are buried in the past, but for Sidney, Dewey, and Gale they are still very real. The nightmare begins yet again when newly successful Cotton Weary is brutally murdered and the production of ‘Stab 3’, a third movie based on Sidney’s story, comes to a grinding halt. All too soon the film’s cast are being picked off one by one, each body being left with a picture of Sidney’s mother. With the body count increasing, Sidney is forced out of hiding and has a new horror to face. 

It’s the third movie people and this is the one where all the rules go out the window. Wes Craven teams up with screenwriter Ehren Kruger (horror movie fans feel free to give that irony a little giggle) and the result is this gripping and gory third instalment of an unexpected trilogy. This is the movie that did was the sequel was expected to do. The body is count is phenomenally higher with two games of slasher hide-and-seek going on within the very first scene. 

Whilst it doesn’t capture the fun of Williamson’s original bubblegum-blonde-Drew-Barrymore-movie-trivia opening scene, it still proves gripping, fun, and enthralling. The classic and addictive metafiction that Williamson injected into the first two movies is still ripe in Kruger’s script; in fact it proves to work better and in a more balanced way in contrast to the sequel. 

For the majority of the film it is a slasher movie and one that successfully delivers the contractual thrills of the genre: the body count, the blood, the suspenseful stalking scenes all work to achieve the expected thrills and chills of the genre. But more than that, the balance between the actual scary slasher-stalking story and the scenes of metafictive information dumps is really well done. The scenes where the movie provides commentary on its genre and itself as a third instalment are spread evenly apart and it’s really nice because it allows us to become emotionally involved with the characters, get into the story, get psyched up about the appearances of the killer, and then provides us with this nice and refreshingly funny bit of metafictive humour. Hell, we even get a revisit from Randy with his know-how on the subject. 

On the negative side, the story itself is a bit of a wild card. Adhering to the idea that third movies bring up unresolved issues from the past, the central drama centres around the mysterious character of Maureen Prescott, and Sidney is almost literally haunted by ghosts in this flick with the connections between her mother and the murders being a little stretched. Whilst the connections technically do work and there isn’t really anything wrong with them, they do feel a little bit loosey goosey and there is a slight reaction of ‘ugh, oh really?’ when the identity of the killer is revealed. 

Having said that, that’s the only real problem there is with this film. The performances are all just as good, the writing is still witty and glorious, and it provides more creativity in terms of the body count, the murders, the motives, everything really. 

Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Lieve Schreiber, Scott Foley, Roger Corman, Lance Henriksen, Josh Pais, Deon Richmond, Matt Keeslar, Jenny McCarthy, Emily Mortimer, Patrick Warburton, Parker Posey, Lawrence Hecht, Patrick Dempsey, and featuring a sneaky appearance from Jay and Silent Bob, Scream 3 is a fun and gripping slasher flick that I really enjoyed. I actually found it more fun than the sequel because it does deliver everything a sequel should with the added surprise elements of the third movie promises. At the end of the day, this is a really fun movie.

Scream 2 [MA]

For Sidney Prescott, life has just begun to get back on track after the Woodsboro murders; she’s in college, has a smart and sane boyfriend, and has even gotten used the immature prank callers trying to give her a scare. But then a movie comes out based on her true story and when two students are killed during the advance screening, it soon becomes apparent that there’s a Ghostface copycat on the loose. But, what began as random murders is soon revealed to have some connection to Sidney and Woodsboro and it becomes apparent that someone is out to finish what Billy Loomis started. 

Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson reunite for a second instalment of metafiction and horror with Scream 2, a sequel that makes fun of itself as a sequel and thus, has this arguably protective cloak against criticism because even if you argue that it’s not as good as the first one, which I am about to do, the metafictive element that is more heavily employed here can absolve the movie of many indiscretions simply by arguing that it has been deliberately written that way. The question of course becomes whether this protective cloak of metafiction works to create a similar viewing experience to the original and only those who watch the film can answer that. 

