"A Nightmare on Elm Street" (2010) d/ Sam Bayer

Yeah, I know, I know. Freddy Krueger review. I'm a big fat liar whose flame-enveloped 501's are putting third-degree burns on my admittedly elephantine cazzies, on this end. After seeing 'nuff  net-gativity towards the 2010 reboot, which I hadn't bothered catching (like most of the original series...ziiing), coming from hardcore fans of he of the finger-knives, floppy fedora, and ugly sweater-fame (a character personified for three decades by character actor and genre fave, Robert Englund, for better or worse), I decided that I ought to give the remake a look. I'd always felt that Wes Craven had some solid ideas on his pioneer excursion to Elm Street back in '84, if handled differently, for lack of better words, and a fresh approach might work in the remake's favor in this regard. First of all, casting Jackie Earle Haley, who's made a career out of playing ugly little creeps (dating at least as far back as the friggin' Partridge Family), as Krueger is a genius move, away from the familiar wisecracking horror cornball favorite for ages eight and under.


Shakey-shake...shake it. Come on, pilgrim, you know he loves you.
Russell's at the diner, waiting for his girlfriend Kris to show up, when he dozes off, and is seemingly dispatched in his dream by a horribly burned yet somehow familiar man wearing a fedora, gaudy Christmas-colored sweater, and a glove full of finger knives, though outwardly, it appears that he's slashed his own throat and committed suicide. Kris witnesses in horror, begins to dream about the same mysterious man, then suffers the same fate one night as she's invisibly tossed around her bedroom and slashed to death in front of her ex-boyfriend Jesse's eyes. Jesse runs to Nancy's house to tell her his story, to find that she, too, has been dreaming the same dreams, before being arrested and jailed for Kris' murder, where he also falls victim to the shadowy sleep murderer. Nancy (Rooney Mara) begins to notice a pattern in the teen slayings, eventually discovering that she attended a preschool with all the victims, and that the man she's been dreaming about was a quirky little gardener there named Fred Krueger (Haley) that abused all the children before being run out of town...


Freddy transforms a tittilating teen into a forgotten chocolate bar left in some fat kid's pocket.
When Nancy's friend Quentin (Kyle Gallner) falls asleep during a swim team practice, he envisions his parents among the angry mob that corners a terrified Krueger and burns him alive, leading the teens to believe that they'd perhaps lied to their parents about the abuse as children, and that Freddy has been infiltrating their dreamscape to exact bloody revenge from beyond the grave for their lies. Except, in the climactic showdown at the preschool, they discover that Freddy really wants to kill them all for telling the truth, as his secret toddler-torturing room is stumbled upon, complete with kiddie crayon drawings and half-fabricated finger knives. Drawing upon a piece of sweater that Nancy managed to pull out of an earlier dream, the two devise a plan to do the same to Krueger involving syringes full of adrenalin, finishing him off when he emerges into reality. Believing they've done just that, Nancy sets the preschool ablaze with Freddy's corpse inside, ending the incredible nightmare, once and for all. At home, Nancy notices Krueger in a mirror's reflection, just as he slams his finger knives out of the mirror into the back of her mother's unsuspecting head. Roll credits.


Snarky captions to Elm Street screen caps seem a bit redundant, don't they?
I even thought about laying three wops on this one, but let's face it, that's just crazy fucking talk, man. Still, where I experienced corny non-scares throughout my encounters with the original series, I experienced some real menace and tension in the remake, with Fred's trademark wisecracks wisely toned down for atmosphere's sake. I can go on for days on end with comparisons, which favor the remake for me, or we can simply cut to the chase, as tackling three reviews in one evening has left me slightly burnt out at this point, by summarizing that most of the gripes of the Nightmare fan base towards this ninth installment comprise a lot of the reasons why I prefer it to the original, which I'd probably score roughly the same on the rating scale. For the silent minority out there, who grew to despise all things Freddy over the years, check this one out, you might end up feeling the same way about it as I do when all's said and done. Two wops.


" One, two...Kelly let the grounder roll through..."

"Freddy vs. Jason" (2003) d/ Ronny Yu

Ironically, our final Friday the 13th review (until the day they decide to haphazardly throw another sequel/prequel/remake together, of course) also marks the first time we're covering Freddy Krueger here. If it's up to me, this will be the only time. Oh yeah, I'm fully aware just how many of you were weaned on and subsequently scared half to death by the corny one-liners and ugly sweater-fedora combo since Wes Craven's first successful series poo-step in 1984, it's just that I never was, thankfully. Even as a teenager watching the original, I felt insulted that they'd waste such an impressive m.o. on such an embarrassingly impotent-looking bad guy, horror's equivalent of Doctor Detroit (1984).
With the phoned in ending of Jason Goes to Hell:The Final Friday still cemented to the bottom of my breadbasket like a pound of grilled venison, I purposely avoided seeing this one on principle until finally, I snagged the dvd off of an A-Town Wal Mart shelf while rubbing elbows with the two a.m. shower cap and bedroom slippers crowd, it having finally been reduced in price to something that I no longer considered rape, and also constituting "something new"(post 70's), which my then concubine-of-the-moment constantly complained that I never indulged in, caustic little ball-breaker that she no doubt, was. What followed, was a decorous, campy effort from director Ronny Yu ( The Bride With White Hair, Bride of Chucky) that reminded me of an updated version of the old Universal monster battle flicks at times.

One, two...look at the bobblers on you.
Having been rendered powerless when the townspeople of Springwood forgot his horrible crimes over time, Freddy Krueger (Englund) enlists the homicidal services of  prolific Crystal Lake slasher Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) to jog the town's collective memory, by posing as his mother and sending the silent giant off to punish the bad children of Elm Street, like Lori (Monica Keena) and her friends, who are having a sleepover. One of the boys gets butchered, leading the authorites to start throwing around the ol' capital F, capital K name again, which leads the kids to suddenly start having nightmares about Krueger again, but he finds himself too weak to actually snuff anyone in their dreams at this point. Jason, on the other hand, is more than willing to pick up Freddy's slack, murdering kids and parents alike, even hack-slashing his way through a cornfield rave while set ablaze, once again picking up Krueger's spare by stealing his intended victim. Lori and a handful of her friends escape in her ex-boyfriend's van, after he and his friend escape from a mental hospital where they've been kept, to warn her about the evil janitor's return.


When they say you ought not tear the law label off of the bottom of the mattress, they ain't whistlin' Dixie.
Freddy does in Mark(Brendan Fletcher) with his signature glove o' finger-knives as Will (Jason Ritter) and Lori watch helplessly, sending them rushing back to the psych ward for the Hypnocil script that kept them from dreaming while asleep. At the hospital, Freddy assumes the form of a hookah-smoking caterpillar and dives down Lori's stoner buddy's yap, possessing him to flush all the pills down the sink drain. Voorhees makes the scene, electrocuting a cop, before splitting the stoner down the middle as he pumps two syringes of the drug into the hulking killer, sending him into a prolonged catnap as the remaining kids rush him home to Crystal Lake for his final face-off with Freddy, who's already discovered Jason's fear of drowning (?) in the killer's subconscious, and is using it to great advantage against him, poking his finger-knives into Voorhees' hydrocephalic head, being an obnoxious dick, and whatnot. With Jason drowning in his sleep, Lori volunteers to enter the dream battle-scape herself to even the odds, and manages to pull both baddies into reality, where Freddy reveals that it wasn't the girl's father who killed her mother all those years ago...it was him all along! Cue: the epic final reel serial-killer-fu-on-wire fight to the finish you paid to see, and throw in your obligatory shabby disembodied Freddy-head wink at the camera, and that just about wraps it up...


Krueger-pillar, cater-killer, either or. Just pass that hookah.
Yu not only succeeds at making a relatively entertaining Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street mash up here, he uses just the right amount of Freddy to not piss me off and lose me before the end credits, which might be a trailer's worth for me? I dunno, but for some reason, I didn't mind the cheesy wisecracking and mugging for the camera the way I would normally have done. Definitely worth a look for the completist and the curious, but it probably won't end up among your all-time favorites. Not quite enjoyable enough to pass out Jason Lives (1986) or The Final Chapter (1984), but more than enough boobs, blood, and brawl to top garbage like Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) or Jason Goes to Hell (1993).Two wops.


"You couldn't find this machete?!!? It was buried in your lung the whole time, you boob!"