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Originally Posted by Aquafresh
 A podcast I listen to is doing a Nightmare retrospective and they posited the same theory. I've never heard anything to support it, but it's true that FREDDY'S REVENGE bears more resemblance to AMITYVILLE II than a proper Nightmare movie. Also, considering the fast turnaround for FREDDY'S REVENGE, some sort of retro-fitted possession script would make sense.
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Originally Posted by DrVenkman
I mean we see it happen now with both 'Saw' and 'Hellraiser' films grabbing seemingly unrelated scripts and doing quick reworks on them, it's not really a stretch to think the same thing happened then as well.
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Originally Posted by Excerpts taken from:
Screams & Nightmares, The Films of Wes Craven Although under no obligation to do so, Robert Shaye at New Line had tried to tempt Craven back to direct the second film in what looked like becoming an on-going series, but he turned down the offer: "I told them that if they came up with a script that I found intriguing, I would consider it, but the script for Nightmare 2 had certain problems, and I felt it was not in my best interests to direct. They didn't intend to change the script at all. It brought Freddy out into the waking world a great deal, and scenes like the pool scene where he's running around amok - he's not really that big a guy and they were putting him in scenes with these six foot tall kids. I said, he's going to be diminished, he's going to be ridiculous."
Craven felt that some of the story elements and concepts in the proposed sequel script did not hold true to his original creation: "I had a real confusion with Freddy coming out of the central character. I had some structural problems with it. There were things in there that were just patently ridiculous, like the scene where the parrot attacks. What does that mean? To me, it had no philosophical thread which I could follow, so I just bowed out." With Craven sidelined, it fell to others to perpetuate Freddy's reign of terror. The script he'd been so scathing about had been drafted by David Chaskin, a New York native who had begun working at New Line in 1978. Craven's comments on the script did prove valuable to Chaskin, but the writer didn't implement them all. "Wes made some suggestions,' remembered Chaskin, 'some of which we used and some of which we didn't, mainly location changes. I had the finale in a more opened space and he wanted it in a more closed, confined area. He also suggested that we shift the focus from Jesse, the male lead. In the script the focus was on him ninety percent of the time, then suddenly shifted to Lisa, his girlfriend." Taking over for Craven as director was Jack Sholder, who previously made the thriller "Alone in the Dark" for New Line. He'd been directing since 1964, with a series of award-winning shorts and a host of TV work to his name. "Our picture is lighter." Sholder explained to Fangoria. "Wes is a very serious guy and his film was very dark, very oppressive, very serious and fairly unrelenting. There isn't much intentional humor in it. We, on the other hand, leavened ours with humor. It got filtered out through the writer David Chaskin and Bob Shaye's sensibilities. The pair of them developed the script on their own without Wes, and then I added my own two cents' worth." |
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Originally Posted by Excerpts taken from:
Screams & Nightmares, The Films of Wes Craven "I wanted to do Nightmare 3 because I felt compelled to come back and expand the original concept. I like taking that one more step and it was important for me in a business sense that I was able to negotiate a percentage point in the sequels I didn't have from the original film." Craven's concept was the creation of the Dream Warriors, a group of variously skilled teens who found that together they had the power to take on Freddy in the dream world. Craven co-wrote the screenplay with Bruce Wagner. "We decided that it could no longer be one person fighting Freddy. It had to be a group, because the souls of Freddy's victims have made Freddy stronger", explains Craven. "I took a executive producing credit", says Craven of his involvement in the film. "My understanding was that I would be asked about things all along. I would be brought in to casting and have a real creative part in the picture. The reality was that New Line Cinema never really contacted me again after they had the script. They changed it quite drastically in some ways. The director and a friend of his rewrote it and changed the names of all the characters, and included several key scenes of their own. A lot of the reasons I had agreed to do the picture were taken away."
