Jason Goes to Hell is the greatest movie of all time

So... Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. This would be the ninth Friday the 13th movie but Paramount still owned the rights to the title "Friday the 13th". Time to wrap it up again but not really I guess was the thinking here. Which is weird because New Line Cinema, fucking Bob Shaye's production company AKA the Nightmare on Elm Street folks, bought the story line. One would think they would go right into a Jason vs Freddy situation but that wouldn't happen for a decade. Everyone was trying to get their shit together for this movie for years, since at least Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, and this was their fucking chance. Sean S. Cunningham, director/producer of the original Friday the 13th, saw the potential here and wanted that movie fucking made. He specifically did not want another generic Jason movie, which is what fucking happened. This was the result of who else but Bob Shaye who ruined many a New Line feature. Instead of the FvJ that everyone wanted, Shaye recruited Wes Craven to sort of reboot the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise to do with it whatever he wanted. The result was one amazing movie, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and this one instead of the FvJ which we got in 2003 anyway. Despite Shaye's efforts, it all worked out in the end, that is assuming you agree that Jason Goes to Hell is the greatest movie of all time, which it is.

Also, there was apparently a lot of confusion and anger regarding the title. People, especially critics, thought that Jason was literally going to Hell and that the movie would be set there. When it wasn't people got pissed. Weird that people took the title so literally when in just the movie before, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, the dude doesn't go to Manhattan until the last 1/3 of the movie. But as they say...

Pros: The concept is pretty cool. Definitely the most unique film of the franchise. Would have worked as a non-Jason movie making me think New Line sort of sandwiched Voorhees into an already written script (a la Die Hard with a Vengeance) which works out in the end. At times unintentionally hilarious making for some pretty entertaining moments.

Cons: Confusing as fuck. All over the fucking place. Jason is barely in the movie (the killers are just random, unremarkable nobodies). More or less no gore or nudity.

Fuck yeah

The opening of this movie is insane. We get a chick staying in your typical murder cabin on Crystal Lake. We slowly see her do stuff when Jason shows up. This is the early 1990s so basically instant nudity. Eventually she Carl Lewises it across the camp area like that literal whore from that Nike commercial (see below) from back in the day. That commercial is almost certainly taking its inspiration from this scene (which is insane). But in this version, Jason catches her and just when he is about to make the kill, SWAT shows up and guns him down. They shoot him like 100 times and then blow him up for good measure. It is a pretty bitching explosion. While all that is going on, this black cowboy guy (apparently the actor demanded he get to dress up as a cowboy) just chills in the shadows like a spectator or some such shit. He is a Jason expert of some kind named Mr. Duke. How did he know that SWAT was going to gun Jason down there? If he knew where Jason was and was presumably wandering about, then why didn't he get macheted down? These are questions that don't get answered. Anyway, we find out this guy is like a world famous bounty hunter and he thinks Jason is pussy which is fucking mind blowing. At one point he is asked by a reporter about Jason and he says that the not exactly media savvy supernatural killing machine makes him "think of a girl in a pink dress." Is he trying to get in Jason's head or something? It's not like Jason is reading the paper or something.

Me after using too much Dave's Insanity Sauce

So they take Jason's body, in pieces, to... Youngstown, Ohio? Uh, ok. Everyone should be freaking out but isn't. This is a medical marvel who has extreme supernatural powers but they leave the autopsy to one dude (Richard Gant who was the black cop during the "business papers" scene in The Big Lebowski) who doesn't know not to eat Jason's beating heart. Ridiculous. This exact thing, minus the heart eating, has happened before in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. The unfortunate act there leads to the dude being possessed by Jason. He like wears meat suites which sort of could explain how he keeps getting exploded and all that shit and keep coming back, which is sort of cool. We also get a cameo of Kane Hodder, the dude who played Jason in most of these flicks. He is one of the cops standing guard that gets killed.

Hater of the year, this guy

We meet more of the characters, most of whom show up in this Jason themed diner. As previously mentioned we have Mr. Duke (played by Steven Williams who was Leroy Hanlon in It, Rufus Turner in Supernatural, and Mr. X in The X-Files), the young hero/scapegoat dude played by John D. LeMay from the Friday the 13th: The Series program which had nothing to do with the movies, and Leslie Jordan who is the little guy in like half the seasons of American Horror Story. Never seen any of these other people before in my life but all the chicks wear flannels and those high hipped thongs that you only saw in the 1990s. In there we get a group of hitchhiking idiots who go to Camp Crystal Lake to bone and such. LeMay, still living his glory days wearing his high school letter jacket and all, picks them up, turns down sex, and takes them to the camp. They get got by Gant's Jason. He starts jumping bodies at this point and ends up jumping a shit load of times throughout the flick. Sometimes he is able to talk and act like a normal human and stuff too. It is weird. Just roll with it.

