Freddy‘s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What‘s This About: Read the title. 

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

• Yet another Elm Street movie that starts with a dream quote. This time by Nietzsche. Like these filmmakers who made this movie, ever read Nietzsche. Nightmare Ave. from The Scorpions, yes, I can see that being quoted.
• And then a Freddy quote: “Welcome to Prime Time, bitch” not sure the significance.
• Is this the Goo Goo Dolls before they were famous? weird.
• So now we’re staring at a map of the US with Springwood OH highlighted and on top says that this is ten years from now. So is this 2001? Why can’t they just say the year. Why are they so vague about it?
• It also states that there’s one surviving teenager. Which doesn’t make sense since it’s now 10 years from now. Unless that kid was 8 or younger during the events of the first 5 Freddy films.
• This also raises the question about what would happen if any of the Elm Street families that had a part in Freddy’s death moved to another state or country. Would Freddy have any power to give them nightmares? Or is this movie about that premise? It’s just that the other movies never cared to move out of the same town. 
• So this new teen victim is having a nightmare on an airplane and when the shit starts to happen he yells that “It’s not fair, I was almost out!” I suppose he meant Ohio? 
• Freddy paying homage to the Wicked Witch of the West doesn’t really give the horror vibe you think it will.

• Music by Brian May. I’m assuming the other one.
• Why is the musical score using Night on Bald Mountain? Is there a Fantasia reference I’m missing?
• This kid is comically rolling down a steep hill yelling ahhh and woooah the whole way for like 30 seconds straight.
• Obvious Robert Shaye cameo.
• Freddy then hits the kid while driving a bus. He then slams the brakes and the kid flies into what can only be described as a portal into the real world while the hole he made was in the shape of the kid like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. I suppose that counts as interesting dream imagery. If you’re 12.
• Breckin Meyer says that he doesn’t want to grow up being a football player and date-raping co-eds like his father. I guess that counts as a life goal.
• Carlos, here, wears a hearing aid in his right ear. He takes it out and can’t hear a thing. So wouldn’t that imply that he needs a hearing aid in both ears?
• The late great Yaphet Kotto. How did he get roped into this? This franchise hasn’t had an established great actor since John Saxon in Part 3.

• Ancient Dream Demons. As opposed to the more modern dream demons.
• The main teen from the beginning tells our heroine, Maggie who runs the juvenile center, that he has amnesia and the first question she asks him is where is he from. Then the kid yells at her that he doesn’t know. I don’t blame him.
• The only thing he does know is that he’s the last survivor (meaning the last teen from the original Elm Street teens). How would he knows this? And what happened to Alice and Yvonne who survived Part 5? Maybe they died from AIDS or something. 
• John Doe, the last survivor, is following a little girl in his dream and in the dream he and she walk up a flight of stairs and the film shows him sleepwalking in the real world but he’s magically walking up a flight of imaginary stairs. Which is just as odd as Phillip in the third film walking through a closed door.
• Maggie is now driving John Doe back to Springwood to help bring back his memory. For some reason, Breckin Meyer, Carlos and this other girl hitched a ride in the van without the other 2 noticing. How this is possible is anyone’s guess.
• So this movie never really addresses how Freddy is back to life or back to his old tricks like the other movies do. We now realize that Springwood has no kids in the town because Freddy killed them all. I guess no one else had any luck like Nancy, Kristen, and Alice with Dream Warrior powers to defeat him. And does this mean that these adults never tried to have more kids or that no younger adults moved in to raise a family and their kids got mysteriously killed. And what about the adults who never had kids, why would they be insane? Unless the others were so insane that the childless people moved out. Such a convoluted sub-plot.
• Roseanne fucking Barr. And her then-husband Tom Arnold. Because in 1991 they were Hollywood’s sweetheart couple.
• Now we’re seeing multiple scenes and shots of the three teens driving in circles in Springwood. Very lazy screenwriting since we already saw this gag in Part 4.
• Watching this again after so many years I can totally see why the slasher genre pretty much petered out by this time until Scream came out 5 years later. And then 5 years later the genre petered out yet again.
• So besides no kids in the town anymore the film is also treating us to some awesome hilarity with all the adults acting crazy because of the kid shortage I guess. This is so dumb.
• Apparently Freddy had a kid that was taken from him in 1966. This movie is set in 1999 or 2001 depending on the the 10 years later meant. So that kid would have be about 33–35 years old or so. The film is trying to imply that John Doe could be the son of Freddy but that’s obviously impossible.

