A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What‘s This About: Freddy gets knocked up. 

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Some very awkward close ups of naked sweaty bodies are what the opening credits start with. Better than seeing some kids make a Freddy house again I suppose.
• The body parts are so close-up that I literally can’t tell an ass from an elbow.
• Frosted glass nudity.
• I sure hope that brown substance coming up in from your shower drain is dirt Alice.
• So the shower is out of control and filling up so much that Alice is going to drown unless she opens the shower door. If only she could try that instead of banging on it.
• And now she stumbled into the Republican National Convention.
•  Amanda Krueger, Freddy’s mum, is working in this mental ward waltzing around these 100 maniac men just meandering about. At one silly point she grabs her nameplate on her uniform and looks at it so we the audience knows that it’s Amanda Krueger. Which was good because I was completely lost as to who that could be.
• The other two dimwits who work at the ward’s only job is to count the inmates apparently. The one restless jerk off just tells the other that they should just round up to 100 and let’s go, leaving poor Amanda Krueger all alone down there with them to get gang-raped. Typical kids’ movie trope.
• I had mentioned in my review for The Dream Warriors that according to imdb trivia that the film took place in 1990 mainly because of Nancy’s age and her being a registered therapist and that’s probably not true since this film clearly says CLASS OF 1989. So either Part 3 didn’t take place in 1990 or the sequels didn’t care. Or both. 
• How did Alice get better looking in this film?
• Glad Alice and Dan made new friends and the whole school got past the whole tragedies it went through from the last film. If I went through that kind of traumatizing bullshit I’d move the fuck away as fast as fucking possible.
• This is the weirdest, most awkward high school graduation ever put to film.
• All these new teens suck. They’re just the fucking worse and I’ve only known them 2 minutes.
• Man, Dan is such a moron.

• What does the “best quarterback in the state” and “the need for speed” have to do with each other?
• Dan just graduated high school but only now at his graduation is he getting courted by a college sports scout? Shouldn’t that have happened like 7 months ago when he was applying to colleges and whatnot?
• Alice is working on the day of her graduation. Who does that?!
• I‘m sorry but is Alice asleep right now as she’s walking to the diner? Why is she seeing the Freddy kids in the park? There’s no reason right now for her to see the kids and Amanda Krueger!
• The Freddy baby mutant monster is ridiculous. How did they think that was a good effect. Or idea? I know this is Alice’s nightmare and it doesn’t have to make sense but it’s still silly having a mutant Freddy baby running around right after it was born.
• So Freddy is brought back by Alice having a dream about him. That’s one serious flaw in the rules. Why bother “killing” Freddy in the first place? It’s the lamest reason to be resurrected. 
• And he always just gets his glove back because it’s always just lying there or something. You would think the survivor girl would take and protect the glove so he can never get it again.
• I hope they explain why Freddy‘s left arm is longer than his right. (They do not)
• I always loved the line: “Look for me in the tower!” It’s so silly and fairy tale-like.
• 4 hours late is not late. It’s not even close. This may explain why the diner is completely empty. Although I always assumed all diners are 24 hours but maybe because we live in New Jersey.
• I can somewhat get the champagne that the kids have to celebrate graduating high school but not the beer. Especially when they are literally partying at the swimming pool in the high school. Who wrote this?
• Mark, the comic book geek, is squeamish around blood. Probably not important for the future. In fact I already forgot about it. What was I talking about? 
• Exactly how far is the high school to where Alice works? Why is Dan even driving? Earlier Alice told her dad that it was just across the park next to the high school and she walked. Now Dan is driving for miles on a highway.
• Plus Freddy made him crash his truck and then Dan takes a motorcycle. Why the double transportation scene? Couldn’t they just use the truck or the motorcycle.
• And Dan crashed right in front of Alice’s diner. He practically made it driving asleep.

• Hahaha, the truck driver that Dan crashed into, comes out to explain to Alice that “he came out of nowhere!” But he was dressed exactly like Freddy. I mean, so many guys in 1989 wear fedoras right? Especially truck drivers. 
• “You‘re just a little pregnant.” Haha
• Even by today’s standards getting a professional photograph in just a few days is odd. In 1989 it’s practically impossible. How did Greta get the graduation photo mere days afterwards?
• Hey, um, Alice telling the myth or story of Freddy to your friends is not the brightest idea. The more they know, the more they will dream of him and he will kill them. You just killed your friends idiot.
• And even after all those deaths in the last movie in the high school these new friends never once heard Alice or whomever discuss Freddy? That seems odd. It’s not like Alice is in a new town or new school. The rumors of those deaths would be discussed ad nauseam in that town.
• In one of the dumber death scene in a Nightmare flick, Freddy plays a waiter who force feeds Greta until she chokes to death.
• Great claymation scene of Alice’s food decomposing in her fridge. It looked like something out of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

• I know I always nitpick how casual and cavalier the victims’ friends and family members are after someone dies but this acting by Mark is so bad in the other direction that I regret ever complaining in the past.
• Ted Nugent!
• Alice turns around for one second and her idiot friend Mark falls asleep and goes into his drawing. Alice sees him like the “Take on Me“ video and quickly draws a stick figure on the drawing and writes Alice above the stick figure. She then closes her eyes for a brief moment and pop! She’s in the drawing too. She really is the Dream Master.
• It just dawned on me that the house that Freddy always brings his victims to doesn’t make sense. It was Nancy Thompson’s house. Why do every kid who have a Freddy nightmare dream of that house? It’s been a while since I saw the original but I’m pretty sure he didn’t live there before the Thompson’s moved in because the Thompson’s were one of the few that killed him somewhere else. Nor sure why he’s constantly associated with that house.
• How did Mark survive that dream? He disappeared in the dream because he saw blood. Then Alice talks to this kid she keeps seeing in her dreams, Jacob, who obviously is Alice’s unborn son for a few minutes and then she wakes up and helps Mark in the real world. Where did he go?
• How is her recent high school graduate friend Yvonne a nurse?! That‘s absurd!
• If only this movie was better since I’m kinda liking the concept of Freddy using Alice’s fetus’ dreams to get to her friends and come back alive. There’s only so much you can do with a killer with a glove of knives who stalks teens in their dreams. Using other dream concepts is a great idea.
• Why is Alice’s ultrasound wrapping a bright blue light around Alice’s body? Can’t she just dream normally?
• I can’t stand the actress who plays Yvonne. She was the annoying African-American girl in Summer School. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me.
• The “actor” playing Mark is just as terrible. I’m assuming he was stoned the whole time filming.
• Whoa! Hot button issue! Mark brings up the idea of Alice terminating the pregnancy to stop Freddy. However, it’s probably the best idea in the whole movie. And of course, Alice flatly turns down this idea and it‘s never brought up again.

• Why would Alice’s doctor call Dan’s parents about Alice’s condition? Did the doctor even know it’s Dan’s baby?
• Alice sure is adamant about keeping and raising this baby herself despite it potentially being a homicidal supernatural demon baby and the fact that she‘s only 18 and has her whole life ahead of her. What is the point this movie is trying to make? Surely a Republican wrote this.
• Hahaha. Mark takes out a book titled “Christian Mythology.” As opposed to Christian facts?
• A friend or whoever tells Yvonne that she missed practice. I think Yvonne is on the swim team. However, school is over, so what team or practice is she missing?
• How did Yvonne fall asleep underwater in the hot tub?!?! Is there anyone who wrote this movie who took any science classes?
• Wow, the whole Super Freddy gimmick was more embarrassing than I remember it.
• I love how Mark, who is a bona fide comic book geek, instead of coming up with stronger or better comic book super powers like strength, flying, or even agility; He comes up with a punisher type hero who shoots Freddy a bunch of times. He has zero super powers; just two big guns. I’m sure nothing would work against Super Freddy but he should’ve tried harder. 
• Shame New Line Cinema couldn’t get the rights to use Wolverine because having a clawed hero vs. Freddy would’ve been bad-ass!

