Right off the bat, there's a non sequitur of a prologue where Freddy appears with sunglasses and a walking stick and makes a bad pun about blindness before we cut to a character in the middle of a distinctly non-Freddy related story.
I know, I know. You're thinking: That's exactly how every episode of "Freddy's Nightmares" starts! If that's not what you're thinking, then heads-up: "Freddy's Nightmares" was an incredibly awful short-lived anthology show from the late 80's where Freddy introduced each episode and sometimes popped up to make wisecracks before commercial breaks.2
I would love to know who thought it would be a good idea to take that unwatchable show and turn its format into a book series. And then I would like to give that person a stern talking-to. By golly!
Because in my heart of hearts, this is the only contemporary horror franchise I still kind of care about. Now yes, you may be jumping up and down and yelling that I reviewed the "Friday the 13th" YA books, but I was never really a Jason "fan." I just watched the movies out of youthful nihilism.3
I had a complex relationship with the "Nightmare" films as a kid. I was terrified and fascinated every time I saw Freddy's burned visage on movie posters and video boxes. I had genuinely disturbing nightmares about the guy. I'd always had nightmares, but the ones with Freddy were the worst. I mean, c'mon- the notion of dying in reality when you die in your dreams is scary!
But you can't spend your whole life being afraid. So how did I finally overcome my fear of this Freddy guy?
I watched "Nightmare on Elm Street 4."
And I loved it. Plus, it felt really empowering to face the demon and find it not to be as scary as I expected.4
And the nightmares went away.
In the years that followed, I had a lot of seriously nasty nightmares about the "Killer Klowns from Outer Space"- no, I'm not kidding- but I never once had another nightmare about Freddy.
So in a case of cinematic Stockholm syndrome, I grew to love the movies that scared me the worst. I obsessively sought out any books or movies that were remotely gross or scary.5
They also fired my imagination. I visualized scenes and thought about how I'd make my own "Elm Street" films and I wrote a TON of Freddy Krueger fan fiction and ripoff stories.6
Now, I recognize that Freddy is EXTREMELY morally problematic. They downplay this everywhere but in the wretched 2010 remake,7 but Freddy was a child molester and murderer before he was torched and became the dream demon. That's all kinds of not okay.8
Especially as an adult who has kids of his own now.9 I identify more with the vigilante parents that set the evil guy on fire than anyone else in the series.
Bottom line: to this day, I have opinions on all things Elm Street related. Comics, cards, music videos, tie-in books, remakes, Bollywood ripoffs, American ripoffs, you name it.
Which brings us to this book, which I'd never heard of until a few weeks ago.
Let's dig in.
For starters, the writing is wretched. Behold:
"Alicia shivered- from cold or fear, she wasn't sure which."
"Alicia bolted upright in bed! A nightmare...Or was it?"
And that's just in the prologue.
This literary atrocity happens later in the book:
"With the speed of a guillotine blade, Alicia's mood went from low to high."
You could probably write a master's thesis about everything wrong with that sentence.
Our story starts with a girl waking up from a dream- OR WAS IT?- and going downstairs. Getting excited yet? You should be! Because then, apropos of nothing, our protagonist's mom accidentally cuts her hand in the kitchen and leaves a TRAIL OF BLOOD across the floor but insists she's fine. Our protagonist helps clean up the blood and then right before leaving to go to school, she doesn't wash her hands. She just rubs her bloody hands off on the back of her pants to dry them!10 Was "bloody butt" a fashion trend in the mid-90's that I missed?
From there it's blah. A kid gets bullied and is pushed too far and takes revenge...OR DOES HE? Our protagonist tries to help the bullied kid and then she randomly develops hysterical blindness. So basically this is Flannery O'Connor's "Wise Blood," but with less "wise" and more "blood."11
The bullying teenagers never once resemble actual human beings. Though, in fairness, neither do teenagers IRL. They're horrible people. So writing about teens is kind of a lose-lose proposition. You do it wrong, it comes off as stupid and sloppy. You do it right, it comes off as annoying and infuriating.
Most chapters end with ridiculous fake-out cliffhangers. They become almost comical by chapter four: "The teenagers screamed at the top of their lungs as death in the form of several tons of steel rushed at them."
And then they hit the brakes and nothing happens. Everyone's fine. As always.
The book basically trains you to take nothing seriously. Whenever there's a gunshot or a scream at chapter's end, you instinctively shrug and say "That was nothing." And it always is.
The ending is dumb and abrupt, too. Our protagonist is in mortal danger...then she isn't. And it's over. And there's a completely unnecessary- and unnecessarily cruel- bonus ending where the poor guy who got bullied suffers even further. What was that about?
This story has pretty much no "Elm Street" connection, either. Freddy introduces the story and drives away on page two, only to reappear at the very very end. The book is halfway done before Freddy's name is even mentioned in passing.12
And it's not like there weren't opportunities for Freddy shenanigans. The main character falls asleep and passes out like every other chapter. For goodness' sake, she falls into a COMA in one scene. And we get nothing. For all the fake-out cliffhangers in this book, it would have been more than fair to throw some Freddy-related nightmares in and fake us out with some mayhem there. But nope.
And when the twist ending comes and the story finally actually directly involves Freddy, it flagrantly violates the rules of the "Elm Street" series in the exact same way as the legendarily bad- and unintentionally homoerotic- "Nightmare on Elm Street 2."13
And where in "Elm Street" continuity is this even supposed to be happening?
Buckle up, because this is gonna get geeky:14 the book's cover has Freddy's face from 1994's "New Nightmare," a world where the "Elm Street" movies exist and Freddy was a fictional character. But this story takes place in the "fictional" town of Springwood. So that ain't right. It's briefly mentioned that Freddy is a topic parents in this town don't like to talk about, but that doesn't give us any context or timeframe. I mean, if we accept it as part of the fictional "Elm Street"-verse, well, this was written after 1991's "Freddy's Dead," in which EVERY KID IN SPRINGWOOD has already been murdered. So what gives?15
And of all the "Elm Street" stories you could tell, why THIS one? A generic bullying tale?
Off the top of my head, allow me to present a way cooler idea: set the story a few years after "Freddy's Dead" and show us the first family with children to move into the now-Freddy-free Springwood. The family is aware of Fred Krueger's legacy, but they also know he's dead now, plus they're in a financial bind and can't resist the town's low real estate prices. Zero in on the kid in the family- let's say it's a teenage girl- and have her explore the haunted town and discover evils deeper than Fred Krueger. Maybe she discovers the evil that drove Freddy to madness and she gets possessed by it herself. Or she discovers and fights someone who gets possessed by it. Or maybe the whole town's possessed by it. And at the end, she defeats it...or does she?
Bam. There's a setup for a new "Elm Street" series with a supernatural mythos all its own that's still kind of connected to Freddy. And you can write as many sequels to it as you want.
Or heck- how about set a story DECADES after "Freddy's Dead" and show life returning to relative normalcy in Springwood. Families have moved back in, couples have had children, schools have students again, and everyone is starting to feel better. The town has this deep-seated wound of the dream demon's memory, but he's dead and it's history, so it's all good. But then kids start dying in their sleep again. Panic erupts, families start leaving town immediately- no one is taking any chances with their kids in that town anymore. But after this mass exodus, ADULTS start getting killed in their sleep. Here's the punchline: there's a new murderer in town and he's sneaking into houses and killing people while their sleep to make it look like Freddy's back.16 Here's the double punchline: after he's caught and arrested, an angry mob storms the jail where he's being held and kills him and he becomes the town's NEW dream demon.
Bam- you can use that as a springboard for even MORE sequels. The possibilities are endless.
I just came up with two ideas for an "Elm Street" novel series that are ten times better than this one. You're welcome, whoever wants to write and publish them.17
Bad as this book is, it's probably no worse than the R.L. Stine/ Christopher Pike YA dreck that was all the rage at the time.18 And all three customer reviews for it on Amazon are positive, so this worked for somebody at some point. Shrug.
There are six of these "Freddy Krueger's Tales of Terror" turds. I'm gonna take a bold guess and say that they don't get better as they go along.
As your blogger, I advise you to just come up with and write your own "Elm Street' stories instead of reading these. You can't do worse!
* * *
1. Reviewed HERE and HERE. Fun fact: they were written the same year as this masterpiece!
2. I reviewed every episode HERE- back when I had more time on my hands.
3. The sixth "Friday" film- the one with the intentional humor- is the only one I'll still say has merit.
4. As Peter Gabriel said, "The monster I was so afraid of lies curled up on the floor."
5. I am REALLY glad the internet didn't exist yet- I would have gone down some seriously dark rabbit holes!
6. I remember LOVING this book of Freddy short stories. Haven't re-read it, don't wanna be disappointed by seeing it with adult eyes.
7. The remake merits a moment's consideration. I was
sleep-deprived and loopy when I saw an advance screening of it. My main memory
is we all hated it and at the end, my mohawked friend- the one who invited me- turned to me, pointed, and screamed "This is YOUR f**king fault!" I'm
always getting blamed for stuff.
Well, I made the
mistake of recently re-visiting it with a clear mind. I figured it
couldn't be as bad as I remember it. Well- I was right. It wasn't as bad as I remember it.
It was worse.
Really wretchedly bad. Almost everything about it misfires.
It fails in every way that the original succeeds. It's a hideous, super-gritty
take on the character. Never fun, never really scary, just mean and nasty. The teenage
characters are all completely unlikable.
It actually bummed me out. They came so close to doing the
idea I always talked about- Freddy was actually innocent and was a dream demon
seeking revenge for being wrongfully killed- but they BLEW IT! Bad Hollywood.
No cookie.
Beyond the lack of humor and 100% unsympathetic characters,
they really REALLY emphasized the child-molesting aspect in the remake. Freddy
is super-rapey. The climactic "showdown" in the film is just him
holding the main female character down on a bed against her will while he licks
her and gropes her and talks about how much he liked molesting her when she was
a child.
In all fairness- horrifying as that is, it's not out of
character. Wes Craven built the child-molesting tendencies into Freddy's
background. But he pretty much never mentioned it. He tended to say Freddy was
"abused" as a child and that Freddy "abused" kids. We got
the message from that. Didn't need our faces rubbed in it.
8. And the fact that this nasty character became an
anti-hero that people were basically rooting for by the fourth film is a whole
'nother can of worms. Heck, I thought he was cool when I was a kid. What that
says about our society and about art and life and the universe and everything
is a subject for a blog that's way above my pay grade.
9. I won't be showing any of my spawn any of the "Nightmare" films. Unless they're way older and seek it out themselves, in which case yeah, I'll watch it with them and explain that it's just a movie and morality and stuff. And that's mostly selfish- I'm only interested in keeping them from having nightmares so they won't wake up in the middle of the night and bother me.
10. I'm not making that up. Exact quote: "Alicia wiped blood off her own hand onto the back of jeans as she hurried over to her car."
11. And there was a fun line during the blindness part:
"You will need an eye donor...Do you have medical insurance?"
"No."
"Then I guess you will have to break into an eye bank."
12. I'm guessing this started as an unrelated YA horror book that they hastily rewrote and inserted some Freddy references into so they could sell it as part of this series.
13. Spoiler alert: an old guy had a near-death experience and Freddy took over his body and was using it to kill people all along. Because Freddy- in addition to being able to kill folks in their sleep- can take over people's bodies at will, apparently?
14. Even geekier than it's been so far...
15. Talkin' to you, author Bruce Richards! Although I'll accept a response from publisher Tor Books, or rights holder New Line Cinema.
16. He has some twisted motivation for this- financial or revenge- you come up with that part.
17. Maybe I should. Is there any way to get paid for fan fiction these days? I should Google that...
18. No, I won't go back and read any of those to confirm this.
19. Bonus footnote: SINCE YOU ASKED, here's my take on the "Elm Street" films now that I'm an adult:
Part 1- Good film, well made.
Part 2- Hilariously awful. Fun to watch with friends in a MST3K way.
Part 3- The first half is decent, it gets dumb and goes off the rails when the "dream warriors" start mobilizing to fight Freddy. Too many cheesy lines. The Dokken "Dream Warriors" video is gold.
Part 4- Has its moments. Very colorful.
Part 5- The gore in the uncensored version is pretty fierce. But it's pretty bland and cold overall. Making it all about pregnancy and responsibility was probably a bad move when your target demographic is teenagers.
Part 6- Stupid. Some cool ideas, such as turning the town into a "Twin Peaks"-ish purgatory, but not really funny or scary.
Part 7- They went postmodern and commented on the Freddy phenomenon here and a lot of it works. Ironically, it's at its worst when it resembles a horror film. The visual effects don't hold up, either.
Freddy Vs. Jason- Meh. Disposable domino redshirt characters. Lotsa blood. When the two characters FINALLY ACTUALLY FIGHT in the last ten minutes or so, it's decent. I would have liked this one a lot more as a kid.
2010 Remake- Awful. See footnote numero 7.
-Phony McFakename
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