WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE
SYNOPSIS
Set in the real world, it has been ten years since Heather Langenkamp played Nancy Thompson in the very first Nightmare On Elm Street. She is now a famous actress and lives in a bid house with her husband, Chase and her son, Dylan. Heather has been having nightmares recently and she dreams that two of her friends were working on a new mechanical Freddy glove for the new Nightmare On Elm Street film when the glove comes to life and kill them both. She is woken up by an earthquake which scares her and her son so much that they phone Chase up and ask him to come home from where he is working. On the way home, Chase is in a car crash (caused when the Freddy glove he has been working on slashed him) and he dies.
More earthquakes follow and it turns out that other people involved in the Nightmare On Elm Street films, including Robert Englund (plays Freddy in the films), John Saxon (plays Nancy's father in NOES1) and Wes Craven (director) have been having the same nightmares. After Chase's funeral, Dylan refuses to sleep and tells Heather that she should get a guardian to ward off the mean man with the claws that is haunting his dreams. Heather later finds Dylan's guardian, a toy dinosaur, slashed to pieces by four Freddy-like claws.
Dylan begins to talk and act like Freddy until one night, he tapes steak knives to his fingers and tries to kill Heather until she finally stops him. It seems as though Freddy Krueger has become real and is coming into the real world through Heather's son to try and kill her. The constant earthquakes are Freddy trying using all his power to get through the barrier of the dream world through to the real world.
A lot of strange incidents occur afterwards such as Heather's friends being found dead in a field just like in her first nightmare and a meeting with Wes Craven who told her about a new Nightmare On Elm Street he's making and that he wants Heather to play Nancy in the film one last time. She tells Wes about being haunted by Freddy and he tells her that he based the NOES films on his own nightmares. It turns out that Freddy Krueger was about long before NOES1 and that he is simply an evil force that is taking Freddy's form to try and scare Heather.
After some suspicious events, Dylan is put into hospital because the doctors think that Heather is forcing him to stay awake. There, Dylan's nanny, Julie, looks after him whilst Heather is being questioned. After Dylan has been slightly sedated, he accidentally brings Freddy into the real world and Julie is stabbed by an unseen force and then dragged up the wall and across the ceiling, just like the character Tina in NOES1.
Dylan escapes but is caught by Freddy whilst trying to get home and dragged into the dream world with him. Heather cannot find him and so rings up John Saxon for help who starts to call her Nancy and use phrases from the NOES film. The real world and the film world are becoming intermingled. Heather finds herself in the white dress she wears in NOES and calls John 'daddy'.
Thinking back to reading Hansel and Gretal with Dylan, Heather realises that Dylan has left a path of sleeping pills leading to Heather's bed so that she can join him in the dream world. Heather takes the pills and falls into the dream world where she meets a Freddy which seems a lot scarier than he ever did in the other films. He is now wearing a black cloak over his red and green striped top and looks more evil. Heather and Dylan are chased throughout the boiler-room by Freddy and finally Heather is caught in steps which are like quicksand (like in NOES) and Dylan can only hide in Freddy's boiler. Freddy cannot get all the way in but stretches his arm to reach Dylan when Heather gets free and stabs Freddy in the leg. He releases Dylan and traps Heather using an extra-long tongue. Dylan manages to push Freddy into the boiler and (like in Hansel And Gretal) he is burned to death.
Heather and Dylan wake up to find a script on the bedroom floor with a note from Wes Craven saying 'Thankyou for playing Nancy for me one last time' and Heather starts the read the script (which is actually the beginning of this film if you can work that out!) to Dylan and everything is back to normal.
TRIVIA
Does not officially count as being part of the Nightmare on Elm Street saga because it does not take place in the same universe as the Nightmare movies. It takes place in what one could call the 'real world'. 'Real world' meaning that in this place Freddy Krueger is a fictional character, not a child killer; and that A Nightmare on Elm Street was a movie that Wes Craven wrote and directed. In fact the Freddy Krueger that they fight is not Freddy Krueger at all. It is a demon who has taken on the persona and appearance of the immensely popular horror film icon.
The following people portrayed themselves in this movie: Heather Langenkamp; Wes Craven; Marianne Maddalena; Sam Rubin; Robert Englund; Sara Risher; Robert Shaye; Nick Corri; Tuesday Knight; John Saxon
Wes Craven felt that Freddy had become too cheesy, and could not frighten people the way that he once did. He wanted to take Freddy back to his roots, make him darker and more sinister. He gave Freddy a dark trench coat to cover his trademark striped sweeter. And also gave him much less dialogue than the later Nightmare films did.
In the hospital Heather is told that she can not be in a certain area without a pass; she replies "Screw your pass!" The very same line was spoken, by her character Nancy in Nightmare 1, to a hall monitor in a dream.
In the film's opening sequence there is an effect where the Freddy claw goes haywire and attacks the film crew. The claw's seeming to fly through the air on it's own was achieved by having it on the end of a control rod that was being operated by a man. Both the rod and the man were digitally removed from the shots in post-production.
The final credits list Freddy Krueger as having portrayed himself.
BEST QUOTES
Freddy (to Heather): Miss me?
Freddy (to Dylan whilst killing Julie): Ever play skin the cat?
Freddy (to Heather): Meet your maker
Freddy (to Heather): Pick a pet for the rugrat, bitch!
Freddy (to Dylan opening up his mouth very wide in a parody of Hansel and Gretal): Gonna eat you up!