• The three way-ward teens walk into a house (while they are dreaming) and after they enter it the house it violently starts to blow up revealing that it’s the Nancy/Freddy house. Those kids don’t even know anything abut Freddy or the house so there was zero reason for Freddy to disguise the house, other than to make them think it was a nice house to go in to. But again, he can just kill them anywhere so making them go in the house is completely moot.
• So Carlos went deaf because his mother poked his eardrum with a super large cotton swab. Or so we’re lead to believe.
• Of course the boiler room. Can’t not have that in a Freddy movie.
• Freddy gave Carlos a super sensitive new hearing aid and tormenting Carlos with falling pins. I’m not kidding. Also Carlos is yelling up at Freddy which isn’t inflicting any pain at all. AT ALL!
• Film tries to be funny as Freddy pulls out a chalkboard to scratch in front of Carlos and making his head explode. Hey remember in the first few flicks when Freddy was scary and uses his claws on the boiler room pipes to make a high pitched scary noise? Why couldn’t they do that?
• Seriously, why does John Doe think that he’s Freddy’s son?! He’s only a teen! If he believes the story that Freddy’s kid was taken from him in 1966 then he should know that he being the offspring is completely impossible.
• It’s quite the phenomenon that a whole town’s adults are batshit crazy. THE WHOLE CROM DAMNED TOWN!
• Hey, it’s that kid from 21 Jump Street! Richard Greico!! (I can’t believe we made 2 Greico references in this Schlocktoberfest. Richard Greico’s mother doesn’t reference him this much!)
• I believe this film introduced me to Iron Butterfly’s hit “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.“ So something positive came out of this movie for me back then.
• Why would falling asleep cause the victim to disappear? That makes no sense and it’s never happened in any of the Nightmare movies.
• I get that Spencer (Breckin) being high on pot and dreaming would be trippy and surreal (more surreal than usual for a dream that is) but why is his nightmare set as a video game? I think he was playing a handheld video game earlier in the flick but this film really didn‘t make his gaming a point to remember.
• They can’t wake Spencer up because he’s “too high.”
• This film has way too many old cartoon sound effects and visuals for my horror tastes.
• So being knocked out is the same as falling asleep? Gotcha.
• I believe the Nintendo Power Glove was obsolete even in 1991.

• The girl, whose name I never caught, just kicked Freddy in the nards.
• Wait. What? John Doe, in his dream, walks outside a house on a bright sunny day and as soon as he walks on the welcome mat the house bolts up to the sky super fast into outer space but he was still on Earth even though we heard him yell “woooooah.” What was the point of that?. I can see if he was still on the porch while the house shot up to the heavens but I checked twice and he wasn’t there.
• The only genuine chuckle this film has is when John Doe wakes from that flying house dream and says that Freddy can’t get him because he’s not leaving this bed and immediately the bed lights on fire. John Doe then slaps his knees in annoyance and utters “Dammit!”
• I gotta say, the pacing in this flick is all over the place. For most fo the first third it was slow and boring with virtually no dreams or Freddy. Now it’s one nightmare after another with no slowing down.
• Not sure how using John Doe to get to Freddy’s daughter worked out for Freddy. Couldn’t Freddy use dreams to track her down? I’m not quite sure the limitations to his powers. This film is implying that since John was the last surviving Elm Street kid that he was the link to getting Freddy more teens to kill and finding his daughter. But John finding his daughter, Maggie, was a total coincidence because John was found by police as vagrant in whatever town the juvie center where Maggie worked and was brought there. If Freddy knew where she lived/worked because why else would he push John in that direction since the beginning, then why couldn’t he just get his daughter himself? I’m so confused.
• This film is really relying on old Looney Tunes gags too much. As John Doe is falling (seemingly to his death) Freddy wheels over a bed of nails so John can die by falling on it. I’m waiting for Freddy to paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain for them to drive into soon. Maybe his knife glove was made by ACME.
• Freddy then somehow enters his daughter’s brain so he can now travel to wherever she goes to kill more kids. 
• Wait. So now Maggie is trying to tell the story about what just happened to her and the teens in Springwood but no one at the juvie center even remembers Carlos, Spencer and John Doe nor is there paperwork for them. Yaphet Kotto, who somehow does remember them, theorizes that Freddy just erased them from existence. WHAT?! WHY?! HOW?! This is so stupid. And unnecessary. Usually these horror movies just forget to mention the dead kids after they die, not have the villain actually “erase” them. And how would Freddy even have that power for? And if he always had that power how come he never used it before since it would be very beneficial to his nefarious crimes.
• I’m assuming that the other girl, Tracey, was thoroughly abused by her father otherwise this scene of her beating the shit out of him would be awkward.

