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

This is a post dedicated to The Midsummer Dream Blogathon being held over at Pure Entertainment Preservation Society

Tnx Tiffany and Rebekah for letting me take part!

“You’ve got their powers. I’ve got their souls. Come on! ” – Freddy Krueger

Number of Times Seen – at least 3 times (Cable in the 80’s and 16 Jun 2021)

Brief Synopsis – After fending off and killing Freddy in the previous movie, The remaining Dream Warriors are once again visited by him as he tries to break free of his imprisonment in Hell.

My Take on it –When dealing with a blogathon about dreaming, how can one overlook the idea of nightmares, especially ones caused by a demon who tries to kill teenagers in their sleep.

As someone who isn’t a fan of horror films at all, I’ve always enjoyed the campiness of the films in this series.

This film was one that I watched a few times largely due to the fact that I really enjoyed the characters in the previous film A Nightmare on Elm STreet 3: Dreamm Warriors (1987).

That movie finally gave the terrorized kids a chance to try and fight back against Freddy and not just become canon fodder like teens are in most slashr films.

This film reunites the viewer with the surviving characters f that film and we get to once again see how they fight off this demon with their unique abiities.

The film is able to choose some very clever ways for FReddy to dispatch many of his vctims whie also keeping a more open playing field along the way.

The fact that Patricia Arquette is misisng from this film is a shame since her character and performance was so great in the last film.

Renny Harlin does a great job directing this film and helps make it feel even more unique than some of the previous films in the series which is nice to see.

Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Renny Harlin got the job by refusing to take “no” for an answer. Rather than accept the rejection, he instead showed up at the New Line Cinema offices on a daily basis, repeatedly requesting to speak with producer Robert Shaye. For a variety of reasons, they didn’t like any of the other directors who came in for meetings about this movie, and Harlin always seemed to be around. Eventually, his persistence won the day, to some degree, because he was so clearly impoverished that his clothes never seemed to change day-to-day, and even began to smell. They had to hire him just so he could afford some new clothes, or so Bob Shaye jokes. According to Harlin, Shaye rarely ever spoke to him throughout the shoot, even though he would visit the set quite often. That made filming Shaye’s cameo scene a bit difficult. The resulting tension meant Harlin lived each day on-set like it would be his last, because he was fairly positive Shaye was going to fire him at any moment without warning. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)