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?

Die Hard 2 (1990)

Die Hard was an absolute success (check out my review HERE).   But sometimes (most times), the follow-up sequel really doesn’t get very good.  What about Die Hard 2? Let’s check it out 🙂

Director: Renny Harlin

Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, Reginald VelJohnson

Christmas has arrived once again.  John McClane (Bruce Willis) is in Washington airport waiting for his wife, Holly’s (Bonnie Bedelia) to arrive.  When he suddenly sees some suspicious people heading into the baggage area of the airport (you know where they send the different baggage to different planes or whatnot..I don’t know what thats called).  He follows them in and when one of them get away, the airport police just take it as a normal baggage thief.  Shortly after, he realizes when all the planes are put on delayed status, that terrorists, lead by Colonel Stuart (William Sadler) has disabled all transmitting and communication functions from the Communications Tower, Dulles Tower to the aircrafts making the scheduled flights trapped in the skies doing circles with no idea what is going on in the airport.  They ask for certain instructions to be followed as they wish to land a criminal, Chief Esperanza and take him away.  John McClane must now find a way to land his wife’s plane safely before it runs out of fuel no matter what it costs as he tries to search out Colonel Stuart and his crew.

Die Hard 2 is not a bad movie but its not as epic as the first one.  It was fun to watch for the most part.  Bruce Willis is both a comic in a sarcastic way given the situation. He is still the McClane that gives it his all and does everything he can to get his wife back and fight the bad guys.  There is a decent support cast.  The issue is that there are certain fight scenes that seem rigid and staged.  This was not the case in the first one.  Also, the effects are not too great but I can overlook it seeing as it is an aged movie.  1990 effects till now has improved a lot but I’m not too picky with effects when the entertainment level is there.

I always like to look at the bad guys. In this one, we primarily have Colonel Stuart, played by William Sadler. Honestly, I don’t really remember this guy in any other movies other than Die Hard 2.  *runs off to look at IMDB* Ah, so the only role I know him from is the guy I wanted to punch as a stupid father in August Rush.  Not impressive… Either way, him as a villain was alright.  I just thought that every time he was transmitting a message it sounded like a mechanical robotic voice. He has a very answering machine recording type of voice which made me laugh a little at it.  I’m not exactly sure that was supposed to be the effect.

This action flick lacked a bit of the intensity that it had in the first one.  It really tries to get us engaged as to what will happen next and technologically, what could be done next, but it wasn’t very much the action that did it all.  There were explosions and plane crashes, fire and shooting and all that but it wasn’t as frequent as I would have wanted from it.

However, whenever I watch these action flicks, I ask myself one thing..was it enjoyable? Did I have fun with it? Fact is…I did! Because John McClane’s character still kicks some serious butt.  Every time he enters on the screen and does his thing, he does it in a great way! Plus, we have a bit of continuation from the first one, with the situation of the in plane situation from his wife’s angle.  And we bring in a little cameo with outside help from his buddy from the first one.  And other characters also.  A new character that really gave a bit of comic relief chemistry was the janitor or something like that called Marvin played by Tom Bower.  That guy cracked me up! He was such an amazing character 🙂

Overall, Die Hard 2 was an enjoyable flick. As much as the villain didn’t make me feel very threatened, Bruce Willis’s John McClane still managed to light up the screen with his comedic lines matched with his way to get himself out of intense and tight situations to find the solution to save the day!