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

Part 3 opened with an Edgar Allen Poe quote, part 4 one ups that by opening with a Bible quote. Which is a hilariously solemn start to the movie that pushes this series fully into goofy territory. Englund gets top billing for the first time, this has fully transformed into the Freddy show. Freddy has always been more talkative and playful than the usual slasher, but here he becomes a full-on jokester. I believe “How’s that for a wet dream?” is his first pun, and he also starts rhyming and shit. That plus the bit with Robert Englund in drag as the nurse removes any mystique or menace that might have remained at this point in the series. There are some impressive and grotesque visuals, but the whole thing feels more like a carnival with rides and a geek show than a tale of terror (fully driven home later when we see Freddy in a spinning tube straight out of a haunted house ride). At one point Freddy’s claws move through water like Jaws then through the sand until he explodes out of a sandcastle. Stuff like that and the invisible Freddy fight scene are fully comedic, not even trying to be creepy.

Part 3 introduced more elaborate themed nightmares/deaths. This continues in that direction, but they are less connected to the characters. Before we had a kid who makes string puppets being turned into one, now we have a character who crushes a bug turned into a bug. They feel reverse-engineered, like someone came up with the bug transformation then added a quick bug squashing to the script to set it up (or its just based on the set, like the waterbed death). That might actually be true based on some of my reading, one potential director said he turned down part 4 when he found out the second unit was already off shooting the special effects sequences because according to the studio “we kind of know how we’re going to make these things” already. And once Renny Harlin was hired to direct, cast and crew were forced to improvise during production because of a Writer’s Strike.

Online I see this entry referred to as “the MTV nightmare” movie, a perfect descriptor. It’s not just the wall-to-wall soundtrack of popular music and a character actually watching MTV. It’s the whole style and presentation. This is the highest budget Elm Street so far, and it looks bigger and slicker than previous entries. The nightmare sequences feel more like music videos, and even the “real world” scenes feel more artificial and glossier. The pacing is way faster, I don’t think this movie goes a 5-10 minutes without a nightmare sequence (in addition to more screen time for Freddy this is also the most time spent in dreams, it might even be up to 50% of the runtime). The characters and plot also feel less believable and more contrived this time around (the nerd character has giant glasses, an inhaler, and A RULER HANGING OFF HER BACKPACK just like a real kid!).

The surviving characters from part 3 are killed off in the first act. The previous movie brought back and killed off Nancy, but dispatching the other survivors so quickly is the first sign that these are just “Freddy” movies now. The characters are there to set up Freddy and then get knocked down by him, the script is just to get from set piece to set piece.

We need a new ostensible main character, and the narrative needs a way for Freddy to keep killing beyond the initial revenge premise (since he finished off all the original Elm Street kids). This falls on Kristen’s friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox), who somehow gains Kristen’s ability to bring others into her dreams (allowing Freddy access to new victims). Alice is to me the least interesting protagonist in the series so far (except for fake Kristen in this movie, Patricia Arquette declined to return, and I did not care for Tuesday Knight as her temporary replacement). Wilcox isn’t bad but doesn’t bring anything extra to Alice to make up for the fact that she is more contrivance than character. It doesn’t help that she is saddled with the clunkiest dialogue in the series so far. I was bummed that part 3 didn’t explore the “Dream Warriors” and powers concept more, but that might have been a blessing after suffering through the b.s. explanations of “Dream Masters” and gates in this one (I wonder if this would have been improved if not for the Writers' Strike?).

Surprisingly this had the best climax so far. The endings were my least favorite parts of the previous 3 Elm Street movies. The mechanics behind this one are still pretty silly, with Lisa defeating Freddy by showing him his reflection in a mirror, but the idea of him being torn apart from the inside by the souls of his victims is a good one. And the execution is top notch, with some really creative and cool effects. This is some phantasmagorical shit, right here. I saw make-up maestro Screaming Mad George’s name in the opening credits and assumed he did the tunnel of souls at the end because it reminded me of his work on Society. Turns out he actually did the cockroach sequence. I should have known, because that is by far the most disgusting and disturbing sequence in the series yet. As I said, this script basically just exists to set up the set pieces, but the good ones have enough juice that I still enjoyed the movie overall.

This is also the most unambiguously happy ending; the victims' souls are freed, and Freddy seems to be gone. Alice briefly sees Freddy’s reflection in a fountain then it disappears. By the time Freddy starts rapping with the Fat Boys over the credits it’s obvious they want to leave us smiling and laughing, they are no longer trying to create any new nightmares in viewers (until The New Nightmare, that is).

Recurring series elements:

Drunk parents are back bay-bee! Alice and Rick’s dad is a useless, angry drunk and possibly the shittiest parent in the series so far. Or is it Kristen’s mom, who seems to ignore everything that happened in the previous movie and dooms Kristen by slipping her sleeping pills? That’s another creaky element of the script, the returning kids (other than Kristen) and anyone close to them are a little too willing to dismiss or ignore things after what they have already been through.

Weird animal stuff: part 2 had the hilarious exploding parakeet, part 4 brings Freddy back to life when a dog pisses fire on his burial site. WTF?

Freddy calls someone a bitch again.

Is someone going to demolish that Elm Street house at some point? It has got to be affecting neighborhood property values.

Random: I already thought Toy Newkirk (who plays Sheila) was cute, then right before she dies, she’s looking straight Velma from Scooby Doo and it's pretty hot. Gone too soon.

RIP, ahead of your time cute nerdy POC.