Really Awful Movies

While A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 features a hacky joke about penis envy, that’s the only thing Freudian about it as what made entries first and third so memorable is jettisoned in favor of risible pop culture references and corny montages.

But it didn’t have to be that way.

The Dream Master busts out of the gate with an aesthetic and feel a la the first Nightmare, before disintegrating mid-way and limping to a finale, an argument for making the eternal Freddy rest in peace as far as sequels are concerned.

It’s frustratingly episodic, with wonderful visuals and cool kills interrupted by heaping helpings of stupidity. Like other entries in the series, The Dream Master exploits common fears like going under the knife, taking exams and riding elevators. However, in the case of all three, the pins are set up but director Renny Harling rolls gutter balls. That’s what happens when the guy who brought us The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine helms a classic horror series entry.

Kristen, Kincaid and Joey are back and the former drags the latter two into her subconscious, believing the one-gloved fedora-clad menace has returned. Her fears are well founded as Kincaid is offed in a junkyard and Joey’s wet dream becomes a drowning.

Joey is a ridiculous Karate Kid, with spaghettini arms and feudal warlord “Land of the Rising Sun” headband. Kincaid is Kincaid, the unexceptional African American holdover from Dream Warriors and likewise Kristen, Patty Arquette redux. There’s also an asthmatic nerd, Sheila, and entomophobic Debbie, a crowbarred in fear device solely to create (an admittedly cool, if nonsensical) bug kill.

Many people have commented on the above and the Cronenberg influence of Freddy’s gym equipment-inspired murder. However it makes very little thematic sense to rip out synovial hinge joints in a workout room, and have the character morph into a Kafkaesque bug. It’s not like anyone’s really invested in Debbie to have this be meaningful.

But that’s just one of the film’s many flaws, the largest being Alice’s insane dress-up montage, as asinine as anything ever lensed in the series.

Worth checking out to see the devolution from the near-classic Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

**1/2 (out of 5)

[BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR FREDDY PODCASTS: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET AND A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE]

Two suspender-and-overall yokels watch a hunter get it on with his paramour in the woods.

The rustic coitus is interrupted when one of the dim-bulb interlopers falls into a creek trying to sneak a closer look.

Welcome to Exploitation Country, Baker County, U.S.A. (aka Trapped).

Where do you go after an opener like that?

Surprisingly, to the other end of the intelligence spectrum, college, where we are suddenly in the midst of a heated classroom debate on the morality of taking a human being’s wife. Then we’re whisked to a ballet tryout to the strains of Beethoven’s Fur Elise. In Baker County, U.S.A., the low to highbrow transitions will cause whiplash.

From there, we’re introduced to the usual college road-trip. It’s the usual assortment of college student stereotypes planning a weekend getaway to the woods via, of all things, an access road, which is all but a guarantee there’ll be three quarters of ‘em who won’t be making it to class the following semester.

You just know the kids’ path will soon cross with rednecks. In these woods, in as ramshackle a shack as you’ll ever see – chickens running about, a bunch of unconvincing southern “shee-it” cussing – we find the hunter again.

This time, it’s he who stumbles upon lovebirds who’d sooner not be seen: his girlfriend with another man. He takes the wrath out on the suitor, because the hunter’s “got his rights.”

He shoots his rival’s wheels out, and worse.

To celebrate, the hunter demands the townsfolk break out their finest corn whiskey and everyone drinks out of mason jars while the soundtrack serenades with banjo joy and he paints the man’s back with scalding asphalt.

Henry Silva (The Manchurian Candidate and Alligator) is menacing as the inbred hillbilly backwoodsman.

We’re Trapped here in a film directed by William Fruet: He’s the man responsible for the excellent revenge flick, Death Weekend (aka The House by the Lake) and best known north of the border as co-writer of Goin’ Down the Road, even better known as a popular spoof on SCTV featuring John Candy. And his Canadian passport is betrayed here by a few “eh’s” casually dropped into the dialogue.

If you’re a fan of Canuxploitation, do yourself a favor and double bill Search & Destroy and Death Weekend.

*** (out of 5)