Elm St. Anarchy - FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE

After years of diminishing returns and a near lifeless horror market, New Line felt it was time to give up the ghost of the franchise that made them, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.  The honor of putting the last nail in Freddy Kruger's coffin fell to Rachel Talalay, who had worked on every NIGHTMARE since the very beginning.  This was Talalay's chance to put her own spin on the series.  The result, 1991’s FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE, was less of a spin and more of a tornado.  Prepare to get dizzy.

The Capsule:

Alright, I'll give it a shot.  The year is 1999, and the last living child in Springwood (Shon Greenblatt) escapes the razory clutches of that dream controlling asshole, Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund).  He takes refuge in the adjacent, unnamed town, where he is immediately arrested for having amnesia and thrown into the classic one-size-fits-all Youth Shelter that only exists in movies.  There he meets the rest of the misfit cast.  Rich kid Spenser (Breckin Meyer) is there for disappointing his controlling dad, and also arson.  Tracy (Lezlie Deane), is a touch-averse kickboxer with anger (and daddy) issues.  Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) is there because…he has hearing problems? Since the only thing John Doe can remember is that he is terrified of Springwood, crackerjack therapist, Maggie Burroughs (Lisa Zane), hauls him back there, with the rest of the delinquents stowing away in the van.  Maggie’s flooding therapy technique goes poorly, resulting in the deaths of several youths in her care.  None of that matters, because it was all an unnecessarily convoluted plan to lure back Maggie, who is really Kruger’s hitherto unmentioned daughter. She is the only one who can transport his spirit (maybe?) and allow him to escape Springwood.  Because…he couldn’t…leave before?  For some reason?  In any event, Maggie and the remaining delinquents must pool their dream strengths and defeat Freddy before he can torment the five or six people living in Unnamed Town, or pass the child killing torch onto daughter Maggie Kruger, or something.  Also, Yaphet Kotto is there.  

I have to put this out there, this is not a good movie.  It’s not even a so bad it’s good movie.  It’s like a neutron star, collapsing in on itself from the shear density of its badness, creating a reality that cannot be measured by modern science.  It does not follow the rules of the previous NIGHTMARE entries.  It doesn’t follow its own rules from the previous scene.  FREDDY’S DEAD is beholden to nothing, least of all logic.  Not even basic math.  John Doe, the amnesiac teen from the beginning, becomes convinced that he was the child taken away from Freddy Kruger, despite being specifically told this happened in 1966.  33 years ago.  Again, he is a teenager.  This sort of ballsy defiance of reason is usually reserved for ‘80s Italian horror.  Impressive show, Ms. Talalay.

The line between dream sequence and reality is nonexistent.  It’s like looking through the eyes of a schizophrenic on acid.  At first, I honestly thought all of Springwood existed inside a dream world bubble, since that is exactly how it is portrayed in the beginning, and because every person in the town is bugnuts insane.  Plus, every scene is classic nightmare shit.  When Maggie orders the escaped delinquents to drive themselves back to the Youth Shelter (as any responsible guardian would), all roads lead back to the town square, CHILDREN OF THE CORN style.  Carlos is almost smothered by an ever-expanding fold-out map that tells him he’s fucked.  The nondescript abandoned house the kids break into physically transforms into Nancy’s house.  But the kids still have to fall asleep before Freddy can get them.  

The movie doesn’t even follow dream logic.  Sometimes, it plays by the classic rule where the dreamer's physical body manifests the same injuries inflicted in the nightmare.  One kid lands on a bed of spikes in a dream, he gets a chest full of holes in the real world.  Another time, though, Freddy jams a stick straight through Carlos’ skull and the dream just goes on.  I'm no doctor, but I think that would have killed him.

Sure, other sequels have played fast and loose with the dream/reality connection, but this one really takes it up a notch.  Since Spenser likes video games, Freddy pulls him into a faux Nintendo nightmare where he must fight an 8-bit versions of his dad.  Tracy jumps into the dream world to save him (because she inexplicably has Dream Warrior powers).  Except, instead of going directly into the Nintendo dream, she goes into sort of a dream lobby, where Freddy in front of a TV, controlling Spencer’s game (on the Power Glove, naturally).  To make it extra confusing, Spenser falls down a pit to hell that exists in the real world, but not the game world.  It’s multiple dimensions of what the fuck. 

Anyone going in hoping for scares will be sorely disappointed.  Freddy sets the tone in his first appearance, riding a broom, doing a Wicked Witch of the East schtick (I'll get you, my pretty, cackle, cackle).  At this point in the series, Freddy has fully transitioned from Boogieman to Bugs Bunny.  I will bet money there is a deleted scene somewhere with him saying "Ain't I a stinker".  Hell, the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons from The Simpsons are more visceral—and plausible—than anything Freddy does here.  The most frightening thing in the movie is the surprise cameo from Rosanne and Tom Arnold as child-longing wackos at the sad little Springwood town fair.

One of my favorite things about the franchise is how each one shoe horns in more backstory about Freddy Kruger.  Sure, he murdered children, but did you know his mom as a nun and he’s the son of a thousand maniacs?  Usually, they are minor details, but FREDDY’S DEAD goes balls to the wall with the backstory retcon.  It seems that Fred Kruger was not the cellar dwelling degenerate we all thought.  Turns out he was a clean cut, home owning family man.  Things only went south after he kills his wife for snooping in his kid killing dungeon in the basement.  That “accident” is why they (the entire town, apparently) took his daughter away, and that injustice is Freddy’s real motivation for going after the children of Springwood.  The whole “being burned alive by an angry mob” thing was just ancillary.  

I usually don’t go into special features here, but I had to know more about how something this aggressively batshit came to be.  The short interviews on the Blu Ray amounted to apologies by the director, producers, and, appropriately insane, Clive Barker, who had nothing to do with the series.  I’m not sure he is even talking about this movie in his clip.  So, I dug deeper.  It seems that New Line cut almost 20 minutes out of Talalay’s final cut, which could explain why nothing in this movie makes any goddamn sense.  Plus, they deemed that the last act of the film—the big showdown—would be in 3D.  Filming in 3D at that time was notoriously touchy, so Talalay had to scale down all the action and stunts to make it work.  The resulting marriage of anticlimax and painfully hideous effects isn't what anyone was hoping for.  

And yet… I kind of like this movie. It has a very punk esthetic, railing against the establishment, doing whatever it wants.  Daring to be stupid.  That was a Weird Al Yankovic reference, but that kind of fits, too.

I dig the weird structure. Starting off with the ominous computer display, it seems like the entire future has gone to shit.  Every location is dirty, filled with trash and graffiti.  The Springwood scenes have a surreal, funhouse quality.  I also love that no one from Unnamed Town knows the infamous history of the ghost town that is, according to the signs, literally 2 miles down the road.

I really dig Talalay's refreshingly feminist spin on things.  The franchise is known for some fantastic female characters, especially for the slasher genre.  Maggie and Tracy can’t hold up to Nancy and Kristen (Patricia Arquette version), but they take charge and do not back down.  Tracy routinely kicks Freddy’s ass every time they meet, and she figures out how to escape the dream before he can turn the tables.  Plus, she doesn't die.  None of the women in the main cast die.  That by itself is something special.

And while they basically replay the “bring Freddy out of the dream” gimmick from the original (except with less booby traps and far more ninja throwing stars) the final daughter vs. daddy fight is so one sided that you feel sorry for Freddy.  Maggie absolutely destroys him, snapping his fingers, nailing him to the wall, snatching away his glove.  It is very cathartic.  Switching tactics, Freddy tries to seduce Maggie down his evil path, but she's not falling for any of his bullshit.  Daddy's girl guts him with his own finger knives and shoves a lit pipe bomb into his chest. There's no look back after the dust settles, no suggestive winks.  Maggie happily declares "Freddy's dead" and that's a wrap.  I wouldn't have been surprised if she looked straight into the camera and give it the finger.  Fuck you, goodnight!   

The movie was financially successful, thanks in no small part to an inventive marketing campaign.  So much so that it lead the way for Wes Craven's classy reinvention, A NEW NIGHTMARE, to render Freddy's final demise just as moot as all the previous films.  Talalay went on to make the equally daft, but slightly more coherent TANK GIRL, before becoming a prolific and still active television director.  Yes, FREDDY’S DEAD may be the runt of the NIGHTMARE litter, but Rachel Talalay took a tired franchise and created something risky, distinct, and anarchic.  What's more punk rock than that?

C Chaka

The Strange, Strange Case of Galaxy of Terror, or A Rip-Off Comes Full Circle

In today’s world of re-makes, re-boots, and re-imaging, it’s easy to overlook the most humble version of capitalizing on the past, the straight up rip-off.  Rip-offs are often seen as just being derivative cash-ins, which they certainly can be (NEED FOR SPEED mostly reminded me I’d rather be watching a FAST and/or FURIOUS).  But sometimes, when you dump a bunch of familiar ingredients into a pot with a couple of oddball ones and mess with the cooking time, you get something unexpectedly satisfying.  Without the DIE HARD rip-off, you wouldn’t have UNDER SIEGE, without the JAWS rip-off, you wouldn’t have PIRANHA, without the STAR WARS EPISODE IV rip-off, you wouldn't have STAR WARS EPISODE VII. 

One of the masters of the rip-off was Roger Corman.  He was renowned for taking a hot property and churning out half a dozen or so variations on the theme, as quickly and cheaply as possible.  More importantly, he also had an eye for young, hungry, unique directors, and he gave them the latitude to be creative.  Even if they were saddled with making a rip-off, they could put their own stamp on it.  This often resulted in strange hybrids; chimeras that were one part blockbuster aspiration, one part low-budget compromise, and one part lunacy.  One of the looniest ever to come from Corman’s rip-off factory was GALAXY OF TERROR, (1981, Dir. Bruce D. Clark).

