At 'Dem Flicks w\ Malcolm - A Nightmare on Elm Street IV

[Malcolm]

This will contain a couple spoilers. Yeah, like you cared.

You can tell that Wes Craven really wanted two things out of his horror franchise :

1) He wanted it to end and not turn into a Halloween/Friday the 13th never-ending series.
2) He wanted to make the last film in the series.

Unfortunately, when he wrote the story & screenplay for III, he wrote it too well such that it simply had to have a sequel. New Line made cash hand-over-first off the series. There's a reason New Line Cinema is still called "the house that Freddy built." So, they got future Geena Davis husband Renny Harlin to direct. Some of his later credits would include Cutthroat Island & Exorcist : the Beginning, and Die Hard II.

Anyhow, after seemingly finally killing Freddy in III, he is resurrected by a dog pissing fire on him. Yes, you read that correctly. Everyone that survived at the end of III are all killed in the first twenty to thirty minutes. The writers, having exhausted Freddy's motivation due to his origins, are now faced with a quandry. They've still got at least three-quarters of a film left & they just killed off all the possible victims. They proceed to pull out one plot twist after another and add layers of what is supposed to be "cool," but ends up being "drag." For instance, one of the characters is a blackbelt or something. Did the plot need this? Did his character need this? Only in the sense that it sets up a unique & convoluted death scene for him. & these aren't interesting death scenes anyway. Our old friend Renny used to be a set director, so the scenery during the killing is moderately interesting. However, gone are the interesting ways of actually killing people. Freddy almost always resorts to the bladed glove instead of ramming victims thru TVs or making them walk off tall buildings using their muscle tendons.

The characters are shallow and almost completely one-dimensional. Unlike III, you don't care if any of them live or die. In fact, you'll find yourself cheering for Freddy on most occasions cos every punk he kills is one less hack actor left to be directed by a hack director in what's left of a hack story.

The special effects by Kevin Yagher are still impressive, but aren't given much of a chance to shine here as the writers' understanding of "surreal dreamworld" extends only to knowledge of how to spell "surreal."

Harlin has no fucking clue what he's doing. Maybe he thinks he's trying to direct an action flick. There's a painful montage where he turns the heretofore unspectacular, spineless, and clueless heroine into a killing machine cos some-fucking-how (never explained) she managed to absorb her friends' traits. The transformation is good for a cheap laugh and nothing more.

And, of course, there must be the climatic battle between the villain and the heroine. Let's up put the list of things that made the scene work :

1) place : creepy-ass, run-down old church GOOD
2) protagonist that has made quantum leaps in character development which run entirely contrary to how the character was introduced. BAD
3) Waaaaaaay too much unconvincing kung-fu. BAD
4) Waaaaaaaaay too much Robert Englund trying to save the scene by overacting. BAD
5) Abso-fucking-lutely bullshit "secret weapon" the protagonist uses to defeat villain, which opens up so many plots holes and contradicts many scenes in past films. Couple this with the fact that it just comes the fuck from out of no-fucking-where. The nonsequitar nature of it is astounding. BAD

Rating : 1 star



Edited By Malcolm on 1141231214

[Paul]

I only remember bits of this one, like them heading to the town and staying at the abandoned house.

There's a full spoiler here.

In the next movie (5), the kid in his pajamas running away from Freddy made me laugh, nearly to the point of tears. It's the only think I remember about that one as well.



Edited By Paul on 1141243930

[Malcolm]

Uh, that's the spoiler for VI, not IV.

[Paul]

I Googled:
"nightmare on elm street IV" spoiler

Google tricked me!

I remember liking the idea of "NoES: Dream Master" when I heard about it, but being disappointed when I saw it.
I don't remember much about it either.



Edited By Paul on 1141330772

[Malcolm]

I Googled:
"nightmare on elm street IV" spoiler

Google tricked me!

I remember liking the idea of "NoES: Dream Master" when I heard about it, but being disappointed when I saw it.
I don't remember much about it either.

I, III, & VII were good.

Or, more precisely, everything that Craven wrote was good.