Really Awful Movies

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is very nearly the perfect horror film.

The genre is about control, or rather the lack thereof. The usual horror boilerplate follows oblivious teens partying in the woods, who, despite their circumstances, can still exert enough free will over what happens to them. They have various means of escape, whether it’s by vehicle, to disappear into the woods, or to use weapons on their assailants.

In this third Nightmare (and the Nightmare Series for that matter), there’s a distinct absence of autonomy. Here, the victims’ movements are curtailed (they’re in a psychiatric ward of a hospital), they have no sovereignty regarding what they ingest (they’re subjected to an experimental drug), they are told what to think (in a touchy-feely ineffectual group therapy) and most importantly, cannot escape their subconscious when they sleep. This is a brilliant conceit, extending the subtle safety metaphors from Wes Craven’s rip-roaring original, where the vehicle of choice is the notoriously safe Volvo, Nancy’s father is in law enforcement and the Elm Street address has bars for windows.

They could’ve simply had an evil child-killing antagonist visiting kids during their nightmares. However, adding these little touches underscores just how helpless the victims’ circumstances really are and help to turn the horror dial up to 11.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is practically a Spaghetti Theory of horror — every possible fright thrown at the wall to see what sticks: haunted houses, needles, heights, knives, pills, sleepwalking, and that’s just for starters. There’s also the extremely sinister origins of Freddy’s conception. And we haven’t even gotten to the fear of sleep.

The actors are so game. Unlike the screamers yelling into the wilderness in a cabin in the woods slasher, there’s real cast camaraderie and charm on display here. The viewer really feels like they’ve gotten to know them after 90 minutes. And how many times can that be said in a typical horror?

DREAM_WARRIORS Dream Warriors puts the series right back in the fast lane after the second effort’s engine flooded.

Apart from sliding a bit toward the back end with some hokey skeletal effects and some cringe-worthy Harry Potter teen empowerment, the bulk of Dream Warriors is an absolute master-class in horror. Some of the series’ most iconic kills are here, including the marionette “suicide,” one of the creepiest scenes in the pantheon of horror. And Freddy’s verbiage is kept to a minimum while the thrills are at their maximum.

****1/2 (out of 5)

[LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST DISCUSSION ABOUT A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET]

Creatures from the Abyss is an Italian nautical disaster horror – as wild and expectation-defying and royally f’ed up a creature feature as you’ll ever see.

Also known as Plankton (because nothing strikes fear into the heart of a horror fan like microscopic floating protozoa), Creatures from the Abyss begins innocently enough: five friends taking a dinghy out for a summer beach excursion. Unfortunately for them (as well as day-for-night continuity), they quite stupidly run out of gas and are soon frantically bailing water in pitch black seas.

Stupid people doing stupid things is a tried-and-true prescription for getting folks into harm’s way, and this is no exception, but what happens next is completely unexpected: quick-cut lightning strikes and cellular organism cutaways, an epinephrine injection of Lovecraftian weirdness.

A dead body washes up to their boat and off in the distance, the group spots the source: an Oceanographic Research Institute vessel.

The fivesome frantically paddle toward their ostensible safe haven and board her.

And what they find is not what you think.

The cabins are bedecked in pink and blue pastels, as if the ship was a sound stage for Suspiria. There’s a blinking mermaid cyclops clock, a bar stocked with the finest Italian liquors and an automated Siri-like shower that proffers erotic advice to bathers!!!

Soon, however, they find out that the party boat’s been abandoned, its radio is busted and they’re floating on a “ghost ship.” To quote Seneca the Younger, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

In the bowels of the vessel, its research labs are filled with weird aquatic lifeforms in suspended animation, preserved in special liquid (“they frighten me, they have an evil expression!”)

PLANKTON_movie_still — “I think it’s time to buy a new bra.” (that’s a direct quote)

With repartee like that, you likely guessed we’re not in Kansas anymore, but in an Italian production shot in Florida. That means hallucinatory dialogue, bad ADR and keyboards right out of Lamberto Bava World, not Disney.

The group finds mysterious white powder, initially thought to be Peruvian marching powder, but the floating lab isn’t a means for transporting illicit drugs: the researchers had been doing nutty experiments with the frozen fish section of the Devonian Era.

What happens thereafter we cannot spoil, but suffice it to say, the denouement is astonishing beyond all our land-lubber expectations. We’ll say this much though: something is radioactive, something is contaminated and there’s a sexual subplot that will blow your grey matter.

Creatures from the Abyss is relentlessly exploitative, baffling and mesmeric — just the way we like ’em.

**** (out of 5)

[CHECK OUT OUR REALLY AWFUL MOVIES PODCAST DISCUSSION OF CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS]