Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

Just go to watch.In exploring the Elm Street saga, the film presents photographs, storyboards, conceptual art, publicity materials, archival documents, and behind-the-scenes footage that have never been previously shared. Never Sleep Again expands on Wes Craven's motivations in creating the first Elm Street film. It also explores behind-the-scenes of the original film and all of its sequels. Through interviews, the film shares how cast and crew brought their own worst nightmares to life on screen and examines the impact the series and its mythos have had on pop culture and the horror genre in general. The documentary also explores the rise and fall of Robert Shaye's New Line Cinema and its reputation as "The House That Freddy Built".

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!

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/*****).

When I first heard that a documentary was being done on the entire Elm Street series, I figured it would be a fun one-hour film that brought back a few key stars to discuss a few behind the scene stories and celebrate the pop-culture that is Freddy and the Nightmare Films.

Boy, was I wrong! Instead, the Makers of Never Sleep Again gave us the most definitive fan-based documentary that has no equal. It is a four hour wet dream with interviews from the biggest stars like Robert Englund to nameless extras like the people who burst out of Freddy's chest in Dream Master. Every film is probed in detail on story-lines, subtexts, and behind the scenes incidents. They even go into Freddy's Nightmares, the short-lived syndicated television show.

The four hour long documentary itself is worthy of the eternal praise of this film and would be more than enough to satisfy the biggest Fred Head's appetite, but Never Sleep Again give us more. It give us another four hours of extras that equal the entertainment value of the documentary.

Even with all of that, there is more. If you order from the Never Sleep Again website by June 1st, you get a signed poster from none other than the legendary Scream Queen herself -- Heather Langenkamp!!! If you did see the Remake and feel let down and ripped off...Never Sleep Again will most certainly make you feel better.

This was simply put, the best, the most comprehensive, the most audacious, the most auspicious and loving fan letter to any lover of this series of films that anyone could expect. Kudos and a clink of the champagne glass to all involved, a labour of love that delivered.

From it's humble beginnings to it's controversial subtexts, revealing interviews piece together the history of the elm street series and paint a portrait of the horror community that made me stand up and applaud "Yes I am a horror fanatic and yes I am proud" Much we have seen before on the pretty comprehensive 8 disc set of Nightmares that New Line put out a decade or so ago, but so much new material and history has happened since then.

The lowlight for me was seeing former studio head Bob Shaye, a man broken after losing control of his studio due to politics. And when he broke down on camera, so did I, who would have thought, in tears in a documentary about the "ELm Street" series. SHeesh I must be getting sentimental in my old age. Every character actor from every movie is interviewed in depth and a running time of four hours - it still felt short! By the end the film had me standing and clapping at the screen like so many teen girls on their first Twilight viewing. Awesome Awesome Awesome. A Perfect 10.