Harefooted Halloween: Sleepy Hollow

What I Liked: The movie is beautifully shot.  It has an almost film noir vibe with the basically black and white color palette.  Those pops of red when blood flies are striking and leave a lasting impression.  Plus the fog, constant overcast sky and ridiculous amount of lightning add so much great atmosphere.  This is another example of you could pause the film at any time and always have a gorgeous image on the screen.

Likewise the production design is off the charts.  All the period costumes, dwellings and the look of the headless horseman evoke eeriness to the nth degree.  And with the pumpkins, fall foliage and decapitated corpses this is like pure uncut Halloween.  It’s good shit.

It earns its R rating by not holding back on the blood and murdering.  The body count gets high which includes a little boy and a pregnant woman’s unborn child.  There are also a few disturbing images of a bat’s head and a crow’s foot being sliced off.  That shit bothers me more than any of the human casualties.

Danny Elfman’s fantastic soundtrack immerses you right into the gothic story.  The use of pipe organ is sort of an old trick due to Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” historically being the standard bearer of horror themes but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an effective instrument.  And the copious amount of chorus makes the movie feel epic.

I appreciate that the headless horseman never loses sight of his mission.  When he targets his victim he doesn’t give a shit about anyone else even if they’re attacking him.  I mean he’ll lay a fucker out if they repeatedly get in his way but otherwise he’s focused like a T-800 on the task at hand.

What I Didn’t Like: Jesus the murder mystery plot is unfollowable.  I’ve seen this thing probably a dozen times now and I still have no fucking idea what the villain’s plan is.  I truly believe a whodunit is a type of picture you can’t make successfully and this falls in line with that.  The investigation comes and goes throughout too so I’m lost whenever it’s picked up again after a break.

There’s some slight steampunk gadgetry that Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp (A Nightmare on Elm Street)) uses during his examinations and it’s just stupid looking.  Magnifying glasses and scalpels existed in 1799 so this crap that Crane pulls out of his bag is unnecessary.

I’m not a huge fan of the action.  The headless horseman’s movements are really martial arty and the two on one fight he has reminds me too much of The Phantom Menace.  He does all these twists and twirls and weapon flipping and shit and it’s incredibly out of place.  I don’t need my headless horseman to be fancy and graceful with his fighting skills.  He should be more brute force and sorta clunky because you know, no head and all.  It’s interesting that the decision was made to have the guy act like he totally has a head where he can tell exactly what’s going on around him no problem.  Sure he’s a supernatural being but if they could’ve found a way to make him vaguely senseless that might’ve yielded intriguing results.

The action isn’t cut that well either with too many edits in general.  You can tell what’s going on most of the time but the finale in particular gets pretty messy.

Christopher Walken (The Addiction) is miscast as the headless horseman.  He’s too recognizable and singular to be anyone other than Christopher fuckin’ Walken so to play a rather anonymous character makes his appearance stand out even greater.  If I’m being honest here it’s also kind of a waste of talent for the small amount of screen time he has and to have the man only yell and growl unintelligibly.  And those fake teeth always bothered me because they look like they don’t fit properly.  It seems like Walken can’t close his mouth and like they’re very uncomfortable.

Overall Impressions: Oh boy this is a tough one.  I wanna love this movie, I really do because it’s an awesome feast for the eyes, the ambience is incredible, the music is thrilling, the carnage is cool and the look of the headless horseman is so badass.  The technical work on this film is simply outstanding. 

But man, the story they went with is garbled.  It’s a bigger minus than I would’ve thought.  For example Ichabod visits a witch out in the woods and her cave home is amazing with plenty of twisted roots, candles, cobwebs, bones, etc. littered around giving the place a perfect spooky tone.  The witch herself transforms into some freaky spirit with black holes for eyes, cracking gray skin and long white hair.  Excellent job in the makeup and design departments but what the fuck is Crane doing there?  I don’t know because I can’t follow the story.  So while the scene is neat by itself it doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight in the context of the film.  And this is the picture in a nutshell.  Fucking killer ass visuals but I’m not that emotionally invested in the plot or the characters.

I’m not saying the movie’s worthless or an absolute jumble but it does have serious issues.  It’s gotta be the best of Tim Burton’s B tier though.  I’ll definitely continue to revisit it over the years because the look and feel is too good to shove aside.  The script and acting isn’t the dealbreaker it probably would be in most other situations.  You should check it out if you haven’t already especially if you’re searching for something to set the mood for Halloween season.

Harefooted Halloween: Feardotcom

What I Liked: Not a whole lot.

What I Didn’t Like: Let’s move on.

Overall Impressions: There are a few quirky things about this guy and I’d like to go bullet points for a while, you all cool with that?  Good.  So:

·         The production design, cinematography and a few plot elements are heavily influenced by Se7en.  The lighting is dark, everything is very filthy, it’s almost always raining outside, the setting is a nameless city (although license plates indicate NY), dead bodies keep piling up mysteriously with cryptic messages sprawled on walls and etc.  Look Se7en is one of the best films ever made so I get that it inspired a lot of filmmakers but it’s such a specific style to mimic.  Pictures like The Glimmer Man, Kiss the Girls, Fallen, The Bone Collector and others tried to do the same with varying degrees of success.  I don’t remember this happening with other thrillers from the time like The Silence of the Lambs or whatever.

·         I find it amusing that the name of the website in the movie is feardotcom.com.  Apparently the filmmakers wanted it to be fear.com but were unable to wrangle it away from the owners.  The workaround to make it dotcom.com and keep it all one word like how you would type it in the address bar is both genius and hilariously stupid.

·         Is this movie considered part of the dot com bubble?  It could’ve been the final casualty.

