A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Plot synopsis:
Kristen, Joey and Kincaid have been released from the Westin Hills Asylum and are now living normal lives and attending high school. Kristen has managed to make some new friends: Alice, a young, bright girl who is a frequent daydreamer; Sheila, a brainy, quiet black girl with asthma; and Debbie, a tall, tough girl who hates bugs. She has also found herself a boyfriend, Rick, a martial arts enthusiast who is also Alice's brother.Kristen begins to have bad dreams and feels as though Freddy has once again come back from the dead. During one of her nightmares, she pulls Kincaid and Joey into her dream as she explores the deserted Elm Street house. In school the next day, Kincaid and Joey confront Kristen about pulling them into the dream.Kincaid wakes up one night and finds himself locked in the trunk of an old junked car. When he opens the hood, he realizes that he is in the same salvage yard that Freddy's body was buried in. Kincaid spies his dog, Jason, digging and urinating in the ground nearby. Freddy then resurrects from the ground after which a pile of junked cars crash down on him. Freddy quickly recoups and kills Kincaid. Later that night Joey is also killed by Freddy.The following day at school, Kristen is concerned when her friends fail to show up for class. She confides to Alice about nightmares. Kristen hits her head and passes out when she discovers both her friends missing, being attacked by Freddy but revived in time. After she learns of the deaths of Kincaid and Joey, Kristen goes to the actual Elm Street house, with Rick, Dan, and Alice. Rick tells Dan the story of Freddy, and Alice reveals a part of the dream master spell. Alice suggests to Kristen that she is in control of her own dreams. However, Alice also looks down at the ground and sees something, a chalk drawing of the house, that only Kristen has been able to see. Clearly, she senses something. At home that night, her mother gives her a sedative to help her sleep. When Kristen falls asleep this time, on Alice's advice, she tries to convert nightmares into pleasant dreams, to no avail. While she meets a child named Alice in her dream, creating a sand castle, even in her good dreams, Freddy appears and ruins everything. Kristen eventually finds herself in Freddy's boiler room. It is explained that Kristen is the last child from Elm Street, and Freddy needs her help to get more children. When Freddy is about to kill her, she screams for Alice. Alice appears suddenly in the boiler room just as Krueger kills Kristen by throwing her into fire. Before Kristen dies, she sends her power, the power to pull people into her dreams, to Alice. Before the power can reach her, it passes through Freddy first.Alice awakens immediately, realizing that Kristen's in danger. She turns out to be right, as Kristen's room is on fire. As Alice tries to understand what has happened, and who exactly Freddy is, her friends begin to die. First, Sheila and Rick are killed. While taking a test, Alice accidentally pulls Sheila into a dream where Freddy is waiting; the same thing happens to Rick later. Yet, after every death, including Kristen's, Alice picks up new talents and abilities. She also picks up the dream powers of the children who have died. She is obviously Freddy's supernatural opposite, albeit too weak to truly conquer or even resist him yet. After his death, Alice teams up with Dan Jordan, who was one of Rick's closest friends. Together with Dan, Alice tries to get to Debbie, their last surviving friend, before Freddy finds her. Unbeknown to the two teens, Freddy is able to control their movements. Trapping Alice and Dan in a time loop, Freddy is able to reach Debbie and kill her (by transforming her into a cockroach and trapping her inside a roach motel and then crushing her) before Alice and Dan intervene.Following a car accident, where Dan is injured and rushed to the hospital, Alice returns home to prepare for one final battle with Freddy. Alice goes to sleep to help Dan before Freddy can kill him. As Alice and Dan search for Freddy, Dan is injured. Alice wills him awake right at the moment the doctors wake Dan and he is pulled from the dreamworld. Alice, facing Freddy alone, attempts to use all of her newly absorbed abilities against him. The fight is relatively equal, except that she has a mortal body and he has not, giving him the advantage of immortality. It's an advantage that proves nearly too great to overcome. He declares that he's been guarding his gate for too long to be taken down by her. But just as he is preparing to kill her, she recalls the final verse of the dream master spell. For the first and only time, someone defeats Freddy, by using the power of the spell to make him see the evil that is inside. Using her power as guardian of the gate of good dreams (which Kristen never was, nor was Nancy,) Alice releases the tortured souls that Freddy imprisoned into the gates of good dreams where he can no longer harm them. Krueger's clothes fall lifelessly to the floor. The film ends with Dan and Alice at a fountain some time later. She tosses a coin in and makes a wish. As she and Dan depart, she decides to keep the wish to herself as Freddy's image appears in the ripples left in the fountain from the tossed coin.

Tags: murder, stupid, paranormal, cult, violence, revenge

Review:
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) It is one of my personal favorite horror movies with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street film, it is solid, decent, excellent horror slasher sequel in A Nightmare on Elm Street series franchise.
This film is actually my Renny Harlin's favorite movie alongside Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2 and Deep Blue Sea. Renny Harlin did a great job with direction and visuals of the film, I think it's actually some of the best directing work he did, and Lisa Wilcox's character Alice is probably to Freddy what Tommy Jarvis is to Jason, an enemy that he will always fight but he will always lose.
Plot: Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may know the way to defeat him for good.Before I start what I like about this movie, I love Wes Craven's original film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which is my favorite best horror slasher film.
Tuesday Knight as Kristen Parker was decent and she was awesome, she was better than Patricia Arquette I love movies from the 80's action and horror films that I love, so this is pretty solid good movie, far way better than 5 and remake which I think they are the worst one I have ever saw.
Kristen Parker (Tuesday Knight) was actually a Dream Warrior she had a power to call her friends in her dreams, Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox) was a Dream Master and she gave her power to Freddy, of course Kristen was the last Elms Street child, but Freddy need it new ones to get the souls from the children to become more powerful than ever.
She has the ability to pull other people into her dreams and of course Alice is scared to find out how to use her powers, but she may just have to use them since Freddy is now after her and other kids too.A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was a good enough sequel, but it just could have been better.
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.
Dark humor is my taste and I always laugh when he pops his quotes: "You shouldnt have buried me; I'm not dead!" "Now how's that for a wet dream?" "Welcome to Wonderland, Alice!" There are a few things that blows; Patricia Arquette should have been recast as Kirsten Parker and the resurrection is a bit lame but then the S/F effects rocks, the director likes action scenes and the music is well above average for a 1998 film.Definetly recommended.
Patricia Arquette, who performed Kristen Parker in the previous "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors", was pregnant and not able to film this sequel.
Not the shallow and unbelievable characters, nor the bad acting (except for the ever so wonderful Robert Englund, that is) or the non-existent story.The nudity, the bad one-liners and the often imaginative kills still get a chuckle out of me now and then and, as I've said, I still enjoy watching the movie every once in a while, but like most of the "Nightmare" sequels, this one is just nowhere near as good as it could and should have been..
After huge success with the first outing, Wes Craven tried to correct the wrongs of Freddy's Revenge with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and he made no mistake about ensuring he killed Freddy and left him buried for good.For some reason (Almost Certainly Money) Renny Harlin (Director) and William Kotzwinkle (Writer) decided to resurrect him again claiming 'Pure Evil Never Really Dies'A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 - The Dream Master is an unnecessary sequel that is clearly milking the success of the franchise.
Kristen Parker once again takes the lead (but Miss Arquette no longer plays the character) Freddy is once again funnier than he is scary, as with all the non Wes Craven episodes, and its pretty much more of the same with less story than before, and the odd decent death scene.5/10 Freddy is still cool, even if the movie isn't.
The Dream Master's refusal to assert itself by accepting the emphasis on fear and vulnerability ideas from the first and third film or the metaphorical significance of the Freddy Krueger character is evident by the film's emphasis on comedy from what was previously the franchise's main source for terror.Being that The Dream Master is the most expensive film from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, one can see where director Renny Harlin and his set/production designers wanted to put their emphases - the dream sequences.
While acting in horror films is traditionally never the first thing one judges on, when it's so wooden, as it is here, it can't help be a jarring feature, especially when the film itself already isn't particularly good.A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 works in the way it decides to further construct and elaborate on the many worlds of which Freddy inhabits, in addition with taking on some seriously twisted and quirky scenes the franchise has never seen before.
This time with have Kristen Parker, Roland Kincaid, Joey Crusel return for the 4th movie in this series, I was disappointed that they re casted Kristen Parker, which i think was a really big mistake.The way Freddy came back from the death, was a bit ridiculous but he dose not take long to get the last two elm street kids, before going face to face with Kristen, who is the last of elm street kids but silly Kristen get her new Friend Alice involved with Freddy.Alice is now key to Freddy as she bring her Friend to Freddy, not intentional.
she has to stop him before he kills again.The deaths scenes in this are not as good as A Nigthamre on elm street 1 or A nightmare on elm street 3 ,I did enjoy watching the dream scenes which were really good, i loved the class dream scene was great.The other thing, I liked in this was the way, Freddy died , it was really gross and scary, I think that was best Freddy deaths in the whole series.Now the acting, I did not like the new Kristen but happy that she was not in the whole movie, I think Girl that played Annie did a great Job.I give this movie a 5/10.
The greatest horror film of the 1980's and one of the greatest horror films of all time in my opinion!.I saw Nightmare On Elm Street 2 a while ago so I cant really remember much about it.I have not seen Nightmare On Elm Street 3 but I really want to now.So I skipped right ahead to four.Unlike the first film which was pure horror with maybe 1 small humorous scene, this film is basically a horror/comedy with Freddy being the wise-cracking humorous villain that we all know.I heard the comedy started with the third film.I also heard that the film New Nightmare goes back to being a horror film.Anyway in this film, a girl has the power to bring people into her dreams.Apparently they killed Freddy in the third film but now he comes back and kills them all one by one.So its basically up to the teenagers who have not been killed yet to try and stop him.The plots of the films are basically the same but the films are still entertaining and fun to watch!
A Magnificent brilliant chapter in the franchise with a great cast (The One And Only Freddy Krueger, Horror Legend Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Danny Hassle, Brooke Theiss, Andras Jones, Toy Newkirk, Nicholas Mele and Brooke Bundy with Ken Sagoes and Rodney Eastman reprising their roles), innovative nightmare sequences, cool fight scenes, amazing soundtrack and it's just full of fun.
Cheesy 80s Fun. First,the good,I like the fact that it picks up right from the last one.The characters are likable and decently acted.I like the concepts for the dream world.The score was great,just like in the other movies.Freddy,although he's more of a comedian now,is still great.I liked the ending,it was very poetic.I also liked the fun 80s feel of it.The best part though,is the kills,they are creative and have amazing effects.The cons though,it is a bit too outdated,the dialogue is really bad,it gets too dumb in the end,and there is some noticeable tonal problems,it doesn't if it wants to be funny or scary.All in all,Dream Master is a fun above average sequel with some problems..
Not a great movie but a fun one none the less strangely enough.Pros: pretty dark and atmospheric overall ridiculous yet fun movie Cons:Freddy begins to look more like a caricature of himself, and looks very plastic as opposed to previous filmsthe film & Krueger essentially become a parody of themselvestypical 80's horror flick level of "acting"underwhelming final act as we've come to expect from the franchise at this pointSoundtrack: 8/10.
A nightmare on elm street 4 was an instant classic aimed at a new generation of movie goers and is considered one of the last good sequels.The kids felt like real life friends who known each other all their lives and care about each other.
What makes this one special is they actually mourn or care as their friends are picked off one by one.Freddy's puns have taken on ironic twists about the fates of his victims and showing how cruel he actually became.The picture looks polished, gruesome death scenes and visuals that are eye candy for anyone taking a course on camera techniques.A new concept used here is gates that need to be protected one by a demon and the other a dream master.
As well, other big scenes include the beach-front dream that's quite exciting for really going through with a rather gruesome ending, the martial arts battle in the dojo is quite fun and the visions of her and her friends at the movie theater as they watch her playing in the diner which makes for a great overall time here, while later scenes include the seriously chilling and creepy runaround as they try to stop their friend being turned into a cockroach in one of his traps and the fun car-crash which leads into the incredibly enjoyable and twisted finale where they battle him through the church using the collected powers to put up a great fight and getting an incredibly unique climax that works rather nicely here in keeping true to the series' strengths.
Soon Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is resurrected and the fight for survival begins all over again and this time, the dream warriors bring in more characters.Joining the group is Kristen's boyfriend Rick (Andras Jones), her sister Alice (Lisa Wilcox), smarty Sheila (Toy Newkirk), muscle punk girl Debbie (Brooke Theiss) and not so cocky jock Dan (Danny Hassle).
Safan could have also expanded the score to focus on the characters and important scenes but for now it at least keeps it simple.Most entries at this point get pretty bad, but this passage maintains some of the better quality that made A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) an entertaining sequel.
Alice Johnson's story would continue the next film, which I talk about my hatred feelings, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child." and this film is really amazing with blending horror and comedy together throughout the whole movie.I give this film a 8 out of 10 stars.
The credit is all given to Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger and he is alright in his fourth portrayal as Freddy Krueger and I really got to see more humor and there is one scene and that is Kristen's nightmare at the beach and he really does kill it with his awesome humor.Since Patricia Arquette could not return due to her being involved in other projects, Tuesday Knight fills in for her as Kristen Parker and she definitely nails her performance and it could have been worse, but it is a damn good performance for this character.Lisa Wilcox plays our new primary protagonist, Alice Johnson and she does a damn good job in playing the role of Alice and it is not Oscar worthy, but it is really good and she was the perfect choice to a new enemy to our antagonist, Freddy Krueger.Danny Hassle plays Alice's boyfriend, Dan Jordan and he is top-notch and just like Lisa Wilcox, he could not have done any better.
The credit is all given to Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger and he is alright in his fourth portrayal as Freddy Krueger and I really got to see more humor and there is one scene and that is Kristen's nightmare at the beach and he really does kill it with his awesome humor.Since Patricia Arquette could not return due to her being involved in other projects, Tuesday Knight fills in for her as Kristen Parker and she definitely nails her performance and it could have been worse, but it is a damn good performance for this character.Lisa Wilcox plays our new primary protagonist, Alice Johnson and she does a damn good job in playing the role of Alice and it is not Oscar worthy, but it is really good and she was the perfect choice to a new enemy to our antagonist, Freddy Krueger.Danny Hassle plays Alice's boyfriend, Dan Jordan and he is top-notch and just like Lisa Wilcox, he could not have done any better.
They have great chemistry on the screen and it definitely shows all the way throughout this entire fourth Nightmare on Elm Street film in the scary film franchise.The rest of the cast is just out there and they make either a huge or very little effort to put on a darn good performance and it is really intense and I really can't blame them because they try they're absolute best but does not deliver when they really need too.The nightmares in this film are just incredible: You have Freddy Krueger sucking the life out of one girl, turning her into a cockroach and that was pretty cool.
They have great chemistry on the screen and it definitely shows all the way throughout this entire fourth Nightmare on Elm Street film in the scary film franchise.The rest of the cast is just out there and they make either a huge or very little effort to put on a darn good performance and it is really intense and I really can't blame them because they try they're absolute best but does not deliver when they really need too.The nightmares in this film are just incredible: You have Freddy Krueger sucking the life out of one girl, turning her into a cockroach and that was pretty cool.
Alice Johnson's story would continue the next film, which I talk about my mixed feelings, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child." and this film is really amazing with blending horror and comedy together throughout the whole movie.I give this film a 7 out of 10 stars.
Freddy has character, making him a more enjoyable villain than Jason.I don't think I've seen a bad Nightmare on Elm Street movie so far.
Music is by John Easdale and Craig Safan and cinematography by Steven Fierberg.Freddy Krueger (Englund) is back again to finish off the last of the Dream Warriors, but when he enters the dreams of a new girl, Alice Johnson (Wilcox), he gets more than he bargained for...In spite of part three being something of a return to form for the Elm Street franchise, it still signalled the point where Krueger as a character started to become more fun villain than a terrifying presence.
There's some nice ideas in William Kotzwinkle's story and the Brian Helgeland, Jim Wheat & Ken Wheat screenplay including Alice picking up the traits of the fallen, her being trapped in a film, the aged diner and the on loop gag.Although actress Lisa Wilcox does a great job as Alice unfortunately Elm St 4 wants you to warm to yet another new heroine and annoyingly feels like an ad wanting you to go out and buy the soundtrack.The Dream Master is a solid enough entry and has the one of the most satisfying endings and closures of the series.
Whereas other horror films just leave the survivors alone, this film follows them as Freddy returns to finish his work, but it also introduces us to a new group of heroes, including Alice (Lisa Wilcox), her brother Rick (Andras Jones), Debbie (Brooke Theiss), Shelia (Toy Newkirk) and Dan (played by the handsome Danny Hassle - who would have to be the hottest male star in all of the Nightmare on Elm Street films).Freddy finds interesting ways to kill off the kids, all of whom have a wide array of personalities and interact with each other well.
But while I still don't like this film, it has grown a bit on me (but not enough for me to actually like it).I'll judge the film in to ways: Pros and Cons.Pros: - Good acting from Rober Englund (as always) and Lisa Wilcox, who should be getting more work; The makeup here is the best out of them all; The score by Craig Saffan is effective.Cons: - Renny Harlin's direction (his version of Exorcist: The Beginning solidifies that fact); The movie feels way too much like an MTV music video while the first three had a very dark tone to it; While the deaths are inventive, they just really aren't as memorable as classic deaths as Tina's or Jennifer's (well, there is Debbie's death, which brings me to my next point); The cockroach sequence (the main reason for many of my restless nights).
The story is Following up the previous Nightmare film, dream demon Freddy Krueger is resurrected from his apparent demise, and rapidly tracks down and kills the remainder of the Elm Street kids.