Earlier I said
Halloween was my least favorite 80s slasher franchise;
ANoES is my favorite. Partially because it's the best. Also because I watched them as a child, sure. (I watched the
Halloween movies, too, though!) It's got a cool concept that allows for some great imagery. Also you're never supposed to root for Freddy against the kids. (sometimes, adults, sure!) Characters have deaths related to one of their two dimensions, but you aren't meant to think these 17 (going on 26) year olds have it coming. Freddy's said to be for kids and yeah, I guess I was attracted to the franchise, but like... because he was scary! I wasn't quite detached enough from the action to like appreciate his quips as a child, he was just a frightening menace, murdering my crushes and
never shutting up.
ANoES is a classic. Freddy is fully frightening; not supposed to be comic relief for anyone. One thing this franchise does here and does often is
kill off who you might think is the main character and let someone else take the reigns - I like that a lot. Helps emphasize that these characters aren't just canon fodder.
Freddy's Revenge is, among other things, the gay one. I never connected to it as a kid though I certainly appreciate it more now. It's just a bit sad to watch because it's not
totally textual and, production-wise, was kind of a bad experience for Mark Patton. I have to check out his documentary. Kind of one of the unhappier endings in the series. But why would it be otherwise at the time it was produced? Also, Mark Patton's Jesse is not really in the Final Girl roll - Kim Myers takes over the last third of the movie which has some extremely cool looking dream beasties.
Dream Warriors is a fan favorite and it's hard to argue with it. Lot of things here stuck with me... the opening gave me a weird fixation with papier-mâché. Nancy comes back
and she dies, but it's heroic and she helps some teens get through their experience with Freddy. Although, uh.
Doesn't last.

I wanna know how
that one adult psychiatrist handled everybody's rapid deaths... what's he up to, now? At times, I thought that was Judge Reinhold. (it's not)
The Dream Master is the one I rank most highly. It's got everything I like - cool things to look at, great theme song, Danny Hassell. (more like
The Dream Boat...) It's a Renny Harlin movie and what can I say, I love what he does. Well, did, between this,
Deep Blue Sea, and
The Long Kiss Goodnight. Don't know quite what his later films are like. It's really satisfying to watch Alice self-actualize with an extremely obvious stunt double towards the end of the film.
The Dream Child? Also well-liked by me. 3-5 are very satisying films for me and are a large part of why I love this franchise so much. Just a really haunting/goofy/sweet fantasy. The titular dream child is that little kid from Jurassic Park... makes you think. Shout-out to Kelly Jo Minter's Yvonne who
survives a slasher flick as not just a black woman but a character who's like, "come on, fellow teens! We are NOT rapidly being murdered by an infamous spirit who keeps ostentatiously murdering local teens!" Ends on a high note with a Sinead O'Connor song that fucking slaps.
I
really wish I liked
Freddy's Dead more but unfortunately I don't. Most of the time Freddy's been pretty limited in what he can do but suddenly he's just a normal slasher and has like murdered an entire generation in this town? What a bummer! I hope Alice and Yvonne got out... Anyway, there's a lot of lore here. Sometimes there's lore. You know what? I like that Lezlie Dean was in this and showed up for the documentary decades later with some silent roller derby servants. Weird and fun.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare blew my mind as a child. Introduced me to the concept of metafiction. Lot to latch onto and as
AdrenalineJohnnyUnusual (brain!) mentioned the last image is really strong. Also this caused me to always look out for Tracy Middendorf in things as a kid - she popped up in the
Angel pilot and a few episodes of
Alias. Anyway, very cool fairytale vibe in this one.
Freddy vs. Jason. Eh. Liked it a lot when I saw it (in fact, it's the only one I saw in theaters) but it's a better Jason movie than Freddy one and I'm sorry; I know this is bad, I'm just, like, "the
looooore!" how are all these things fitting together.
Remake: do not like. I will say this: when I saw it I felt a twinge of sadness for the woman playing Nancy because I recognized everyone else in the cast from various CW shows or Twilight or whatever. But I had no idea who she was. This film was kind of a cultural flop; guess she never made it... anyway, turns out that's what famous and acclaimed actress Rooney Mara looks like. No, I haven't seen
Carol. I'll get to it!
Up until the 2000s, they were very careful to point out that Krueger was a filthy child murderer, figuring that a nightmare ghost that targeted children and chopped them to pieces with a glove made of knives was plenty bad enough.
But starting with FvJ, they decided that no, he also needs to be a pedophile as well. Did not like that particular retcon.
I didn't remember them making this
too much more explicit in
FvJ (I think maybe even
Freddy's Dead kind of did, though) but it was
very explicit in the remake and a huge mistake. Absolutely a good thing good taste forced some plausible deniability in the 80s - it would be even grosser to have Freddy just keep quipping and winning otherwise. It almost looks like the remake will do something interesting and have
Freddy not have committed sexual abuse but instead be a victim of paranoid parents now out for revenge. That's kind of the obvious thing to do considering Craven was influenced by the McMartin preschool trial case and maybe other Satanic panic stories. But
no, he did it, and now he's unkillable and I guess going to assault Rooney Mara offscreen before murdering her. Awful. Charmless movie. Okay, the last kill is cool. (even though again: I don't want that ending!)
Highly recommend the long documentary
Never Sleep Again which just has the cast and crew talking about these movies.
Friday's also got something like it -
Crystal Lake Memories.