Tag Archives: Movies

The Interns (1962)

Posted on November 10, 2013 | 1 comment

the interns

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Training to become doctors.

Based on the Richard Frede novel the film looks at a group of medical students going through a rigorous first year internship at the New North Hospital. All aspects of an intern’s experience are analyzed from their various moral quandaries to dealing with deaths of patients that they’ve become attached to and even sexism. We also get a glimpse of their private lives from their relationships and stresses to even their partying.

Although the film is entertaining and well-paced it is a bit too much like a soap opera. This comes to a particular head during the relationship sequences.  The characters seem to fall in love at first glance and the word ‘love’ gets expressed excessively until it becomes as irritating to hear as nails on a chalkboard.  It also has a mentality that every character ‘must’ magically find their life mate even if it seems particularly forced like with John (Cliff Robertson) who relentlessly chases after fashion model Lisa (Suzy Parker) even though she continually gives him the cold shoulder and the two can’t agree on anything including her need for an abortion from a unwanted pregnancy she had with another man. Alec’s (Michael Callan) is the only thread in this area that works as he proceeds to try to juggle two at the same time and the way he avoids a confrontation with the two while at a party is amusing.

There are some good scenes and even memorable moments. The best is when Lew (James MacArthur) finds an interest in obstetrics and delivers his first baby. The acrimonious relationship between Dr. Riccio (wonderfully played as usual by Telly Savalas who has hair here and isn’t completely bald as he usually is) and Dr. Bruckner (Haya Harareet) who he looks down upon simply because she is a woman, but eventually learns to respect is great. I also liked the party sequence the one moment in the film that gets lighthearted especially when 37 people try to cram themselves into a small closet in order to beat the world record.

The cast is interesting and eclectic. One can spot either an older veteran actor, up-and-coming star, or famous character actor in literally every shot. Robertson who sometimes comes off as stiff gives a strong all-around performance, which may be his best. MacArthur who would later costar in the long running series ‘Hawaii Five-O’ is also really good. Buddy Ebsen does well as a wise-cracking chief surgeon and it is great seeing the very young and beautiful Stefanie Powers as a nurse. John Banner who would later become famous for playing the incompetent prison guard Shultz on the long-running sitcom ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ can also be seen, but he is not given a single line of dialogue.

The film is glossy, but still compelling and if anything gives the viewer a good taste of what life of a medical intern is like. In 1965 the film was followed by a sequel The New Interns, which will be reviewed next Sunday.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 8, 1962

Runtime: 2Hours

Not Rated

Director: David Swift

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hospital setting

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The Jerk (1979)

Posted on November 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

the jerk

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: This is stupidly brilliant.

This is the type of film that looks like it was done by people that were stoned and meant for audiences that were equally stoned. The ‘story’ runs like it was conceived by someone who couldn’t come up with a real plot so they did this instead. The whole thing is as simple and mindless as the character it depicts with no real correlation to anything. Everything is thrown in haphazardly and at times looks like nothing but a very desperate and strained attempt for a laugh. This is coupled by a performance by Steve Martin that is very one-dimensional and even amateurish. He behaves like one of those annoying class clowns looking for attention and yet despite all this it still manages to be funny sometimes really, really funny.

This is a definite precursor to Dumb and Dumber and others like it and in many ways this is still the best as it completely stretches the stupidity axiom. It tests the audience’s perceptions on what is tolerable and logical. This doesn’t just have a couple of guys who are weird everybody and everything is weird. The humor works totally outside of the box. It gets you to laugh at things you didn’t think you would and also gets you to see things differently. It creates a warped world that for the first hour is consistent and fun, but by the second hour it begins to struggle and ultimately overreaches.

Martin’s ‘air head’ routine doesn’t seem too original since he had been using it previously in his stand-up acts and comedy guest stints. His character is too dumb and naive to be believable and there is never any explanation for it. He manages to give his performance a certain endearing quality, which is the only thing that saves it. The opening segment has him growing up a white boy amongst a poor black family, which borders dangerously close to being racist and stereotypical.

