Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is the worst movie of all time

Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be but it still not very good. Freddy is still somewhat scary but just cusping on completely ridiculous. The acting is crazy bad. It's also a disgusting movie. Overall it was sort of fun--probably not for the right reasons though--but I will never watch it again. I'm also starting to hate these movies and I still have four to go (not counting the reboot).

In this one, Krueger comes back, yet again, to kill the surviving Dream Warriors and a whole new group of teens. Yep, that's what's happening. They are just churning these out once a year at this point. Also, this was the highest grossing horror movies of the 1980s. 
 
NOES 4: The Dream Master has a Fresh score of 53% which I found somewhat unbelievable.

Pros: Some good kills/special effects. Sort of scary. Starting to get unintentionally humorous (which is probably a con for most people).

Cons: Nothing new here. Bad music. Bad acting. Some problematic world building, again. 

They are both blonde
Notes: Open with shitty music. A movie also known for its great soundtrack (yeah, it's bad). Also immediately starts with very shitty acting. Blonde in Freddy's house gets blown back like 40 feet when the window implodes. Walks right into the boiler room. Oh shit. This is supposed to be Patricia Arquette's character from NOES 3: The Dream Warriors, Kristen. It took me way too long to realize this and just fucking watched that movie. This actress's name is Tuesday Knight which is an absurd thing for your parents to call you. Apparently Arquette was preggers and that was why she didn't come back. This new chick looks NOTHING like her. In her dream, the other surviving dream warriors show up, she has that ability to rally the troops in her dreams. I guess they still hang. She keeps telling them Freddy is still alive but they swear he's dead. I just watched NOES 3 and I don't know if I am supposed to recognize these people are not. 

One of the new people, Rick, brother of the survivor girl, Alice, does a bunch of this shitty karate which is fucking absurd. These guys are brother and sister but almost make out multiple times. Dad is abusive. Mother is dead. Have some weird shit going on in this house. Every time this chick and the blonde that took over for Arquette are on screen together, droning on about god knows what, it is like a bad acting off. 

Yes, a dog brings Freddy back by peeing fire on him
Again, no one thinks Freddy is around anymore. Think the idea he could come back is absurd. Then Kincaid, the black dream warrior, goes to sleep with his dog. In the dream his dog attacks him and is like a hound of hell or something. What this dog does to bring Freddy back is the most absurd thing I've seen in a movie. So, the dog pees fire on the ground where Freddy's bones are buried which brings him back to life. Da fuck? He dead. On to the next dream warrior, Joey. You may remember him as the one that got literally "tongue tied" in Dream Warriors when Freddy shape-shifted into a hot nurse before taking him hostage for most of the rest of that movie. In this one, Freddy does the SAME FUCKING THING except this time instead of a nurse coming at him on the hospital bed Freddy comes at him as a beer poster girl through the waterbed. This is where the one-liners really start to pick up and must of them suck. It's like, “hey, remember when I said that shit before I killed that chick in the last movie? 'Welcome to prime time, bitch.' You liked that, huh? I'm going to do that for every kill from now on.” This one is “how is this for a wet-dream?” Boo.

Why is this necessary?
Honestly, so far the movie has been okay. Around here, though, some shit starts to irritate me. First, there Robert England in drag for no fucking reason. I'm going to blame this on producer Bob Shaye as I do everything else. Second, the brainiac chick in this movie, some robotics super genius, says “li-barry” instead of “library. Third, they go by Freddy's house which is all run down and shitty looking. How the fuck is this house still standing?

Arquette's stand-in's mom is still an aggressive bitch. Chick eventually faces off with Freddy. Around here somewhere she is dreaming of relaxing on the beach but Freddy turns into this sand shark thing with his glove as the fin and he explodes out of the sand. It's sort of cool but cheesy. Pulls Alice into the dream. As Freddy tosses her into a fire to get burned alive, she shoots out some infamous 80s blue lightning, giving Alice her powers of bringing people into her dreams and aerobic exercise. Here we are, 40 minutes in and all the dream warriors are dead. Feels like a four hour movie by this point. Alice also starts getting the powers of the people Freddy kills.

Those still living are all, "Freddy isn't real." How do they not believe in Freddy by this point? That starts to change when they are in class and the "genius" chick passes out. This is the "wanna suck face" death which is fucking gross and dumb but looks sort of cool. In the middle of this we get another shitty Bob Shaye cameo. Fuck this guy. Teaching a class on, what, dream masters? More falling asleep in class. Here is where things go off the rails. New rules every fucking movie. Now he needs someone, Alice and previously Kristen, to pull people into her dream and then he kills that person. What? Terrible fucking world building. 
Next we get some horrible karate with invisible Kruger and Rick. Freddy is saying all this sensei type stuff. Rick kicks the glove off, good deal, but it flies out and stabs him in the chest, bad deal. Alice has a daydream he still alive. It's fucking stupid. Says “baaaaa-bay” like a moron. She's like picking up powers from everyone who dies still. She can use nunchaku now or at least the dude with completely different hair posing as her body double can use nunchakus pretty well, I guess… I have no idea.

She goes to see Refer Madness in a dream maybe or IRL and then falls asleep there. It doesn’t matter. Ends up in a different movie. At the diner. The infamous pizza with pepperoni souls. She is working at the dinner, serving herself, I think, made to look all old. Freddy tells her he wants the chick that works out all the time. They keep referencing how fit she is. It's not like she's a fucking bodybuilder. She even benches with Flo-Jo like nails. Freddy is spotting her. I think she's lifting A 10 pound bar with 10 pound plates. He does a shit job and breaks her arms. They fall off and she turns into like a cockroach or something. I don't understand. He catches her with a glue trap and a roach motel. He smashes it. Wtf is happening?

No previous references to this were made
Alice is now pissed. Tallies up all her powers in physical display by putting on her person something from each of the dead kids. It's like, "now that I look ridiculous, I can go kick ass." And she does. Alice beats the shit out of Freddy for like 45 seconds with maximum effort. Freddy just laughs like a maniac for most of it. Obviously not working. All that shit is worthless. Then she recalls the final verse of the Dream Master rhyme that I thought had no relevance in the movie up until that point. So if I understand correctly, she more or less defeats Freddy by turning the evil or souls inside him against him. What? And those souls like burst out of him and rip him apart. I don't fucking understand. There is more to it than that, I'm sure, with the words in the rhyme having some sort of meaning. But I don't fucking care. It's fucking lame. And then the movie ends with the hint of another Freddy return and sequel. Four more to go. Four more to go. Halfway there.

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