• Man, every subsequent Freddy movie has a degrade in his make-up. I’ve seen better make-up effects from a Freddy mask from a Spirit of Halloween. From 10 years ago. That burned to the ground.
• Why is Yaphet Kotto in this?! So far he has not advanced the plot at all. AT ALL! He’s just another doctor/therapist/expository dialogue giver.
• Why is Freddy giving him a nightmare though? Is this the first adult he has tried to kill in the dream world?
• Oh, this nightmare for Yaphet is just for Freddy to explain to the only other person who knows about the Ancient Dream Demons that that’s how Freddy gets his powers from. Yaphet also figures out without much effort that he can take Freddy out into the real world by grabbing his sweater before he wakes up. Convenience.
• Oh right, the 3D glasses gimmick. Thing is, I don’t mind making the finale in 3D. It was kinda fun when I saw it back in 1991 in the theatres. But having the actual old red/blue 3D glasses part of the the plot of the movie to defeat Freddy makes zero sense and is super lame. Like how would Kotto know to make Maggie wear the glasses to see better in the dream world? Why is this necessary?!
• I get that they have to come up with some other supernatural reason that Freddy has the dream powers, especially since this is the final film they want to make and actually kill him for good, but this is just awkward. And this also gave New Line the idea to do the same explaining the killer’s powers for Jason Voorhees a few years later when they wanted to bury that franchise as well.
• Hahahaha. All Freddy’s classmates when he was like 10 taunt him by calling him a “son of  100 maniacs.” How would they even know this about him?
• Alice Cooper you son of a bitch! I can’t believe the dumb lame filmmakers didn’t have him say “Welcome to my Nightmare!”
• At least the 3D effects when converted to 2D don’t look that bad as they did for Friday the 13th Part 3.
• In another flashback, The Ancient Dream Demons just float up to Freddy as he’s about to die from the angry mob of parents and have a little chat with him abut giving him his powers. So fucking lame. I would be more comfortable with him making a deal with Beelzebub or someone like that. Or Ted Cruz’ father.
• Ok, let’s wrap this up people.
• I remember when Nancy pulled Freddy from the dream world into the real world and back then his head didn’t expand and stretch in inhumanly ways.
• Why is this Tracey chick still alive?
• These lackluster sequels are making me feel like I should rewatch Freddy vs. Jason because I kinda remember they did a good job with both characters in that movie. Not the human actors but just Jason and Freddy. But again, I haven’t seen that flick in a very long time.
• Why didn’t they ever give more mythology or purpose to his homemade killer glove in any of the Nightmare flicks? They should’ve given that item more magical properties, like that’s where his powers are derived from like it’s cursed or black magic. Meaning he’s weaker without it and can die when they take it from him or something like that. It’s such an iconic weapon. I know I’ve said that it’s lamer when he kills a teen with only the glove but it’s still a great weapon and he can still use it as a piece of magic. Like the Sauron‘s One Ring or the Infinity Gauntlet.
• I’ve been talking about the glove this whole time that Maggie and Freddy are fighting and I don’t care that I’m not paying attention.
• Maggie puts on the glove and stabs Freddy and then Tracey throws Maggie a pipe bomb to insert into Freddy’s guts thus blowing him up. Freddy only seems mildly annoyed at this inconvenience, says casually, “Kids” and that’s about it when we see the Ancient Dream Demons fly off like they were in a Tim Burton claymation flick.

• Maggie then says triumphantly that “Freddy’s Dead.“ And now we’re treated to a Nightmare on Elm Street clip show of al the best parts of the first 5 movies during the end credits. Fun times. I kinda wish they did a Cannonball Run and just showed the bloopers. Not of the Nightmare movies though, the Cannonball Run bloopers.
• Why oh why couldn’t they end this movie with the Curtis Mayfield “Freddie’s Dead“ song from Superfly? At least it wasn’t a lame hip-hop song.
• I would say Freddy deserved a better finale than this but he got a decent coda in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (No, I’m not reviewing that!) and like I said, I think his character was better in Freddy vs. Jason. Plus, compare this to the reboot with Jackie Earl Haley, I’ll take this shit. Still wish the franchise ended on a better note. 
• We didn’t need the twist that Maggie was his daughter. That didn’t really raise the stakes or myth to him, especially to his defeat. Also the Ancient Dream Demons was a bad idea and I wish they came up with a better origin to his dream powers, not like they even had to. Which they didn’t.

Was it Entertaining:

Final Thoughts: I really don‘t know how they could‘ve screwed this up. I suppose they could‘ve made a worse sequel and finale but not by much. I mean, sure, it‘s never easy to give a satisfying ending, especially to a wildly popular character that has already “died“ 5 times already. I‘m wondering if they executives at New Line really hunkered down and gave it all they got though. Really heard a ton of ideas and threw some at the walls to see what would stick or make sense. Every movie wasn‘t planned out in advance or anything so every new installment had to round robin from the previous movies and even then that didn‘t work out so well. So I can‘t blame them for coming up with ancient dream demons or some weird-ass silly shit like that. Personally, like I said, they should have made it simple. But someone had the bright idea to make this 3D so claymation flying worm demons somehow was the logical approach. Whatever. At least they pretty much ended the franchise for good though. Wes Craven‘s New Nightmare was not really a sequel but more of a weird experiment and Freddy vs. Jason was a soft reboot that could be watched by itself. Plus it was an idea that the fans have wanted for over a decade so I give it a pass. The Jason series tried to kill him off and we still got the awful Jason X. New Line really didn‘t care at this point with their franchises. It‘s amazing we got the award-winning Lord of the Rings from them. Speaking of Lord of the Rings, I learned when writing this review that Peter Jackson actually wrote a screenplay for Freddy‘s Dead but it was rejected. Shame.

Score: 2 Roseanne Barrs (out of 10)