A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master picks up with the surviving "dream warriors" from the previous installment adjusting to life back in high school after their experiences at the Westin Psychiatric Hospital. Things are going fine, with no sign of Freddy Krueger returning after they buried him and consecrated the ground with holy water in A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3: The Dream Warriors.
But then one of their dogs pees fire on Freddy's burial site and Freddy returns to life via a very cool film-reversal sequence that puts his skeleton back together and attaches flesh to his bones like the guy in Hellraiser. Shoulda seen that coming, I guess.
The focus of the movie shifts from Kristin, the heroine from part three, to her quiet, reserved, Sissy Spacek-looking friend Alice. Like the dream warriors, Alice has a dream power herself - the ability to take her friends' powers from them when they die. Good for her, sucks for them.
The dream warriors get offed in short order by Freddy and we get stuck with Alice and her one-note friends for the rest of the movie. There's Deb, the exercise nut who hates bugs; Sheila, the uber-nerd with asthma; and Alice's would-be boyfriend, Dan, one of the most pointless and dull characters in horror history. The only interesting character who doesn't come off as completely one-dimensional is Alice's brother, Rick, with his sweet karate moves and cool-kid hair. He's a lot like a proto-David Boreanaz.
Of course, it's not long before Freddy starts dispatching these kids in manners consistent with their singular personality traits, and it's up to Alice to fight back. That sort of ironic, tailored murder concept was introduced in the previous film, but here it's taken to ridiculous levels. Still, some of the kills are pretty cool looking, and almost all are creative.
I remember that this movie, specifically, is the movie that turned me around from being scared to fascinated by horror movies. Despite containing all the trappings of a horror movie, there is little here to be scared of. Freddy is jokey and silly for the most part, the kills are too off-the-wall to be frightening, and the whole thing is approached more like an action flick than a horror movie. This makes sense, as it is action director Renny Harlin behind the camera.
Harlin does give the movie some style and some impressive gags that sell the dream-like quality. For example, the repeated exit of Alice and Dan from the diner is very cool, and would be reused in part 6.
This one also contains what could have been the most heinous kill of the entire series - Deb's transformation into a bug before being squashed in a roach motel. If they hadn't been looking for a Kafka-esque sequence, they could have simply stopped with Freddy shattering Deb's elbows as she did her bench presses. Holy cow, what an image. The still shot of that moment was on the back of the VHS box and always made me ill when I saw it. Frankly, Freddy did that poor girl a favor when he made her turn into a bug and die. Better that than shattered elbows. Yow!
Still, cool kills aside, you have to consider The Dream Master the beginning of the decline for the A Nightmare On Elm Street series. The one-liners get worse, the kills get goofier, the stories get more incoherent, and so forth from here on out. Dream Master has a lot of flaws, and sometimes feels like it's a gory R-rated horror flick made for children, but it's entertaining and watchable - unlike the next couple of movies. Maybe this can be a gateway horror movie for other people just getting into the genre like it was for me.
Oh, and stay tuned during the closing credits for Freddy rapping with The Fat Boys. Or just go find the music video on Youtube. Oh my.
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