First, let’s discuss the pros. By no means is this a bad sequel and it definitely does not cheapen or take anything away from the original or the franchise. Williamson’s quick and clever metafictive wit is still present and works to great effect. Indeed, the film draws attention to itself as a sequel, but does not actually follow through with the clichéd and expected defining features of a sequel. Randy himself, still heavily into movies even after the first flick, openly discusses the calling cards of a sequel: chiefly a higher body count and an increase in the creativity and gore factor of the murders, however the film nicely doesn’t adhere to these clichés. Truthfully the body count is higher, literally by one corpse if my counting serves me correctly, but the gore factor is not upped in any way and the creativity less so. There are no garage doors with cat flaps, no sadistic games of movie trivia, and no gutting and hanging from trees or goalposts; just flat out stabbby stab stab. 

The story is pretty good although, the killer’s motive at the end whilst being “good and old fashioned” can be argued and work as a bit of an unstable plot point. I personally think it said more about the fragility of the character, which didn’t quite sit right. Aside from that there are some nice red herrings, misdirected leads, and a twist that I really didn’t see coming. 

At the same time as being a slasher story, it’s a story about redemption and character growth, making it a slasher flick of many levels. Cotton’s character from the first makes a reappearance and his story, whilst being a little clumsily handled and the character a little unstable, is really kind of nice namely because it brings such a minor character into limelight and focuses a lot on them and the repercussions of the first film on them. Gale’s character receives a bit of a wake up call and it’s nice to see her character develop and transform, especially the greedy, grubbing side of her. 

Quickly going back to the humour of the movie, there are a great many jokes that make their way into the mix that nicely tie the two movies together, namely the appearance of Tori Spelling as Sidney in the movie of the Woodsboro murders. Other recognisable faces make their way onto two screens with Heather Graham as Drew Barrymore’s character and Luke Wilson as Billy Loomis. 

I have sort of already covered most of the cons in the pros section, but we’ll do a quick overview. Whilst I did like most of the metafictive comedy that was blended into the script, some of it did come across as being obvious and sometimes a little ham-fisted. This is noticed probably most poignantly during the movie discussion scenes where heated discussions take place on the nature of sequels, which then bleeds into other, more dramatic scenes. 

Randy’s character is exactly the same, which is kind of sad because I think a growth of character for him would have been interesting to watch, but he proves to be a one-trick pony, playing that trick of movie trivia and analysis over and over again. 

By the time we get to the reveal of the killer, there is some idea as to who it is and whilst there is a twist that I didn’t see coming, it doesn’t work to up the ante in favour of horror and suspense, if anything the more the killer reveals of themselves just highlights how weak a person they are and how their motive is pretty mediocre and just ugh. More detail into the history might have helped to heighten the fear factor, but as it stands I was a little disappointed with the killer. 

Sidney is just as annoying as she was in the first movie so I suppose we can’t really count that as a con because it is to be expected. There really is only so much of that girl one can take, though the way she fights back against the killer is always something that I marvel at. 

Starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, Elsie Neal, Live Schreiber, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joshua Jackson, Timothy Olyphant, Jamie Kennedy, Jerry O’Connell, Duane Martin, Larue Metcalf, David Arquette, Omar Epps, and Jada Pinkett Smith, Scream 2 contains all the metafictive humour of the first movie, but a little less of the initial fun. Maybe it’s because the setting has gotten bigger, being set on a college campus away from Woodsboro, but that initial intimacy of the small town serial slasher does get taken away a little in this. So, I lied when I said this movie takes nothing away from the first. 

Filled with murder, blood, romance, drama, suspense, and comedy, Scream 2 works well as a sequel that ironically doesn’t deliver the expected ‘delights’ of a sequel but, of course, it’s not as good as the first one.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare [MA]

It’s been ten years since the Nightmare on Elm Street movies came to a close with the death of Freddy Krueger. But for Heather Langenkamp, who starred as Nancy in the first movie, the nightmare isn’t over. She’s been receiving some creepy phone calls reciting that old sing-song rhyme, and having a Freddy nightmare that turns out to be eerily prophetic. Wes Craven is writing a new Nightmare movie and wants her to reprise her role as Nancy. As the script remains under wraps, Nancy’s nightmares grow steadily worse and it becomes clear that the evil of Freddy isn’t going away unless she confronts it. 

