Cast/Notable Credits:
Rachel Talalay (Director): Tank Girl(1995), Ghost in the Machine (1993)
Robert Englund (Freddy)
Lisa Zane (Maggie): L.A. Law and E.R. T.V. series
Lezlie Deane (Tracy): 976-EVIL (1989), former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader
(pictured right)Breckin Meyer (Spencer): Garfield 1 & 2 (2004,2006), Herbie (2005), Rat Race (2004), Road Trip (2000), Go (1999), 54 (1998), Escape from L.A. (1996), The Craft, Clueless (1995), Robot Chicken T.V. series
Yaphet Kotto (Doc): James Bond: Live & Let Die (1973), Alien, The Running Man (1987), Puppet Masters (1994), Homicide T.V. series
Roseanne Arnold (Woman in Springwood), Tom Arnold (Man in Springwood), Johnny Depp (Teen on T.V.), Alice Cooper (Freddy’s Dad)
Trailer:
Plot:
Come 'on, he can't be dead. Can he? Well I think we all know the answer to that question.
Well they attempted to kill Freddy. Shame on them. After watching this film there's one of two ways you might respond:
1. Yeah, that movie sucked. They really need to kill him and stop making these films.
Or...
2. Freddy can't go out like that!
Does Freddy's Dead sound that bad? Yes. If you have the intelligence and maturity greater than a 6th grader...DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM! I repeat: DO NOT WATCH THIS FILM!
Here's a short recap of the film: (so you don't waste as much time)
Ten years in the future, Freddy can't leave the city limits of Springwood, so he lures his daughter to come to town. Freddy kills a few and he "hops" in her body and is now able to cross town lines. She pulls him out of dream land and into the real world where she blows him up.Regular Recap of Freddy's Dead: (if you want to know more)
Freddy's Dead starts off with a map of the U.S. is displayed on screen. A dot indicating Springwood, Ohio pops up showing its location. The next thing that happens is a narrative message that displays on the screen. It reads:
10 years from now: Mysterious killings and suicides wipe out an entire population of children and teenagers. Remaining adults are experiencing mass psychosis. There is new evidence of one surviving teenager…
What the hell does that even mean? That is the most illogical beginning statement in movie history. Basically its random nonsense for saying all the kids are gone and Freddy's powerless, but a teen is about to come to Springwood to restart the Freddy cycle.
Now do you remember my math problem from Part 5: The Dream Child? Here's a quick run-down.
6 yrs take place(between Nightmare Pt.1 & 3)
+ 1 yr (Part 4)
+ 1 yr (Part 5)
= 8 yrs total between Pt. 1 & Pt. 5
The franchise begins in 1983, so 8 yrs from that is...1991.
1991
+ 10 years
= 2001
The release date for the film was September 13. The film supposedly takes place on September 13, 2001. What event happened on September 11, 2001?
Back to the film...after our text and map of the U.S. the film cuts to a teenager sitting on an airplane. According to my calculations the film takes place on September 13, 2001. Did we have airplanes back in the air by then? So how can a kid be sitting on a plane?Okay, I know all the math mumbo-jumbo is crap and none of it really makes since, and the film makers had no idea what was in store for the country...but it’s kind of cool that I was able to figure that out. Well that rant was more educational and entertaining than the movie was. Sorry.
Back to business…again...the teen on the airplane falls asleep and enters the “dream world”. He falls out of the airplane and eventually lands in Springwood, Ohio on Elm St. I guess the plane was flying right above Springwood, therefore...he's in Freddy's domain.
The kid is convienently placed in Springwood in the Dream World. The next scenes deplict
Freddy screwing around with the kid and even hitting him with a bus. I guess Freddy's still powerless because normally when someone gets hit with a bus...they die.The kid hangs on the front of the bus as Freddy drives him to the edge of the city limits...which is marked by a horizontal crack in the road. Great writing here. Freddy stops the bus and the kid flies off the front and rolls across the city limits line into a new city/county. Freddy chuckles and comments, “Go fetch little puppy.” Apparently Freddy can’t leave Springwood so he sends the kid to do his bidding. Sounds like FvsJ doesn't it?
