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"Freddy's Revenge"

Started by Fearless Freep, September 28, 2002, 11:07:37 AM

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Fearless Freep

So this month I'm going back to watch all the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.  I'd only seen the first one.

Anyway, ahving just finished Part II: "Freddy's Revenge", I had to make some comments.

1) In Part I , Freddy was hitting teens in different locations, he just happened to end up at one particular house.  In Part II, it comes across like Freddy is haunting a particular house

2) What's with the renegade toaster. It was connected to *nothing* in the plot and was not in Freddy's style.  Seemed more a device to say "spooky stuff is happening...be afraid" but it made no sense at all

3) What's with the exploding parakeet.  Same as above, absolutely no connection to  Freddy's modus operandi.  And the bird wasn't really that menacing, either.

4) What's Freddy's motivation?  In Part I, Freddy was trying to kill kids in their dreams.   Actually, Part I  was more of Freddy's Revenge against the parents who had killed him.  In Part II, he's trying to possess a boy to go out and kill randomly for him.  Did the writer actually see the first movie?  

5) The director had way too much interest in half -dressed and undressed teenage boys then I was comfortable with.

6)  Took  *forever* to get going.  The move was slow and boring for a long time, punctuated by the toaster and parakeet scenes, which served more as jarring reminders that nothing was really happening then actually providing any setup tension.

7) Dialog....ugh!!!!

8)  Where did the fire come from, anyway?  Freddy is 'killed' by a fire  from a spontaneously combusting factory?  Why?

All in all, the premise was ok, dead guy trying to kill people from beyond the grave by possessing a teenager to go out and kill for him.  But *that* plot doesn't fit well with the established Freddy from part I, and the execution was terrible in this round.

From what I've seen of Part III so far, it looks like the writer has a better understaninf of how Freddy operates.

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting

Will

Could be, since Wes Craven wrote #3.  Part II is definitely my least favorite of the series. Basic rule of thumb for Nightmare on Elm Street movies: If at least one cast member from Just the Ten of Us is NOT in it, it's no good. i know that's weird, but I swear it's true.  1,3,4, and New Nightmare are the best ones.


Steven Millan

                   Actually,both Frank Daramont and director Chuck Russell wrote the final filming script for "Nightmare...3",for Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner's original script(which was published as a trilogy novel back in 1986)was far too extremely gory and dark(all of the Dream Warriors but Kristen die in that script,and their deaths involve numerously splattery impalements and decapitations),if anyone is curious to know.
                 Otherwise,Parts 2 and 5 are the least favorites of the series,even though New LIne Cinema was rightful in being heavily ambitious and thoroughly creative in their handling of the series(as well as a little too profit obsessed at the time)than Paramount ever was with their "Friday The 13th"/Jason movies,making Freddy more of the modern day equalient of Universal's  and Hammer's movie monsters and their ever popular series.

J.R.

Freddy's Revenge is by and large known as the "gay" NOES film. Undressed boys, that scene in the leather bar, like the director was going for that. Anywhoo, it's long been an annoying staple of horror sequels (usually Part 2s) to focus on mundane things that have nothing to do with the story.

I would have loved to have seen Wes Craven's original script for Dream Warriors used. I've never understood why so many people love that movie. "Use your dream powers!",  ugh. If, however, everyone had acted so retarded and then met grisly deaths, that would have been classic.

John

Lessons learned from Dream Warriors: When you have superpowers in a dream and are hurting the untsoppable killer, do not rush up and let him grab you!

Haze

On both movies, part 2 is actually in my opinion one of the better ANOES films, it holds a dark atmosphere and developed characters as well as some very good effects for the time. Anyway it may not be how Freddy operates but it shows how Freddy is capable of doing many things with his powers (This includes posessing someone) it makes more sense than you think, Freddy is a demon and demons can supposedly posess people so it makes sense to me anyway.

On part 3, I love this one because it is not only exciting and still dark but it shows diversity to the point that Jason or almost any other killer can not go. It just shows how well Freddy is at his self appointed job and how malicous and sick his character is. Also the kills are different because it feeds off their different fears and paranoias. I agree that Craven's script would have been more appropriate but this one is still one of the better 80s slashers.

These are my opinions but Hell thats what these boards are for.

Fearless Freep

Being that this is all opinion :)

it holds a dark atmosphere and developed characters as well as some very good effects for the time.

I thought the characters were terrible, and very poorly acted.  Everyone was a steroetype, at best, most  thinner than one dimensional.  The distant father, the over-sympathetic  mother, the sadistic gym teacher.  All so flat you could see the brush strokes on their cardboard cutout  personalities.  