·         Strange character actor Udo Kier (End of Days) makes a quick appearance in the beginning as the first victim (spoiler) and Stephen Dorff (The Gate) plays the main detective character making this a mini Blade reunion.  They don’t share any scenes though.  Well, not in the true sense anyway since one plays a corpse.

·         Of course with this coming out in 2002 and centered around internet technology it’s hard to take the piece that seriously.  For those old enough it could be a trip down memory lane of how websites used to look and operate and how pictures used to represent and talk about computers and stuff.  So with that and camcorders playing another large role the movie’s aged very poorly.

(Alright I’m moving out of bullet points now)

*Spoilers for the rest of this but the movie’s not very good and the final reveal is kinda peculiar* The enormous overarching issue with the film is it’s a shameless knock off of The Ring (it’s sort of a Nightmare on Elm Street rip off too but I’ll get to that).  Here’s a rundown of the similarities but fair warning that this will also be spoilers for The Ring.

(Going back to bullet points (sorry for this review being a bit of a mess))

·         Girl dies and uses then modern technology to enact her revenge.

·         If you log on to the website (feardotcom.com) you’re cursed.

·         Visitors to the website have visions of events related to the girl’s death that are also clues to uncovering who this person is and where you can find her.

·         After visiting the website you have 48 hours to live which parallels how long the girl was tortured for before she died.

·         A man, Mike (Stephen Dorff), and a woman, Terry (Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show)), team up to find a cure for the curse.

·         The girl’s corpse is found by Terry at the bottom of a pool of waste water.

·         Fake out ending where Mike and Terry think that finding the girl’s corpse will halt the curse but it doesn’t.

·         A discredited doctor was behind the girl’s murder.

·         The girl emerges from the computer screen during the finale.

Holy shit!  And the American remake of The Ring came out just two months later!  I mean come on.

The part about this having Nightmare on Elm Street qualities are Mike and Terry experience visions that aren’t real like seeing a little girl in an all white dress similar to the jump rope girls, Terry gets trapped in a demonic boiler room at one point and it’s indicated that some of the victims think they’re dying from their worst fears like insects or drowning but in reality they’re not.  At first I thought this was the concept they were going with, people killed by their worst fear, which is sorta neat but nope.

Admittedly this is a fascinating film to analyze because of how blatant its influences are.  The mashup of ideas could’ve worked better if they didn’t simply copy and paste so damn much (see the computer pun I snuck in there?).  The Se7en and Nightmare aspects are probably done well enough where they can get away with it but The Ring concept is too unique to lift completely intact so that really doesn’t come off too good.

I might recommend this strictly as a case study.  If you’re into breaking shit down, especially horror shit, it could be worth your while from an academic standpoint.

Harefooted Halloween: Butcher Boys (aka Boneboys)

What I Liked: Once the zaniness starts it doesn’t stop for even a second.  One minute this group of teens is bumming around the outskirts of San Antonio and the next they’re on the run from a gang of maniacs.  Civilization seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet with nothing but abandoned factories and warehouses left.  Then our protagonist gets trapped inside the bad guys’ lair that’s a fiendish nightmare of enslaved women, torture equipment, cannibalistic freaks and demented lunatics.  I was on edge the whole time.

Ali Faulkner (Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1) plays the lead Sissy and she does a really good job here.  She goes through some serious trauma of witnessing her friends getting killed and then being kidnapped and assaulted by the butcher boys.  Faulkner had to be distraught and seething for basically eighty of the eighty seven minute run time which couldn’t have been easy.

What I Didn’t Like: The crazy shit I mentioned earlier cuts both ways.  I mean I didn’t really have any idea what was going on basically the entire time.  Shit isn’t exactly explained and the movie moves at such a fast pace and throws so many ideas at you there aren’t quiet moments where the characters or story can breathe.  While the all consuming chaos is fun it leaves confusion and a certain emptiness in its wake.

The group of butcher boys we initially run into and spend the first two thirds of the film with have like a 50’s greaser look to them which is weird.  I don’t really get it.

For the first ten or fifteen minutes the editing is horrible with a lot of awkward cutaways and closeups.  Maybe the filmmakers wanted to match the bulk of the picture better by cutting the opening quicker but it just looks like shit.

The batch of teens that initially bite the dust are particularly annoying.  I had no problem with seeing them gutted.  Sissy and her brother are the only two who aren’t keying people’s cars or starting fights or you know, acting like pure assholes.

Overall Impressions: This was originally a Texas Chainsaw sequel script written by series writer and producer Kim Henkel.  I’m not sure what happened that caused this to be turned into its own thing but the end product is so close to something from that universe that I’m counting it as an honorary entry.  Don’t think fake diamond, think genuine cubic zirconia.

Interestingly the first part is really like a Judgment Night rip off with a vicious gang chasing innocent passersby through a seedy underbelly urban jungle.  But then the switch gets flipped and we’re most definitely in TCM land with maniacal off the wall characters and gruesome carnage.

Even with all the gore, brutal imagery and frightening ideas that keep piling on I found myself strangely enjoying it.  I wish it were more focused though because the butcher boys conjure up way too much mayhem to get a handle on anything.

If you’re a fan of the Texas Chains then I guess I cautiously recommend checking out this alternate reality curiosity.  All the TCM references and cameos are kinda neat to spot but they also blur the line even further about it not being an official entry.  Sure it doesn’t come remotely close to the excellence of the first two Chainsaws but even with its problems I think it’s probably better than the remakes/reboots from the past twenty years, except for possibly Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.  It’s absolutely better than TCM: The Next Generation.  That I know.

Harefooted Halloween: Phenomena

What I Liked: Good pacing.  The story keeps moving and evolving subverting your expectations at every turn.  It starts out like a typical slasher picture with a girl’s boarding school setting but it doesn’t take long to chuck that out the window and go off in another direction entirely.  I mean check out this crazy six minute sequence of events: the protagonist Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly (Dark City)) sleep walks, witnesses a murder, falls from a balcony unharmed, walks into oncoming traffic, gets picked up by creepy molesters, jumps from their car, tumbles down a hill, encounters a monkey in the woods, the monkey takes her to meet a world famous entomologist (Donald Pleasance (Halloweens)).  Holy guaca-fuckin’-mole.

Even though this is about a girl who can communicate telepathically or emotionally somehow with insects there isn’t any gratuitous gross out bug stuff.  Sure there are some closeups but the filmmakers don’t linger on them daring you to look away.  The nastiest thing that happens isn’t insect related but instead Jennifer falls into a vat of sludge filled with decomposing human remains.  Bugs are in there breaking down the meat but I think we can all agree that’s not the grossest part of that situation.

Oh.  My.  God.  The soundtrack.  Hard rock/metal luminaries such as Iron Maiden, Motörhead and, of course, Goblin contribute heart pounding, fist pumping, ass kicking tunes.  It’s so over the top and sorta comical how the music doesn’t really fit the scenes but man is it memorable and cool as shit.  Fuck yea dude.

What I Didn’t Like: Too much deus ex machina bullshit.

There’s a monkey as a main character and it’s really weird how they use him in the story.  He’s there for two very specific purposes but unfortunately I can’t go into it because of spoilers.  Still I think he gets a strangely abundant amount of screen time.

Overall Impressions: This one is by Dario Argento and it’s my favorite of his so far.  Honestly I’m not a huge fan his two biggest pictures, Deep Red and Suspiria.  I always liked Tenebrae more and now Phenomena has pulled ahead.  It’s more disjointed than usual though with the movie throwing so many ideas at you.  For example Jennifer has a special connection with insects but she also sleepwalks and is the daughter of a famous actor which is a plot point and she teams up with a fly to try to catch the local murderer and do you see what I mean?  There’s just a lot here and amazingly it flows.  I gave into the whims and didn’t ask a lot of questions.

If you’re new to Italian horror I guess this is as good a place to start as any.  I’m sure most other folks will point you towards Suspiria or whatever but if you’re looking for something less abstract and with a quicker tempo try this one out.

Harefooted Halloween: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

What I Liked: Lots of tension throughout.  You know there’s something sinister going on with this little thirteen year old girl Rynn (Jodie Foster (Maverick)) but we’re kept in the dark for a long time.  She’s supposed to be living in this Maine country house with her father but he’s never around, she doesn’t go to school and acts very conspicuously with an excuse for everything.  And what the hell is in that cellar anyway?

Really nice acting work all around here but Foster’s performance is the highlight.  It’s also probably pretty realistic for a kid like this.  She has this deadpan stare that denotes superiority and disgust for those around her.  When she finally gets a friend in seventeen year old Mario (Scott Jacoby (Return to Horror High)) she starts to open up and let him into her world so she can warm up to the right person.  Foster has to deal with a lot of different emotions but also keep them suppressed most of the time which is a difficult task for any actor let alone such a young one.

The other quick mention acting wise I want to bring up is Martin Sheen (Firestarter) who plays a totally creepy ass pedophile.  He pivots back and forth between being disturbingly calm while making disgusting insinuations and abuzz with uncontainable energy like he can’t wait to pounce on his victim.  Very effective execution.

What I Didn’t Like: Foster’s hair with the long bangs looks absolutely terrible.  At first I couldn’t believe someone would give her a haircut like that but then I read it was actually a wig.  It’s distracting.

We could’ve been shown Rynn committing one more evil act.  There’s talk and suggestion but it just feels like the movie’s missing one tiny extra jab to push it over.

Overall Impressions: I would classify this as more of a thriller than a horror picture.  It’s a character study of this girl who’s too smart for her own good and only wants to be left alone.  The world won’t have it though so she does what she feels is necessary in order to survive.

The film is very play-like and takes place mostly in Rynn’s house.  It was eventually turned into a play twenty years later but the original source is a book of the same name written by Laird Koenig (Inchon).  I haven’t read it but from what I gather Rynn was lightened up a touch for the movie and made a bit more ambiguously malevolent.

Anyway I do recommend checking this picture out.  It ain’t blood and guts like The Brood or nothin’ so expectations will need to be calibrated.  A more sophisticated route is taken by leaving a decent amount to the imagination. 

Harefooted Halloween: Gretel & Hansel

What I Liked: The production design (Jeremy Red (Hard Candy)) and cinematography (Galo Olivares (camera operator on Roma)) are absolutely beautiful.  Lots of pale yellows and neon blues give a rosy yet grimy feel.  It’s not overly kaleidoscopic though which was a good decision for such gloomy, no wait…grim subject matter (see what I did there?).  And it’s very nice that there’s no terrible shaky cam to distract you either.  All the shots are clear and wonderfully composed.  There’s so much awesome eerie imagery to soak up and spooky atmosphere to get caught up in.

Alice Krige’s (Deadwood) performance as the witch is magnificent.  She rides the line of acting kind and charitable towards Hansel (Samuel Leakey (Twist)) and Gretel (Sophia Lillis (It (2017))) while at the same time emitting a serious creep factor.  Krige never lashes out and keeps it reserved the whole way which adds a sense of uneasiness to even the most humdrum scenes.

What I Didn’t Like: In general the script is kinda bad.  One of the problems is they had to stretch a relatively brief story into feature length and that mainly resulted in the witch having to keep up her ruse for an extended period.  I know she wants to fatten up the kids before she cooks them but the movie drags a bit towards the middle.  But before Hansel and Gretel even get to the witch there’s an odd scene where they run into a weirdo who tries to kill them.  He looks like a zombie or maybe he’s just sick or I dunno.  That felt totally out of place.  The rest of the issues are more routine type stuff like poor dialogue, unnecessary narration, story elements introduced only to serve the finale, messy backstories, etc.

Overall Impressions: If you think about it this is pretty much an impossible film to make.  The baseline story you’re working off is about a cannibalistic child murderer and then on top of that you wanna do a dark horror version.  I don’t know if anyone really wants to see that.  The concept is just too unpleasant for most folks to get behind.  I mean either you go all in with something deeply disturbing that’ll be extremely alienating or you pull back and play up the fantasy elements without putting the children in too much danger.  They chose the latter.  It’s your only option for a mainstream release.

Oz Perkins wrote and directed and has been transitioning more into those roles the past few years after starting out as an actor (Psycho II).  He also did The Blackcoat’s Daughter which is another methodical psychologically driven horror picture and I liked that better but Perkins shows a lot pf promise.  He seems to be trying to find different angles on horror instead of doing straight forward pieces.  We always need filmmakers like him to shake shit up so I’m interested in what he does in the future.

As for Gretel & Hansel it’s a tough recommendation.  There are awesome visuals and a cool performance by Krige but unfortunately it’s underwhelming in all other areas.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Series Wrap Up

Holy moly, that was a lot to get through.  But we’re not done yet!  There are a few items I wanted to mention before we move out of Elm Street.

Similar to the Alien series the Nightmare pictures were a launching pad for hot young directors.  Wes Craven had already been around a little while and made a splash with The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes.  He also just finished up the slightly higher profile offbeat camp-fest Swamp Thing.  Nightmare was the one that made him a superstar though.  And of course in the 90’s he crafted another gigantic hit with Scream.

Part 2 was helmed by Jack Sholder who didn’t become a mega director but he did follow up with several really fun pictures including the sci-fi Terminator-esque The Hidden and the action bonanza Renegades.

Chuck Russell did part 3 and went on to have a colorful career working on effects heavy projects such as the 1988 Blob, The Mask and the underrated Schwarzenegger classic Eraser.

Part 4 saw the rise of Renny Harlin who’s a personal favorite of mine.  He would eventually deliver the amped up shark adventure Deep Blue Sea, the comic book-y ultra cool ”Bourne Identity” (books) knock off The Long Kiss Goodnight and perhaps the most pirate-y movie ever made with Cutthroat Island.

Stephen Hopkins came on for part 5 and continued to do good work on Blown Away and some incredible work on Predator 2.

Series producer Rachel Talalay slid into the director’s chair for Freddy’s Dead and then put together an array of quirky films afterwards that include Tank Girl and Ghost in the Machine.  She moved over to be a prominent TV director working on everything from Ally McBeal to The Flash.

Ronny Yu cut his teeth in the Hong Kong cinema game in the 80’s and 90’s.  He didn’t do much after Freddy vs. Jason but he did make one of his best known films, Fearless with Jet Li.

Samuel Bayer was a long time commercial and music video director before doing the Nightmare remake.  After the hostile response to the film he went back to music videos.  His resume in that area though is unparalleled.  Some of the folks he’s worked with include Nirvana, The Ramones, Iron Maiden, Rush, David Bowie, Metallica, Sheryl Crow, Aerosmith, Green Day, The Strokes, Maroon 5 and Papa Roach.  Jesus.

Similarly the writers utilized to help build out the universe of the franchise is equally impressive.  Here’s a sampling: Wes Craven (you know), Frank Darabont (The Green Mile, The Walking Dead), Brian Helgeland (Payback, LA Confidential), Leslie Bohem (Dante’s Peak, Daylight), Michael De Luca (much more of a producer but he wrote In the Mouth of Madness and a bunch of episodes of Freddy’s Nightmares (don’t worry we’ll get there)), Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia, Cape Fear (1991)) and Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Bird Box).

And of course jaw dropping special effects have been a mainstay of the series from the very start.  The two biggest shoutouts in this department go to David Miller (The Terminator, Tales from the Crypt, Friday the 13^th: A New Beginning) who made Freddy Krueger a reality through his brilliant makeup work on the first film (fun fact: melted cheese on a pizza was his inspiration for Krueger’s scorched flesh) and then Kevin Yagher (Child’s Play, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Face/Off) who did an amazing job carrying the torch for most of the sequels.

This isn’t to discount everyone else in the other areas of production.  All the people who worked on these pictures did a wonderful job.  The series has a cohesion that carries through yet each picture offers a distinct feel.  It can’t be overstated that the technical work has been an inspiration for countless other filmmakers.

And then there’s the man himself, Robert Englund.  He’s arguably the heart and soul of this whole thing.  Freddy wouldn’t be the same if someone else had been cast.  Englund has a lot of thoughts on playing the character but here are some of the more noteworthy tidbits. He says there’s a dance to Krueger’s movements, how he turns and handles himself.  Once this is pointed out it’s easy to pick up on.  Sometimes he’s graceful and sometimes he lunges out of nowhere but there’s always a flair to it. 

Englund also talks about the knife glove having a weight to it (mainly in the first two movies (the original glove was stolen during the shooting of part 3 by someone working on Evil Dead II where you can see it hanging in the cabin’s shed)).  This causes Freddy to drop his right shoulder and give him an almost gunslinger posture.  Badass.

Obviously not everything was in Englund’s control like the crazy effects, the script and the final decisions made by the editor and director.  But he certainly wasn’t afraid to put his own spin on the character like when he brandishes his knives with the line “this is God” or the tongue wagging at his female victims or the infamous “welcome to prime time bitch!”  It’s a unique spontaneous combination of elements that makes Freddy Freddy.

The evolution from Fred to Freddy is another interesting aspect.  In the first two installments he’s Fred and doesn’t joke around a lot.  But in the third one he’s now more informally Freddy and he ain’t scared to crack some witticisms your way.  By the time we get to Freddy’s Dead he’s a straight up cartoon character.  It makes sense to get serious after that with New Nightmare but in Freddy vs. Jason I think they got the balance perfect.  For the remake they sadly made him so no nonsense he’s kinda boring.

Now how about a couple of bests and worsts?

The best deaths are the roach motel in Dream Master and Tina being dragged around the room in the first film.  One is wacky nuts while the other is gets under my skin nuts.

The worst death is the invisible martial arts fight which ironically is also in Dream Master.  That just feels like what it actually is, they ran out of money and still had more filming to do.  Honorable mention is the comic book death from Dream Child.  It’s not creepy in the slightest and slashing a paper cutout of the victim doesn’t make for riveting imagery.

The best film is the original hands down.  It’s the most well rounded.

The worst is the remake.  Nothing thrilling going on there.  In the series proper I’m gonna say Freddy’s Dead.  Even though it was intentionally lighter in tone and is legitimately funny at times it deviates too far from where I would like Freddy and the story to be.

For further viewing you can check out Freddy’s Nightmares which was a horror anthology TV show hosted by Freddy Krueger released in conjunction with part 4.  Englund reprises his role and makes cheesy puns during cutscenes in between an episode’s story.  It’s totally a Tales from the Crypt rip off except it came out a year before in 1988.  I’ve only seen the two episodes that come with the blu ray bundle of the films and it’s fine I guess.  Not as good as Tales.  I can’t imagine they had quite the same budget behind it but they did attract some extraordinary talent to write and direct a few episodes including Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) and Dwight H. Little (Halloween 4, Marked for Death, Rapid Fire).

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Real Nightmares was a reality show from 2005 where people would confront their real life fears and it was hosted by Robert Englund as Freddy.  Episodes were shot but it never aired.  Probably because it was clearly a Fear Factor copycat.

And finally there are some documentaries.  Never Sleep Again goes through the making of each film and is nicely done with a lot of info.  I’d recommend that one if you want to dig deeper into the thought process behind the movies.  Just be aware it’s a bit lengthy at four hours long.

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street is Mark Patton’s doc half about his life and half about his experience on Freddy’s Revenge and how society’s treatment towards gay people has impacted him.  In the scope of the Nightmare universe it’s a very specific topic to spend a lot of time on so you would need to decide if that’s something you’d like to delve into.  Patton examines the history of horror in gay culture and explores the Venn diagram of where horror films and the gay community converge.  While Patton has an agenda (mainly looking for closure on how he felt vilified by Freddy’s Revenge writer David Chaskin) I thought it was a pretty good watch that illuminated me to this particular cross section of fandom.

Also I Am Nancy is Heather Langenkamp’s doc on her exploration of the character Nancy Thompson.  Haven’t seen this one so I can’t comment.

Ooookay, those are the Nightmares on Elm Street.  Definitely an entertaining series that encompasses so much creativity and great filmmaking.  I recommend checking out all the movies (except the 2010 remake) if you’ve only made it to certain ones over the years.  Hell, three are under ninety mins and the rest barely get over that threshold (apart from New Nightmare which runs longer).  They’re easy watches but at the same time there’s a lot to analyze like the recurring use of red and green lighting, stripes in the set design and did you realize it took Freddy four damn films to finally pick off all the Elm Street kids?  Sweet dreams, bitch!

Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

What I Liked: Pass.

What I Didn’t Like: All.

Overall Impressions: The big question I kept asking myself while watching was “what was the drive behind this remake?”  And the only answer I can come up with is this was a pure cash grab.  To be clear not all remakes are inherently bad but there needs to be a reason to dig up the old material.  A new twist on the story, a bigger budget with more resources available, rearrangement of events, etc.  The 2010 Nightmare doesn’t do any of this.  The only thing is they employed a lot of CGI tricks to pump up the dream scenes and make the deaths gorier.

I don’t think Jackie Earle Haley (Alita: Battle Angel) is very good as Freddy Krueger either.  Part of it isn’t his fault because they CGI-ed his burnt face too much and the ADR for his voice doesn’t sound or line up quite right with what’s on screen.  Maybe it was intentional to make the voice sound detached from the body but I thought it came off more like a poor dub job.  Even with that Haley looks a bit too short in stature and he doesn’t seem totally comfortable with his knife glove.  The movements are sorta awkward like he didn’t want to copy Robert Englund but hadn’t figured out his own effective maneuvers yet.

It’s probably impossible to live up to Englund’s portrayal though.  Watching someone else attempt the role gave me a greater appreciation for his approach to the character.  He seems no natural in the part from the first moment and only got better as the series progressed.  Like I never thought about his movements or facial expressions until I had a comparison and realized Englund’s execution is so perfect I’ve never questioned it (again, I’m talking about the sheer physicality of the performance).  I’m not saying you can’t ever do the character again but it’s gonna be extremely tricky.

Anyway, this film is instantly forgettable.  There are too many callbacks to the original and no cool unique moments of its own.  Again, they’re just banking off name recognition and duping long time fans of the series.  This makes perfect sense considering this was the last of the Michael Bay produced horror reboots he did in the 2000’s which included The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher and Friday the 13^th.  And even though they all made a lot of money, including Nightmare, none are held in high regard.  In fact they’re pretty heavily disliked by most.  Don’t waste your time.

Harefooted Halloween: Freddy vs. Jason

What I Liked: Everything.

What I Didn’t Like: Pretty much nothing.

Overall Impressions: It may seem like I’m giving this movie short shrift considering I wrote a fair amount on every Nightmare installment but to keep it short and sweet I think this is as perfect as you’re gonna get for this concept.  No need to beat it to death.