The kid wakes up in the daytime and...has amnesia. He checks his wallet and finds no I.D., but a newspaper clipping about…”The Missing Krueger Child”. He wanders into the next city (which is a futuristic city…10 years from now…one of those “the world has gone to hell” apocalyptic visions of a future city) and lands in a local children’s shelter.
The two key psychiatrists of the shelter are a chick named Maggie and the black dude from the original Alien flick. That guy's name is...Doc. Wow. Even more great writing and thinking. The both of them oversee the troubled youth of the town or society, at this point I have yet to figure out if every kid in the world is gone or just the ones in Springwood. Doc and Maggie decides to take on the amnesia teen and they call him John...as in John Doe.
John becomes Maggie's patient and she tries to help him deal with the amnesia and try and figure out who he really is. In the mean time, wherever this kid was going on his flight, no one has made a big deal about some kid disappearing out of his seat, nor the fact whoever was going to pick him up at the airport has come forth to find him or file a Missing Person's Report.
John shows Maggie the newspaper clipping in his wallet, which is the only thing that was left with him. The both of them decide it’s best lead and it's time to check out Springwood. It's better for John to retrace his steps and visit Springwood in hopes of rediscovering his identity. Pretty sound logic...right?
Maggie (Lisa Zane...pictured left) and John take one of the shelter’s vans
and takes a little road trip to Springwood. Little do they know there are some company hidden in the back of the van. There are three children from the shelter stowing away in the back. They needed to get out...cabin fever. The troubled children are Tracy, Spencer and Carlos.When they get to Springwood Maggie discovers the three in the back and she decides to pull over at the town fair to use the phone and call for someone to come pick up the stow-aways. Unfortunately the town folk are...a little weird. The five become suspicious of the town because their odd behavior in the adults and there are no children in sight.
Don’t they have the media in the future? No newspapers, radio, or television? You’re telling me, that the town next door doesn’t know that the neighboring town’s population of children has been wiped out? Isn’t there a sign of something’s wrong when the local high school football team stops playing against Springwood because…there’s no one left to play! Moving on…all of the town’s folk are crazy and delusional and keeping talking about Freddy.
They decide to pull the greatest horror movie trick in the book and...drum roll...split up looking for answers. Yep. Split up. The three hideaways decide to shack up in the old Freddy house for the night. WTF? How the hell did they come to that conclusion. "Let's just barge into this house, no one would mind."
While crashing at Freddy's place, Carlos and Spencer do the obvious...they fall asleep and enter the Dream World. Which is short for them getting picked off one by one by Freddy. Tracy also falls victim to the sleepy eye, but she
Meanwhile, Maggie and John go off and visit the school and…f*ck, I forgot what else they were doing in the mean time…oh yeah…they stopped by the local orphanage. John is under the impression that he is the missing child of Freddy Krueger, while Maggie doesn’t believe him. Wait a second! WTF? What's the point of a town having an orphanage if there is no children? You would figure that the orphanage's budget would have been the first to get cut when the economy went to crap.
Oh well...John thinks he's Freddy's long lost kid, but can't do the simple math of him being a teenager in 2001, while Freddy was long dead by the time he was just a little sperm in his d
addy's rifle. The creepy old lady at the orphange does imply that "someone" is the child of him...hmmm...I wonder who that could be. If John's not due to age limits, that leaves...Maggie?Tracy finds them and brings them back to the house try and rescue Spencer before he dies. They all enter the Dream World...wait a second again...I think it was just regular reality this time...when they attempt to save Spencer. Maggie gets hit with some weird looking “spiritual cloud” thing that was unleashed to her by Freddy during the confrontation.
