Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Tagline: They saved the best for last. It’s funny because I still have two more Freddy films to go.

Curiosity: Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is actually the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie I ever saw, as a way-too-young lad. While it seems lame today, the scene where Freddy (Robert Englund) blew up Carlos’ (Ricky Dean Logan) head freaked me out for weeks.

Plot: Set in the awful future of 2001, Freddy Krueger has killed almost all of the children in Springwood, Ohio save for one. After giving the final child amnesia, Freddy sends “John Doe” (Shon Greenblatt) out for fresh meat. He eventually stumbles into a juvenile shelter, where he meets Dr. Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane). Together, they try to figure out what Freddy wants from him, before he kills again.

Thoughts: For me, this is the installment that has aged the least well. But that’s really only because, as my introduction to the Nightmare series, Freddy’s Dead scared the bejeebits out of me as a child. Now, however, all I see are Roseanne Barr cameos and unnecessary connections to other, better horror/fantasy tales like The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, Wizard of Oz, and even Fantasia (That is why they used Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” right?). Not to mention the fact that the filmmakers were still recycling imagery from The Dream Warriors.

Still, the film deserves credit for trying to deepen Freddy’s history by explaining the events that made him so gosh dang evil. Writer/director Rachel Talalay (Tank Girl, Kyle XY) returns the series to its surreal roots, although she tends to oversell it, especially during the film’s first half. One character’s observation that Springwood is like Twin Peaks is more of a bid for credibility than an accurate comparison. I also enjoyed Johnny Depp’s return to the series [SPOILER: Freddy hits him in the face with a frying pan]. And given all the different methods kids have tried to defeat Freddy, this ending makes more sense than most (here’s looking at you, The Dream Master). But my favorite part overall is the bit of dialogue designed to tell the audience when to put on 3D glasses. See, the last 10 minutes or so of the film were shot in 3D - note the way the characters suddenly start holding things way, way away from their bodies - and Maggie, for no real reason, puts on 3D glasses to denote that it's 3-Dizzle time. At one point, she even tells the audience to keep their glasses on. Brilliant!

Reflection: There are sooooo many Goo Goo Dolls songs in this movie. What would Bruce Dickinson think?