There is a good supporting cast, but they seem wasted and many of them only have a few lines. Bernadette Peters, as his love interest, really doesn’t add much however Jackie Mason is pretty good as Martin’s boss at a gas station. Maurice Evans is also fun as Martin’s butler and has an amusing way of responding to his wife’s sudden death. Rob Reiner, the director’s son, appears in a cameo as a truck driver who gives Martin a lift ‘up to the end of the fence.’

Overall this is pretty goofy stuff, but only for those who are in the right frame of mind for it. It’s a simple, scattershot formula that produces some genuine laughs.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 14, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 34Minutes

Rated R

Director: Carl Reiner

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, HDDVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Farce, Movies that take place in the South, Offbeat

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Eat the Rich (1988)

Posted on November 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

eat the rich

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rich feed the poor.

This is an extremely garish mixture of loud music, ugly visuals, and shock comedy. The story is about a waiter, a gay man with a real fun bitchy attitude, who gets fired when he refuses to suck up to the arrogant clientele. He gets revenge by banding together other misfits who return and kill everybody and then feed the dead bodies to new unsuspecting patrons.

Sounds gross and tasteless, but it really isn’t. There’s no nudity or sex and no graphic violence or gore. A little bit more of these things would have actually helped. At least it would have solidified it as the underground shock comedy it seems to be striving to be. Instead it’s cluttered with no real objective or foundation. At times it plays like biting social commentary and at other times nothing more than a silly gross out teen flick

By the time you get to the way off-base ending it becomes obvious that the filmmakers were trying to be outrageous simply as a way to get noticed. There is no real insight to the have and have-nots of society. They simply came upon the idea because they felt it would appeal to the type of audience they were looking for.

This is too bad because had it been a little more polished it might have been a stronger film. Believe it or not there are some clever bits. The jabs at the Queen are a riot. The scene involving terrorism and the Middle East crisis is a true original. The rich characters are so over-the-top obnoxious you have to laugh-out-loud.

The true scene stealer though is Nosher Powell. He is a former stunt man/ stunt coordinator who worked on many of the stunts in the early James Bond movies. Here he plays a sort of Teddy Roosevelt times ten a ‘working class’ politician who bullies everyone and everything. The actor has a rather rough, amateurish delivery which only adds to the saltiness of the character.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 22, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Richardson

Studio: Recorded Releasing

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Offbeat, Satire

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The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979)

Posted on November 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

the marriage of maria braun

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Maria gets her way.

Maria’s (Hanna Schygulla) husband a soldier in World War II is presumed dead. She decides to make her mark by getting a job and a new lover in the form of a black man named Bill (George Eagles), but complications ensue when her husband Hermann (Klaus Lowitsch) shows up very much alive. Maria enjoys her new found independence and isn’t interested in falling back into her old role, which causes friction with her husband as well as her interactions with others.

Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder creates a unique vision and manages to walk the balance between the gritty and surreal. The lighting is evocative and shadowy and nicely reflects his stage background. The sets are colorful and varied and one becomes almost hypnotically entranced with the visuals. The abandoned buildings and rundown locales especially at the beginning make a strong impression and become like a third character. Fassbinder echoes the desperation of the characters through visual means only without ever having to resort to melodramatics, which alone makes this a classic and far better than some other similar films about the period.

Equally great use is made of sound with two to three layers of it within each scene. Whether it is the noise of a radio, traffic, or someone whistling there is always some noise coming from the background much like in reality, which helps in a subtle way to make the scenes more vivid. I loved the dolly shots constantly moving the camera around in every scene throughout the rooms that the characters are in giving the viewer a full sense of their dimensions and helping breakdown the fourth wall.

Some memorable scenes include the moment when Maria’s husband comes back from the war and catches Maria in a compromising position with her new found lover. There are at least four minutes here where there is no talking from any of the characters and one becomes riveted with the silent reactions of the three, which proves powerful. Even the erotic overtones work. Normally I find that area to be rather clichéd and mechanical, but here the sweat glistening off the naked bodies seems genuinely evocative and enticing.

Many people feel this is a movie about budding feminism and applaud the strong female character. I really wouldn’t argue with that and in many ways it is fun seeing this woman forge her way ahead while remaining poised and stalwart throughout. Her relationship with rich businessman Karl (Ivan Desny) and the way she turns him into a subservient to her every whim while also explaining to him that ‘he isn’t having an affair with her, but instead SHE is having one with him’ is classic, but I also felt it seemed a bit artificial. Having a strong central character is one thing, but this woman seems inhuman. She never shows any vulnerability at any time and appears almost completely removed from the environment around her. Never once does she flinch, compromise, or back down from anything or anyone, which just isn’t possible and makes Maria one-dimensional in the process. A character is more interesting when their flaws are exposed and then they must work hard to overcome them, but this one doesn’t have any, which is my biggest issue with this otherwise excellent production.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: February 20, 1979

Runtime: 1Hour 58Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Studio: United Artists

Available: VHS, DVD (The Criterion Collection)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Classic, Drama, Foreign Films, Historical Drama, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, War Movies

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Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986)

Posted on November 4, 2013 | 1 comment

jumpin jack flashBy Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Whoopi plays spy game.

Due to Whoopi Goldberg turning 58 on November 13th and because whenever I watch a clip of ‘The View’ on YouTube she tends to be my favorite panelist I have decided to review each of the films she starred in during the 80’s for the next 7 Mondays. Critically her films in that decade did not fare well and she has even disowned a few, but since this is a 80’s movie blog I feel it is my professional duty to review them anyways whether some of them are torturous to sit through or not.

In this one she plays Terry Doolittle a bank employee who does a lot of transactions and communications through her computer. One day she gets a message from someone using the code name Jumpin’ Jack Flash who asks for her help supposedly to save his life. This sets into motion wild adventures in which she puts her life at risk and gets involved with everything from the CIA to foreign government powers.

Whoopi is the best thing about this otherwise silly and contrived plot. Director Penny Marshall nicely allows Whoopi room to flex her comic muscles while also taking advantage of her sassy and streetwise humor. The part where she tries to decipher the lyrics of the ‘Jumpin Jack Flash’ song by the Rolling Stones is full of all sorts of Goldbergisms and it’s great. Her impressions of Ray Charles and Diana Ross are on target as well, but my favorite part is when she is drugged with truth serum and then goes into a beauty salon and tells everyone there exactly what she thinks. My only complaint to her performance is her unnecessary use of the F-bomb, which turns this otherwise kid friendly story into an R-rated movie.

It is also fun to watch a lot of up-and-coming comic stars in small roles including Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, James Belushi, Tracy Ullman and Annie Potts. There is even a surprise appearance by Jonathan Pryce at the very end, but my favorite is when Penny casts her older brother Gary as a detective who has a humorously confrontational exchange with Whoopi inside a police station.

Marshall’s directorial debut is limp. I liked all the movie posters that line Whoopi’s apartment, but otherwise the visuals are dull. Her workplace environment and conversations that Whoopi has with her co-workers seems realistic, but not particularly interesting or amusing. The opening segment limps along while barely being engaging. The part where Whoopi gets her dress caught in a shredder has up-tempo cartoon-like music played over it, which puts the thing too much at a kiddie level.

The story itself is convoluted and confusing with little that is plausible. The shootout inside the office gets particularly ridiculous, but the biggest problem I had with the script is the way the Terry character gets herself involved in the mess in the first place. If she knew the person asking for her assistance to this dangerous mission I might understand it, but she doesn’t. After she is shot at and nearly killed, gets her apartment ransacked and is verbally threatened she decides to immerse herself even more into the precarious situation even when she is given the opportunity to get out of it, which most normal people would’ve.  The viewer starts to lose empathy for a protagonist when they act irrationally, which this one does. The idea that she is doing it because she has ‘feelings’ for this other person even though she has never met him, knows nothing about him and doesn’t even know what he looks like is just plain stupid.

Although the Rolling Stones song from which the movie is named after does get briefly played later on I felt it should have been used over the opening credits. I still prefer the Stones version, but Aretha Franklin’s rendition that is used during the closing credits isn’t bad.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes

Rated R

Director: Penny Marshall

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Movies Based on Songs, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Spy/Espionage

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High and Low (1963)

Posted on November 3, 2013 | 6 comments

high and low

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Pay ransom go bankrupt.

Kingo (Toshiro Mifune) is an executive of a shoe company who finds out that his chauffeur’s son has been kidnapped and comes under tremendous pressure to pay the ransom even it will make him bankrupt.

As with all of Akira Kurosawa’s films the production values are solid and the story is well paced. The very methodical police work and investigation is interesting and enlightening. It’s certainly nothing like today’s CSI shows, but well done for its period. The ending scene where Mifune faces the kidnapper leaves a strong and memorable impression.

However, on the negative side the set-up to the kidnapping happens too quickly without any type of buildup or tension. Almost the entire first hour takes place inside the living room of Kingo’s hilltop house and it would’ve helped to have some cutaways to other locales.  Mifune, who is billed as the star and gives a great performance disappears during the second hour only to finally reappear at the very end and I felt it would’ve been stronger had he been involved more in the investigation. Also, the revealing of the kidnapper is unexciting and a big letdown.  I had a hard time understanding why a guy who was so very crafty and sophisticated in every facet of his planning of the kidnapping would suddenly get so conveniently dumb and sloppy at the very end.

This is a decent Kurosawa entry, but in my opinion not one of his best. Yet it is still good enough to keep you captivated from beginning to end.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 1, 1963

Runtime: 2Hours 23Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Studio: The Toho Company

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (The Criterion Collection)

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Classic, Drama, Foreign Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Japan, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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Death Race 2000 (1975)

Posted on November 1, 2013 | 5 comments

death race 2000

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: New meaning to roadkill.

Based on the novel ‘The Racer’ by Ib Melchior the year is 2000 and a highly rated cross-country race takes place on television between many colorful individuals. There is Frankenstein (David Carradine) who has lost an arm and a leg in past races and must wear a leather mask to cover up his facial scarring. Then there is his chief rival Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone) and also Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov) Nero the Hero (Martin Kove) and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins). Of course this is no ordinary race as crossing the finish line isn’t really as important as how many innocent bystanders they can kill along the way.

The idea is outrageous and for the most part director Paul Bartel manages to pull it off especially within the limitations of the budget. There are real kick-ass car explosions here and none of that computerized crap, which in itself gives it a few extra points. I liked the scene were an actual car is seen dropping down a steep cliff and how they were able to block off long sections of highways in order to be the only cars on the road. Some of the dark humor is funny although more so in the beginning. The best moment is when a group of doctors and nurses wheel up some elderly patients onto the middle of the roadway in order to be slaughtered by the racers as part of the their annual ‘euthanasia day’.

Sly is really funny. I know some critics have gotten on him over the years about his acting, but here he steals it from his costars and the film wouldn’t have been as effective without him. Carradine is pretty good in his part and his more subdued acting style makes a nice contrast to Stallone’s flamboyant one. The two even end up in a nice fist fight. However, I liked the idea of having the Carradine character being this walking gimp of a man so intoxicated with winning that he continues to drive and compete even as his body falls apart. Having him take of his mask and look completely normal and making that all a sham was disappointing and took away the unique gritty mystic of the character.

The initial treatment of the script was written by producer Roger Corman and then Bartel was hired in to put a more humorous spin on it. Although I like the idea of having some comedy I still wanted more gore and grittiness. Instead it becomes too campy and cartoonish and losing the potential edge that it has at the beginning. There also needed to be more of a focus on the race itself. As it is it goes too fast with pit stop segments that bogged the whole thing down. They manage to get from New York to St. Louis in one day, which if going on I-70 would be 953 miles and doesn’t seem possible even at high speeds. There is also a question of the speed of these cars. Supposedly they are ‘real fast’, but there is one segment where Joe tries to run down a kindly fisherman and the guy is able to out run the car for quite a distance before he is hit, so they can’t be all that fast.

There is also a secondary storyline involving an underground group called the People’s army that is trying to sabotage the race and put an end to it. Initially I felt this thread would allow for more intrigue, but instead it makes the whole thing too over-the-top. The short running time doesn’t allow for such a convoluted plot and the whole thing would have been better served had they stuck to the race and racers personalities itself. The sappy ‘feel-good’ twist ending is terrible and ruins whatever potential edge the film had.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 27, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Bartel

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Campy Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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New Nightmare (1994)

Posted on October 31, 2013 | 2 comments

wes cravens new nightmare

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Freddy versus Heather Langenkamp

It’s been 10 years since the original Nightmare on Elm Street was released and actress Heather Langenkamp who played Nancy in the original is now have nightmares about Freddy and receiving strange phone calls. After talking with director Wes Craven, who is working on a new script in the series, the two surmise that some evil entity is using the character of Freddy Krueger as a portal to enter into the real world and it is up to Heather to once again play the character of Nancy in order to stop him.

The film is high on concept, but low on effective delivery. For one thing the film doesn’t go far enough with its original idea. The evil entity should not have been portrayed as just being Freddy all over again, but something much scarier and over-the-top. In my mind it would have been more interesting having Robert Englund being the one to have to go up against his own character instead of Langenkamp.  Despite the initial novelty of seeing the actors playing themselves the whole thing ends up devolving back into a rehashing of the same old formula.

The film is also overlong. It introduces its first act and then seems to take forever to get to the second one. There are too many gimmicks during the first hour including several scenes where a character, mostly Langenkamp, wakes up out of a nightmare only to find that she is in another one. The dream within a dream thing becomes confusing and irritating. The logic is threadbare, poorly thought out and many times a stretch.

The scares or I should say the attempted scares are pretty minor and not too prevalent particularly during the first hour. A lot of them are just stuff that is redone from the earlier films. When Heather’s husband starts falling asleep while driving home and then attacked by Freddy while on the road is very similar to the Dan character having the same type of attack while riding on his motorcycle in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and there it was much more creative.  When Heather’s friend Julie (Tracy Middendorf) has her body pushed up the walls of a hospital room and then on the ceiling while being slashed is exactly what happened to the Amanda Wyss character in the first film, but there it was creepy while here it is tacky. The same thing with Heather running up some steps in the climactic sequence only to have the stairs turn into mush just like what happened to her in the original.

The film uses computerized effects that only help to make things more overblown. When Heather’s son Dylan (Miko Hughes) races onto a busy highway and into oncoming traffic it is obvious his body was matted onto another screen and the scene reminded me too much of the Mel Gibson character doing the same thing in Lethal Weapon. The gothic castle-like setting that makes up the finale has an unimaginative Mazes and Monsters feel to it. The Freddy character has also lost his zing. I thought the character was supposed to have been someone suffering from burns, but here it looks like someone who has been skinned and very obviously a mask worn by an actor.

Hughes as the young Dylan character makes up the majority of the screen time. The kid is alright, but started to remind me of Danny Lloyd from The Shining especially when he tried to put on an evil possessed voice, which sounded very similar to Lloyd saying ‘redrum, redrum’.

The idea that this is supposedly a fresh perspective to the series is just an ill- advised gimmick that drapes what has become a very tired, mechanical formula that should have been put to rest. Out of all the sequels I consider this one to be the weakest.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 14, 1994

Runtime: 1Hour 52Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 90's Movies, Horror, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Posted on October 29, 2013 | 3 comments

Nightmare on elm street 5

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Freddy’s in the womb.

Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who survived Freddy’s attack from the last film and supposedly killed him is now suffering from those dreaded reoccurring nightmares again. This time she sees herself inside the mental institution where Freddy’s mother Amanda was raped and even witnesses his rebirth. She also finds out that she is pregnant and Freddy is trying to drive his spirit into the fetus so he can be reborn into the real world.

I came into this thing with extremely low expectations, but found myself delightfully surprised and consider this a definite improvement over the previous installment. Director Stephen Hopkins inserts a more artistic visual flair here. Some of the segments even have a certain Salvador Dali look especially near the end when the dimensions in the rooms inside the dreams begin to have all sorts of odd configurations. The use of a moonlit-like lighting accentuates the film’s dark imagery. I saw here the makings of the modern day horror movie that we are used to seeing today with more emphasis on the dark psychological undercurrent and less on the mechanical slasher formula.

The special effects are imaginative. Watching Freddy coming out of his mother’s womb as a baby is excellent as well as having him as a deformed baby run around an abandoned sanctuary as a sort of freak child. The scene showing Alice’s unborn baby inside her womb and attached to an umbilical cord I found to be quite impressive. I also was impressed with the segment where Alice’s skinny model friend Greta (Erika Anderson) gets her mouth stuffed with food by Freddy and her cheeks balloon out excessively, which may sound funny, but the way it is shown gets disturbing and even unsettling as they go back to it several times later on in the film. A segment cut from the theatrical release where Freddy force feeds her the insides of her own stomach can be seen on the unrated version.

The characters seem more like real people and the dialogue is an improvement as well. Wilcox now sports blonde hair and no longer has that reddish hair look that reminded me too much of Carrie. She also seems more confident in her role and gives a solid performance. Anderson, who was a former Elite model, makes for a pleasant addition to the eyes.

Freddy doesn’t have quite as much screen time as he did before, but that works for the best. The pace is slowed down with more emphasis on mood and atmosphere, which gives it a slightly more sophisticated feel.

My only real complaint is the blaring rap song that gets played over the closing credits, which is jarring and out-of-place.  Some fans of the series consider this to be one of the weaker installments, but I don’t agree. However, if you didn’t like it feel free to leave a comment as I would be interested to hear why.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 11, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stephan Hopkins

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

3 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Posted on October 28, 2013 | 1 comment

nightmare on elm street 4

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Freddy won’t go away.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) tracks down and kills the last of the three remaining Elm Street teens, but Kristen (Tuesday Knight) wills her dream powers to her friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who now finds herself taking on the different traits of the past victims.  As Freddy tries to draw on a new batch of teen victims she fights him off with her new found abilities.

What started out as a highly original idea has now become formulaic. I didn’t find any of it scary, or even all that entertaining. The nightmare segments are redundant and the storyline cluttered. I wasn’t wrapped at all in the perils of any of the characters and would be surprised why anyone would. The whole series would’ve worked better had it stuck with the original Nancy character solely being the victim of the dreams and her lifelong battle against Krueger instead of always having some new character being the victim of the nightmares, which starts to make it derivative.

The dialogue is stilted and the characters are cardboard. The acting is also uniformly bad. Past entries in the series have had teen cast member go on to super stardom, but it is easy to see why this one didn’t. Due to being pregnant Patricia Arquette was unable to reprise her role as Kristen and Knight makes for a very weak replacement. I also didn’t like Wilcox because she seemed to resemble Sissy Spacek and started to remind me too much of the original Carrie. I did appreciate Danny Hassel as Dan simply because his wooden acting and one-note facial expressions aptly reflected the dull personality of your average high school jock.

The special effects are okay. The part where Alice is at a movie theater and gets sucked into an old movie is groovy as is watching the attractive Brooke Theiss morph into a giant cockroach. The segment where the souls of Freddy’s victims burst out of his body is excellent and the best moment of the entire film. However, other effects like having the heads of Freddy’s victims on sausages of a giant pizza are too silly.

Englund is in top form and really seems to be having fun. The part where he bursts out of a water bed and asks Joey (Rodney Eastman) “How’s this for a wet dream?” is fun as are his other choice lines. Englund even appears briefly as a female nurse and does as the Freddy character a rap song during the closing credits.

The series at this point looks to be dying a slow death with not enough new elements being added in and too much rehashing of the same old stuff. It seems incredulous to me that another two entries were made before the concept was finally retooled.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 19, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: Renny Harlin

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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