LeMay, for his part, has a baby momma who is I guess Jason's niece or cousin or something. Her, her mother (who works at the Jason diner, which is fucking insanity), and her baby are like super hosts or something. Anyway, the mom, Jason's sister I think, ends up dead (killed by Jason who is wearing a cop meat suite) and LeMay gets blamed for it but he saw and knows it was Jason. His baby momma and daughter shows up to the house and sees all this carnage. LeMay runs them out while the cop is coming at them obviously trying to murder them. After they escape the baby momma, her husband is this cheating dickbag by the way who is obsessed with airing/creating Jason news for ratings and such, fucking ditches him. He eventually gets caught and no one fucking believes him, of course, and he goes to jail and meets Mr. Duke who is still chilling there after telling the sheriff to go fuck himself in the diner. LeMay wants out and such to save his baby and baby momma, Mr. Duke reveals that only a relation can kill Jason and a special knife has to be used. He tells him all this "for a price" which is a broken finger. He appears to be a sadist until it is shown that dude planned this to help him escape by having this injury or whatever. It is stupid but works. And the movie becomes Terminator 2: Judgement Day as Jason shows up at the police station to find and kill this film's Sarah and John Conner. This is a good place to reiterate that this movie is all over the fucking place.

Wrong movie yo

Any who, he eventually does make his escape and makes his way to the Voorhees's family cabin that is still chilling there near the camp and has all the family's shit still in it including the fucking Necronomicon from The Evil Dead and this supernatural dagger that can kill Jason or whatever. Why they have this, you know? But yeah, as he bumbles around in there, the newscaster dickbag shows up and talks about how he stole Jason's sister's body from the morgue to drive up ratings or something just to make himself more unlikable, saying "I stole her body from the morgue, then I went home and fucker her daughter." Just why? I guess they wanted to make him as shitty of a human as possible for when Jason shows up and passes his demon heart thing to the dude. Once this happens the cop who was possessed melted by the by. It is gross and sort of impressive.

LeMay eventually finds his baby momma to warn her about all this and her possessed fiancee shows up to kill her. He saves her, again, and off they are on the high way. However, once they are out of danger, the chick attacks LeMay and fucking ditches him him on the side of the road. She loves leaving this dude high and dry.

Starting to wind down here. Things start getting really strange at this point. They all end up back at the family cabin or whatever where the mom's body is chilling, waiting for the cop Jason dude to show up which he does, eventually. But first the foursome of baby momma, LeMay, Mr. Duke who meets up with all of them when shit goes down at the diner (just going skip over that whole mess), and baby prep. This is cut short though when Mr. Duke falls through a trap door for no reason. He is injured when a pair of cops, one is the dead mom's husband so baby momma's step dad, while the other is this idiot cop that LeMay tricked during his great escape. Everyone is collectively like, "uh, one of you is obviously Jason even though you are both talking at which is a very uncharacteristic move for the silent assassin." Baby momma, who ditched LeMay yet again, chooses to shoot her step dad or whatever. The quick decision is indeed incorrect and the other cop goes right at the baby and tries to make out with it (i.e. give the demon heart/tongue thing). This doesn't work though and the demon heart gets chopped. We see it and it is this weird demon baby thing. Uh, what? It scurries off and possesses the mom which means Jason gets his body back, woohoo. And he looks like shit. He is all bloated and not tough. Plus his death is garbage and completely anticlimactic. They sort of unceremoniously kill him with that dagger and roman candle fireballs shoot out his chest whereupon he gets dragged to hell by these little shitty stone handed demons. The fucking end. ... But wait, we get a closeup on Jason's masks and what comes out and grabs the fucking thing? Freddy's fucking glove. Ah yeah. Sets up Freddy vs. Jason which comes out 10 years later and ignores this movie, Jason X (the Jason in space movie), and New Nightmare all nice like. Yeah, greatest movie of all time!!!

Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood is the worst movie of all

Good god. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the one where the wheels come totally off (i.e. where the magic happens). Finally moving past the character Tommy, who was the survivor boy in the previous three installments, this one pits good old immortal Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder for the first time (he would play Jason in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), against telekinetic Tina Shepard who brings him back to life with her mind which results in the death of mother, shrink, and the teens that have come to Crystal Lake to celebrate this idiot bro's birthday.

This one was originally conceived as a potential Freddy Vs. Jason but was too ahead of its time. While we would get that flick 15 years later, New Line, the production company behind the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and Friday the 13th's Paramount, couldn't get their shit together in 1987. Nightmare was at the height of its popularity and the deal that Paramount brought to the table didn't impress Bob Shaye, CEO of New Line. What they offered was they would keep creative control of the film as well as handle domestic distribution while New Line would retain international distribution, which was basically offering them next to nothing. New Line would pass, going on to make Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master which was also trash.