A cleverly and highly metafictive movie, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare works both as horror movie and social commentary on the popularity of the Freddy Krueger franchise. After the string of trashy but fun b-grade horror sequels that came after Craven’s chilling original, this is a drink of fresh water; rich in intertextuality, metafiction, and parallel running plot lines. 

What I liked best about this movie was its metafiction. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by films that draw attention to or make fun or commentary on their own status as films. Films where actors play themselves, or a slightly different version of themselves, I just find really funny and a very clever way of making social commentary and critique on various topics: in the case of this movie, the unexpected popularity of Freddy Krueger and his iconic status as the killer that always comes back. Krueger as metaphor is a very strong theme running through this movie: a metaphor for the film’s endurance, for a character/film being definitive of an actor, and even the everlasting-ness of cinema and how actors are often haunted by films that they’ve done, which they’re not always the proudest of or consider their best works. The idea of Freddy haunting Heather as Heather and not Nancy is a stark illustration of this and this is where the film achieves its status as both metafictive horror movie and social commentary. 

All the original taboo themes of the first film are being explored again, but this time there are various hints that suggest alternative meanings of the movie and contradict certain events. It’s a film that leaves you with a lot of questions to ponder and I think I like that most about it. 

Heather Langenkamp delivers a great performance as a haunted version of herself and Miko Hughes who plays her son Dylan is very entrancing to watch, especially in his scarier moments of trance, fear, and possession. 

After a decade the special effects have become a lot crisper, but occasionally there is still one that makes you think ‘ugh that is so fake’. Oh well, can’t win them all. 

Starring Matt Winston, Rob LaBelle, David Newsom, Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena, Tracy Middendorf, Sam Rubin, Robert Englund, Robert Shaye, Tuesday Knight, and Tina Vail, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is an eerie and entertaining horror movie and social commentary that’s filled with metafiction, action, horror, drama, and comedy. It’s a homage to the powers of storytelling and I found it quite engaging and entertaining. 

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare [M]

Thanks to Freddy Kruger there are no kids or teenagers left in Springwood… except one. A nameless amnesia case is picked up by the cops and dumped in a neighbouring town’s youth centre, with no clues as to his identity but a clipping from a newspaper. His doctor suggests a trip back to Springwood to jog his memory, but the trip goes bad when two out of three stowaway patients meet grizzly ends in their sleep whilst there and only one development is made in the John Doe case: Freddy Krueger had a child. 

The final chapter in the Freddy ‘saga’, Freddy’s Dead does prove to be a little bit of an improvement of its predecessor at least in terms of writing… well, for the base idea at least. It still follows in the footsteps of the entire string of spin-off movies: being a trashy 1980s B-grade horror flick, but at least, at the very least there was a bit of an effort made to salvage Freddy’s history… if only just a bit. 

Essentially what this movie was, was an attempt to put a lid on the string of Nightmare movies whilst simultaneously being a last minute attempt to salvage the severely mutilated history that lazy and clichéd writers had dreamed up for Freddy. Mixing spiritualism, religion, and psychology, the Freddy history that we are given in this film is much more compelling and believable than the satanic spawn theory of Dream Child. Having said that, there still are a few gaping plot holes: namely the fact that this movie doesn’t link on from the others in any way at all. Admittedly, they set it for ten years from ‘now’ (whether that ‘now’ is the leave-off point from the last film or the actual present is unclear), so kudos for trying. Then the recurring dream and the sudden information dump that Freddy had a child is a bit of an unstable bomb, but it works for the rest of the film, loosely. The story, however flimsily written, does succeed in depicting a believable tale of incredibly troubled childhood resulting in a psychologically fractured man so, for me after Dream Child, that was a massive relief. 