Not surprisingly, Shaye and Risher had their own view of the development of the script. "They thought they had it nailed," claimed Shaye of Craven and Wagner's final draft screenplay. "We thought it needed more work. There was never any acrimony as far as I know. I think the tremendous success of the film speaks for itself." As Risher explained to Cinefantastique magazine, "Chuck Russell made the script work. I give Wes the complete credit for the terrific idea of these kids, the Dream Warriors; I'm not faulting that. But Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont turned the script around. We wouldn't have made it with what we had. They rewrote seventy percent of it." To Craven, New Line's motivations were straightforward: "They were only interested in having my name on another Nightmare film." Craven was now faced with an uncomfortable situation. New Line hired Chuck Russell to direct - the man who scripted "Dreamscape", the film which Craven has always felt was a thinly disguised work of his then-unproduced "A Nightmare on Elm Street" script. The matter ended up in arbitration at the Writer's Guild, and all four writers were credited on screen. "I had this idea that New Line and I could patch up old differences with this film", said Craven at the time. "They didn't inform me when they had rewritten the script, and it wasn't until I made a stink that I got to see the final version. I was not even informed when filming was supposed to start." |
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Originally Posted by Aquafresh
Which SAW movie is a reworked script? Just curious.
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Originally Posted by DARKMITE8
Just revisited Craven's SHOCKER over the weekend. He was really trying catch that lightning twice wasn't he? Don't get me wrong, it's a guilty pleasure of mine (mainly for Mitch Pileggi), but between all the "dream" logic and wisecracks, I thought I was watching NOES 2.0.
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Originally Posted by Aquafresh
I watched SHOCKER for the first time recently. I just found it to be excruciatingly long for a horror film and downright terrible.
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Originally Posted by Mattioli
Well, there really wasn't any mystery left by the end of the series. The fear had been taken away and replaced with Freddy riding on a broomstick ala the Wicked Witch of the West. If you accept that your audience no longer fears--and in some cases, reveres--your monster and you've spent beaucoup bucks on his makeup work, why not show him in full light? There's nothing to lose.
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I will never understand why New Line hired that fucking HACK Stephen Hopkin's to do part 5? Even more mysterious is how he managed to keep getting large scale features when everything he made was fucking trash i.e. Judgment Night, Predator 2, Blown Away, The Ghost and the Darkness and Lost In Space which was yet another New Line production that he fucked right in the ass. I guess he gives good head?!
Anyway, my favorites of the Elm Street series are the first, third and fourth. But with part 5, I wonder why they didn't try to recruit someone like Sam Raimi, if they were going to try to top Harlin's flick? Even better would have been if they shifted down and tried to go back to something more moodier and atmospheric. In that case Don Coscarelli would have been my 1# choice. Phantasm has the sort of dark, surrealistic feeling that I would have loved to see in an Elm Street movie.
I've to say that the Remake was boring lifeless crap. Jackie's Kruger showed a little more sadistic side than Englund, but the rest of the cast were pretty much forgettable (Even Clancy Brown).
Worst Nightmare film? Opinions?
I've to say that the Remake was boring lifeless crap. Jackie's Kruger showed a little more sadistic side than Englund, but the rest of the cast were pretty much forgettable (Even Clancy Brown).
Worst Nightmare film? Opinions?
The remake is a fucking third term shotgun abortion while Freddy's Dead and New Nightmare follow closely. I do have a soft spot for 2 and 5 though. I don't even rate Freddy Vs. Jason because I'm totally indifferent to it.
I am well documented in my disdain for the remake, but it is much better than either FREDDY'S DEAD or DREAM CHILD.
New Nightmare bores the hell out of me, but I can watch some of the kills from Freddy's Dead time and time again. I'm still kind of surprised at the vehement hatred of Dream Child, which is probably my third favorite in the series. Freddy's Revenge is the worst made, but it's so unintentionally hilarious I can't help but enjoy it.
I am well documented in my disdain for the remake, but it is much better than either FREDDY'S DEAD or DREAM CHILD.
Like hell. Freddy's Dead, for all its flaws, is never boring, and as Gabe mentioned, some of the kills are just great. And as I've said before, there's a Chuck Jones sort of vibe from Freddy that flick that, while entirely wrong for the series, does make for occasionally entertaining stuff. I'm still not a fan of Dream Child, but entertaining kills came from that, and they at least expand on the Son of a Hundred Maniacs thing a bit more. The remake has Haley's excellent work as Freddy, and fuck all else.
Freddy's Revenge and Freddy's Dead are the worst of the bunch, but they're at least entertaining on some level. Can't say the same of the worst Halloween and Friday flicks.
And New Nightmare is still easily the best film in the series. Best characters, best Freddy, coolest story.
Freddy's Revenge and Freddy's Dead are the worst of the bunch, but they're at least entertaining on some level. Can't say the same of the worst Halloween and Friday flicks.
And New Nightmare is still easily the best film in the series. Best characters, best Freddy, coolest story.
The first one is the best, but I like New Nightmare a lot. I also have an inordinate amount of love for Freddy's Revenge, The Dream Warriors, and The Dream Master.
New Nightmare's a film to respect more than love, really. Utterly perfect ideas, but a generic "evil child" horror flick holding them together.
I've probably said this before, but I think New Nightmare is interesting because it shows Craven delving into the meta toybox a few years before he leaped headfirst into it with Scream. That being said, in my mind, New Nightmare commits the unforgivable sin of being boring and, frankly, a bit pretentious. That's something I could never say about any of the other Nightmare films.
I've probably said this before, but I think New Nightmare is interesting because it shows Craven delving into the meta toybox a few years before he leaped headfirst into it with Scream. That being said, in my mind, New Nightmare commits the unforgivable sin of being boring and, frankly, a bit pretentious. That's something I could never say about any of the other Nightmare films.
Bingo. I'll take pretty much any other Nightmare film over New Nightmare for this reason, even the shitacular Freddy's Dead. All you need to know about New Nightmare is the premise. There's no actual joy in watching the film, and no reason to ever rewatch. The only reason I've seen it multiple times is to try to understand what it's cult following sees in it.
Though I really do like this tidbit I read about it today in Brian Williams' Horror-Movie-A-Day blog:
I still think it's hilarious that Wes Craven never asked Johnny Depp to appear in the funeral scene in New Nightmare because he was afraid he would turn him down. I don't know why the hell he would think that, since Johnny had already cameo'd in the god-awful Freddy's Dead. It's doubly funny when someone eventually asked Johnny about it and he said he would have shown up in a heartbeat. Anyway....
My series ranking:
1. A Nightmare On Elm Street
2. A Nightmare On Elm Street III: Dream Warriors
3. A Nightmare On Elm Street IV: The Dream Master
4. A Nightmare On Elm Street II: Freddy's Revenge
5. New Nightmare
6. A Nightmare On Elm Street V: The Dream Child
7. Freddy vs. Jason
8. A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
9. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
As far as I am concerned, the first five films on my list are excellent. The rest are middling to awful.
You make baby Freddy cry,
LOL
Glad to see Freddy's Revenge getting some love.
Aside from a couple weird tangents like the Freddy Parrot, Freddy's Revenge is the darkest of the series, I'd say. Freddy is much more present than the first movie. He looms threateningly over the entire length and the make-up is much more realistic. He's fucking terrifying in part two.
Freddy's Revenge does have some things going for it that really ought to be highlighted, and it holds up well as low-budget 80s horror. As mentioned at various points in this thread, the make-up work on Freddy is excellent, Christopher Young's score is a winner, and it is true to the darkness of the original in a way that none of the other sequels were, or indeed even attempted.
