Le Cauchemar de Freddy

The Best in the industry (at the time) were responsible for the stunning special effects. The special and practical effects together with the incredible make-up never disappoints in this series.

Several characters from 'A Nightmare on Elm Street 3' including Kirsten, Joey and Kincaid return. Joey and Kincaid are once again portrayed by Rodney Eastman and Ken Sagoes, but Kirsten is now played by Tuesday Knight, and unfortunately she wasn't as good as Patricia Arquette.

With Nancy gone and Kirsten not lasting very long, Alice (Lisa Wilcox) becomes the new heroin, having received Kirsten's powers of bringing people into dreams. Alice has a dream-like presence, which works so well for the movie. She has a crush on hunky Dan (Danny Hassel). This film brings an end to the last of the Elm Street children, and having tricked Kirsten, Freddy now has new victims to torment.

The film blends humour and horror amazingly well, without the humour getting in the way of the action or suspense. Ha-ha, and there's a dog named Jason in a Freddy movie!! Classic!

With 'A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master' having nice characters, a good story, fantastic effects, and being atmospheric, this almost felt like it ought to have been the start of a franchise, and not the fourth film in a franchise. The effects are hands down the best since the original and some of the best yet for an 80's horror movie in general. Made almost four decades ago, the effects are still incredible. This was also the best in the series since the original. This was awesome!

This doesn't have the well-known cast of the previous Nightmare 3 movie but the special effects are still good.....each very different and some of them very funny. They make this perhaps the most entertaining entry in the series.

Memorable scenes include a junkyard, a water bed, a classroom, faces in a pizza, a girl bench pressing and faces coming out of Freddy's flesh. The storyline, however, features its usual dumb and ridiculous theology and has its usual share of unlikable obnoxious teens. Their parents weren't pictured as any better, perhaps worse.

In fact, the kids and parents are so bad you wind up rooting for Freddy to do them in. Perhaps that's the idea!

Freddy is resurrected from the dead when a dog takes a pee on the ground in the scarp yard in which he was buried! That kind of sets the tone for the fourth instalment. When this first came out on VHS I was blown away by the special effects & it quickly became my second favourite in the franchise, after the first film. This was mainly due to the special effects (impressive at the time) and gimmicky way in which people die. However, 30 years on and in my opinion the film has lost some of that initial positivity, I know think that part 3 is a far better movie. There were splashes of humour in part 3 but it still managed to also be a dark, scary horror film. But in Dream Warriors Freddy is now more of a comic, spouting corny one-liners, which is something that I personally wasn't so fond of. The special effects are the real star here. It's still a fun movie to watch but I think it was the point where the series started to go down hill. Linnea Quigley has a nice little topless part as one of the souls coming out of Freddy's body, worthy of a freeze-frame!

Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) directs Dream Master, the fourth entry in the franchise about a maniacal dreamstalker named Freddy Kruger. The entry is extremely passable and enjoyable.

The survivors of Dream Warriors are still haunted by memories of Freddy Kruger. But Freddy isn't quite dead as he picks up his glove and takes up where he left off...with vengeance. The only flaw in his plan: a shy outcast named Alice who harbors powers that will enable her to do battle with Kruger as she assumes qualities of past Freddy victims.

Although some of the more interesting characters are sacrificed first, the Nightmare franchise proves to be deeper and more original than any other slasher series around. Some inventive deaths and imagery on display as Robert Englund devours the scenery as Freddy.

The original 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is still to me one of the scariest and best horror films there is, as well as a truly great film in its own right and introduced us to one of the genre's most iconic villains in Freddy Krueger. It is always difficult to do a sequel that lives up to a film as good as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' let alone one to be on the same level.

While the best of the sequels from personal opinion is the third, the fourth one is another one of the series' better sequels. Like the third film it is not on the same level as the original, a very difficult feat, but it does have enough of what is a large appeal of the original and why it works so well. Not perfect, but a lot of very good things.

'The Dream Master' is not without its flaws. With a couple of exceptions, the acting is largely wooden (while not the worst offender as such, Tuesday Knight is no Patricia Arquette) and the beginning rock song is really cheesy and feels out of place. The story at times gets a little silly.

However, Lisa Wilcox is a winning lead and Robert Englund continues to terrify as the iconic character that epitomises "what nightmares are made of". 'The Dream Master' is to me the second best directed sequel, courtesy of Renny Harlin, giving a potentially clichéd premise freshness and imagination.

Special effects are neatly executed. The humour is darkly comic and very funny and there are some wickedly cracking one-liners. The scares are aplenty and they are legitimately creepy with some cool deaths (the water bed one is a strong example) and amazing dream sequences thrown into the mix. Alice being flung into the on-screen action from the cinema balcony is one of the series' most marvellous highlights.

It's a beautifully photographed film, particularly the dream sequences, and is the most unique-looking 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel with its European art-horror visual style. The production design is both dream-like and nightmare while the music is suitably haunting.

Overall, good sequel and one of the series' better ones. 7/10 Bethany Cox