31 Days of Halloween - Day 29: Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 - The Dream Master

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 29: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 - The Dream Master (Movie #346)

The Dream Master starts off with a lot going against it. It's not easy following The Dream Warriors (arguably the best horror sequel of all time). This film also gets a ton of flake for being the film that turned Freddy into a straight up stand-up comedian. Watching the 4 hour documentary Never Sleep Again there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stories that explain a lot about why this movie feels the way it does. Specifically the amount of times Robert England and Director Renny Harlin refer to this as the MTV Generation Freddy.

That being said, looking past that issue (and a handful of other flaws) this movie isn't that bad. I certainly prefer it over the next entry The Dream Child. The biggest reason I always like this movie is the cockroach kill which I think is the best death in this franchise (and possibly horror in general). It's so gross, disturbing and taps into my hate of bugs that it will always strike a chord with me.

The other plus is Renny's directorial choices. The scene in which Kristen is falling asleep due to sleeping pills her mom cooked into her diner has some incredible camera movements and the cockroach kill I mentioned earlier has a surreal moment where Freddy throws a barbell at the audience causing a mirror to shatter.

There's also some bad ideas. Like the invisible karate sequence. It's probably best we forget that ever happened in a movie.

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.