That having fell through and with the series pretty much DOA, Paramount decided to brainstorm other famous foils that they could have Jason go toe-to-toe with. The screenwriter, Daryl Haney, basically just threw ideas at the producer until something stuck, saying "I notice that at the end of these movies there’s always a teenage girl who’s left to battle Jason by herself. What if this girl had telekinetic powers?" Hence this is the one that sort of became known as Carrie vs. Jason which is insane.

Pros: Another giant leap toward comedy. One solid kill in the infamous sleeping bag death. The telekinesis stuff has some potential.

Cons: More or less completely diverges from the previous films (though Jason does sort of hold it all together). Out there in a bad way. It's bad acting, irritating character, and a crappy plot even by Ft13th standards. Shitty kills and very little nudity.

Same damn person

Notes: If I've said it once I said it a million times, or maybe never, but franchises really start to peak around part seven. In that vein, in this part seven we get telekinesis for no reason. Fuck it, man. We get it with the survivor girl who is a small child at the beginning of the film. Her dad is being an abusive asshole. He beats the mom and is just a dick in general. The little girl goes out on a little boat to get away from him and when he follows to the edge of the dock, she psychokinesises the platform, sending him into the lake where he drowns. She immediately regrets it although her dad was a raging dickhead. She ultimately grows up to be the girl from Road Trip (Amy Smart, who is also a very pretty lady).

Part of what makes this movie so bad were all the horrendously unimaginative the kills were. Most of the kills are just Jason grabbing and stabbing. At several points in the film, Jason does the thing where he just walks up behind someone and you think, "huh, this is too obvious, of course this isn't how he is going to kill this person," and then he does. The only really memorable kill is the infamous sleeping bag death. In this one, Jason first kills the dude, Dan, with a machete by, of course, just walking up to him and murdering him. Meanwhile, the girl is getting ready for bed in their massive 30 person tent when Jason walks up. She sees him and her dead dude, maybe, and decides this is too much, she needs to hide. Going on instinct, I guess, she zips herself up in her sleeping bag. Jason grabs her, walks her over to a tree, and smashes her into it. Fuck yes.

Not a lot of nudity in either. We get a skinny dipper who just swims in place when Jason comes at her, then we get one other set of breasts from the stoner chick late in the movie. Both the chicks are super attractive though. Speaking of swimming, I guess we are just gonna ignore that Jason is now an excellent swimmer. The kid drowned and in every movie now we see him fly by Michael Phelps.

The movie also has some of the most irritating characters in the whole franchise which says a lot when alumni include Kevin Bacon, Corey Feldman (who did a fine job), Crispin Glover gyrating about, the character with the lowest self-esteem in all of cinema, a guy that walks on his hands, a mother-son neo-Nazi duo, a rapey coroner (giving us a bad name), and a punk chick who only gets screen time so that she can do the robot. The two worst offenders are the desperate homely girl and the fucktard writer guy. First we'll start with the less offensive homely girl. The dude she is interested in, some rich dude, maybe the writer dude, I don't remember, goes with someone else. Most the people are dead at this point and everyone else is dead drunk. She decides this is an appropriate time to try to make an all out effort to get the dude to notice her. She gets completely dolled up at like two in the morning and goes out looking for him. She is just like wandering about saying his name. It's the weirdest and craziest thing I've ever seen. No wonder she is single. She ultimately dies alone.

Now for the writer dude. Fuck this guy. The writer dude has to be in the running for the most irritating character of all time. This rich bitch, Melissa, played by Susan Jennifer Sullivan (who was long rumored dead but is in fact alive and well) who is Jenna from 30 Rock except serious, leads him on and makes out with him to make this other guy who is more interested in the telekinetic chick jealous. When she finally tells him, "hey, I'm not going to have sex with you," he loses it and says some down right weird shit. "I know about rejection," he says at one point, "I've been rejected by the finest science fiction magazines in the continental United States!" Then he goes down stairs, opens the birthday dude's gifts, and, thankfully, dies.

Though the shit I have already mentioned has already ruined my opinion of the movie, I sort of don't mind the telekinesis stuff. I'm sort of in the if you have an unkillable zombie who has magically learned to swim despite originally drowning (maybe) that has the ability to teleport (unconfirmed until Part VIII), then fuck, I can buy psychokinesis. Her psychic ability, on the other hand, is basically useless. She sees the future but is either unable to change it or she fucks it up and doesn't because she is an idiot. Like when she sees her mother die and then she dies like in said vision. This leads to some ridiculousness. Psychic girl flees her cabin when she finds out her like live-in shrink or stepdad or whatever is fucking with her head. The mom and said shrink or whatever start chasing her so she hops in the car and takes off, ultimately crashing it when she has the vision of her mom getting killed. She then heads to the cabin to find her love interest to help. When she gets there, she says to him, "I just saw my mom; I have to find her," which is nonsense. She could have just stayed where she was since her mom was just looking for her and came up to the car immediately after she ran off.