The other thing is, I'm kinda sympathetic to that movie for basically being rendered an outlier retroactively. Not that bringing back Nancy and restoring some of the original ruleset wasn't a great move for Dream Warriors, but it's sort of a parody of the Indiana Jones trilogy situation, where Temple of Doom is suddenly a black sheep because Last Crusade went the crowd-pleasing route and basically remade the original movie. Retroactively, Judeo-Christian based artifacts, Nazis, and cutting to Indy's college after the prologue became series motifs, and Marcus and Sallah became "regulars." Temple of Doom consequently sticks out like a sore thumb once the trilogy is taken as a whole, especially by people who did not experience the series as it was released, due to its sin of actually tried to cover new ground. In the case of both franchises, if you consider a world where only the first two movies exist, the part 2s work just fine as sequels - only due to the respective third installments' "return to form" (and establishing a template) do they become wrong turns in the context of their series.
So, okay, the comparison has holes in it in the sense the Freddy's Revenge is still a bad movie and Temple of Doom is the shit (and better than Crusade, to my lights), and Freddy's Revenge does tell some established rules to go to hell in a way that goes beyond "shaking things up" to being plain wrongheaded and disrespectful. But it's not like it's conceptually invalid to try a Freddy posession story, nor is it unacceptable to decide to reprise the house from the first movie (and introduce us to the new occupants) instead of the surviving heroine. In a sense, Freddy's Revenge is sort of like a haunted house movie, which is sort of the whole point of the Clu Gulager character being repeatedly beleaguered by malfunctioning appliances and combustible parakeets and other unintentionally comical bullshit.
I'm grateful they didn't continue the direction when it didn't work, but I'm also fine that they tried. And people tend to forget that despite the critical ravaging the movie took (and all the sequels did), the box office was screaming.
Regarding the homosexual overtones of Freddy's Revenge, I went to a horror convention back in October and attended a panel with Mark Patton (Jesse). Long and short was that the writer WAS gay and wrote it like that on purpose. The director just straight-up didn't notice this subtext when he was making the film. Also, it probably didn't hurt that Mark Patton (Jesse) is very gay as well, and a real sweet guy. I talked to him for about 5 minutes later on at his signing table and he appreciated that I wanted to talk about the film so much. When we were done, he looked at his table of photos and asked me which one I wanted. I told him I couldn't pay him for an autograph (I was tapped out on what I allotted to spend at the convention), he just shook his head and asked me again. I got a sweet autographed image of this poster and took my picture with him.
Say what you want about the movie or his acting. Mark Patton - Stand-up guy.
Aside from a couple weird tangents like the Freddy Parrot, Freddy's Revenge is the darkest of the series, I'd say. Freddy is much more present than the first movie. He looms threateningly over the entire length and the make-up is much more realistic. He's fucking terrifying in part two.
Agreed 100%, it's actually quite a spooky experience that gets overlooked due to some of the odder elements that make it feel like a series black sheep. I really dig the fact that, moreso than the first film, Freddy really does loom over the entire movie. And Christopher Young's score? Eerie stuff.
That opening scene on the bus was genuine nightmare fuel for me as a kid. I have fond memories of watching the film at around 8 or 9 years old, holding the TV controller with one finger primed and ready, hovering over the "channel up" button just in case things got too scary.
And Bill - that poster is absolutely ace, I've always loved the poster campaign for Freddy's Revenge.
That's a pretty great story. That movie gets a lot of crap for not fitting in well with the others, but I'd still put it ahead of the Dream Child.
Once again, it's great to see Freddy's Revenge getting a lot of love. As far as I'm concerned, the franchises is absolute aces when it comes to 1-4. Dream Child is where things start to go wrong.
Anyway, I'll be seeing the original on the big screen next week for the first time. Pretty excited. Naturally, I'll probably end up re-watching all the others again shortly thereafter.
I enjoy Freddy's Revenge for what it is but there's no denying it's a fucking mess. That being said, I may have to finally watch it on Blu-Ray, this weekend.
