Subject: REVIEW: FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE

From: [email-masked] (The Phantom)
Date: 18 Sep 91 17:51:25 GMT

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		  FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE
		    A review in the public domain
			    by The Phantom
		      ([email-masked])

     The Phantom feels good about this review, because with it he can
help nearly all of his readers.  All except those who have already seen
FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE, that is.  There's not much that can
be done for those unfortunate few who bolted from the comfort and safety
of their homes to see Freddy's latest (and purportedly, his last) ELM
STREET film this past weekend.  Perhaps they were disappointed by
CHILD'S PLAY 3 the week before and figured that at the very least,
nothing could be worse.  Perhaps they were enticed by the prospect of
great special effects -- after all, as the print ads read, "they saved
the best for last."  Perhaps the rare opportunity of seeing another film
in 3-D did it.  Or perhaps it was just their self-appointed job, as it
was for the Phantom, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, and what
appeared to be most of the employees of New Line Cinema's New York
office (New Line has been the distributor of all of the ELM STREET
films).

     That in and of itself should have told the Phantom something.  The
premiere of TERMINATOR 2 was also filled with industry people (rows 10
through 14 were filled with nothing but ILM weenies), but that seemed
easy to understand.  After all, T2 was destined to be the summer's
blockbuster film, and if it weren't for the dedicated effort made by the
folks who work at the special effects houses, the film wouldn't be
nearly the success it is.  Why not go see it with a packed house of
eager movie-goers the night before opening day and see how your efforts
-- or those of your coworkers -- paid off?

     But it's hard to understand what those folks from New Line were
doing at the National Theater last Friday, except perhaps looking for an
excuse to cut out of work early.  Surely they couldn't have expected
people to stand up and cheer (as they did at the end of T2).  Or stay
seated and applaud (as they did at the end of DANCES WITH WOLVES).  Or
even keep their dissatisfaction to themselves (as they do at the end of
most films which fail to live up to their expectations)?  Given the
general grumbling heard by the Phantom on the way out, the last place he
would expect a New Line employee would want to be last Friday afternoon
is anywhere within range of rotten fruit.  (Alas, the Phantom forgot to
pick some up on the way in, so his preferred form of film criticism was
denied him.)

     So the Phantom can come to no other conclusion than that these poor
folks weren't going to get paid last week unless they attended the 4:00
show in an attempt to help fill what would otherwise be a rather empty
auditorium.  Additional confirmation for this theory was provided
outside the theater, where the Phantom looked on in amusement as the New
Line folks were told that even with their industry passes it would still
cost them $1 each to get in.  Since New Line at this point has more
unopened, returned copies of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II than it has
dollar bills, the Phantom wasn't at all surprised to see that the
National's steep cover charge might prove their undoing.  Yet by the
time the film was over, even they did little more than provide what the
Phantom's believes was the very definition of a "smattering" of
applause.  They may not be hard workers; they may not be well-paid; but
they are loyal.

     Yet even a full refund wouldn't have kept the Phantom from wishing
that he had bought some popcorn at the concession stand.  How
frustrating it was to have to leave the theater without being able to
fully express his feelings about the nightmare that had just unfolded
before him.  And if some of the buttered kernels happened to fall on the
heads of the New Liners, it probably wouldn't have surprised them,
knowing as they did that at least one critic was in the audience -- Ms.
Maslin, like other film critics, wasn't allowed to see and review the
film before opening day because New Line didn't screen it before opening
day.  (As an aside, when a studio or distributor doesn't screen a film
before opening day, you can be fairly sure that there's a reason for it;
one can't pan a film one hasn't seen yet, can one?)

     Well, one has now seen this film, and one is therefore now quite
well prepared to pan it.  As was obvious to every phan unfortunate
enough to see Freddy in his last outing (THE DREAM CHILD), the ELM
STREET series has really been on the skids for a few years now.  The
first ELM STREET film was a certified original, a unique twist on the by
then standard slasher genre that allowed horror auteur Wes Craven to
transcend the limitations of ordinary horror villains in a more-or-less
plausible way.  Freddy was a little more scary and a little less funny
back in those days, and the sequels never really matched the original.
On the other hand, the first two sequels were well made and very
entertaining in their own right, and by the fourth (THE DREAM MASTER),
Freddy had turned into a veritable cottage industry, spawning a
television series and a line of Halloween makeup that made everyone
involved an awful lot of money.  In short, Freddy achieved the celebrity
status that had always eluded Michael and Jason -- the serial killers
from the HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH serials respectively -- and it
quickly became apparent that New Line had the cinematic equivalent of
the Golden Goose on its hands.  Freddy's films were relatively
inexpensive to make, and people apparently couldn't get enough of him.

     That is until DREAM CHILD, when someone decided that people really
*would* see anything with Freddy in it, regardless of how good -- or, in
this case, bad -- it was.  That's always a mistake, and in this case it
left the Goose's neck on the chopping block, anxiously awaiting a
reprieve from the farmers at New Line -- and more importantly, from
Freddy's still-loyal phans.  After DREAM CHILD, there were two ways to
go.  Either New Line could find a writer and a director who would
breathe some life back into the series, or they could drop the axe and
make whatever money they could as quickly as they could and kill the
series once and for all.  After leaving FREDDY'S DEAD, the Phantom
should have asked the folks from New Line what they were having for
dinner later that night, but he suspected that at least for some of
them, roast goose was on the menu.

     The problem with DREAM CHILD was that despite all the money spent
on special effects (which were an increasingly costly and escalating
proposition since THE DREAM WARRIORS), it was a fairly boring film.  Not
bad, really, but not interesting either, and shortly after it opened,
word of mouth saw it to a speedy closing.  All of a sudden, it seemed
that Freddy wasn't perhaps the drawing card that New Line thought he
was; after the smoke cleared, it wasn't clear whether there would even
*be* another sequel.

     But another sequel there is: FREDDY'S DEAD, the first of the ELM
STREET films not to use the words "A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET" in its
title.  That now seems strangely appropriate to the Phantom, for
FREDDY'S DEAD is less like an honest sequel to the original 1984 horror
classic than a big joke played on everyone who has the misfortune of
seeing it.  From the jokey title (a play on the early 70s Curtis
Mayfield hit); to the 3-D glasses (which are in fact good for nothing
but making you feel like a complete fool until the last 15 minutes of
the film -- the first 115 are in two dimensions, though of course the
characters are only drawn in one); to the throwaway special effects
(which are not very especially special); FREDDY'S DEAD provides ELM
STREET phans with a very sad, very tawdry sendoff for one of our
favorite horror personalities.  Romero did better by his DEAD; it's too
bad that New Line couldn't have done better by Wes' Freddy.

     What can be said of an ELM STREET film in which only three people
die (four, including Freddy)?  Such a film simply doesn't have its heart
in the right place.  Or what of a film that's advertised as being in
"3-D FreddyVision" and yet has no 3-D effects until the last 15 minutes?
(By the way, the joke was certainly on the Phantom and his fellow
audience members at the National last Friday.  We all dutifully put on
our vintage 50s red/blue 3-D glasses right at the start of the film --
and then spent the next 10 to 30 minutes peering over them, under them,
and around them in vain search of any effect that could even be
construed as being in three dimensions.  "There ain't a *damn* thing 3-D
about this!" was the most apt summary overheard by the Phantom during
the film's exceedingly flat beginning.)  Still not convinced?  Okay, how
about Roseanne and her husband Tom Arnold as deranged residents of the
now-childless Springfield?  See, it's a joke, son!  Laugh it up, why
don't you!

     The Phantom did indeed come close to doubling up once or twice, but
it most assuredly wasn't from laughter.  Rather it was from watching the
most lackluster and uninteresting ELM STREET film ever.  The characters
were dull; the special effects were....  Oh, the Phantom went through
this once already, didn't he?  Comes from trying to write too many
sequels to his own reviews, perhaps.  Got your magic 3-D reviewing
glasses on, phans?

     The plot might have been interesting, but the idea -- discovering
how Freddy became the oh-so-unneighborly guy he is by looking at scenes
from his tortured past -- is almost completely wasted.  Robert Englund
does what he can out of makeup, but oh how the Phantom longed for Terry
O'Quinn and a performance even half as good -- and half as scary -- as
the one he turned in for THE STEPFATHER.  The rest of the cast is
uniformly uninteresting; character development has been rolling steadly
downhill since DREAM WARRIORS.

     We learn that Freddy has a child that was taken from him, and that
he has been seeking revenge on everyone else's children since he was
burned alive by the angry townsfolk of Springfield.  It might have been
possible to explore in some depth Freddy's relationship to his son or
daughter (the Phantom's not telling which, though it hardly matters in
the scheme of things), and that might have made FREDDY'S DEAD much more
interesting than it is.  Something along these lines was attempted in
ELM STREET 2, and because of that it remains the most intelligent and
interesting of the sequels (though perhaps not the crowd-pleaser that
later sequels were).  But such discussion and exposition is postponed
until the "final confrontation", and by then it is much too late.

     We do, however, get to see -- in 3-D, no less -- those spirits of
the underworld with which Freddy Krueger makes his fateful pact.  As the
flames surge around him, these dream agents offer Freddy immortality as
long as he spends it collecting children's souls, television residuals,
and product endorsements.  They may come from the depths of hell, but
agents are, after all, agents.  It wasn't clear to the Phantom whether
these dream agents get 10% of the souls that Freddy collects, but he
suspects that some arrangement along those lines was worked out.
(Naturally the agents looked like flying skulls with short spinal cord
tails -- all mouth and no heart, you might say.)

     Alas, the dream agents have let Freddy down; with FREDDY'S DEAD,
the Golden Goose has been cooked, and the series ends not with a bang
but a smirk.  Though the 3-D at the end is fun (the Phantom's always had
a soft spot for 3-D, ever since it was revived in the 1981 spaghetti
western COMIN' AT YA), it's a shame that it was implemented with
red/blue glasses rather than polarized glasses -- the result is not
nearly as good as it could have been, and so those phans who go in
expecting something similar to FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3 are going to be
doubly disappointed.

     It was kind of sad watching FREDDY'S DEAD and seeing what had
become of the premiere horror series of the eighties.  Though it
concentrated less on horror than on crowd-pleasing special effects and
humor in its later sequels, the ELM STREET series was like a favorite
pair of jeans -- something you could slip into and feel comfortable with
no matter how torn up it got.  But Hollywood never seems to learn the
lesson that last summer's season of dud sequels brought home with a
vengeance: that although audiences may not always be as discerning as we
critics would like them to be, and though they may not always know
quality when they see it, they certainly have no trouble perceiving a
lack quality and effort, and they'll stay away in droves from films that
don't at least make an honest attempt to entertain, if nothing else.

     About the only people who might enjoy FREDDY'S DEAD are those who
will see *anything at all* in 3-D -- the Phantom isn't sure whether the
video release will also be in "FreddyVision"; on the other hand, given
the bad word of mouth that this last ELM STREET film is generating, it's
likely that we'll all find out quite soon.

: The Phantom 
: [email-masked] 
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart