Number 3: Wes Cravens New Nightmare
It’s 1995. I’m over at my friend’s before school. He has horror movies on, which isn’t unusual. The trailer (yes, VHS tapes did this before the main feature — it wasn’t just a cinema thing) was for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. My friend smiles and says, “Freddy’s back.”
But “Freddy’s back” was no longer a surprise. This was the VHS release, but looking at the cinema dates, Freddy had been declared dead in 1992 only for a new film to be advertised in 1994. “Freddy’s back” was becoming as predictable as EastEnders being on tonight.
There had been six films, and when we last saw Krueger, his daughter had banished him to hell for what was promised to be the final time.
What came out in 1994 was, in this Analyst’s opinion, an absolute stroke of genius. The film didn’t undo Freddy’s death. It brought back Nancy from the first film despite her being “dead” by Part 3. Except it didn’t. Nancy remained dead. Heather Langenkamp returned — and there lies the film’s difference.
One of my favourite scenes in the entire franchise follows Heather on a talk show. The host brings out Robert Englund in full MTV Freddy mode. He gets a standing ovation from the studio audience as he teases, “You’re all my children now!” It’s a famous quote from Nightmare 2. But wow, what a creative way to make a point.
This boogeyman — whose picture on a VHS box once sent me home with nightmares — had become something else. An icon still, yes always. But somewhere between saying “Welcome to prime time!” in Dream Warriors and rapping with the Fat Boys in 1988, the curtain had been pulled too far open. The mystique of the dream stalker had long gone with every lore dump in every sequel. In this one scene, Wes told his audience he knew that.
Wes writes a film here that puts his Dream Demon — the thing we call Krueger — back to his darkest. He stalks Heather, her son, and other Elm Street cast members. The way to defeat him is to play Nancy one last time. She faces off with him in the boiler room. After Freddy’s defeat, we learn this was all a screenplay, and that Freddy is once again trapped inside the story. Leaving us all safe until next time.
Among our group at the time, I don’t think this one got the love it deserved. Partly because it came towards the end of the Elm Street run — we’d seen a lot of the scares done before. But also because it was, whisper it, a bit creative and arty. When you’re that age, you don’t usually go for that kind of thing.
This concept though — where the characters know they’re in a horror film and know the rules — well, that could be expanded upon by Wes a couple of years later in a film called Scream. It became quite big. A story for another time, I think.