A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.
A psychiatrist familiar with knife-wielding dream demon Freddy Krueger helps teens at a mental hospital battle the killer who is invading their dreams.
Director:
Chuck Russell
Stars:
Heather Langenkamp,
Robert Englund,
Craig Wasson
Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may be able to defeat him for good.
Director:
Renny Harlin
Stars:
Robert Englund,
Rodney Eastman,
John Beckman
A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather Langenkamp play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?
Director:
Wes Craven
Stars:
Heather Langenkamp,
Robert Englund,
Jeff Davis
Dream-haunting Freddy Krueger returns once again to prowl the nightmares of Springwood's last surviving teenager, and of a woman whose personal connection to Krueger may mean his doom.
After being mortally wounded and taken to the morgue, murderer Jason Voorhees spontaneously revives and embarks on a killing spree as he makes his way back to his home at Camp Crystal Lake.
Director:
Joseph Zito
Stars:
Erich Anderson,
Judie Aronson,
Peter Barton
A group of camp counselors are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer camp which, years before, was the site of a child's drowning.
Director:
Sean S. Cunningham
Stars:
Betsy Palmer,
Adrienne King,
Jeannine Taylor
Having revived from his wounds, Jason Voorhees takes refuge at a cabin near Crystal Lake. As a group of co-eds arrive for their vacation, Jason continues his killing spree.
Director:
Steve Miner
Stars:
Dana Kimmell,
Tracie Savage,
Richard Brooker
Tommy Jarvis goes to the graveyard to get rid of Jason Voorhees' body once and for all, but inadvertently brings him back to life instead. The newly revived killer once again seeks revenge, and Tommy may be the only one who can defeat him.
A new family moves into the house on Elm Street, and before long, the kids are again having nightmares about deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger. This time, Freddy attempts to possess a teenage boy to cause havoc in the real world, and can only be overcome if the boy's sweetheart can master her fear.Written by
David Thiel <d-thiel@uiuc.edu>
(at around 35 mins) When the coach is getting bombarded by basketballs and volleyballs one of the balls flies out, smacks him in the head and then bounces on the floor. At one point it is a volleyball and at another point it is a basketball. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Boy on Bus:
[a student tells another student to turn his boombox down by throwing a paper at his head]
Turn it down!
See more »
Now that Nightmare is up to seven or eight sequels, while Friday The 13th is up to ten (and counting), it must be hard to look back on the days when horror films tried to be vaguely original or even different. With all the Screams and I Know What Your Breasts Did Last Summers, making Freddy's Revenge in these "enlightened" days would be just about impossible.
But culture, and particularly youth culture, in the 1980s was considerably different, certainly far less conservative and anti-creative. In those days, The Cure were a big thing, and even the most basic of pop sludge was far more creative than what we have today. Not to mention that it was far easier to make dodgy films and get them released theatrically.
A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2 picks up five years after the original, although it was a rush-job filmed less than a year after said original was out of the theatre. The film company, at that time the independent startup known as New Line, saw a quick and easy meal ticket that only required them to convince Robert Englund to submerge himself in what looks like three tons of multi-coloured latex. So the idea of a decent script, decent actors, or decent photography, went right out the window.
Which is kind of sad, really, when you consider that this is the only Freddy film in which an original premise is used. You might want to skip the rest of this paragraph if you have yet to see it. In it, a young man (whose behaviour is consistent with repressed homosexuality, in one of those hilarious plot coincidences) has just moved into the house from which Nancy originally dealt with Freddy. With the help of the sort of girlfriend any other male (and even some females) of this age would want to climb atop of at every opportunity, our hero attempts to fight off Freddy (and his own gayness), which in turn creates some very interesting plot devices. The moment when our heroine is holding up a carving knife at Freddy, who gives her a graphic and terrifying demonstration of the fact that she'll kill her (confused) lover if she kills Freddy, could have been one of the most horrific moments in the entire series. I am not quite convinced that it isn't, given that the only other episode in the series that was vaugely adult after this point was Part 3.