During the confrontation, John dies...so much for the golden child...and Freddy vanishes as the survivors cross the city limits line (crack in road). They decide to go back to the other city. They cross the town line (or crack in the road) and Freddy is “carried” into the next town.
How it that possible? You may ask. Because, Maggie is unknowingly Freddy’s daughter and when he hit her with that “spiritual cloud”, he is then able to use “her blood/body” as a vessel to travel to new hunting grounds. Whatever. So Freddy crosses town lines and can wonder the Earth now.
Back at the clinic, no one remembers anything about Carlos, John or Spencer because Freddy has “wiped” their memories through their dreams. His powers are back! Except for Alien dude. Doc remembers them because he can “control” his dreams and Freddy can't influence him. He is the master of his dreams, not Freddy. Yeah, whatever.
Maggie decides to visit her mom because she starts to realize that she may be the daughter of Freddy. She learns that she was adopted and now has come to full realization that she is the daughter of Freddy. It also doesn’t hurt that she has been having dream flashbacks of Freddy’s youth during the whole movie. Idiot.
Alien dude (Doc) runs an “experiment” and enters the Dream World and confronts Freddy. During the confrontation, he takes a piece of Freddy’s shirt out of the dream and into the real world. Doc and Maggie hypothesize that they can bring Freddy into the real world and kill him with real weapons. Hold on. Doesn't Freddy only appear to children in the Dream World? WTF? Now he can enter adult's dreams. The rules keep on changing in this f*ckin' series.
Also during this time Maggie has a Freddy flashback to the day the Springwood parents burned him alive in the warehouse. During that day, three “dream demons” promised Freddy eternal life if he would kill for souls for them or something like that. Yep dream demons made a pact with Freddy. We also learn of Freddy's abusive childhood by his stepfather...Alice Cooper.
Yeah, you heard me...Alice Cooper. I'll let you ponder that thought.
Here's a quick question...anyone else sick and tired of all these slasher villains having their sickness explained by a troubled abusive childhood? Yeah. I'm talking to you Mr. Zombie.
Doc and Maggie comes up with a plan to pull Freddy into the real world and kill him here with
real weapons. But Freddy’s the master at manipulation in the dream world, so Maggie must wear a pair of 3-D glasses to “see beyond” Freddy’s lies. Oh did I mention that the last twenty minutes of this movie was made for 3-D? If I didn’t, I just did. When Maggie puts on the glasses in the dream world, it’s supposed to correlate with the movie’s 3-D experience. Right.Maggie eventually pulls Freddy into the real world and they battle it out as Freddy tries to lure his daughter to the “dark side” to help him in the family business. Now he's some Darth Vader or something.
Freddy struggles to fight the little skinny chick…WTF? So he struggles versus Maggie, but against Jason in “FVJ” he’s the man and whoops some *ss. Eventually Maggie disarms Freddy's glove and stabs him with it and then blows him up with explosives. Freddy’s dead. Again. For a while.
Dream Sequence Time:
Approximately 36 minutes 38 seconds
(Series total: 3 hr 18 minutes 21 seconds out of 509 minutes)
Dream Mix w/ Reality Time:
7 minutes 42 seconds
(Series total: 31 minutes 15 seconds)
Freddy Puns:
23 (Running Total: 82)
Villain:
Freddy’s Dead features Freddy in his last movie….just kidding. The master of dreams returns once again to his fun loving teenager killing role. Robert Englund continues to be the staple behind the make-up. Englund also gets some screen time as himself as the film digs a little bit into Freddy’s past married life before he gets murdered by the angry townsfolk.
We learn that Freddy is psychologically driven to kill by his abusive childhood. Yawn! I’m sick of that excuse to create the “monster” in all these horror movie villains. So what if Alice Cooper rides him a little hard during his childhood? It doesn’t mean that he has to go on to be a child killer.
