A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

On Sunday, August 30th, Wes Craven passed away, having lost his battle with brain cancer. As the acclaimed director of so many horror films, and the creator of one of horror’s foremost icons in Freddy Krueger, Craven’s work was certainly loved by many. He was the kind of guy who brought horror to the forefront and made it palatable for the masses - while still putting out quality stuff. In remembrance of Craven's legacy, I’m doing a special review of his original 1984 classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, John Saxon

IMDb

I remember seeing this when I was about 14 for the first time, and I thought it was like nothing else I’d seen. The flashy colors, the fast pace and the surreal horror of the nightmares – it was a spectacle and it grabbed me by the throat in a vicegrip. Looking back now, it really was so influential to what came later. It opened up the doors for horror to take on realms outside our own, to explore nightmares and multiple realities, and it gave us all that in such a vibrant and colorful package – taking ideas explored in other psychological films to new levels by visualizing them. We felt the terror.

We start off with our fake main character, Tina, who has been having bad dreams of a man with long fingers for knives and wakes up with her nightgown slashed to ribbons in the front. Her initial suspicion was that Wolverine from the X-Men had snuck into bed with her, but she will soon find out it’s something much worse. Her mom tells her she either has to “stop having those dreams or cut her fingernails,” and ah yes, the days when parents could be that callous about their children waking up with cut-up clothes…

The third option is stop sleeping with scissors in your bed.

She tells her friends, Nancy and Glen, about the dream the next morning, but they of course shrug it off as insanity, as something so insane as a man with knives for hands could never pose a threat to them.

Johnny Depp is looking that way because Wes Craven held up a picture of a two-headed baby off screen to see if the actors could keep their concentration. Depp failed, so he was selected to be killed off later in the movie in the most brutal way.

That’s Johnny Depp as Glen, there, in his first movie role ever, who you might have trouble recognizing in this because he isn’t wearing a shitload of makeup and his hair looks like a normal person’s.

They all have a sleepover that night because Tina is afraid of her nightmares. When they hear a noise outside, they go to check and find it’s Rod, their delinquent wannabe friend who fulfills the ‘80s leather jacket’ quota for the movie. Because every 80s movie needed one of those, ya know – just a product of the time. They get into some verbal banter outside, and Rod immediately responds by pulling out a switchblade. Uh...guys, I’m really not sure that’s the dude you want to bring to your sleepover party.

"I'M NOT OVERREACTING!!!"

Rod then has sex with Tina, which is fine until afterwards when she is brutally murdered by knives cutting her up and throwing her around in the air. Gee - that’s how you know you’ve really got to work on your fucking game. When your partner dies.

Fuck. Just, holy fuck. What a brutal scene.

But this is actually the introduction of one of horror’s most iconic characters, Freddy Krueger, who I’m pretty sure was modeling your grandma’s Christmas sweaters for a living before he got big in this film. The scene where he’s introduced is excellently done, especially because he stretches his arms out like Slinkies and scrapes the walls with those long, metal claws he has. Yes, that's the reason it's excellent. Shut up.

Goddamn, this was all so fucking whacked out and insane. In the best way possible.

But this is a great scene. The nightmareish atmosphere is furiously fast and fun, and the acting is spot on from Englund and Amanda Wyss, who played Tina. Afterward, the surviving characters even start to figure out that Freddy stalks them in their dreams. Good for them. It's good that they're smart.

As Tina has left the building, the movie convenes in an emergency session after that and elects Nancy the new main character. She’s understandably upset the next day as she is in school and falls asleep only to wake up and see this:

Ugh, SO violating the dress code.

Then she runs into the worst hall monitor in the world:

Sorry to go on a bit of tangent here, but really, what is the point of hall monitors anyway? Are you just promoting some fascistic system where kids can’t be trusted to do things by themselves? I mean, if Freddy Krueger can transform into an annoying hall monitor with a striped sweater and a bleeding nose, and nobody notices that that isn't a good hall monitor, maybe it’s worth it to get rid of the profession as a whole.

We also get scenes of her visiting Rod in jail after he is arrested. Rod tells her he didn’t kill Tina, it was an invisible man cutting her up while he was in the room. You might recognize THAT as the lame-ass defense everyone gives now when they're accused of murder, but it actually started with this movie.

Rod is then killed in his cell, which prompts Nancy's father, the sheriff, to start intervening. He's played by John Saxon, the only man in Hollywood at the time who could use such a stern voice all the time.

Suicide, or killed by nightmareish dream-demon for revenge for his parents' sins. Either way, this isn't cool.

His sternness is eternal. It will never die. It will live on even longer than he himself.

While taking a bath at home, Nancy drifts off to sleep, which allows Freddy's hand to try and attack her in the tub. An interesting note: In this scene, actor Heather Langenkamp was not acting. She was just taking a regular bath in the privacy of her own home. Craven just wanted the fear to be real, which, really, is the only way to do a horror film.

Nancy is admitted to this psychiatric clinic where they test her brain waves while she's asleep to get to the root of the problem. The reason you know they're professionals is because they have computers and are wearing white coats. Nancy begins screaming insanely and bloody scratches start appearing on her, so, job well done, scientists! She's good to go home now, and you guys can continue doing your scientist-y jobs.

The greatest scientists in the world.

At home, Nancy has a shouting match with her mother, who refuses to tell her anything meaningful about Krueger. Why? Nancy already knows about him and is saying he's the one killing everyone. Who else could be killing everyone? How would Nancy know about Krueger if he's dead and in the past like her mother tells her? Does her mother really think she's that crazy or susceptible after just hearing his name once or something? I have so many questions.

None of which her mother will answer.

We also find out the sordid backstory of how the parents in the neighborhood burned Krueger alive in his boiler room because he was a child murderer. Which is bad, don't get me wrong. But what neighborhood doesn't have a good story to tell over hamburgers and beers at a cookout? Come on.

Glen is hanging out in his room later on when his bed eats him and spews out a bloodshower enough to cover the entire room for several seconds straight. I think that's awesome.

Clearly he was healthy, considering how strong his blood is.

We then also get the greatest phone sex scene in the history of movies.

So it's really just up to Nancy, who engages in a battle with Freddy. She manages to get Freddy into the real world, which results in one of the better jump scares I've seen – she wakes up, thinking it might actually all be over, and then he pops up from behind the bed. That's kick ass. Nancy isn't impressed, though, so she just sets him on fire and calls it a day.

Her father, the master of all good timing, shows up just in time to see his wife get eaten by a bed with a Halloween smoke machine in the room. Boy, the beds in this movie sure are hungry tonight.

The awesome kind of horror special effects I wish we would see more these days.

So everything seems to be good finally. It's a sunny day and perfect weather for a sunroof and parent murder:

So that's the end – the nightmare is reality and you can't really ever tell when it's over. Craven originally wanted the film to end in a happy manner, with everything that happened in the film just being a nightmare. I have to admit that would have been interesting. But I guess I'm a dark soul, because I like the ending we got. It works because it further blurs the line between the real world and Freddy's nightmare realm, like the whole rest of the movie was doing.

However – I can still see where Craven was coming from. His ending could've been good too. That's because this is a great horror movie, and it doesn't live or die by circumstance like that. This is a story about being young, right on the edge of adulthood. It's about the feeling of your parents dismissing what you say because you're a kid – but in your mind, you're almost an adult; they should listen to you. The kids in this movie find out that a devil in their nightmares is killing them, and it's their parents' fault. The kids themselves are blameless, yet they are the ones who face the penalty for their parents' sins.

Then, not only that, but their parents foil them at every turn in this film – Glen certainly would still be alive if his dad hadn't hung up on Nancy during that scene when she tried to reach him. Nancy's mom could have told the truth halfway through this movie and saved a bunch of lives. In ANOES, the parents are the “villains” - though they have no ill intent, they don't listen to their kids, dismissing them just for being kids, which is an all-too-common thing amongst adults. There's a sense of helplessness about everything in this film, which you, the viewer, feel by proxy of the characters.

Oh, and I guess Freddy Krueger is pretty evil too. I mean c'mon. The guy is a child killer, for fuck's sake.

Through the insane visuals, the groundbreaking story blending reality with dreams, the horrific visual nightmares and the iconic Freddy Krueger, who makes the most of his seven minutes of screentime here, Wes Craven and company created a classic. This is one of horror’s greats. If you haven't seen it, I really recommend it. And if you have, well, then you know what I'm talking about.

RIP Wes Craven. You are gone, but your work on this great film will live forever.

Images copyright of their original owners; we own none of them.

REVIEW: My Soul to Take (2010)

It’s Wes Craven time! This famed director can really go either way. On the one hand, he directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream. On the other hand, he directed The Serpent and the Rainbow and the subject of today’s gala of wrongness, My Soul to Take.

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Max Theriot, John Magaro

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0872230/

This is a very interesting type of bad movie. It looked like a generic Nightmare on Elm Street rip off – I mean, it’s a story about a bunch of kids stalked by a serial killer who died years ago; come on – but really, it’s bad for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT reasons! I know I’m usually a lot grouchier than this when a movie this terrible comes around but…I can’t help it; this is just too interesting to me! I’m like a kid in a candy store with this shit.

The film starts off with some guy who can’t act, trying to act. He’s a father with a wife who likes to watch on the news about what kind of knife a serial killer currently on a killing spree uses, because, you know, THAT’S something the news would broadcast! What, do they just think people are going to be able to get a close enough look at the knife to be able to quickly call 911 and report it before they get slashed? And for that matter, the knife says ‘Vengeance’ on it…why? It’s never explained! Not even two minutes in, and I’m already confused!

"Ooh, a knife! Cool!"

Then the father finds the knife in the sink and the movie has an epileptic seizure trying to convey the idea that the father is crazy. He does some silly voices and the camera flashes in-between really choppy scenes of creepy angles of him. Then we find out he killed his wife, and the cops come and get him, but he won’t die, and talks to them in a voice that sounds like Jigsaw from the SAW series. Then some stuff blows up, we find out that seven babies were born at exactly midnight and…we flash forward 16 years later!

Okay, I gotta take a breather; this movie is exhausting. That was like 5 minutes of screentime right there. Maybe even less! This whole thing is like the cinematic equivalent of a speed junkie’s personal video blog. You don’t have to cram EVERY SECOND of screentime in with nonsense, Craven. You CAN have a quiet, atmospheric moment or two, you know! Why am I the one telling him how to make his movies? I’ve never made one!

So in the present day, I guess, a bunch of kids are all gathered around in the woods where they apparently glorify the killer from before every single year on the exact day he died, which is their birthday – that’s right, these seven kids who were born when the killer supposedly died all get together each year to ritualistically pretend to kill a big puppet made to look like what they imagine he looked like. They get stopped by the cops because apparently there’s a curfew in town, and they’re all really surprised at this. Why? They do this every year. They should know about the curfew! Why is it such a surprise to them?

Anyway, we see our three main heroes, Bug, random black kid we won't see much, and our main star, Asian kid!

Hey, it's The Goonies/the kids from The Sandlot/the kids from IT/the kids from Chronicle...

Now, in an interesting twist, the Asian kid is actually a really well developed character in this movie. He has a clear motivation, a lot of depth and faults that anyone can relate to…nah, just kidding, he gets killed off in the next scene:

Yes, apparently this serial killer does it execution style and throws his victims off bridges...

After that it’s high school time, as we see one of the kids, Alex, getting into a fight with his drunk, abusive jackass of a stepfather, who drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon, so according to South Park, that’s why he’s a drunk, abusive jackass of a stepfather. I’m so glad Matt Stone and Trey Parker are there when I need them. But hey, if my stepson was in The Box, I’d be pretty angry at him too, so I can kind of sympathize with the stepfather a little.

Alex goes to school and meets Bug, where they hatch a plan to put Bug’s phone in the girls’ bathroom to overhear what they’re saying. Am I in the same movie still?

No, really; am I in the same movie? This IS a horror movie, right? And not Bratz: The Movie or some kind of fashion model photography shoot? Because you're not making a very good case for the former, Craven, I gotta tell ya.

Yeah, apparently the girls in this movie are like the mafia of high school, led by this one chick who’s watched way too many Helena Bonham Carter movies, Fang. Yes, Fang, that’s what they call this girl. They talk shit about Bug and Alex and some other people and it gets them both slightly pissed off at one another. They say that Bug has been in institutions and has killed people before. They say Alex just uses Bug like a monkey. This of course causes both friends to turn on one another with disbelieving looks! But wait, if they’re such good friends, why are they so ready to believe random shit-talking they secretly overheard from the girls’ bathroom? Shouldn’t they be good enough friends to where they would KNOW that whatever the girls said wasn’t true?

We also get this really strange scene where Bug starts imitating everything Alex does and says somehow, like he’s possessed, and has to be slapped to snap out of it. It’s…mostly incredibly pointless. Just like this little paragraph!

We see some religious girl talking to another girl who the head jock of the school got pregnant, I guess. Isn’t there supposed to be a serial killer in this movie? We’re 40 minutes in, and not more than one poorly explained, brushed over kill scene has happened! The pregnant girl is worried about her baby, so religious girl says “It’s a baby, not a bomb.” Well unless you’re in Dracula III: Legacy:

I bet you didn't expect me to reference Dracula III again, did you? But yeah, to make a long story short, they both get killed I guess.

Then we see this girl named Brittany running away from head jock asshole guy Brandon, who wants her to give him a blowjob. She comes across the dead body of the religious girl outside, which is weird, because they weren’t even anywhere CLOSE to there when she was killed just ONE SCENE AGO…but what’s even stranger about these scene is that Brittany assumes Brandon did it, just at the drop of a hat for no reason. She accuses him of killing this girl like she’s accusing him of stealing her homework. What a smart character. Luckily her punishment for this moronic dialogue is death!

Not EXACTLY a good shot...

Then Brandon gets axed, too, and the killer utters the brilliant line: “Fuck your fucking unborn child!” Wow, Wes Craven…just wow. I don’t know why I expected better lines than this from a movie serial killer…OH WAIT it’s because Craven directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was famous for its killer’s witty one liners that DIDN’T involve profanity and ridiculous try-hard tough guy-isms! Silly me.

At home Bug finds out that his mom baked him a birthday cake. He tells her he likes that Brittany girl – you know, the one who just got killed – and she says “Isn’t she a little sophisticated for you?” What the hell? I guess she won’t be winning any Mother of the Year awards! You might as well just tell him “Honey, you’re a hopeless loser and you can’t even talk to most girls; just give up.” I mean…wow! That was pretty cold.

After that we see one of Craven’s brilliant plot twists as that Fang girl who was acting like the Godfather of the high school mafia is actually Bug’s older sister the whole time. Yeah. Real riveting twist, right? She tells him she hates him and that he ruined her life because he’s actually the son of the serial killer from the beginning of the movie, who everyone thinks is back and killing again. Then she beats the living crap out of him, because nothing says horror movie protagonist like getting beat up by your own sister:

So…HOW did this never come up in any of their no doubt wonderful familial conversations in the past SIXTEEN YEARS?! I’m sorry, I don’t buy it! There is NO WAY none of this crap was just NEVER brought up that whole time Bug was growing up!

After that we see Alex again for the first time in about a half hour. He comes in and talks to Bug about some stuff and then casually mentions, near the end of the conversation, that he just got back from murdering his stepfather. Yeah…wouldn’t have mentioned that FIRST THING, would he? I guess he just didn’t think it was very important.

Bug goes to get him a drink, sees his dead religious girl friend in the mirror, gets his father’s knife with ‘Vengeance’ written on it back somehow, and then goes downstairs and finds his mom dead. One cop comes in – yes, one cop; I guess sending more would have been a stupid idea – and tries to arrest him, angry that Bug would kill his mom NOT because he killed his mom, but because he was a symbol of hope for the town after his father killed his actual mother in the opening scene. Yes, HOW DARE HE HAVE A SERIAL KILLER FOR A FATHER AND COME OUT SCREWED UP BECAUSE OF IT! What an inconsiderate little shit.

The cop then gets killed by the actual killer a second later.

Bug and the killer fight a little bit and the killer apparently has teleportation powers, avoiding every gunshot fired at him somehow. Bug goes upstairs where it’s revealed that Alex was the killer the whole time, because the killer’s soul randomly picked his body at birth 16 years ago to transfer into…I don’t know, just go with it. Alex goes outside while he internally monologues about how he isn't the hero the city needs, but the one it wants right now, and that he can fake it FOR THE SAKE OF THE TOWN…

Actually on second thought, no.

Yeah, this movie was special. I don’t even know what to say about it. Craven conjures up, somehow, some decent drama with this thing, but there are so many plotholes, stupid scenes, terrible acting and horribly inconsistent storytelling moments that I can’t overlook them all. My Soul to Take is honestly a trainwreck of a film that you could probably miss and be a better overall person for it, and if you really want a GOOD 'troubled teen' movie, go watch Chronicle instead. But if you want something so terrible and so ridiculous that it's actually hilarious, well, My Soul to Take will do the job. Happily, in fact.

None of the images or videos here belong to me. They are copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: The Breed (2006)

The Breed…a movie about superintelligent, super-vicious dogs attacking people on an island. It’s stupid, it’s kind of bland, so why are we even wasting any time, right? You know what has to happen now.

Director: Nick Mastandrea

Starring: Michelle Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez, Michelle Rodriguez (not that I really like her that much, but compared to the rest of these characters, sure).

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455362/

The film begins with our generation’s Christopher Columbus and his bikini-clad girlfriend drinking on a boat and searching for a new world to colonize. They’re excited because in their random sailing in the sea they found a random island! How delightfully random. No, seriously, that seems to be what they were doing…just arbitrarily floating along with no clear destination. Isn’t that always a recipe for greatness? The girl goes into the woods to see what’s on the island and gets eaten by the camera.

Camera-devouring deaths are among the most lethal kinds. Especially prominent in hot blonde girls prone to starring in horror movies. -The Surgeon General

Then we see our main characters who are flying in a private jet to the same exact island, where apparently the two brothers, Matt and John, had an uncle who died and left them this cabin, which they’re now going to stay in for a little mini-vacation while Matt is studying for finals…because I guess they couldn’t have waited until he was just done with them, or something. Oh, and we’re also introduced to the only good thing about this movie, Nicki. She’s Matt’s girlfriend, who is played by Michelle Rodriguez. And she’s pretty much the only really interesting character in this.

So they get to the cabin and fool around for like 20 minutes…the token black stereotype character, Noah, and the other girl of the group named Sara flirt a little, and so do Nicki and Matt. And that’s really about it…woo-hoo?

Then Sara finds a little dog outside which she brings inside, only Noah says something mean to it and it runs away, like it can actually understand him. She chases it outside, but then a bigger dog jumps out and bites her on the leg. Even though Matt wants to do the sensible thing and take her back to the mainland where they can get it treated, John and the others say no, they want to stay out and party, because it’s not too serious yet. Yeah, screw personal safety and health; we want to stay and party! God, these people are dumb. You know what; they deserve everything they get. No sympathy for them anymore!

Then the next day Sara is acting weird. So weird, in fact, that she violently stabs a pancake in cold blood.

Did this movie really just try to make pancakes intimidating? “Watch out, she stabbed that pancake like she MEANT IT!” Truly I am horrified now.

Then the guys all go hunting in the wild, which is fine until Noah gets split up from the others and runs into the world’s only dog mafia:

"Calling Kibbles n' Bits Agent 12, over! He's headed for the south side, over!"

They know about those debts he didn’t pay and they’re fed up with waiting. They follow him without attacking (for some reason) and he finds the others JUST IN TIME for them to run into Christopher Columbus from the opening, who apparently has survived this entire time and is covered in blood, which I hear is very tasty when you're the opening kill character in a horror movie that somehow survived to the half-hour mark. The dogs decide they want to find out for themselves, and they tackle him like a football team. A big, hairy, four-legged football team.

And thus ended his quest for the new world.

Seriously, they jump him like a bunch of starving kids at a McDonalds! I guess they just really liked him a lot better than the other guys even though all four were standing in the same area…oh, I forgot; if they attacked now, there wouldn’t be as much suspense later on. Silly me.

Then everybody reconvenes at the cabin and they decide to try and go get the boat, except they can’t do that, because the dogs bit the rope anchoring it down, and now it’s floating away. But they can’t go swim and get it either, because whoops, there are dogs sitting on the plane’s wings too! The lengths these dogs are going to stop them from getting away is just ridiculous, and moreso when later on you see how inconsistent they are about it.

And did I mention that I’ve always wanted to fly the “dogs on wings” airlines? It has a certain je ne sais quoi to it.

They're here for the airline food. If you know what I mean.

So yeah, they lock themselves back in the cabin after that, and we’re treated to the movie’s exceptional racial sensibility when we see Noah acting like the stereotypical black character he is. So glad these writers aren’t insensitive. It’s like he’s a manlier Chris Tucker at some points. Anyway their next plan of attack is to use the pulley to slide on a rope to the shed, where the car is. Only Nicki can do it, except she got injured on the leg when John shot her with an arrow – like the true archer he is. But since it’s Michelle Rodriguez, this really is only a flesh wound, as she makes her way over to the shed, gets inside and does some kuh-razy gymnastics to escape the dogs. This is the only good part of the movie, and even then I suspect it’s because it only has her in it, and not the rest of those morons. And she didn’t even accomplish anything by going over there anyway, since the car wouldn’t start and the dogs started jumping at her before she could fix it. Sooooo sadly, a pretty pointless scene aside from getting to watch Rodriguez kick some ass.

You go girl. Keep in mind that she's doing this with a heavily injured leg, and she's STILL kicking more ass than the rest of the characters combined. That's classy right there.

Back at the cabin, Noah goes down to check the fuse box and get some more wine out of the cellar when he gets attacked by a dog that was somehow silently waiting down there! It didn’t go up and attack them all indiscriminately because it knew it was in a horror film. So it just waited for someone to come down there instead. I guess dogs are smarter than we give them credit. Oh, and nobody really cares that their friend is dead, either – the most he gets is a casual “I can’t believe Noah is dead” before they change subjects again; real great friends these people were.

Truly the most emotional death scene I've ever...oh who am I kidding

After that, it’s nighttime, and we learn several things, like a) the dogs just leave them alone at night and don’t even try to come in at all, and b) being bit by one of them makes you act…slightly irritable when people try to touch you, for some reason, as Sara does when John tries to hug her. OK then; I thought it would actually be something a little more interesting than that…

Then the next day the dogs crash through the walls of the house to attack them. Why didn’t they do this before? No answer...I guess they just really liked building up the suspense.

John and Matt get the car and drive out, intending to…do something, I’m sure. When they reach the cliff and remember that they’re actually on an island, they go back to the house and get attacked by some dogs on the way. Why didn’t the dogs go to the house and attack the helpless and injured females still there all alone? Maybe John and Matt just smelled better.

Sara dies and none of them seem to care at all, and they drive away to find the dog “training” facility on the other side of the island. They somehow climb over the barbed-wire fence and go in. John climbs up this big electric tower to try and get some cell phone signal working when he sees the boat that Christopher Columbus and his doomed busty girlfriend brought in at the beginning. And why didn’t Columbus go back and use the boat to sail away in when he was running away from the dogs during the first part of the movie? GOD, HOW MANY PLOT HOLES ARE THERE? You know it's a bad sign when I have to ask these questions every few minutes!

The dogs try to attack Nicki, but she blows them up along with the whole factory in a giant blaze of fire. Matt and John think she’s dead, but her Michelle Rodriguez powers pulled her out of it fine, and she escaped without a scratch. They get on the boat and start going home when another dog attacks! It had been hiding in the boat the whole time just waiting for someone to get on and relax their guard! So THAT’S why Columbus didn’t take the boat! Because the movie had to set up a contrived and silly ending jump scare! Of course!

Yeah, that was the end of the movie, too. This whole thing was just dumb. Every single plot point, and the center of the movie’s suspense, was entirely reliant on the fact that these dogs are smart enough to outwit the human characters. But that doesn’t work when the writers can’t seem to decide on how smart they are. One minute they’re smart enough to make sure the humans can’t use their plane to leave, but then they seem like they don’t even know what they’re doing when they ignore opportunities to attack them later. And I thought there could have been an interesting plot point with Sara getting sick from being bitten. A few times it seemed like she was becoming one of them, or something (which is actually a good idea), but she got killed off before we could really see, so yeah, big waste of time there too. What a piece of cheap junk this was.

Now I'll end this review the only way I know how: