Alice, having survived the previous installment of the Nightmare series, finds the deadly dreams of Freddy Krueger starting once again.
Here we are at number 5, a sort of halfway point of the franchise. By now the films were getting stale and repetitive, more of the same old and ideas were running low.
We still do have some great Freddy moments, but you feel that they’re being too forced and too thought about, which is a shame because he is a great character. As I said the films plots are becoming very repetitive, the same thing that happened with the “Friday The 13th” franchise, you still love to see your villain, in this case Freddy but you also feel like you’re watching the same film with different kills, which isn’t exactly a good thing.
In this film we see Freddy trying to steal the soul of survivor Alice’s unborn child, she’s free from the clutches of Freddy after defeating him but he is getting too her through the baby’s dreams. This concept was a great idea but was executed very badly. I enjoyed watching vulnerable and shy Alice slowly become a kick ass character, in this film we get more of an easily frightened Alice, which is understandable from her experiences but none the less she’s a less interesting character in this instalment.
We also see the return of Freddy’s mother, Amanda which I honestly never liked. The storlyline of how he was born was an intriguing and interesting one, but her involvement in the demise of her satanic like son is not a great one. You wonder why she never helped out in the first place, why a ghost can have the ability to help defeat him and many more mind boggling moments.
The effects, as always, are greatly done. The one thing that the Freddy franchise is consistently good is the effects teams. but this film definitely falls flat and audiences were mostly losing interest very quickly by now, which is highly understandable.
This film was most definitely a huge dip in the franchise, which I find hard to grasp because the Character of Freddy is one that you can do so much with and there are many great ideas that have been passed around. Like I said in my review of “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master”, and I quote: “I personally feel that this should have been the final film, that way the series could have ended on somewhat of a high”. I stand by that quote still.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
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The “Freddybike” has a license plate that can be seen for a few seconds and says “FREDDY”. It’s a California tag.
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When Alice wakes up from her nightmare in the asylum, and Robert Englund appears beside her in bed and pins her down, originally he said, “There’s no such thing as safe sex.” The line was excised from the film.
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The graduation sequence was cut down significantly to speed up the pacing of the film. As a result, there are several continuity errors. Among the cut footage was Dan’s graduation speech, dialogue between Greta and Racine, a rap between Yvonne, Alice, and Greta, additional dialogue about parents and future plans, and a scene in which Alice’s father gives her a camera she had been saving up for as a graduation present before she went to Paris (if you watch closely, you can see Alice hand her father a camera before they go to take the group picture).
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“School’s out, Krueger!” was a replacement line when the actor, who was a minor at the time, wasn’t permitted to say “Fuck you, Krueger!”.
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Virtually nothing of the screenplay by John Skipp and Craig Spector made it into the film (according to Skipp, only the phrase “It’s a boy” was retained), while only around half of Leslie Bohem’s screenplay was kept. William Wisher Jr. and David J. Schow did further rewrites, and the final screenplay was put together just days before shooting by Michael De Luca.
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The famous song is changed. Original: One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again. Edited: One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, better stay up late. Nine, ten, he’s back again…
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Hopkins was given just four weeks to shoot and a further four weeks to edit the film. This meant that he had to shoot on one stage while the crew dressed the other, so they could shot almost continually. After he made it, the studio was so impressed that he was given the task of directing Predator 2.
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When Alice and Mark look through the pile of newspapers, for a moment, the camera is set on an article regarding Amanda Krueger’s death. In this article, Robert Shaye (Producer) is quoted as he says: “She was a victim of the evil within us all. I hope she will know peace in the life hereafter”.
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Both horror author Stephen King and comic book writer Frank Miller were offered the job of writing and directing this movie.
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During the sequence in which the nun (Amanda) is raped by the criminally insane, Robert Englund is wandering around in the background without his Freddy makeup – including one shot in which the camera lingers on him for a few seconds.
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Lisa Wilcox’s name appears on the opening credits, but not on the ending credits.
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On the door to Dr. Moore’s office, just below his name, the name “Dr. Talalay” can be seen. This is a reference to Rachel Talalay, who had been involved with the series since the beginning in various capacities, most notably in directing Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
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Unlike the previous films, this film main titles do not display the digit “5”, just “A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child”.
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The lowest grossing Nightmare film of the franchise.