The design of the main contenders looks great, the effects are very nicely done (maybe a couple of bad CGI moments but impressive work overall), the idea of Freddy resurrecting Jason to instill fear in folks in order to bring himself back up to full power is totally reasonable and magically the film carries a vibe of both a Friday and Nightmare installment at the same time.

I mean they give you everything you want to see.  There are parts where Jason attacks by himself and Freddy attacks by himself.  They face off twice, once in the dream world and once in the real world.  There are dream sequences and there are woods sequences.  The carnage dished out to the humans is very nasty and a bunch of it is clever and varied.  We get our loathsome teens partying and having sex but we also have a smarter storyline about teens who escape from a mental hospital to help fight against Freddy and Jason.  Their backstory is pretty involved too.

Thankfully we’re back to Nightmare 1 &2 era Freddy where he’s amusing but not an outright comedian.  To me this is the ideal temperament.  He’s quick and intelligent enough to use his surroundings to his advantage but he’s not afraid to get up close with his blades.  Meanwhile Voorhees is massive and possesses superhuman strength.  He’s slow but he can tear your limbs off in an instant.  The matchup makes sense from an entertainment standpoint because they’re so different from each other.  And not only that they’re sincerely frightening here.  It feels like our heroes don’t stand a chance against either of them.

Hong Kong cinema veteran Ronny Yu (The Bride with White Hair) was brought in to direct.  He had modest success with Bride of Chucky in the states so he was already in the business of reinventing classic 80’s horror icons.  He manages to pull the pieces together in the right way to delicately balance the brute force of Jason and the playful torture of Freddy.

Unsurprisingly this was a legal and negotiating nightmare to pull off (pun intended).  Separate studios own the rights to the characters and each one wanted to make sure their guy was gonna be treated properly and that their fans would be satisfied with the results.  Well the gamble paid off because it did really well at the box office.

This movie has no right being this good for something so goddamn gimmicky.  It’s one of the best entries in both franchises.  There’s a ton of fun to be had.

Harefooted Halloween: Wes Craven's New Nightmare

What I Liked: Instead of going down the same path the other sequels had beaten to death Wes Craven found a unique angle by going very meta.  Krueger is tormenting the original cast and crew of A Nightmare on Elm Street in both their dreams and the real world.  Craven is being guided by an unknown force with his new script which is the movie we’re currently watching, Robert Englund (Strangeland) is slowly being possessed by Freddy and Heather Langenkamp (Star Trek Into Darkness) and her son (Miko Hughes (Pet Sematary)) are being tormented by Krueger in their dreams.  Not only that but series producer and New Line Cinema founder Bob Shaye is pushing for Heather to be in the new film, Heather’s husband is a special effects guy crafting a new knife hand prop and someone’s stalking Heather.  It all works and makes for an unpredictable watch.

Freddy doesn’t really joke here.  He’s back to being flat out mean.

What I Didn’t Like: While the approach to this Nightmare picture is highly original you need to have a baseline understanding of the films to grasp what you’re watching.  It’s advisable to have at least seen the first installment and know that there have been many sequels and Freddy Krueger is a beloved cultural icon.  I can’t imagine this piece working otherwise.

The overall design of Freddy doesn’t look great.  His skin is less burned and more like he’s missing most of his top layer so his muscles, tendons and bones are exposed.  Sounds cool on paper but it ends up coming off too fake and rubbery.  They also dress him in a striped turtleneck sweater, black leather pants, a long black trench coat and laced up boots that go up almost to his knees.  Yuck.  The fedora tends to be missing a lot of the time as well which makes him appear incomplete.  His clothing isn’t tattered either but in perfect condition and that seems wrong.

They treat Krueger like he’s been away from the silver screen for a long time but Freddy’s Dead came out only three years earlier.  Freddy’s absence for a period of time is integral to the plot because his powers are significantly diminished if people forget about him and his resurgence is his attempt to fight against this.  But I guess this bothers me because it comes off more like Wes Craven is condescendingly dismissing all the sequels.

*Spoiler on this last item* The finale showdown between Krueger, Heather and her son in the dream world is weak.  It feels like a concession to the audience for making them sit through what is definitely not a typical Nightmare story.  Sort of a reward like “ok, here’s your scene where Freddy attacks someone in a fantastic hellscape.”  It doesn’t fit with the rest of the film and isn’t anything very imaginative.

Overall Impressions: You can read this picture a number of ways but I think Krueger in this scenario is supposed to be the fame of the Nightmare movies.  It can be an overwhelming force that brings both good and bad into your world.  You gain adoration, wealth and opportunities but it can be difficult to detach yourself from those films.  It can take over your life.  For example Heather Langenkamp was stalked for real after the original Nightmare and that’s a scary thing to experience.

It seems like a miracle this was ever green lit because the idea is a little ahead of its time.  On the other hand studios tend to like movies about the film industry.  Anyway, in a few years Craven would go for a similar vibe but on a smaller scale with Scream.  A self-referential tone would become more popular ten or fifteen years later though with movies like Shaun of the Dead, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and Cabin in the Woods.

This is a good movie.  It’s much more of a thriller with horror elements sprinkled in and like I said, there’s a prerequisite to getting the most out of the intricate plot, but I appreciate the bold choices made.

Harefooted Halloween: Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

What I Liked: Some of the story ideas are interesting.  Krueger has killed all but one child in Springwood which caused the adult townsfolk to go crazy and some don’t even want children to visit because they fear Freddy’s wrath.  On top of this the town is located in some other dimension where Freddy has control.  Once you enter it becomes nearly impossible to escape.