So they go out to find her. The asshole stepdad or what-have-you throws the mom in front of him so that Jason kills her instead of him--what a guy!--but he eventually gets his when Jason walks up on him (maybe teleport) with a buzz saw and disembowels the prick. The chick finds her mom and is pissed. Comes up on Jason just sort of moseying down the street. The girl sort of telekinesises Jason into a mud puddle and then downs a power line that electrocutes him with the infamous 80s blue lightning. Doesn't work though and they end up back at the cabin somehow. She also smashes a house on him around here. This only causes mild irritation.

Down to three survivors now. The psychic, the love interest dude, and the rich bitch. Rich bitch has no idea what's going on and is obviously not long for this world. Awfully late in the movie to be alive and clueless and a bitch. She tells Melissa what is going down but Melissa is like, "uh, this is fucking crazy, let's go, guy," and she goes to leave. And... she's dead. Axe to the face. Not coming back from that. Now Jason comes at dude and psychic chick. She mentally keeps chucking shit at him like couches, potted plants with severed heads in them, bits of cabin, so forth. Eventually she smashes his hockey mask. The straps cut into his skin. It's all puss filled and fucking gross. Made my stomach turn a bit. They get it on. Jason dies and comes back like six or seven times. Eventually explode the cabin with him in there. Again, redness and slight irritation.

So Jason has the girl cornered at the edge of the dock. She is fucked. He has his knife raise and ready for that sweet, sweet final kill. But the girl has one last trick up her sleeve that comes about when she is freaking out as she unconsciously summons her dead father. He bursts up through the dock--looking surprisingly good for being dead in a body of water for over a decade--and pulls Jason down into the water, chaining him at the bottom of the lake. Man, didn't see that ending coming because it is insane and is completely out of nowhere. That is the whole movie. Insanity out of nowhere. Three more to go before Freddy vs. Jason. Fuck.

Aw, look at that face. So cute. Just want to cuddle him.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare is the greatest film of all time

Finishing up the Nightmare movies with Wes Craven's New Nightmare on Robert Englund's 70th birthday. Just one more Freddy movie to go. Now I'm going to watch all the Friday the 13th movies until I get to Freddy vs. Jason. God help me with that endeavor.

New Nightmare was mostly decent except for the end. This was my first viewing since sixth grade. God tier then. Definitely a step below now. Wes Craven is still solid(ish) and the film holds up alright. You can see the wheels turning here for the meta epic that he comes out with a few years later in Scream. This is sort of a prototype for what becomes postmodern horror. On it's own I would say this is one of the better Nightmare movies. I shall rank those here pretty soon.

Pros: Solidly postmodern. Felt totally revolutionary when it came out. Really fucking slick. Return to scary Freddy.

Yes, this shit again

Cons: Bob Shaye, again, is unfortunately all over this one too. Notably the redo of Freddy's disgusting tongue coming out of the phone receiver and licking at Langenkamp's face. Really drags in the middle and the ending isn't the best.

Notes: Opening scene is fucking brutal. It consists of a Langenkamp, Nancy from the first one, on a Nightmare set with her family, acting and what not, when the robot Freddy hand comes to life and starts slaughtering people. Husband is a FX guy. Son is the “boys have penises and girls have Kindergarten Cop. Wes Craven is there, too. IRL it was all a dream. Had an earthquake. Kid is watching NOES and freaks out. She gets a “One, two, Freddy's coming for you,” prank call. Goes on a show. Getting pub for the 10^th anniversary of 1. Uncle Freddy comes out. Hams it up. She goes and sees Bob Shaye. He's proposing a definitive Nightmare movie. Says that him and Wes haven't talked for 10 years because Wes hasn't had any “really scary nightmares.” Pretty sure that wasn't why. Also says that while they were going to leave Freddy dead, “the fans” won't let them. Pretty sure that wasn't true either at that point.

The adored child murderer, hamming it up

We start learning stuff about Langenkamp's son who is losing it. He has this stuffed T-rex he names “Rex.” Rex is the kid's protector. Pretty cool idea and keeps showing up with Freddy wounds. They stitch him up and he is ready to go again. Rex is constantly waking the kid up fighting Freddy, he tells his moms. He has another freakout while the dad is away working on a movie. Langenkamp calls him up on his ginormous cellular telephone and he decides to drive four hours to get back home. Langenkamp dreams his death. It goes thus: he is all over the road dozing off. Falls asleep driving. He tries to call home on his massive, barely functional cellular phone. Nothing. Dozing again. We see the knives from the glove come out of the seat and sort of flick his crotch. He is totally out. The glove comes out and slashes his chest and wrecks his car. Wakes from her dream. Police show up to tell her he's dead. She demands to see the body. At the coroner's she sees the Freddy slashes and pukes.

At the funeral the wind blows like crazy, earthquake. She falls and hits her head on the coffin. It's crazy. The kid disappears. Is getting pulled into the coffin by Freddy. She saves him. Her husband reanimates and attacks him. She wakes. John Saxon saves her. He is the best. In the background in the crowd we see Wes shaking hands with Shaye. Robert Englund is awkward. Seeing the swarthy dude from the original NOES in the background as well.

