OR, "I REDO the Freddys"!
Last year.
Yeah, figured this would be as good an excuse as any to do the Freddy companion to "I REDO the Jasons".
Thus, also, the sequel to "I love the Freddys!!".
Never Sleep Again (2010)
All right, so as I said here, I upgraded to the edition with a commentary, so, that's another 4 hours of stuff.
It's like having a new documentary, IMHO.
So, time to re-review it, which means re-reviewing the flicks.
Geez, gonna be hard to find new things to say....
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
Okay, the origins of this are laid out pretty well here, in my review of "Swamp Thing", of all things.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
Geez, I beat this one to death last time...
Well, the commentary updated, and thus read into the record, about how since "Never Sleep Again", was released, that fans have agreed that the segment on part two is the best part, and its lead to Mark Patton being more available for conventions, and he's considered the first male scream-queen, and tours with the other scream queens, and all that stuff.
Haven't heard any recent updates, but, early this year, he said he's still working on "There Is No Jesse", collecting interviews for it.
He's got Robert Englund, he's got Wes Craven, he's got Cher, cuz they did "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean", together, and there's some more he wants to get that's he's keeping secret, so....still waiting on that.
He also said the paperback book version of "Jesse's Lost Journals", will be coming out with extra chapters, and, he's got a paper autobiography coming down the line that'll be before "There Is No Jesse".
So, that's all of that, still no hide nor hair of any of that stuff.
Um...what else..what else...
Ah! continuity connections!
This one has always kind of been dismissed, because there's never been direct reference to the events of this, and never any mention of Jesse in the other ones.
BUT, this sets some things up.
From this one onward, the Nancy house has the red door.
So any sequel with the red door on the Nancy house is a link to 2.
Robert Englund in his Freddy getup in part 7 says "you are all my children now!".
That's right out of this one, and nowhere else.
This one occurs 5 years after part 1, and references Nancy, then Nancy in part 3 says it's 6 years after 1 to accommodate the time gap here.
They could have flat out ignored the passage of time, but they half-acknowledged 2 by taking the estabished passage of time into account.
Part 5 steals a lot from this.
I touched on it last time, but the parallels are striking.
Freddy tries to use Jesse as a body, Freddy tries to use Jacob as a body.
Freddy rips out of Jesse, Freddy rips out of Alice.
Ambiguous ending where Freddy's hand rips out of a female's torso, and, ditto.
And, those are just the obvious ones.
Anyway, this one's considered "the gay nightmare".
Meh, I don't care, I still think it's a great horror movie for all horror fans.
Watch the damned thing, I still think it's the scariest one.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
The Christian Nightmare.
...or IS it?
I mean, you've got the mother of Freddy as this nun.
You've got Freddy defeated by holy water, and a cross.
But...Freddy in part 1 says "THIS...is God!", referring to his glove, and here, he says "sorry kid, I don't believe in fairy tales!", and, he laughs off the holy water death in part 6.
So...seems like Freddy's atheist, and has good reason to be.
Seems like Lovecraft rules apply.
Meh, the christian shit working in this one is really more an homage to Dracula, if anything else.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
The MTV nightmare.
Um...covered this one pretty well...okay, my old copy of "Never Sleep Again", had a really bad glitch right about where it got to the effects on the cockroach girl, now, the new copy is perfect.
That won't haunt me anymore.
Hooray!
Oh, yeah, and in the commentary, they point out that the Freddy that curses at the camera crew is Robert Englund's stunt double, not Robert Englund.
And, by doing so, they acknowledge you're watching an updated version from the first release.
So, even that little fact is read into the record, and part of the show.
Freddy's Nightmares:
A Nightmare On Elm Street The Series (1988-1990)
Of course, I did my exhaustive pain-in-the-ass review here.
No, Bob Shaye was right, miserable television.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)
The comic book nightmare.
Also, see "Freddy's Revenge", above.
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
The Tex Avery nightmare.
Ehh...it wasn't totally goofy, it had the really dark child abuse stuff in there.
It's an odd flick, it's a mixed bag, but I'll defend it any day of the week.
Edit- Oh!! Oh, wait! That's right!
The commentary finally addressed why the fuck Leslie Deane was all made up in goth makeup, and stage blood, and had that mute goth girl for a human arm rest.
...they don't fucking know.
The goth makeup thing is she's got a band, and that's her stage persona...but the girlfriend as human furniture thing...they're just as confused as we are.
But, hey, they don't ignore it, and pretend it's sane now.
It's acknowledged.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
The cerebral nightmare.
See the Wes Craven retrospective for how his association with this franchise played out.
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The Universal monster-mash nightmare.
Yep, I've beaten this horse into dust, haven't I?
Lets move on.
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
Ah, now here's where the difference really kicks in.
The original release, the remake was just about to come out. Here, in the commentary, they look back on it, and outright say it sucked.
So, it's official, and on the record.
For history.
I Am Nancy (2011)
Okay, this was plugged on disk 2, so, it counts, I'll re-review this, because I was never happy with my sloppy first pass at it.
I still think of this as an extra chapter of "Never Sleep Again".
Maybe Heather Langenkamp intended this to be an ego tripping career boost, maybe not, but worst case scenario, if it was, it evolved into something much more, and it's a sweet little documentary.
"Never Sleep Again", dissects the films, this covers the impact of the films.
I still recommend it.
Yeah, that's my boiled down, non-rambling assessment.
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash (2007-2008)
Yep, they pimped this on disk 2, so it also counts as a topic.
I hemmed and hawed last time, but screw it, it's in my canon forever.
I love the fuckin' thing.
Warts and all.
Ditto its prequel.
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors (2009)
Eh, I'm a bit easier on this now.
It's still not a favorite, it's still flawed as hell, and I don't include it on my canon, buuut, it had some neat ideas buried in there, it called back to the ending in the Peter Briggs script, and I loved that thing back in the day, sooo, it did try to please fans like me.
It meant well.
Just, production shit fucked it more than anything.
Penny-pinching from the high-ups, and a sick artist did it in.
Whatever.
They tried.
And it's still better than the Freddy/Jason reboots.
The (updated) doc overall...
Still a masterpiece.
With the commentary, it's absolutely perfect.
Aaand, that's it.
Up next, that Halloween update thing I talked about.
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