Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

I had a feeling the "Elm Street" documentary was going to be something special, but I had no idea just HOW special until the pre-ordered disc arrived early. Initially I presumed that the 240 minute running time listed was for all the material on the 2-disc set, but to my great surprise and delight, that's actually the running time for the main feature. A few cast members (Ronee Blakely, Johnny Depp, Patricia Arquette, etc) are noticeably absent, but practically everyone else who worked in front of and behind the camera on an "Elm Street" film is interviewed.

There's something here for even the hardest of hardcore Freddy fans (of which I am one), with lots of interesting stories and previously undisclosed revelations, never-before-seen photos and behind-the-scenes footage, some pretty nifty stop-motion animated recreations of key scenes from the films, laugh-out-loud anecdotes and much more! This puts every bit of bonus material that New Line's ever released to shame (excepting, perhaps, the long out of print Anchor Bay special edition of the first film -- though a few clips from that are included here too).

"His Name Was Jason," the documentary on "Friday the 13th" franchise already proved that the best way to do a documentary on a horror movie is to turn it over to the fans, but "Never Sleep Again" has raised the bar even higher. Kudos and thank you to the production team for putting together this incredible documentary!

This is basically the review I did on Amazon in 2010!

I could write a ten page review about how much I loved this, but I'll spare you all! In a nutshell, this is a comprehensive and detailed look at not only what went on behind the scenes while making the Nightmare films, but it's full of great interviews with actors and crew.

We get to learn what everyone involved experienced before, during and after being in their respective films and it is absolutely riveting!

Special mention has to go to Heather Langenkamp for her work and dedication on this project!

It's impossible to be a fan and not love this!

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010)

**** (out of 4)

Four hour documentary covering the entire series (minus remake) is without question one of the greatest things ever produced for the horror genre. Both HALLOWEEN and the Friday THE 13TH series have had documentaries done on them but there's no doubt that this film here is above both of them and ranks as one of the most well-informed ever produced. I prefer both Jason and Michael but it's impossible not to be impressed with this film because the filmmakers were actually able to bring pretty much everyone back (with the exceptions being Depp and Arquette). Not only do you get all the directors, writers and main actors but we also get several who had very small parts like the "where's your hall pass" girl from the first film. All seven movies and then the cross over are given a large amount of time so that we can hear about them being made, hear about the various production issues and we also get to see some deleted scenes that I don't believe have ever been shown before. The entire film is one big highlight but some of the most memorable moments can be found in the section on part 2, which has become known as the gay Freddy. It's funny seeing the writer, director and cast talk about the gayness to the film and it's even funnier to see how most of them didn't realize while making the film. The troubled production here is also very interesting as if Craven's thoughts on a sequel to a film he had planned on keeping single. The Craven aspect is another one of the most interesting things here because, again, I don't believe he's ever really talked about any of the sequels outside the ones he was involved here but he comments on all of them here. His opinion of them is rather low, which is to be expected to a point but it's funny to see other directors, especially the man behind part 2, dishing on the original. FREDDY VS JASON gets a lot of time given to it as we hear about the dozens of screenplays that were denied before they finally came up with a winner. There were years of rumors and fake reports about what was going on with this film so to finally hear some true stories was a nice tough. The various endings were discussed as well as an alternate version that featured more of Freddy. The cast list is too large to even start with but fans won't be disappointed because all the majors are here as well as most of the smaller characters and we even get Alice Cooper for good kicks. Horror fans can always debate which series is the best or which films are the best of a series but I don't see how it would be possible for someone to sit through this thing and not be impressed. The passion of this thing hasn't been touched by any other documentary of its kind and I'd be willing to bet that those other guys are going to have to step up their game if they want to come anywhere near this. Everything you want to know will be answered here and it really gives one a major respect for what a small studio ended up doing with one character.

Back in the late 1970's to early 1980's, Writer and Directed:Wes Craven (The Scream Series, Red Eye, Shocker) created one of the most memorable villains of all time and his name is Freddy Krueger (Played by Robert Englund until the 2010 remake with Jackie Earle Haley as the new Freddy Krueger). Originally Wes Craven's screenplay was rejected by every major studio and every big-name producer until producer Robert Shaye (Book of Love, The Last Mitzy) decided to produced the movie with his then small distributor company turned major studio:New Line Cinema.

This documentary interviews most major cast members of the original series (Except:Johnny Deep, Patricia Arquette, Craig Wasson, Bradley Gregg and Laurence Fishburne), including every director, make-up artists, screen-writers and more. Interviews are surprisingly honest, they talked about what worked and didn't worked in the series. Even the spin-off "Freddy Vs. Jason" is talked about with the cast & crew.

Directed by Daniel Farrands (Screenwriter of "Halloween 6:The Curse of Michael Myers") and Andrew Kasch made an extremely long but always entertaining documentary of the entire original series. It is certainly more fun to watch than "His Name was Jason" documentary, which Farrands was involved in and it is better than "Halloween:25 years of terror".

Interviews on all the movies are certainly fun to watch, especially the underrated but flawed "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:Freddy's Revenge", considering how gay the movie is now! There's even an surprise interviewee on "Freddy Vs. Jason" is one of the biggest laughs of the feature.

Disc 1 is the entire documentary of "Never Sleep Again:The Elm Street Legacy". Which is nearly four hours long! DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) transfer and an good Dolby Stereo 2.0 Surround Sound.

Disc 2 includes slashed scenes:extended interviews of the entire series, featurettes and more. "Never Sleep Again:The Elm Street Legacy" is great fun and die-hard fans of the series will certainly have an ball watching it. Even non-fans will some of the interviews to be truly enjoyable. Don't miss it. (**** ½/*****).

This was the cap on a recent Freddy Krueger marathon, and even though I just finished watching them all, this talking-head / film-history doc's love and comprehension makes me wanna dive right back in. Beautifully breaking down every single Nightmare movie, and holding no detail or story or opinion back, it's a perfect companion for any franchise fan, and even a solid intro into the world.