The infamous painting

Kid keeps watching the original NOES, a glutton for punishment, which is apparently always on cable. He is singing the Freddy song. Heard it from under the bed, he says. He tells her Freddy is trying to get into their world, well no shit. He has a nose bleed and she takes him away to clean it. We see the TV is unplugged. She takes him to the playground the next morning and meets Saxon. While they talk the boy climbs on top of this death trap of a spaceship jungle gym. That you can climb out of the top of this is crazy. She goes home. Is getting mail from a “stalker” which includes one letter of the alphabet on a single Bible page. Calls Robert. See Robert's shitty paintings. He is working on a Freddy one. He is having dreams, too. It's such a shit painting.

A candid of Langenkamp with her favorite prop

All the dreams and stuff keep escalating. The kid gets more and more Freddy obsessed. Comes at his momma in her dream with little steak knives attached to his fingers. She wakes and comes down stairs. The kid has arranged the pages to spell “answer the phone.” I start wondering here if this movie is actually bad and I just have nostalgia for it. Anyway, the phone, it rings. She does indeed answer it. It's Freddy. His tongue comes through the phone and licks her face, again. God damn it. What the fuck. Bob Shaye loves that shit, obviously. It's still fucking gross and not scary. It makes the kid puke, which yeah. He fucking loses it. Kid goes to the hospital. Nurse is Bob Shaye's sister, Lin Shaye. You might remember her as the gross landlord from Kingpin.

Such an elegant gesture

Langenkamp goes to see Craven. Tells her about the script. Gist is “when the story dies, the evil is set free,” he says. Explains the mythology of it. Basically has to go through someone real, her, to become real. She is like, “what the hell, man, that is all really happening to me.” He's basically a tulpa. If you watch Supernatural, then you know about this. A tulpa is a pretty cool concept that comes from Tibetan Buddhism. The word means “emanation” or “manifestation.” What it basically is is a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers. Something that comes into being because you believe it.

When he does come into being, Freddy shows up wearing leather pants. He needs better friends. Someone to tell him he looks ridiculous. Chuck Klosterman once wrote something along the lines of if the world was ending in 10 minutes and a friend were to show up wearing leather pants, he would spend all of his remaining time roasting friend in said leather pants.

Fucking brutal

There are two really good scenes near the end. The first is when the kid's babysitter gets killed. It is like the one in the original where Freddy drags the girl around on the ceiling except more brutal. It's sort of a long time coming and also out of nowhere. It's solid. The other is when the actors start losing touch with reality. Saxon is there helping Langenkamp when suddenly he starts calling her Nancy and saying that she is his daughter and he is a cop. At first she resists it and then that becomes reality. It's so dreamlike and cool. That shit is fucking great.

There are also some not so great scenes near the end. One is the highway scene. The kid and the mom are running across the highway while a giant Freddy fucks with them from above, picking them up with his knife finger and shit. It looks like such shit. Like incredibly fucking bad. The green screen looks absurd and she has the worst stunt double ever. It is someone with a completely different body type and a very shitty wig. It's not good.

Gross

The final scene doesn't age well either. After Freddie beats on Langenkamp, he gets to where he is like going to eat the kid like a snake but Langenkamp saves him. Again, looks like shit. Then the stupid stairs scene from 1 comes back. Another scene no one asked for. Basically the end is a bunch of the worst Freddy scenes from the previous movies montaged together into a bullshit fight scene. It ends when Freddys uses his long snake tongue to try to choke Langenkamp out which we have seen before. But the kid stabs it and Freddy ends up in a furnace and gets cremated. Anticlimax. Then once they leave the dream, Langenkamp finds Wes's script. It was all in there. Not the greatest ending but it sure as shit was a lot better that Freddy's Dead: The FinalNightmare. I probably won't ever watch it again but it was pretty good. Would have ended the series nicely. But then they had to do Freddy vs. Jason. I'll get to my outrage on that one eventually. 

Pretty much says it all

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is the worst movie of all time

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. Holy shit. Why did I fucking sit through all this shit for a second time (I originally saw it when I was 10ish). The movie features a fake-son, real daughter storyline and has a few interesting cameos. It does a terrible job of world building and shits all over the continuity of that universe. Basically, New Line, the production company that put out all these movies, had more or less run the character into the ground by this point with six movies in seven years, most of them terrible. It was time to kill him off, so they thought.

There was a lot of weird shit surrounding Freddy’s Dead. Peter Jackson wrote an early script that feature a loser Freddy that kids took sleeping pills to go fuck with him. This is what they went with instead. The crew had also just come from working on Cry Baby and the director had worked extensively with John Waters. As a result of that, I’ve seen the movie described as John Waters presents Freddy Krueger. We should be so lucky.