Unfortunately, the actors hired for these roles cannot act their way out of a wet paper bag. The only cast member with acting skills that even compare to Robert Englund's would be Marshall Bell. I am convinced that his turn here as the (gay) gym teacher was what got him hired to be in Total Recall and StarShip Troopers. Mark Patton (no relation to the Mike Patton who leads Mr. Bungle or the Mike Patton who was an early cast member in You Can't Do That On Television) is terrible - his only talent, as such, is to scream like a seventy-year-old woman. The actors who play his family look as if they belong on a cheap knock-off of Family Ties. The best actor in the whole piece was the budgie, who seemed to decide he would rather explode than be in this idiotic film a second longer.
When all is said and done, Robert Louis Stevenson said it much better in The Frightening Tale Of Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hyde (although there are no shortage of adaptations to that work which suck more than this). Normally, I would give this effort a three out of ten, but it gets two bonus points because it is like no other episode in the Nightmare canon, and that is a damned good thing when you put it alongside episodes four through seven.
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Now that Nightmare is up to seven or eight sequels, while Friday The 13th is up to ten (and counting), it must be hard to look back on the days when horror films tried to be vaguely original or even different. With all the Screams and I Know What Your Breasts Did Last Summers, making Freddy's Revenge in these "enlightened" days would be just about impossible.
But culture, and particularly youth culture, in the 1980s was considerably different, certainly far less conservative and anti-creative. In those days, The Cure were a big thing, and even the most basic of pop sludge was far more creative than what we have today. Not to mention that it was far easier to make dodgy films and get them released theatrically.
A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2 picks up five years after the original, although it was a rush-job filmed less than a year after said original was out of the theatre. The film company, at that time the independent startup known as New Line, saw a quick and easy meal ticket that only required them to convince Robert Englund to submerge himself in what looks like three tons of multi-coloured latex. So the idea of a decent script, decent actors, or decent photography, went right out the window.
Which is kind of sad, really, when you consider that this is the only Freddy film in which an original premise is used. You might want to skip the rest of this paragraph if you have yet to see it. In it, a young man (whose behaviour is consistent with repressed homosexuality, in one of those hilarious plot coincidences) has just moved into the house from which Nancy originally dealt with Freddy. With the help of the sort of girlfriend any other male (and even some females) of this age would want to climb atop of at every opportunity, our hero attempts to fight off Freddy (and his own gayness), which in turn creates some very interesting plot devices. The moment when our heroine is holding up a carving knife at Freddy, who gives her a graphic and terrifying demonstration of the fact that she'll kill her (confused) lover if she kills Freddy, could have been one of the most horrific moments in the entire series. I am not quite convinced that it isn't, given that the only other episode in the series that was vaugely adult after this point was Part 3.
Unfortunately, the actors hired for these roles cannot act their way out of a wet paper bag. The only cast member with acting skills that even compare to Robert Englund's would be Marshall Bell. I am convinced that his turn here as the (gay) gym teacher was what got him hired to be in Total Recall and StarShip Troopers. Mark Patton (no relation to the Mike Patton who leads Mr. Bungle or the Mike Patton who was an early cast member in You Can't Do That On Television) is terrible - his only talent, as such, is to scream like a seventy-year-old woman. The actors who play his family look as if they belong on a cheap knock-off of Family Ties. The best actor in the whole piece was the budgie, who seemed to decide he would rather explode than be in this idiotic film a second longer.
When all is said and done, Robert Louis Stevenson said it much better in The Frightening Tale Of Doctor Jekyll And Mister Hyde (although there are no shortage of adaptations to that work which suck more than this). Normally, I would give this effort a three out of ten, but it gets two bonus points because it is like no other episode in the Nightmare canon, and that is a damned good thing when you put it alongside episodes four through seven.