Just like the previous two films, Freddy doesn’t say anything that is remotely intelligent or important in the movie. Freddy continues his rampage of puns and smart ass comments followed by some action/kill to support the comments.
It seems that Freddy doesn’t even use his kick *ss glove any more. I don’t remember the last time he actually killed someone with it. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it was Kung-Fu Ricky in A Nightmare on Elm St. Pt. 4: The Dream Master
the last one to bite it by Freddy’s glove. Besides getting his butt kicked by his daughter, he loses his glove and she turns the table on him with it, stabbing him at the end. I miss the glove.
Cast:
The cast of Freddy’s Dead…sucked big time. The lead character Maggie (played by Lisa Zane) is Freddy’s long lost daughter. Huh? Yep. The film makers decided it was time to introduce another person from Freddy’s past that no one ever heard of to be the heroine.
Maggie was a young girl when the town took out their vengeance on Freddy and killed him. She was shipped into an orphanage and eventually adopted. She had forgotten or blacked out that part of her life and went on like nothing ever happened.
Her life story comes full circle and meets up with her dead child killing daddy. Maggie becomes the “only” person who can kill Freddy…for now…and fights off the temptation to join him as a Dark Lord of the Dreams. Instead she whoops his butt, stabs him with his own glove and blows him to pieces.
Other cast members include Yaphet Kotto (Alien dude) who plays the head psychiatrist at the shelter. Unfortunately he's a mega wuss in this film. If he can "control" his dreams, then why doesn't he go kick Freddy's *ss?
Outside a couple cameo's by Tom & Rosanne Arnold, Johnny Depp, and Alice Cooper we are treated to the star of the Garfield films, Breckin Meyer. It was Meyer's first featured flick. He just continues the long line of decorative actors who have had bit parts in horror films. Meyer is luckily enough to be the victim of the famed Nintendo death (see below).
SFX/Gore:
What can I say about the Nightmare films...well they really disappoint me when it comes to deaths and gore. They continue to blow their budget on special effects only to cover a few limited deaths. We're not talking super cool effects either, they're just crappy light shows that surround over the top gore.
At least we get the film in 3-D vision! They should make more 3-D horror flicks. Back to my original gripe, there are only three deaths in this one…four if you include Freddy. Oh wait, he doesn’t die. Let’s recap the fabulous deaths:
*** Spoilers Ahead ****
(Highlight to read)
Hearing Aid Death: One of the "troubled youth", Carlos, wears a hearing aid in his right ear. With out it, he can’t hear. I'm mean period. Apparently the left ear is just useless and don’t expect the
film to give any explanation of how he lost his hearing. That part just wasn't in the writing.Back to his death…Carlos falls asleep at the Freddy house in the upstairs bedroom and he enters the Dream World. While in the Dream World, his hearing aid turns into a spider-star fish looking thing that clamps to Carlos’s ear and enhances his hearing to the umpteenth decibel level.
Freddy uses this enhanced hearing and screws around with his hearing by doing dumb childish things like dropping pins on a metal floor and scratching his glove across a chalkboard. Eventually Carlos’s head explodes from the high level of noise. Is that even possible?
Nintendo Death: Spencer (Meyer) is a spoiled little rich kid who lands in the shelter because his daddy verbally abuses him and puts down. Spencer walks around mindlessly playing his hand held Nintendo game...a lot. Spencer also
likes the wacky weed a little bit.Combine his wacky weed along with his video game obsession and throw in a touch of sleep and we get fun…for Freddy. Spencer falls asleep in the Freddy house and enters the Dream World. Eventually one thing leads to another and he finds himself face to face with Freddy.
Freddy uses his powers and takes control of Spencer's body remminstent of a “video game”. Freddy sits back in a chair and plays the video game reenactment of Spencer’s life with a Nintendo controller. John, Tracy and Maggie enter the dream world to stop him and they unplug and steal the controller preventing Freddy from killing Spencer…except Freddy has…the “Nintendo Glove”! I’m sure you can imagine what that means. Freddy controls Spencer and forces him to jump in a burning pit of fire. Spencer's dead...game over.