This also really marks the turn from quasi horror to straight up slap stick comedy. But it ain’t funny. Freddy had become a joke. New Line staged a literal public funeral for the character and the City of Los Angeles declared the day before the movie’s release, September 12, 1991, “Freddy Krueger Day.” Should have been dealing with the LAPD’s systemic racism and gearing up for the soon to come Rodney King riots, I guess, but what do I know.

Pros: It’s corny enough that it is almost enjoyable. But not really. I shan’t watch this again.

Cons: Choppy as fuck. Shitty world building. Kills are weak. Freddy’s death is uncreative.

Notes: Opens with a kid on a plane. Is sort of freaking out as he doesn’t like flying. Or heights. Lady next to him tells him not to be such a pussy. She immediately gets sucked out of the plane. So does he eventually. Falls forever. Hits his house. Wakes up in the house. Looks out the window. The house is falling now. This exact scene happens another time later on. It feels like it happens so many more times than that. Freddy is flying around like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I'll get you my pretty, and your little soul, too.” House crashes into the ground. He’s fine though. Now he's running around. Falls down this hill. He falls forever yelling like, “wah, oh, woah, wowah,” so forth. Comes to a theater. Bob Shaye is the ticket taker. Freddy hits him with a bus. Knocks him back into the real world. Hits his head on a rock. Gets amnesia. Goes by John Doe for the rest of the movie. There is a cutout of him in the dream world. This is our setup. We are watching a cartoon.

Optional musical accompany: The Looney Tunes theme

Meet the cast of kids who live a few towns over in a group home. Deaf kid named Carlos. Kickboxer (which is equated with kung fu) chick named Tracy. Breckin Meyer, the dude from Road Trip and Clueless who is that same stoner in this film as well. This social worker chick, Maggie, who has Freddy the man dreams, it’s obvious from the beginning it’s his daughter. Parker from Alien who is a live-in doctor of some kind.

Hoping John Doe might remember more about his past, Maggie and him road trip to Springwood where Fredddy has killed all the kids. Breckin Meyer, Carlos, and Tracy all snuck in the back of the van. Life in Springwood basically revolves around the dead kids as everyone is going to fair and the high school and such. Roseanne and Tom Arnold show up at the fair. Roseanne freaks out. Is all, “I want my kids back,” and rubs her head all over them. Tom is like, “uh, don't pay attention to her, kids.” They are like, “uh, okay.”

Maggie and JD are off to the high school while the others are supposed to go back to the group home. They immediately get lost as they are living in some sort of weird looping bubble. While they are driving around aimlessly, Carlos is put in charge of the map. He falls asleep, of course. Still dealing with the map like a champ though. Keeps unfolding and unfolding until it fills the back. Once he gets to the center it says, “You're fucked.” He wakes up. Tracy is like, “what the hell does the map say.” Carlos retorts, “It says we're fucked,” which was actually great.

Meanwhile, over at Springwood High, Maggie and JD visit a history lecture that is ongoing but without children in the classroom. Here Maggie looks at all these newspaper clippings on the wall that are all child murders. She is like, “huh, they happen every 10 years” which doesn't make any sense. Here though, I was like, “wait, that is sort of interesting. Maybe it's like It where Pennywise is like forever old and comes back and kills or whatever.” It's here that the history teacher is all, “time for some Freddy 101, 'fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Freddy sailed the ocean blue.'” My reaction is still like, “huh, that could be pretty cool.” Then he goes on, “fourteen-hundred and ninety-three, Freddy sailed across the sea.” Here I am like, “oh, this stupid.” Yet he goes on, “fourteen-hundred and ninety-four, Freddy came back for more.” Maggie acts like this is totally normal.

We get some kills around then. Everyone ends up at the Freddy house for some reason which shockingly still for sale. Hearing aid kid, Carlos, gets killed. It sucks. His head explodes when Freddy gives him an evil hearing aid and scratches a chalkboard. He does it like such an idiot. Looks like he is on ecstasy. Carlos disappears. Tracy is freaking out. Breckin Meyer is high as balls on the couch. Tracy can't deal with his incompetence and leaves. He passes out on the couch watching a smashed TV. Johnny Depp pops up. Giving a PSA. “This is your brain; this is your brain on drugs,” one. Freddy shows up at the end and kills him. Says to Breckin Meyer, “let's trip out, man.” It's lame. Sucks him into the TV and they are basically in this fighting game against each other. This fucking scene. Straight up cartoon. Total slapstick. Breckin Meyer is actually in the game while Freddy plays it from outside. When jumps Breckin Meyer jumps he makes that “boingy, boingy, boingy,” from cartoons as well as other Looney Toons type noises. It's doing this shit that I tried to ignore before where what he does in the dream happens in the real world. It happened with Carlos too as he was walking up stairs in the dream that weren't there IRL. It's obvious this can't be ignored at this point as Breckin Meyer is boinging up to the ceiling and flipping around and stuff. Here Freddy starts using all these Nintendo slogans which they were apparently not thrilled about. While playing the game with a joystick Freddy says, “Now I'm playing with power.” But he sort of loses to Breckin Meyer that when he whips out the “power glove” which was a product Nintendo really had at the time. With that he is able to murder Breckin Meyer, finally. Oh course he says dumb shit like “great graphics” and “I beat my high score.” Lame. While this happens, IRL, Breckin Meyer jumps down a flight of stairs and falls into a bottomless hole at the bottom. Maggie is standing right there but puts forth no effort to save him. This is the point I ask myself, why am I watching this shit?

At some point Tracy kicks Freddy in the crotch and he gets a whole vendetta thing going with her. Freddy has a lot going on here. Also find out that Maggie is Freddy's daughter, which has been so telegraphed. Kills John Doe in a replay of that house falling scene, then Freddy sort of like possesses Maggie. Not this shit again. We also keep hearing this song that irritatingly similar to "Mars, The Bringer of War but is not in fact that song. Feels almost over but there are 35 minutes left.

Back at the group home no one remembers the people that died even though there are like half a dozen people there. The doctor though, he can control his dreams and remembers. Cool. Maggie finds out she was adopted for real this time. Didn't this already get confirmed. She starts getting flashbacks of childhood when Freddy was raising her. She also remembers him killing her mom by repeatedly hitting her head on a tree. The dream becomes real and she is all like, “you can't leave Springwood.” But through some loophole where he entered her earlier he can now. Says to her “Every town has an Elm Street,” which based on the seven different cities I have lived is true in my experience.

Freddy gets in Tracy's dream. She was sexually abused by her dad and Freddy uses that against her. It is low, even for Freddy. Freddy and her get it on. He says to her “Kung fu this, bitch,” as you'd expect, but she lives. Gets in the doctor's dream, too. This is the first time I can remember him getting into someone's head that was past the early 20's age range. Freddy cartwheels about the room and kung fus him. It's weird. He then cuts off his fingers again. Must really like this effect. Just as dumb as when they did it in the original. The doc rips off a piece of his sweater. Tracy and Maggie wake him up. He has the sweater. They get the idea to bring him into the real world and kill him “for good.” This is the most inconsistent universe. Just roll with it I guess. Best not to think too much about it because it's dumb.

Making the movie lamer

They work 3D glasses into the plot. Maggie uses them in the dream world somehow. I don't know. The point was that when she put them on, the movie turned 3D when you watched it in the theater. They have a lot of just obvious perspective shit to use for the 3D. Maggie somehow gets in Freddy's dreams, what, and we start seeing what he dreams about. We see him getting taunted at school for being a fucking sociopath and killing animals and shit. Yeah, fuck that kid. Now we see Freddy in high school. Alice Cooper is Freddy's adopted dad. He beats him for some reason. Whips off his belt and smacks him over the chest, saying “it's time to take your medicine, boy.” Freddy laughs and responds with the obligatory “thank you sir, may I have another” line from Animal House. We eventually get to where the towns folk burn Freddy to death. Earlier in the movie Freddy talks about how demons came to him and offered him eternal life if he kills kids in their dreams. Here we see that happen. You'd it would provide some detail. Maybe at the very least explain some of what they are about and shit. Nurp. When Freddy is on fire the shittiest CGI pieces of shit like swim up to him and pretty much verbatim say “hey, wanna live forever and kill kids? Then let us inside you.” He says ok and there you have it.

Eventually we get to the end, finally, and they pull Freddy into the real world and finally fucking kill him in the most absurd way possible: they stab him with a stick of dynamite and it blows his head off. There is so much horrible CGI in this ending it is incredible. You may think you know shitty CGI. You know nothing without seeing this movie. And that is it. So ends the run of shitty Nightmare on Elm Street movies... Just kidding! There are three more! One is actually good though and one is a reboot. But you get what I mean. 

Visual representation of what I mean

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.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is the greatest movie of all time

Three Nightmare on Elm Street movies in and this one is my favorite thus far. Wes Craven returns as writer, which is obviously a positive, and they more or less ignore the previous movie, which is also for the best. Just missed the 30 year anniversary for this solid piece of horror kitsch.

In this NOES iteration we have good old Fredrick Krueger going after the last of the kids whose parents murdered him all of whom are staying at this mental hospital for reasons. Nancy is there in an official capacity, she must have been a real go getter at school to already be some sort of psychologist three years after the original NOES so just roll with it, to teach the children how to lucid dream. As such, each of these kids basically develop some sort of superpower that they use whilst in dreamland to combat Freddy scissor hand.

