Nightmare on Elm Street series

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by EJA, Oct 25, 2010.

  1. EJA

    EJA Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    I've already posted here about Heather Langenkamp, the star of a few of these movies, but I thought I might as well start a discussion around the franchise in general. Are there any fans of it here? My favourites installments are most probably the original, followed by Dream Warriors, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (I know a lot of people hate this one, but I honestly didn't think it was that bad; certainly more entertaining than the previous two films, which stank IMO), and Wes Craven's New Nightmare. I used to like Freddy vs Jason, but I've gone off that in recent years and no longer watch it. I haven't seen the remake, and to be honest I've no real desire to. I've heard it was crap anyway.
     
  2. Starbreaker

    Starbreaker Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2001
    Location:
    Birmingham, AL
    The original and New Nightmare are great. The remake is horrible.
     
  3. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2001
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    The original, Dream Warriors and New Nightmare I think are really great horror movies. Dream Master is really fun in that highly polished, late 80's, studios were actually starting to make money and made one good mainstream one before it all went to their heads kind of way.

    The remake is really kind of terrible. It was going somewhere interesting when there was a taste of Freddy possibly being wrongly accused, but then of course no one had the balls to go there. That would have been too interesting. Jackie Earle Haley was really great in the role with what he had to work with. I really liked the performance and he made it his own, but everything around him was just bad.
     
  4. Servo

    Servo Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Nov 13, 2003
    Location:
    Manchester, England
    That's pretty much how I feel about the franchise, too.
     
  5. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA
    FYI, you folks all know that Robert Englund is guest-starring on CHUCK tonight, right? In a Halloween "Nightmare" ep?
     
  6. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2005
    Location:
    Pingfah
    Those are the 3 I'd pick too.

    New Nightmare is very underrated in my opinion, I see it as a precursor to Scream in the manner in which it tries to deconstruct the anatomy of a horror movie. But it does it in an intelligent way instead of spoonfeeding it to you like the Scream movies do.
     
  7. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA
    New Nightmare was the very first movie novelization I ever edited. The writer, David Bergantino, had great fun with the whole "meta" theme of the movie, and even killed himself off in the epilogue . . . .
     
  8. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 31, 2007
    Location:
    Yorkshire
    I enjoyed the series, though, really, it's two different things.

    The first movie was a great creepy horror flick with a fabulously hateful threat - a moody dead paedophiliac serial killer. Then from the third movie onwards (we'll forget the second one!) becomes more like a riff on Graham Masterton's Night Warriors books, with folk chasing a wisecracking dream imp through each others' dreamscapes...

    Not really a follow on from the original movie's tone. Great fun though.

    I wish Black Flame and their novels licence had lasted longer, though - I had three books accepted by them and approved by New Line, but only Final Destination: Destination Zero appeared before they went tits-up. One of the two that were approved but didn't actually appear was a Friday The 13th, but the one I was most proud of - and would dearly love to finish someday, if someone else took the licence - was A Nightmare On Elm Street: Rabid.

    It would have been so great. The prologue, included in the stuff approved by the studio, was a Jane Austen pisstake a good couple of years before Pride And Prejudice And Zombies made it fashionable. And the climax would have had-

    Well, never mind. Maybe some publisher will revive the licence someday, and let me actually finish it...
     
  9. EJA

    EJA Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Greg, the novelisation of New Nightmare sounds really interesting. I think I might like to try and get it on Amazon sometime!

    Yeah, I heard about what they did in the remake where first they suggest that Krueger might well have been innocent, and then say that he was a paedophile. Ugh. I'd have preferred the former option.

    I really like Dream Warriors, but I've always felt it was a big mistake to kill off the character of Nancy Thompson; she was Krueger's best enemy. I never cared much for that Alice character they brought in in Dream Master and Dream Child. (Of course, having a big crush on Heather Langenkamp probably influences my feelings!)
     
  10. EJA

    EJA Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Woops, double post! Sorry!
     
  11. Worf2DS9

    Worf2DS9 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2001
    Location:
    Canada, eh
    These are the only two I own on DVD. I haven't seen any of the other movies in the series in ages though.

    I did see the remake on the weekend, but I don't think it's near as good as the original. Haley was okay as Freddy, and I suppose his facial burn makeup was more realistic, but otherwise there was nothing overly noteworthy about it.
     
  12. Myasishchev

    Myasishchev Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2009
    Location:
    America after the rain
    I finally only saw Nightmare on Elm Street the other day, and it's to date the only one I have seen. I did rather like it, though.
     
  13. Dream

    Dream Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 2, 2001
    Location:
    Derry, Maine
    Those are the only good ones in the franchise because they were the only ones Wes Craven were involved in.
     
  14. Ar-Pharazon

    Ar-Pharazon Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 19, 2005
    Location:
    Far North Chicago Suburbs
    He was also good in the Bones episode "The Death of the Queen Bee" as the creepy high school janitor with the knife collection.

    As far as the Elm St. movies go, I liked them all more or less and as far as I'm concerned, Robert Englund was Freddy, moreso than any actor was the part in any similar movie.
     
  15. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2001
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Wes Craven being involved in something, though, doesn't guarantee quality. He's made a lot of shit over the years.
     
  16. EJA

    EJA Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    What do people think of Freddy's Dead? I know a lot of people don't hold it in very high regard, but I quite like it, more so than the previous two films in fact.
     
  17. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2005
    Location:
    Pingfah
    I don't dislike it, it's a marked improvement on most levels over Dream Child. The numerous cameos are good fun, the effects are really pretty slick in places. I saw it in the cinema, and the 3D effects were laughably poor though.

    But it's not trying to be a serious horror film, it's supposed to be fun, fantastical and a bit silly like all the sequels from 3 onwards, and it does a good job of that. I think it successfully betters its own low targets, certainly the best attempt since Dream Warriors.
     
  18. T'Baio

    T'Baio Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 18, 2001
    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    I can't even make it though Freddy's Dead anymore. It is so laughably terrible in every way.
     
  19. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2005
    Location:
    Pingfah
    To be fair, I haven't watched it in a decade or more, I may have a youth tinted view of it.
     
  20. EJA

    EJA Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Feb 25, 2007
    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Some trivia for you: Brooke Bundy, the actress who played Chief Engineer MacDougal in TNG "The Naked Now", also played Kristen Parker's mother in Dream Warriors. And Lisa Wilcox, AKA Alice in Dream Master and Dream Child, appeared as Yuta in TNG "The Vengeance Factor."