The rest is more or less, take it or leave it, the same. Freddy’s killings become a little less creative and a little bit predictable with the gore in this film being dialled down a notch… during some parts. 

Englund still delivers a classic Freddy performance complete with the memorable wise cracks and one-liners and the other thing that I liked about this movie was the sneaky appearance from Johnny Depp! Little bit of intertextual satire there, which was priceless. 

Starring Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Lezlie Deane, Ricky Dean Logan, Tom Arnold, Roseanne Barr, Yaphet Kotto, Elinor Donahue, Breckin Meyer, anda sneaky, sinister appearance from Alice Cooper Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is a shameless close to the Nightmare saga and to give credit where credit is due, it did resurrect the franchise slightly with the rewritten history of one of cinema’s iconic slashers. Filled with action, horror, gore, violence, drama, trauma, and comedy, it’s still a fun and trashy ‘80s B-grade horror movie, but it’s shameless about what it is and I liked that about it. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child [M]

Alice thought she had gotten rid of Fred Krueger and those horrible nightmares. But now dreams are taking on an eerily familiar tinge of danger. After a terrible nightmare where she almost drowned in the shower, it seems to Alice that Freddy is back and when her boyfriend is brutally killed in a car crash her worst fears are confirmed. Freddy is back and in search of new souls, but what’s different this is that he’s attacking their dreams… when they’re awake. 

And we’re back on to the bad follow-up movies that attempt to tell the impenetrable back-story of Fred Krueger and… fail, absolutely epically. But we’ll get to that in a minute. After exploring and mutilating the themes of identity and Lacanian mirror theory in The Dream Master, this follow up movie explores pregnancy and motherhood. Maybe it’s some stab at the ultimate abject; kids and parents turning on each other, whatever the writers were trying to do with this movie caused it to be a class flop just like its predecessor. Admittedly, you can argue that these films have become a deliberate B-grade string of ‘good’ bad movies, but it really doesn’t make them any less bad. 

So, Freddy is somehow back again and really we have no idea how; we’re given all these clues, but no information dumps, which is kind of surprising seeing as films like these tend to favour them generically. The first thing that I want to tear apart in this film is the religious aspect of it. I can completely understand the appeal of creating a history for a notorious cinematic slasher like Freddy Krueger; he’s one of the best horror movie killers around with his fedora and his wise cracks. But what irritates me is the fact that whoever was in charge of coming up with Kruger’s back-story, didn’t really bother to explore the other, more frightening possibilities. Think about how much fun you could have writing about Krueger from a psychological point of view. But no, they go for the religious aspect and how he is some mutated spawn of the Satan. Now, this annoys me for two reasons. 1) Freddy Krueger was not born some mutated creepy devil spawn: he was a man who was a child murderer and was murdered by the townsfolk, thus sparking his revenge story of the first movie. 2) I cannot help but feel that it’s an example of incredibly lazy writing when you just slap on a ‘religious’ label and then don’t explore that further. In this film we get the slightest hints of explanations regarding Christian mythology, and Freddy’s one weakness, his mother (a bit of a reverse Bates or Vorhees thing going on there), is a nun. End of research. 

All of the film’s attention is on the ‘gross-out’ aspect, which is really just a lot of tapioca, claymation, and rubber daubed in shiny gluey liquid. One thing that can be praised in this movie is Freddy Krueger in black and white comic strip: that return to the grey tones of noir was pretty cool, especially for such a modern character as Freddy. I have to admit also too that there was a little hint of Mad Max about the first death scene, namely the victim literally becoming one with his bike. It was actually eerily prophetic of Fury Road. Whether this was deliberate or not, I still responded in a positive way to that bit. 

Most of the performances are pretty solid with a special shout-out going to Lisa Wilcox as Alice and Kelly Jo Minter who, in a slightly annoying and obvious but nevertheless effective way, provided the voice of reality, authority, and all of the characters who were not meant to believe what Alice was telling them about a guy killing people in their dreams. 

Starring Danny Hassel, Erika Anderson, Nicholas Mele, Joe Seely, Valerie Armstrong, Burr DeBenning, Beatrice Boepple, Clarence Felder, and Robert Englund, Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child provides a fairly predictable cinematic experience that results in disappointment because it is so obvious. Filled with gore, classic Freddy wise cracks, drama, horror, and a sneaky exhibition of Englund without scarred Freddy makeup, it’s just as bad as its predecessors and should be viewed with the expectation of being a tacky, B-grade horror movie. Not much less and certainly nothing more. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master [M]

Kristen, Joey, and Kincaid are the last of the Elm Street kids against whose parents Freddy swore revenge. Although his bones are buried and they’ve been sleeping sound, Kristen fears that they haven’t seen the last of him. Sure enough, Freddy comes back, but it’s not just to wipe out the original Elm Street kids. Hungry for the souls of more children, Freddy tricks Kristen into using her power to call new kids into her dreams and soon his sights are set on Alice, an identity-confused wallflower with a dream power all her own. As her friends start to get picked off one by one, Alice must dig deep and find the courage to face Freddy and become the dream master. 

After a slight resurrection in the quality of writing and performance and just everything in general in Dream Warriors, this next instalment in the Freddy Krueger saga is a sound flop. It just flops to the ground like a sack of crap. True, the sack of crap that it is. 

For a start, we’ve only got two members of the Dream Warriors cast and while I can understand that this is no-one’s fault really, it’s just very hard for people to see different faces on the characters they know and it’s not fair to expect us to automatically feel the same (if any) attachment to them as we had before. To be honest, even the two originals made it feel like they didn’t really want to be there. 

Having said this, the new characters made a solid go of it and fair play to them! More power to Lisa Wilcox who stars as Alice; it’s hard to play a convincing wallflower who actually does have friends, but not really a sense of belonging and she did the role really well, particularly when she takes on the character traits of each of her friends as they meet their end. I actually quite liked her as a character and thought that her eventual embodiment of all her deceased friends forming her identity was a nice touch (in sentiment at least). 

Freddy’s methods of killing and wisecracks become more creative and hilarious with him turning our heroes’ deep-seated fears and social anxieties against them: one girl gets gruesomely transformed into a cockroach and another has everything sucked out of her when Freddy asks “wanna suck face?” Need I say more? 

Moving on to things that bring this movie down, the major one is the way that the writers tried to be deep and smart in the ways of Lacanian mirror theory. If for nothing else, the overt and brutally ham-fisted way in which mirrors are used in this movie as a metaphor for identity really drags the film down to the lowest depths possible with a heavy coat of pretentiousness. 

The dialogue is shoddy, rumbling along fine and then suddenly popping forward or backward, and there’s at least two or three places where you forget that there’s some sort of shaping plot going on. Overall, it doesn’t make for very gripping entertainment on any level. 

Starring Rodney Eastman, Danny Hassel, Richard Garrison, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Nicholas Mele, Toy Newkirk, Ken Sagoes, Brooke Theiss, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master falls back bounds behind its predecessor. Filled with gore, action, drama, murder, and comedy it’s another 20^th century B-grade horror flick that achieves a few throaty chuckles at its derpy hilarity, but ultimately just isn’t good. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors [M]

All over town teenagers are committing suicide. Survivors of attempts are grouped together in a clinic where they have nothing in common, except for a recurring figure in their nightmares. A burned man with knifed fingers terrorises them in their sleep and it’s not until the hospital receives a new staff member, Nancy Thompson that any hope of survival comes through. Knowing the foe that these kids face, Nancy teaches them to use the powers of their dreams to fight back against Krueger. But Freddy’s been gaining strength from the souls of his victims, is Nancy and a bunch of kids really strong enough to fight him? 

Whilst it’s not a cinematic masterwork by any means, Dream Warriors is still a hell of a lot better than Freddy’s Revenge. This is where the films become somewhat camp, like Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies, but that element of campiness actually has a lot to be said for it. Dream Warriors introduces this fun element as well as the horror and stomach-churning gruesomeness that is the fun of Nightmare, making it a relatively entertaining movie. 