On paper it was an ALIEN rip-off with a dash of STAR WARS inspired metaphysics, but this was only the connective tissue.  The space in-between was filled with wacko characters, bizarre psychological horror, boobs, blood, and scenes no one had ever seen in a movie before.  Allow me to encapsulate:
 
Glow-headed videogame enthusiast, Planet Master, orders a rescue party to travel to the barren world of Xerxes to search for survivors of a crashed spaceship.  The hand-picked crew of mostly insane people includes Captain Laura Palmer’s mom from TWIN PEAKS, a mute Sid Haig who worships crystal boomerangs, a man steaming mad at corpses, claustrophobic psychic Joanie from HAPPY DAYS, and Robert Englund in nice guy mode.  There’s also the guy from MY FAVORITE MARTIAN as a simple cook and certainly not an android like Ian Holm in ALIEN.  I don't know why you would even think that (not foreshadowing).  Captain Laura Palmer’s mom, who is not the galaxy's most responsible spaceship driver, almost kills everyone three times before her ship is guided to the surface of Xerxes by a mysterious force.  The crew locates the crashed ship, finding only bodies, which the nutbag team leader immediately incinerates, not really helping the investigation.  He’s kind of the anti-CSI.  One by one, the crew are attacked by their deepest fears made manifest.  Sid Haig is killed by his own boomerangs (and his own arm).  A scaredy-cat astronaut gets a really aggressive scalp massage.  One tech officer is unfortunate enough to have an irrational fear of being fucked to death by a giant maggot.  I can't remember what the Latin term is for that phobia.  Robert Englund has a split screen fight with his inner Kruger.  Joanie definitely does not love tentacles.  Finally, the bland hero, who is not interesting enough to have cool or ironic fears, must face the ultimate evil in the bowels of an alien pyramid.  Does he have what it takes?  Will anyone escape the planet alive?  Can anyone figure out what the hell the ending means?  

This movie is bonkers, right from the get go.  The believable, lived in future of ALIEN is nowhere to be found.  It's more like BUCK ROGERS' sleazy, loser cousin on a mescaline trip.  Obviously, it is endlessly entertaining.  Even the super gross stuff, like the rapist maggot, is too ludicrous to really be offensive.  In the scene, a regular sized maggot grows as big as a VW Microbus and flops on top of the worm averse crew member.  Technically, I guess she suffocates, but it very strongly suggests that the maggot has other things on its mind.  It is clearly a fake, and comes close to Ed Wood Jr. territory.  However, like the best of schizocinema, it's played straight.  As straight as that sort of thing can be, at least.

It also has a number of legitimately solid touches, including one of my favorites, the alluded to, but unexplained back story.  Captain Laura Palmer's mom (who you should never, under any circumstances, accept a ride from) suffers PTSD from the ill-fated Hesperus mission.  It had something to do with aliens and she was the sole survivor, but we get no other details except that she's haunted by it (not a good thing on a planet that feeds on your fears).  Even better, the bland hero and the corpse hating team leader clearly have some beef about a previous mission.  The corpse hater has a MAD MAX style leg brace, so it's probably justified.  Neither one goes into the specifics, though.  If they had explained it in exposition, it probably would have boiled down to the old chestnut, "Your recklessness almost got me killed the last time!", or something equally predictable.  Instead, the director wisely decides to leave you guessing.  It's the mystery that makes it interesting.  

The set design can be impressive, too, especially for being a cheapie Corman movie.  Some of the matte paintings are truly spectacular, and the planet exterior scenes feel appropriately bleak and alien.  The reason for this is perhaps the movie's most interesting facet, the Production Designer and Second Unit Director is none other than a young James Cameron.  So the rip-off of ALIEN can actually be seen as a prototype for Cameron's official sequel, ALIENS.  Tonally, the films are miles apart, but there are unmistakable similarities.  The crew from GALAXY is sent to a desolate planet on a deliberate rescue mission, just like the Colonial Marines in ALIENS, and both are more militaristic than the reluctant explorers from ALIEN.  There are scenes in a tight tunnel like the one Bishop crawls through in ALIENS.  It is even more apparent in the art direction, which Cameron had direct control over.  The scene of the GALAXY crew walking through the wreckage of the crashed spaceship is almost a mirror of when Ripley's gang are surveying the debris of their downed dropship.   None of the wacked out characters filtered through to ALIENS (thankfully), though some of the names were direct nods.  Colonial Marine sergeant Apone was in honor of GALAXY's Mechanical Effects man Al Apone.  Bill Paxton even worked as a carpenter on GALAXY.  Now, we can all agree that ALIENS is an indisputable masterpiece (all of us), but who knew a cheap, goofball early '80's knock-off played such a large part in its creation.  That, and HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, but we'll get into that at another time.

The tale gets even stranger.  Not only was GALAXY inspirational for James Cameron, it also has a bizarre connection to Ridley Scott's own wacko semi-sequel/prequel, PROMETHEUS, 21 years later.  In Scott's mega-budget space epic, while inside an alien pyramid, a simple maggot is transformed into a large, phallic shaped monster that face rapes one of the investigating crewmen.  Hmm.  Now, I'm not saying that Scott stole the pervert maggot idea from GALAXY OF TERROR, but if he ever saw that movie, that is the scene he would remember.  

C Chaka