The scene were the fath accuses the kid of killing the bord with a cherry bomb was just painful to watch; the dialog was silly and senseless and the acting was...brrr

The only two characters given serious death scenes were the sadistic gym teacher and the 'best friend' who was usually being a jerk.  Had me rooting for Freddy to whack off a few more stupid characters and if he'd gone after the dad, I'd have cheered.  This seemed to be more  "Jesse's Revenge" against all the people being mean to him in his life.  Jesse as a whiner was far less interesting than Nancy willing to fight back.

Anyway, I just finished up "Dream Warriors" and a couple of things that came to mind.

1) I liked that they went back to the premise of the first, Freddy killing people through dreams, and killing the kids again of those who had killed him.  Although given that 20 kids were supposedly killed by Freddy in life, plus all the kids from the same street  having dream problems and suicide problems, there are some statistical anomolies on that street that someone whould've noticed :) (And just how long is Elm street anyway, because we have a lot of people involved)

2) The kids were fairly simply drawn and semi-stereotypical; given how many there were, that's understandable that they didn't have time to further flesh them out.  The acting was decent and the characters were at least somewhat sympathetic.  They had enough personality that yuo felt bad when they died

3) The 'dream power' angle was sappy.  Nancy beat Freddy the first time around simply by figuring out what was happening and that to beat Freddy required strongly differentiating between reality and fantasy.  Bringing in the whole "dream power' angle just felt silly.   If anything, that should play more into Freddy's hands because it seemed that the more immeresed you are in the dream, the more you're in Freddy's domain.  That actually  happend to the kid who who thought he could beat Freddy through his 'wizard power' only to find out that Freddy was still running the show.  Again, the girl-drug-addict with the knives thought she could take Freddy in a fight.  Her dream-view of herself gave her a lot of misplaced overconfidence and she died as a result..  In the end, the 'dream powers' were at best useless and at worse, dangerous

4) Heather Langenkamp - sorry, but her acting was..pretty bad.  She did ok in scenes with only the kids, but in mixed scense (like the group sessions), she tended to getting lost and in scenes with the better actors (John, Saxon, Craig Wasson, some of the better furniture ) she was painfully outclassed.

5) When the mute kid yells and the other kid (Kincaid?) said "you found yuor dream power!" I had flashbacks to "Hook" with Robin WIlliams finding his 'happy thought'.  I almost expected the kid to start flying.  truly the silliest of the 'dream power' moments, and worth singleing out

5) The girl and the tricycle  - what happned to that?  It looked like a setup of some sort  than got forgotten about.

All in all, an enjoyable movie in the series, given some sillines that could be overlooked

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting

Akira Tubo

Freddy's Revenge is easily the most enjoyable of all the Nightmare movies.  In fact, it's really the only one I like.  It's twisted, man, and I like that.

Chadzilla

Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> The director had way too much interest in half -dressed
> and undressed teenage boys then I was comfortable with.
>
>

That was intentional on Jack Sholder's part.  I remember reading interviews where they tried to make the possessed Jesse Walsh (note the gender ambiguity of the name) seem androgynous in nature.  Perhaps director Sholder and screenwriter David (The Curse) Chaskin were making Freddy symbolize sexual orientation fears.  The movie did contain a rather interesting "Cruising" sequence with the Coach, if I remember correctly, and, at one point, Freddy comes out of Jesse's midsection in a "birth sequence".  I'll have to revisit the movie to jog my memory, but reading The Dread of Difference as well as Men Women and Chainsaws has changed my perception of Horror Film symbolism ever so slightly.

Chadzilla
Gosh, remember when the Internet was supposed to be a wonderful magical place where intelligent, articulate people shared information? Neighborhood went to hell real fast... - Anarquistador

Fearless Freep

Perhaps director Sholder and screenwriter David (The Curse) Chaskin were making Freddy symbolize sexual orientation fears

Rather silly because I thought the whole fear/attraction of Freddy was that you can't avoid sleep and in your dreams you're pretty defenseless.  There's a certain inevitability in "I'm going to sleep, eventually, and when I sleep I'll dream and when I dream I'm going to die"  (In the interviews with the writers on the videotape I rented, that subject comes up)

This further reinforces my belief (commented above) that they writer/director of "Freddy's Revenge" either had very little knowledge of who/what Freddy was about, or didn't really care.

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting

Akira Tubo

"Rather silly because I thought the whole fear/attraction of Freddy was that you can't avoid sleep and in your dreams you're pretty defenseless."

Something inside of you that you can't escape, that has the potential to utterly consume you and alienate you from everyone you love, is pretty scary, too.

I, for one, applaud the makers of Freddy's Revenge for going in a completely different direction instead of simply rehashing the first movie (as did the makers of Dream Warriors).

Fearless Freep

I, for one, applaud the makers of Freddy's Revenge for going in a completely different direction

I don't because they way they did it was pretty lazy and the actual execution of the movie was so bad (see all the other points above)

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Going places unmapped, to do things unplanned, to people unsuspecting