Falling house death: John (never learn his real name) has been having nightmares of falling out
of the sky all movie long. There's even a scene where Freddy appears as the Wicked Witch of the West through the window and taunts John.John races back to the Elm St. house with Tracy and Maggie when they decide to confront Freddy and stop Spencer's death. At the time, John is under the impression that he is Freddy’s son and can’t be harmed by dad. Wrong.
John enters the Dream World and “wakes up” in a house. John leaves the bed and looks out the nearby window. The house is falling from the sky…and you know John gets sucked out and falls out the window. He free falls to the ground and eventual death. To make sure John "bites it", Freddy places a bed of spikes to cushion his fall. John falls, hits the ground and lands on the bed of spikes. Freddy's son...you are not.
TNA:
I should just skip the TNA category when it comes to Nightmare films. None, zilch, zip, not-a, zero, nil boobs in this one. Bring back Joey! Even worse, only two hot chicks (Shark Factor) are on the screen.
Lezlie Deane (Tracy) was a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Halloween 5’s
Tamara Glenn was also a former Dallas cheerleader. What a coincidence…just like Halloween 5, this movie also sucked. Cheerleader pictured right is not Lezlie. By the way, what's with all these tiny bit part actresses turning out to be hot NFL cheerleaders? How 'bout them Cowboys!T.Gun's Take:
This movie was made for the entertainment of a twelve or thirteen year old. Funny, that's the age I was around when I first watched it back in the day. I enjoyed it then…to a degree.
I didn’t know what the hell was going on in the beginning of the film with the opening text. I still vaguely do. That initial set up was done very poorly. Freddy's Dead didn’t get much better after that either.
The storyline sequences were bizarre and random throughout the whole movie. There was no character development outside of Maggie, and that was at best...okay. It didn't make me root for her any more.
Also the characters were placed in situations conveniently during the film. Example: the three kids just decide to shack up at 1428 Elm St. They just break in and stay the night so Freddy could pick them off. I definitely don't remember seeing a "Welcome strangers, come stay here" sign.
Freddy's Dead featured quiet a few flashbacks into Freddy’s youth. That was pretty cool. I like to see how things come together, but I wasn't too impressed with the abusive parenting thing though. I didn’t know that Alice Cooper went on to adopt Freddy just to abuse him as a son. I always saw him as a caring and understanding fatherly figure.
The three headed dream demon plot line really...I mean really stretched the limits of tolerance for me. You're telling me that all this time Freddy had made a deal with a bunch of snake looking dream demons. Weak. Not to mention that the demons themselves were visually crappy. They were three snakes with demon heads on them. Oooh! They spilled the SFX budget into that demon creature concept.
No wonder Wes Craven came back and created “The New Nightmare” movie. After watching the franchise go down hill and produce crap like this, he had to resurrect the Freddy character to give him some credibility.
I could just imagine him seeing this thing for the first time and storming out of the theater telling himself, "I need to fix this." He probably went straight into script writing drafts after this P.O.S. (Piece of Sh*t).
One of the few things I liked about the film was the ending. Not the final battle, but the ending…as in...credits. During the credits of Freddy's Dead, the film played a montage of all the Freddy kills from the six movies. That was a pretty good tribute to a
Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened September 13, 1991 and made $31.3 million at the box office ($12.96 million opening weekend)-Peter Jackson wrote a draft for the movie…they did not use it…should of..because it's not like he went on to do anything big
-Rachel Talalay was the only female to direct a Nightmare film
-Other script ideas: return of a grown up Jacob (Alice’s son in Part 5); Taryn, Joey, and Kincaid (Part 3 & 4) come back as “Dream Police”…Blade Cop, Sound Cop and Power Cop to defeat Freddy
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