My long and strange history with the Nightmare on Elm Street series begins in 1985, the fateful year my grandma accidentally escorted my sister and I (ages four and six, respectively) to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge instead of the intended 101 Dalmatians. We lasted about 30 minutes before my grandmother realized that the typical trailer shown before a Disney movie doesn't usually involve a man with finger-knives whose brains are leaking out of his head, but you only need to look so far as this webmagazine to see that the damage was done.
As other girls in my middle school worshipped the New Kids, I lusted after hunky New Line president Mike De Luca (at least, until I actually saw Freddy's Dead); and even as recently as last February my boyfriend gave me a Freddy Krueger doll -- er, action figure -- for Valentine's Day. (Hey, it's a McFarlane Movie Maniac -- hearts and candy my ass!) Yet even in the midst of all this healthy Freddy reverence and/or obvious psychological damage, there still remains no rational excuse for my unfailing devotion to Renny Harlin's directorial debut, Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. But then again, why should I need an excuse? There's a dog that pisses fire!
While other movie monsters are resurrected in traditional ways such as rituals or grave-digging, only Freddy manages to rise from the beyond by virtue of flaming dog urine. This utterly brilliant moment, certainly the saving grace of the movie, is truly one of my favorite scenes from any film. Often overlooked by cinephiles in favor of, oh, the shower scene Psycho, the Dog Who Could Piss An Arsenal From Nightmare 4 is a horror icon worthy of worship. And in my opinion, he should be inserted into every lacking movie that comes along. There is no film that cannot be salvaged by a fire-pissing dog, and there are few that would not be improved by the addition of one. Really, which would you rather Obi-Wan had befriended in Episode One: a canine with incendiary urine or goddamn Jar Jar Binks? I rest my case.
In terms of Guilty Pleasure movies, the Nightmare series can be broken up into four categories: Pleasure (the first, the third and the New Nightmare), Guilt (the second and the fifth), Guilty Pleasure (the fourth) and Endless Ungodly Torture (Freddy's Dead). As you can see, The Dream Master is the only Freddy installment which qualifies. Released in the late 1980s, this effort marked the point when the Freddy chronicles descended into utter lunacy, becoming little more than a plot-barren special effects showcase for the world's most wise-cracking child-killer.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps in an effort to upstage the flame-shooting mutt, Freddy eats a pizza of human souls, dons sunglasses and goes to the beach (only to transform into a Freddy-Shark), turns the chick from Just the Ten of Us into a giant bug (to the tune of a Sinead O'Connor song!) and, most horrifyingly, puts the characters into a timeloop in which the same stupid, inept scene is played three times in a row. (Regrettably, it was not the scene with my beloved canine.) Nightmare on Elm Street 4 is an enthusiastic mess full of cheerfully awful acting, terrific special effects (um, for 1988), a Fat Boys song on the soundtrack and, well, a fire-pissing dog! How can you go wrong?
DROOL FACTOR: Unfortunately, the hottie factor of this series peaked in 1984, when Nightmare on Elm Street first introduced the world to that drool-inducing specimen known as Johnny Depp.
GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Cheesy and oddly creative in the way only an 1980s Freddy movie can be. Points for enthusiasm if nothing else; I'd rather have a hairsprayed insect than the cold, crass CGI of The Haunting.
STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Much like the hottie quotient, the cool chicks of Elm Street peaked with the ass-whupping Heather Langenkamp of the first and third installments. Props are duly given to the brutal slaughter of her inferior successors.
--Sarah Kendzior
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