Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Freddy Krueger and The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise had had a nice, good long run by this point. Robert Englund had gone from being just a lightly regarded character actor to a worldwide movie star solely off of the strength of just this one character. Hundreds of millions had been made, not just off of the box office receipts, but from the endless marketing and merchandise that naturally goes along with such a popular cinematic brand name. Having hit somewhat of a high point with 1988’s Part 4: The Dream Master (it was the highest grossing of the series along with being considered a truly quality entry), the decision was made to go into full overdrive in order to produce the next sequel even without the benefit of proper development or an airtight script (even as Part 4’s ending could have easily served as being the last hurrah for Freddy) with the next film then being rushed rapidly into theatres in 1989, nearly one year after the last one. A smart decision was made to retain the services of Lisa Wilcox as Alice Johnson, The Dream Master of Part 4 who had defeated Freddy then and they would actually go so far as to give her star billing alongside Englund (even though Elm Street fans will forever debate her status as being the best Freddy nemesis alongside Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson). An even better idea in principle at least was the one that with Freddy having been drained of all of his power (having lost all of his “souls” in the final battle with Alice in Part 4) and with Alice still being strong enough herself to keep him at bay, when she becomes pregnant through having sex with her fellow Part 4 survivor turned boyfriend Dan (Danny Hassel), Freddy seizes upon the unborn fetus from almost the very moment of conception (since it has inherited her dream power of either keeping Freddy down or giving him unfettered access to new victims) since it turns out that unborn children are almost constantly dreaming in the womb with his master plan either to be reborn directly into this world or at least controlling the child Dream Master in order to use him as a conduit to turn people’s dreams into a slaughterhouse, thus making the main conflict into that being Alice (who lost all of her super dream powers in Part 4 when Freddy lost his souls) once again facing Krueger only this time with her unborn son’s soul at stake. That’s where the positive elements of the concept pretty much end, save for an amazing tracking shot showing the scores of diseased maniacs during the time of Freddy’s original conception with an out of makeup Englund clearly shown wandering within their ranks. First off, Renny Harlin’s impressive, beautifully composed style as director was replaced by Stephen Hopkins (himself a future A list director) who chose to go with a more drab, desaturated look for this film along with some horrific soundtrack choices (including three too many rap songs) but yet because he finished the actual shoot in only 4 weeks and the editing in another 4 without cracking under the pressure, he was able to use this movie as a calling card in Hollywood in order to get himself onto some even bigger films thanks to all the impressed executives who knew that he could stay within a budget. The film was promoted early on as being a return to the roots of the franchise, but the overall effect was not so much in the vein of Wes Craven’s uncompromising horror masterpiece that was the original but more in the darkly gothic vibe of Part 3 (with even the Amanda Krueger character being brought back) mixed in with the usual straight up comic lunacy that had made Part 4 so hip and popular, but nonetheless it’s still an uneven mix as while some of the gothic elements are effective (such as the aforementioned lunatic asylum flashback / dream sequences), we still get some badly played comedy moments like Freddy doing a kill dressed as a waiter complete with a green and red bowtie and even becoming a superhero at one point (Super Freddy) to drive home the always obvious point that physical damage in the dream world does absolutely NOTHING to him. As such, the film also continues the tradition of killing off survivors from the previous entry, in this case being Hassel’s bland yet nice guy jock who was also Alice’s only real friend and ally against Krueger since having dealt with Freddy firsthand previously he was thus the only one who actually believed her, thus delivering a cruel early blow to fans of Part 4 especially when she learns that she is carrying his child. As for the rest of her (their?) circle of friends, we get a group that comes nowhere close to displaying the appeal, camaraderie, and bonds of loyalty that the circle of friends in Part 4 displayed before Freddy killed them all off. What we get instead is a superficial wanna be teen model (complete with draconian mother) who half jokingly declares that she won’t ever let anything happen to Alice before she herself dies one scene later, a latently unlikable skateboard and comic book fanatic who had a borderline stalker like obsession with the model girl, and worse of all, a intern nurse girl at the local hospital (Kelly Jo Minter, who seemed to be EVERYWHERE in films of the 80s) who just outright refuses to believe anything coming out of Alice’s mouth about Krueger and thus plays the Doubting Thomas annoyingly throughout almost the whole entire film while also simultaneously trying to show compassion for her pregnant friend (gotta wonder if she was even AWARE of what had happened to Alice’s last batch of friends, including her own brother). Indeed, if some feel that Krueger has been considerably weakened here as a character (acting as if deathly afraid of his own mother??), then the same can be said for Alice as well, having lost all her old powers and thus coming across as now almost being a little out of her element against Freddy in the dream world despite the major irony that she is in NO danger from him whatsoever, since Freddy knows that killing her (and the baby) would cut off his gateway from claiming more victims’ souls even as she is forced to see those whom she cares about get sucked into Freddy’s own personal hellhole. At least Nicholas Mele also returning from the first film as Alice’s recovering alcoholic father comes back stronger than before, steadfastly standing behind his daughter with the very heavy implication being that he is actually fully aware of who Krueger is and what his daughter’s connection is to him, thus making him the first parent in the series to be completely supportive of his offspring in the ongoing fight against the evil of Freddy. Then of course there is the (rather interesting) plot thread of the alleged Dream Child himself (Jacob) and not only the idea of how powerful he could possibly be (once he is born of course), but also the role that he could have possibly played in future installments, a blown opportunity for sure because after this film’s “happy ending”, the series would segue right into Freddy’s Dead (which was set “10 years later”) and all mention of the eventual fates of both Alice and her son Jacob would never be brought up again (although a possibly non canon comic book series stated that they had moved away from Springwood although how Krueger was literally able to wipe out the town in Freddy’s Dead without the use of either of them as a conduit was never properly explained) and the notion of having the character of Freddy’s mother be the one to “save the day” was a very shaky one at best (especially with the flimsy way it is shown that she “contains” Freddy at the end). It all makes it seem that maybe since it was ultimately construed as being a poorly done sequel (with the weakest box office take of the series) that the story continuity that had (with the exception of Part 2) run clearly from Craven’s original all the way through this fifth entry was just finally scrapped altogether in order to make way for the special effects and one liners extravaganza that was Freddy’s Dead. Not really all that bad a decision on the filmmakers’ part (most horror franchise sequels are more or less standalone stories except for the villain) but again, not knowing the true fate of either Alice or her son was pretty infuriating given the seeds that were planted here (a more grown up Jacob might have made a fascinating addition to a later sequel), but it is in this rationale that we can clearly see the fatal flaw of killer deadlines, rush job filmmaking and the changing up of the creative forces that be when it comes to a profitable franchise and just only wanting to keep the proverbial snowball quickly rolling only to see it melt away from the unnecessarily scorching heat…
5/10