Firstly, the writing is much better than its predecessor! What we’ve now got is a fairly stable and balanced script that blends information dumps and payoffs with comedy, and plausible pop-psychoanalysis. Freddy’s methods of attack in these kids’ dreams become all the more inventive and scary as he takes on the form of past or repressed horrors of each character. For example, we’ve got an ex-drug addict whom Freddy kills with ten fingers of needles while another girl is forced to listen to her mother’s decapitated head complain about her attempts to ruin her relationships with other men. On a shallow level, this movie delivers the thrills by preying on the plausible psychoanalytic edges of distressed teens that are suffering from real-life problems like drug addiction, divorce, etc. This exploration into that sort of territory already makes it infinitely better than the piss-weak attempt of possession through Nancy’s old house that was at the centre of the second flick. 

Secondly, we’ve got some much stronger performances at work here and it was actually nice to see cast members from the first movie reprise their roles. I’ll concede it was a bit of a wild card bringing Nancy back into the nightmare, seeing as we never really worked out whether she died in the first film or not, but the appearance of her familiar face did bring a new layer of enjoyment to the movie: it’s always nice to see familiar faces in movies. The performances are all bounds ahead of those in the second film, with connection and chemistry actually being able to be seen between the central characters. 

What I love also too are our heroes’ interactions with Freddy and his newfound one-liners that bring that extra level of fun to the film. 

The special effects are much better and there is even a solid stab at explaining Freddy’s history, which is interesting. 

Starring Heather Langenkamp, Craig Wasson, Patricia Arquette, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Jennifer Rubin, Bradley Gregg, Ira Heiden, Penelope Sudrow, Priscilla Pointer, Laurence Fishburne, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a camp, but fun supernatural slasher flick filled with action, horror, violence, drama, and comedy. While it’s still not a horror masterpiece, it’s fun. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge [MA]

Jesse and his family have moved into a new house, but he hasn’t even finished unpacking and he’s already having strange nightmares about a guy with knifed fingers. Stories run rampant around the schoolyard about how the last owner of Jesse’s house went mad and killed themselves, but then Jesse finds a diary and the nightmares become all too real as he reads Nancy’s accounts of Fred Krueger. Soon Jesse is fighting for his life and his sanity as Freddy starts to take control of his body when he sleeps, killing his friends and loved ones, and threatening to take Jesse down with him. 

Hands down, one of the stupidest movies ever! I don’t think you can even call it a sequel because, aside from the house and the villain, there is literally nothing linking it properly to Craven’s original classic. And it definitely shouldn’t be called Freddy’s Revenge for the simple reason that he has nothing and no one to revenge against! All this movie is, is a return of the vengeful ghost who apparently is now killing because it takes fear to make him stronger. 

Oh there are so many things wrong with this film. For a start, it really shouldn’t exist on principal, just like Psycho II. The brilliance of the first movie was that it left us in complete suspense; really without any sense of closure, just shock. The whole dream-within-a-dream sequence with the striped car was awesome and a perfect way to finish the piece. Whilst I won’t deny that Freddy is a cool villain, it really should have been left there. I think the biggest thing that annoyed me with this flick was the fact that Freddy is now trying to gain strength to enter the real world through a corporeal being, in this case Jesse. What made Freddy so freaky in the first film was the fact that he was free of that mortal coil in the dream-plane, showing off how he could slice himself open and cut off his fingers and stuff. Now he wants to be in the real world? The whole thing makes no sense to me, even if we consider the argument that he would still be immune in reality. The idea behind Freddy was that he was this vengeful ghost that was getting revenge by killing the children of the townsfolk who killed him I their dreams. Bringing him back into a story where there is really no goal for him aside from gaining strength is really piss-weak writing. 

