HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019 OVERTIME!: Freddy’s Dead: The Last Nightmare (1991)

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Congratulations!  It took two extra days, but we made it to the end.  My overall thoughts about how this marathon went is after the review.

But we’ve got one last film, this one sponsored by Mike Blanchard!  Mike is the mastermind behind the GeekCast Network, providing specialized shows on Movies, Comics, Cartoons and more designed to unleash the geek in you!  Not that long ago, Mike had me on to discuss my Modern Fandom Manifesto--and baseball and potato chips and the awesomeness of Georges Batroc.  You can listen to the almost three hour conversation here.

Mike’s choice is appropriate given that this was intended to be the end of a famous horror franchise...until Wes Craven had an idea to go meta, and then there was this Champion Bout with a certain other super-slasher.

You know, there are some films I am a little harder on then they deserve.  It’s just that there are times where you can see what a film could have been, little glimmerings of promise in fields of just flat-out laziness that make me upset with the wasted potential.  This is one of those movies; there is are full stretches where you can see director Rachel Talalay trying to pull this film back into being a horror film...and then just shrugging and leaning back into the comic book super-villain schtick the series had fallen into.

Case worker Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane, who is luuuuurvely) becomes fascinated with a John Doe (Shon Greenblatt) who won’t go to sleep, has amnesia and is in possession of a news clipping about a missing woman in Springwood.  Now, we know from the opening sequence that John is literally the last teenager in a Springwood gone insane due to Freddy’s constant bloodthirst.  When Maggie decides to take John to the cursed town in the hopes of uncovering who he is, she learns something about her past and how she is connected to the dream demon.  This results in an effort by her, a dream therapist (Yaphet Koto, who seems to be enjoying himself because he gets to be someone, you know, not glowery) and a young girl he’s treating (Lezlie Dean) to destroy Krueger once and for all.

The plot I just gave you is worthwhile, and when it is dealing with Maggie’s character arc and taking advantage of the dream logic inherent in the franchise, I was appreciative of it.  Portions of the sequence involving the trip to Springwood achieve a creepiness that the immediately previous films in the series did not have.  There’s an attempt to extricate Krueger from the ‘son of a thousand maniacs’ bullshit by showing us his growing years under his adoptive father (Alice Cooper).  The general idea behind what Freddy wants, driven home by the line ‘Every town has an Elm Street’, is actually sound.  There’s about forty minutes of a worthwhile film here that bolstered with good performances by Zane and Koto....

...but then there’s the other forty minutes, which realizes that it’s a Freddy sequel and charges right into the silliness the franchise had become mired in.  There are two characters (one played by a young Breckin Meyer) who are there solely to become Freddy Fodder; they have one defining aspects--one’s movie deaf and one’s a stoner--and are there just to be killed.  There are winceworthy sequences with the residents of Springwood behaving movie insane (the cameo by Rosanne Barr is not really as bad as all that, but Tom Arnold’s turn...ugh) that cannot disguise their expository purposes with All Dat Komedy.  There is a second act twist that is pretty obvious from the first conversation between Zane and Goldblatt that is played for shock and tragedy but falls flat.  And there is the ending, which calls back to the first film but results in Zane becoming this knife-throwing savant that is flat-out silly.  Those forty minutes yanked away the moments of promise and cleverness gave me.

This is two different films that end up being at war with each other, and neither one comes out on top.  Every time Talalay pulled something interesting off, the script--and she was responsible for the screen story, although how much of the stupid stuff was added by actual screenwriter Michael De Luca I do not know--pulls something sophomoric.  Nothing is more indicative of this film’s tone than the fate of Ricky Dean Logan’s Carlos, which begins with some creepy ideas revolving around his movie deafness utilizing interesting sound design and ends with Freddy playing a chalkboard with his razor glove until the kid’s head explodes.

This was Talalay’s first feature,* and she had two other tries at theatrical success--the really awful Ghost In The Machine and the underrated Tank Girl--before finding legitimate success as a television director.  On one hand I liked a lot of what she did here; on the other hand, I kept rolling my eyes at the business-as-usual.

During the credits of the film, we are ‘treated’ to a clipshow of moments from the previous four Elm Street films...and it just reminded me of how far the series had fallen.  I don’t have the affection for it I have for Jason Goes To Hell, which went all in with its desire to do something different, and cannot recommend it.

And That’s A Wrap!

It took me two extra days, but I did it.  I want to thank all of my sponsors for programming the bulk of this marathon, some of whom took time from busy schedules to give me their choices.  Please try out their various creative endeavors that I linked in the individual essays.

I think this year was more satisfying to me than last year, and I’m probably going to stick with the ‘format next year.  There were a couple of real surprising gems I would not have discovered otherwise and some opportunities for me to write about why I like certain films.  I even got a chance to codify why one of those films I don’t get doesn’t work for me.  More importantly, I don’t feel as burnt out as I did at the end of last year.

If you’ve enjoyed this year’s Horrorfest, I strongly encourage you to join the Domicile of Dread Patreon.  There are five different tiers from $1 (where you’ll receive exclusive essays and other bits of writing) to $10 (where you’ll get lots more, including the ability to make me write essays about whatever you want!)...and patreons at all tiers get to participate in special events like this and receive special ‘presents’ like the audio chapbook Wings of Fame that will become available shortly.  Every little bit helps keep me above water and drives me in my journey of creativity.

Thank you for following me on this adventure.  If you’re new, stick around.  There’s lots of fun ahead here at The Domicile!

*--Talalay is another woman, along with Marys Harron and Lambert and Roberta Findley, whose name I would submit to refute Joshua ‘Peaches Christ’ Grannell’s claim that women don’t make horror in All About Evil.