We also get the most backstory to Krueger than ever before.  *Spoilers for the rest of this paragraph* It turns out he’s been psychotic since he was a child by mutilating helpless small animals and then as an adult he probably killed his adoptive father (Alice Cooper (music shit)).  Later he murders his wife and gets ratted out by his toddler daughter on the child homicides.  It turns out Freddy brandished all sorts of knife gloves with various sharp implements at the tips.  The cops took his daughter away so that’s part of the reason why Freddy pursues children in their dreams.  This point seems kinda moot though considering he was already targeting kids.  And we get a glimpse at the demons that Krueger bargains with to live on killing folks in their dreams.  Phew!  That’s a helluva lot to fill in.

Best death has to go to Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan (Back to the Future II & III)) who wears a hearing aid as a result of child abuse from his parents.  Krueger turns his hearing super sensitive so that a pin drop sounds like a bomb exploding.  What’s genius about the setup is they found a way to incorporate the knife glove into the finisher.  Freddy pulls out a small chalkboard and there’s a great simple eerie effect where he stretches it larger.  He then scratches his knives across the board to create that dreadful screeching noise that most people cannot stand (I’m actually not one of those people, I mean it’s not pleasant but it’s not the worst sound to my ears).  Krueger builds the squealing up and he goes into what looks like an orgasmic trance until Carlos’ head explodes.  Bravo.

I’m conflicted about the humor employed.  Bizarrely there are some straight up spoof jokes in here but goddammit I laughed out loud a couple of times.  One is when Carlos tries to unfold a road map but it keeps going and going and unfolding more and more and the map eventually has “you’re fucked” written on it and engulfs him.  And the other time is when Freddy takes Carlos’ hearing aid which causes the sound in the movie to cut out.  Freddy jumps around behind his back and tries to make a bunch of noise but Carlos, and you, can’t hear it.  It’s so fucking silly.

What I Didn’t Like: Ok even though I just pointed out some of the comedy is pretty humorous the overall tone is too light.  Krueger isn’t really threatening at all in this one because he toys with his victims more than usual and I swear he looks at the camera more than once while making a quip.  At times this is like a Looney Tunes Nightmare.

The studio mandated that the finale be shot in 3D and oh boy do they lean into that shit (this explains the image on the poster of Freddy sticking his glove directly in your face).  Our hero Maggie (Lisa Zane (Bad Influence)) puts on 3D glasses before the last stretch because she’s told they’ll help her see things she normally wouldn’t in the dream world.  Really this is the cue to the audience to put their glasses on.  Then all this crap is pointed towards the camera like a spiked baseball bat, the knife glove, Freddy’s stretching arms, etc. to give you a thrill in threee deee!  And of course Maggie takes the glasses off when she’s finished so you know you can take yours off too now.

One of the biggest issues with the film is how dated it is.  The grunge soundtrack by Brian May (no, not Queen guitarist Brian May, a different dude who did the soundtracks to Mad Max 1 & 2) is bad enough but the numerous video game references, specifically the 8 bit Nintendo type stuff and the power glove, are the worst offenders.

Overall Impressions: Long time Nightmare producer and all around film guru Rachel Talalay used this as the springboard for her directing career.  She intentionally wanted to make something funnier and not as dark as the rest of the series by pushing Freddy’s sense of humor to the breaking point. And with the dilapidated oddball town angle she was aiming for a Twin Peaks vibe too.  In those terms she succeeded.

Freddy’s Dead is a strange bird because it comes off as more of a reboot.  There’s an odd Escape from New York style intro that shows a computer screen map of the US with text explaining how Springwood is a shell of a town meaning either a lot of time has passed since the last episode or we’re dealing with an alternate timeline.  Plus Freddy doesn’t seem to need a conduit to get into other kids’ dreams anymore and he can completely take over the real world, well at least this one town.  Most of what’s been setup in the previous installments is inexplicably ignored yet this is billed as the next sequel.

The aspect that had the strongest potential is the town ravaged by Freddy’s murder spree where the remaining residents have turned into blabbering basket cases.  This makes sense if Freddy were allowed to continue unimpeded.  His shadow looms large creating a mysterious atmosphere.  Interestingly writer and ridiculous producer Michael De Luca (Deep Cover, Last Man Standing, The Social Network, Moneyball, etc.) also wrote In the Mouth of Madness which uses a very similar premise about a town that’s taken over by a supernatural evil and becomes difficult to escape from.  The ideas work much better in that movie though because you have more leeway with the story.  There aren’t five previous pictures to contend with where everyone is very familiar with the main character and his world.

The filmmakers all knew there wasn’t a good way to end the series but they did their best to make it definitive instead of leaving the whole thing open ended.  I know I keep doing this with whatever number I’m on but part 6 is probably the weakest film yet.  I like the darker Nightmares better.

Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

What I Liked: Still plenty of special effects work to marvel at.  The weird baby Freddy turning into adult form and then back again towards the end are probably the two most successful.  And the oversized demonic baby cart prop looks really rad and appropriately evil.

What I Didn’t Like: In the previous installment it’s established that Freddy can’t just attack any old person in their dream, he needs Alice (Lisa Wilcox (Knots Landing)) as a bridge to bring others into her dreams in order to kill them.  It’s a convoluted idea that the filmmakers insisted on sticking with for part 5.  They should’ve abandoned this and simply opened up everyone else’s dreams to Krueger once he finished dispatching the Elm Street kids.  So now the filmmakers painted themselves into a corner and came up with a messy plot about Freddy using Alice’s unborn baby’s dreams as a conduit to murder folks.  On top of this Alice experiences nightmare visions when she’s awake which makes things even more confusing.  I need to give up trying to figure out the rules in these movies because they only get more frustrating.

They tamed this sucker down too much.  There’s little blood and a paltry body count of 3.  Not only that but the one time Krueger uses his knife hand to kill he slashes a paper copy of his victim which looks unbelievably lame.