On that subject, the script is really bad, to the point of utmost mind-numbing lobotomy! The idea that Freddy haunts the house and that’s how he can possess Jesse is a really weak idea, which actually never gets explained, and this is where the film really starts to take shape as the giant question mark that it is. Hints as to what’s going on are dropped, but never properly explored, the audience are left to pretty much do all the work, which really just isn’t the point, and by the end of the flick it does seem that the whole reason it’s in existence is to play with special gore effects and nothing else. 

The makeup and special effects are pretty gruesome and impressive to a certain extent I am willing to admit, but that is still no reason why the writers couldn’t have tried a bit harder or the actors actually attempt to act! 

The performances are pretty shocking, either overacted completely or so underdone wooden puppets would have delivered more animated performances. There are absolutely no connections between characters at all, and no chemistry between the two leads, which really shuts the film down as their ‘love’ is meant to be what can save Jesse. 

Starring Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rustler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange, Marshall Bell, Melinda O’ Fee, Tom McFadden, Sydney Walsh, Christie Clark, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is a pretty piss-weak film all around. Filled with action, some fairly gruesome points of interest, possession, violence, murder, ‘romance’ and ‘drama’, it’s a pretty terrible movie!

Prom Night [M]

Six years ago a game of hide and seek went awry when a group of 12 year-olds taunted little Robin Hammond, backing her into a corner where she slipped on a ledge and fell to her death. Fearing that they would be held responsible, Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick have never told anyone what happened that day. But someone else was there who saw it all and now the kids are paying their dues in blood as a masked killer stalks them and picks them off one by one at the prom. 

Jamie Lee Curtis made a name for herself within the horror genre and whilst this movie is no Halloween, it still provides a bit of mindless horror movie gore and fun through its somewhat shaky plot misdirection and seemingly random killer reveal at the end. To be fair, it’s not a terrible piece of cinema, but it is pretty bad enough to be considered within that cult canon of horror flicks that were around in the 70s and 80s. 

Six years ago a game of hide and seek went awry when a group of 12 year-olds taunted little Robin Hammond, backing her into a corner where she slipped on a ledge and fell to her death. Fearing that they would be held responsible, Wendy, Jude, Kelly, and Nick have never told anyone what happened that day. But someone else was there who saw it all and now the kids are paying their dues in blood as a masked killer stalks them and picks them off one by one at the prom. 

As we’ve most famously seen in Brian de Palma’s adaptation of Carrie, the prom is a perfect setting for mayhem, murder, and a shitload of bloodshed. Whilst Prom Night does not feature any kick arse split-screens or haunting displays of telekinesis, there actually is a lot in it that is quite reminiscent of de Palma’s classic. We’ve got the prom setting, that part is obvious, but there is also a separate revenge plot thrown into the mix against the prom queen. Unlike the pivotal moment in Carrie however, this revenge prank backfires when the initial perpetrator gets murdered somewhere else in the school and one of the members in on the joke gets his head cut off! This part was actually quite laughable because the guy was a dick and the token genre idiot: all brawn, and no brains. 

The story is simple enough, though I do have to say that it’s nothing at all special. In fact, for the most part it is highly predictable, filled with red herrings that we see through right from the get-go, very heavy on the horror movie clichés regarding sex and drugs (those that indulge are the first to get killed), and even the reveal at the end, whilst it did come as a little bit of a surprise, was pretty pathetic. 

The killer itself was pretty piss-weak, all dressed in black with a balaclava hiding their identity. Most of the victims actually put up a pretty good fight, which just goes to show that this killer was pretty amateurish: generally just not very scary. Whilst suspense gets built up relatively well in this flick, there’s something of the anticlimax surrounding the entire thing, which leaves you on a bit of a dispirited note. 

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, Casey Stephens, Anne-Marie Martin, Antionette Bower, Michael Tough, Robert A. Silverman, Pita Oliver, David Mucci, Jeff Wincott, Marybeth Rubens, and Joy Thompson, Prom Night is a flick filled with romance, drama, suspense, violence, blood, and murder. It’s a fair enough horror flick, but only if you are in the mood for a mindless and clichéd movie. There’s nothing at all groundbreaking or cinematically clever about, it’s just your typical mindless cult horror movie.