Heather Langenkamp returns as survivor girl Nancy from the first one. Her pops, the ever cool John Saxon, he back as well. Also features a very young Patricia Arquette. Others making appearances that you would know are Lawrence Fishburne and the guy from Body Double who looks exactly like Bill Maher, Craig Wasson. And of course Robert Englund. A lot to like about this one. After Freddy's Revenge this was sincerely welcomed.

Interesting piece of trivia about this film.Sam Raimi stole Freddy's glove and used it as a prop piece in Evil Dead II, my all time favorite flick, which came out that same year. Wes Craven and Raimi had this thing where they would have little nods to one another in their movies throughout the decade as a way of saying "my movie is scarier than yours." It all started with Craven putting a Jaws poster in The Hills Have Eyes. Raimi, thinking that was cool, decided to do the same thing when in The Evil Dead he featured a scene with a torn The Hills Have Eyes poster to basically say the same thing. Next, Craven had Nancy's character in A Nightmare on Elm Street trying to stay up while watching The Evil Dead It then culminated with stealing the glove which you can see in the shed above the door.

Should have been flipping the bird

Pros: Cast is fucking dope and surprisingly well acted for a NOES flick. Effects are also solid. Fantastic kills. Dream sequences are eerie and cool.

Cons: Freddy's backstory is pretty weak. A few of the effects don't age very well (the fighting Freddy bones). Also, Freddy at one point coexists both as a physical skeleton and an ethereal dream killer which is sort of problematic (like, is the skeleton on autopilot while fights with kids or what?).

Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.

Notes: Movie opens with Arquette. Good call more or less building the movie around the young starlet who looks like an adorable child at this point in her career. Dreams that Freddy is chasing her about in some shitty house. He comes at and slices her wrists before she comes to. Her mother, a real Mommy Dearest type, thinks she tried to eliminate her own map and sticks her in an institution where Nancy is on staff as some sort of intern or something. Her methods are not conventional.

Is she not adorable? Also, Feddy totally looks like a phallus

A couple of really fucking cool early deaths. Probably the two best in the franchise and they run back-to-back. The first is this sleepwalker dude. With this poor bastard Freddy basically pulls out the tendons on his arms and legs and fucking walks him around like a puppet. He then takes him to the ledge of the building and cuts the "strings" which causes him to splat below. In the second, the other blonde one that is not Arquette earns a spectacular death that ushers in the era of Freddy dropping one-liners before every kill. She starts the scene by watching TV in the common room. The Dick Cavett Show is this evening's chosen entertainment. How they got Cavett to do this cameo is beyond me. That night he was interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor. She was an actress at one time, of course, but by this point, and the way I remember her, she was little more than a socialite, sort of like Paris Hilton, whom she was actually related to by marriage. He was supposed to interview Sally Kellerman for the bit, I always thought she was really pretty, but she didn't end up doing it for whatever reason. Cavett was then allowed to choose the person who he'd interview. He picked Zsa Zsa saying "she was the dumbest person" he'd ever met in his life, he'd never have her on his show IRL, and if there was one person he'd want to see killed by Freddy it would be her. Their back and forth is ridiculous. She is wearing this feathery boa thing. Cavett asks her how many animals died for that thing. Zsa Zsa is like, "I don't know. Is it real? I don't know where it comes from." Cavett is like, "Oh, it probably came from an artificial bird." They drone on about how to succeed as an actress and such, ironically, when he turns to her and says, "can I ask you something?" Zsa Zsa, "uh, ok." Then Cavett says, "who gives a fuck what you think," turns into Freddy, and fucking kills her. The girl is like, "what the fuck am I watching," which leads to the best of all of Freddy's one-liners, "welcome to primetime, bitch," and then this happens.

Led by Nancy, around here the group starts more or less getting superhero powers in their dreams. Arquette, for example, can pull people into her dreams and do gymnastics (which is next to worthless). The others include the black dude who is like a pudgy strongman, the wheel chair wizard kid shoots the infamous 80s blue lightning and dies, and the punk, drug addict chick who is “beautiful and bad” who looks fucking awesome with a ginormous mohawk.

Look at what we missed out on?

Other things of note in the movie are this horny idiot Joey who by some miracle makes it to the end to the movie. Freddy pulls ye olde pose a hot, big breasted blonde way out of the dude's league. Here he starts hooking up with this nurse that matches the above, gets literally "tongue tied", and held captive for most the rest of the movie. You'd think he would have learned something from this experience. No, he does not as we see in NOES 4: The Dream Warriors when the same fucking thing happens only this time the chick is on some beer poster and instead of getting tied to the bed by a rope, tongue obvious Bob Shaye addition, he gets pulled into and drowned in his waterbed. Also, the blonde in this one almost turned into Freddy with boobs which was just too much for everyone.

Lastly, the flick features Freddy's birth story which was a weird addition. Basically his mother returns to this hospital where she worked as a nun/nurse and Fredrick was conceived during a 100+ psychiatric patient gang rape. No one wants to hear that shit. Other than that and some 80s cheese, pretty solid. Would recommend.