There’s a lot of stop motion use which dates the film a bit more than it should.

Overall Impressions: Unfortunately this is a movie nobody wanted to make but part 4 was the highest grossing episode yet so they couldn’t stop.  Sometimes it works out regardless of the circumstances like Pusher 2 and 3, but other times it’s a disaster.  Now I wouldn’t say Dream Child is as bad as all that but there’s not a whole lot to sink your teeth into.  The story about Freddy grooming Alice’s child in the womb isn’t a terribly fun idea.  Although you can read a lot into Freddy representing the fear and apprehension that a young single unemployed mother is going through.  Will my baby be healthy?  How will I support us?  Will my friends and family understand?

Ok fine, you don’t really go see a Nightmare for its nuanced plot.  So then what about the effects?  Yea, they’re good and show a lot of creativity.  Greta (Erika Anderson (Zandalee from Zandalee)) being force fed to death is the definite standout.  That’s genuinely disturbing.  The trouble is part 4 delivered such an insane extravaganza that it was gonna be extremely difficult for anyone to top and part 5’s effects execution just isn’t as well done.

After a consistent ratcheting up of nightmare sequences and gore they took a step back here.  Director Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2, Judgment Night) admits there wasn’t anywhere for the series to go except to tone it down slightly.  I’m not automatically opposed to that because I believe a highly inventive story angle can win the day over reduced carnage.  That didn’t happen here though.  It’s just…I dunno, sorta dorky.  Worst one so far.

Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master

What I Liked: The filmmakers pushed the visual look to another level.  Dream Warriors started down this path of giving Freddy’s world a dirty and hyperbolic motif but here they made everything filthier and with greater distortion.  There’s always wind blowing, it’s always storming outside, it’s always nighttime, there are lots of rags hanging from the ceiling and every single thing around you is decrepit.  The grime is inescapable.

By far the best parts of the film are any scenes with Freddy.  This usually means the deaths but there are a couple of times when he pops in just to say hi.  Since the Dream Warriors version of Freddy was an enormous hit they doubled down on that this time.  His humor is amped up to the point where almost every line out of his mouth is a joke.  I’m more ok with it in this because the rest of the picture matches better with that type of attitude.  The production on these has become so over the top that I’m more open to the film having a rowdy atmosphere.

Holy shit are the deaths creative.  The nastiest and craziest has got to be when Debbie (Brooke Theiss (Beverly Hills, 90210)) is bench pressing and Freddy pushes down on the bar crushing her elbows.  Awgh!  That would be horrible enough but then bug arms start growing out of her stumps, she gets stuck to the gooey floor and transforms completely into a cockroach.  Oh no, she’s trapped in a roach motel!  Freddy finishes her off by crushing the bug box in his hand causing roach juice to ooze out the end.  Yuck!  Not only is the idea utterly fucking bonkers but the effects are amazing.  I can’t help but think they may have been inspired by Cronenberg’s The Fly with this one.

And shoutout to the effects team once again for putting together the most incredible gags in the series to date.  The ending is particularly impressive that involves many different types of shots to pull off the rebelling souls trapped inside Freddy’s body.  Just a jaw dropping feast for the eyes.

Kinda split on the copious amount of pop tunes on the soundtrack.  Doesn’t totally fit but I sorta like the songs they chose.

What I Didn’t Like: The rules keep getting fuzzier.  Kristen from the previous installment (now played by Tuesday Knight (The Fan) who also performs the opening credits number) transfers her dream power to her new buddy Alice (Lisa Wilcox (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures)).  So now Alice can pull others into her dreams (ironic how this ability is a major part of this film and not really used in the previous one where it was introduced).  First of all, apparently you can transfer dream powers, like at will?  I think the person you’re pulling in needs to be asleep as well but that’s not clear.  So now that Alice has this power Freddy can only kill those that Alice pulls into her dreams?  This setup is confusing.

Like the stairs in The Exorcist franchise they fetishize the hell out of Nancy’s original Elm Street house by showing it off as a haunted hellscape every chance they get.  The notion that the house is the evil headquarters for Freddy began with Part 2 and has persisted ever since.  It’s never explained why the place is so damn important but the series is now fully committed to the idea.  I don’t really understand.

While the Freddy stuff is as good as you would expect the rest of the movie is pretty weak.  It took four pictures but we finally got a more traditional slasher type deal with a gang of obnoxious high school teens being picked off one at a time by a killer.  They try to lead their normal lives in between but to no avail.  Freddys’ always waiting for them.  You got your corny jokes, crushes, montages, disbelief, etc.  All of that isn’t anything you haven’t seen a zillion times before.

Overall Impressions: Growing up this is how I remember a Nightmare picture looking and feeling.  Grungy as fuck, exaggerated lighting and Freddy handing out one liners with each intricate kill.  This is definitely the most uneven film so far though.  The deaths are very entertaining but the high school friends scenes are very mundane.

My man Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island) directed and his passion for filmmaking is on full display.  He’s having fun (even though he was under immense pressure during production) bringing these insane images to life and giving you some bang for your buck.  However, it was only his second American film and he hadn’t gotten great at the dialogue exposition parts yet.  With that said I think you can pick up on the Harlin-esque vibes.  He likes to go big and somehow pull shit off that doesn’t seem possible like Freddy literally sucking the life out of his victim through their mouth until they wither into a hollow husk or having a dog piss fire (!?) onto Freddy’s grave to bring him back from the dead.

Look, the movie’s pretty stupid.  I can’t deny that.  The Dream Warriors version of Freddy and his deathtraps were a huge hit so this is the logical path to take.  But while Dream Warriors might be the better picture overall I’d rather watch Dream Master most of the time.  Take that for what you will.