Nightmare on Elm Street series

[EJA]

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.

[Starbreaker]

The original and New Nightmare are great. The remake is horrible.

[T'Baio]

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.

[Servo]

T'Bortion wrote:

---

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.

That's pretty much how I feel about the franchise, too.

[Greg Cox]

FYI, you folks all know that Robert Englund is guest-starring on CHUCK tonight, right? In a Halloween "Nightmare" ep?

[Pingfah]

T'Bortion wrote:

---

The original, Dream Warriors and New Nightmare

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.

[Greg Cox]

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 . . . .

[Lonemagpie]

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...

[EJA]

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!)

[EJA]

Woops, double post! Sorry!

[Worf2DS9]

Starbreaker wrote:

---

The original and New Nightmare are great.

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.

[Myasishchev]

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.

[Dream]

Pingfaaaaaarrrgghh wrote:

---

Those are the 3 I'd pick too.

Those are the only good ones in the franchise because they were the only ones Wes Craven were involved in.

[Ar-Pharazon]

Greg Cox wrote:

---

FYI, you folks all know that Robert Englund is guest-starring on CHUCK tonight, right? In a Halloween "Nightmare" ep?

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.

[T'Baio]

Dream wrote:

---

Those are the only good ones in the franchise because they were the only ones Wes Craven were involved in.

Wes Craven being involved in something, though, doesn't guarantee quality. He's made a lot of shit over the years.