Halloween Marathon: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master (1988)

Moving right along in Part 4 of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, we have Dream Master.  The last part really renewed my hopes with where this series could be heading.  Funny part in all this is that every movie so far is helmed by a different director and it makes me wonder the different direction and view each has had for it.  This one is no different of course, so the adventures are yet unknown as well. Still, I remain a lot more optimistic and a little excited!

Let’s check it out! 🙂

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master (1988)

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Andras Jones, Rodney Eastman, Ken Sagoes, Brooke Theiss

Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may know the way to defeat him for good.-IMDB

 Yet another director taking over this series and I have to say that I’m liking how its having this continuity factor added in.  It makes Freddy into a villain that differentiates from Jason or Michael because we now know that he has a goal.  His mission to revenge continues in this one a few years after the previous movie and he is out after being revived to kill the remaining Dream Warriors. I have to say that Renny Harlin is  a pretty good director.  At least, my expectations raised when I did a little research and realized that he helmed one of my personal favorite creature features, Deep Blue Sea.  That movie is just all sorts of fun and this one follows quite the same feeling actually.  However, this one does get a little repetitive and in turn made it feel slightly lengthy by the end.

One of the main things with this one is that, we start it with the last 3 remaining Dream Warriors.  They are in high school and trying their best to move on with their lives.  At least, the two guys, Joey and Kincaide are but Kristen, now sadly not Patricia Arquette anymore but taken over by a girl called Tuesday Knight, constantly pull them back into the dream sequence with Freddy and suspects that they aren’t done with him.  I guess when you think about Freddy too much, he finds a way to come back.  Except this time, Kristen’s own abilities aren’t enough for Freddy except her boyfriend’s sister, Alice seems to have her own little way to master her dreams.  The fun part is that he now twists it around and somewhat uses Alice to get his new victims.  Only deal is, Tuesday Knight’s Karen is a really not so great.  She could definitely scream but that acting was pretty meh. While Alice (played by Lisa Wilcox) may be a decent actress and had an intriguing character arch but I’m still deciding whether it was peculiar in a good or bad way.

There are some pretty fun tropes used to move the story at the end.  It creates a bit of good confusion because it adds a quirky spin to the events until the characters themselves pull out and figure out what they have become.  At the same time, part of what makes Freddy’s character a fun slasher is the way he murders his victims.  He’s always been able to get into their illusions and imagination via their dreams and take control of their dream sequence.  This time, he takes it to a new level that made me quite impressed.  The only issue is that the kills were so frequent that he felt like in one movie, he was trying to catch up to his kill count that the other slasher series would’ve amounted to at this point in their series.  It was frequent and turned a little meaningless and while the movie isn’t a lot longer than its predecessors, it started feeling a little boring and used.

Overall, this fourth installment of A Nightmare of Elm Street called Dream Master takes it up a level by continuing where the previous one left off and adding upon it.  It also gives Freddy a more vengeful and resilient to death side.  His kill count increases and it does have some unique fun tropes that are added here. While it loses steam somewhere near the end, it is still a fairly enjoyable addition to the series.

Have you seen Part 4 of A Nightmare on Elm Street/Dream Master? What do you think?