• How is this the same asylum from Part 3? In Dream Warriors, Amanda Krueger said she was in the tower at the asylum but now we’re seeing a whole new asylum, which is now abandoned for some reason and looks like a castle from a Hammer movie.
• If Alice truly is the Dream Master, she would enter Freddy’s dreams and torment him! Just saying.
• Why does Freddy’s make-up get worse after every movie? He looked great in Part 3. Budget cuts or maybe Robert Englund demanded easier make-up since it probably takes over 10 hours to do the good make-up.
• Hahaha. Alice got the upper hand on Freddy and lured him into the large room where all the inmates were and they tear him part. Some of his limbs become tarantulas for some reason and one lands on Alice freaking her the fuck out.
• They are now ripping off Labyrinth with the kid chase in the MC Escher staircase!
• Hey, at least it’s an interesting nightmare scenario.
• I’d have more nitpicks and snarky comments but I keep dozing off. Ironically, Freddy isn’t trying kill me because that would be way more entertaining.
• Freddy rips himself out of Alice’s body, pretty much ripping off the same premise from Part 2.
• Not sure how Yvonne saved Amanda Krueger’s soul by just opening up the tower doors and touching her ghost. I guess the asylum tower doors never opened even before the place was abandoned.
• Man, the way they destroy Freddy was more off-the-wall than I remember. Amanda tells Jacob to use the powers he learned by watching Freddy and Jacob somehow rips the souls out of Freddy’s body, thus killing him. Then two babies emerge—one a normal baby and the other the mutant Freddy baby from earlier in the film. Amanda absorbs the Freddy baby and Alice takes the normal one. Amanda then struggles to contain an adult Freddy trying to claw his way out of her as a bunch of doors close on them. I think it’s symbolic.

• Another thing that’s weird or unused in these Nightmare flicks? We always see the young kids (mostly girls) who sing the nursery rhyme, which you would think are the little kids Freddy molested and killed when he was alive. But in each and every Nightmare movie he only hunts down teenagers. So there are no kids under 12 that had parents who killed Freddy that he seeks revenge for? Kinda odd right?
• Again with a rap song during the end credits. What is it about Freddy Krueger that says gangsta? This was supposed to be a horror movie right?
• And this rap has nothing to do with Freddy or dreams. Whose idea was it to put this rap in here? This is so bizarre. There was less rap music in Leprechaun in da Hood.

Was it Entertaining:

Final Thoughts: I think out of all the Nightmare movies (in the 80s anyway) I think I‘ve seen this one the least. I remember seeing it in theaters and I don‘t even think I had a copy of it on VHS. Yes, I know I saw this more than Freddy‘s Revenge. I hated it back in 1989 and still hate it now. And it‘s because of the premise, because the premise works fine with Freddy using Alice‘s baby‘s fetus as a way of manifesting himself. I just think the acting is atrocious and the deaths are lame. Alice as the only other survivor girl after Nancy Thompson returning for multiple films wasn‘t the fan favorite either. She‘s just not that good an actress in my opinion nor that interesting a character. They just made her the Dream Master without really going deep into her powers or even the origins of her powers. Although having a whole new crop of dumb hapless teens for Freddy to waste would‘ve been a bad decision as well as we‘ll see in Freddy‘s Dead. But all in all, this one was a major disappointment in every sense of the word back in 1989 and is still a dud today. Great poster though. In fact I never mentioned how awesome the Nightmare on Elm Street movies for 3, 4 and 5 are some of the best in the history of horror movies. It‘s just too bad the movies as a whole didn‘t live up to the great artwork.

Score: 4 Unexplained Ted Nugent Cameos (out of 10)