| A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master | |
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Theatrical release poster by Matthew Peak[1]
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| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by |
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| Based on | Characters byWes Craven |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | Robert Englund |
| Cinematography | Steven Fierberg |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Craig Safan |
Production |
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| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $6.5 million[2][3] |
| Box office | $49.4 million (US)[4] |
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is a 1988 American fantasy slasher film[5] directed by Renny Harlin, and is the fourth installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Serving as a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), the film follows Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) who, following the death of Nancy Thompson and completing his revenge against the families who killed him, reappears in the dreams of Kristen Parker, Joey Crusel, and Roland Kincaid, where he uses Kristen's best friend, Alice Johnson, to gain access to new victims in order to satiate his murderous needs. The Dream Master is often popularly referred to as "the MTV Nightmare" of the franchise.[6][7][8]
The Dream Master was released on August 19, 1988, and grossed $49.4 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $6.5 million, which made it the highest-grossing film in the franchise in the United States until the release of Freddy vs. Jason, a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise, in 2003. The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics. It was followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989).
In 1988, a year after the events of the previous film, Kristen, Kincaid, and Joey have been released from Westin Hills and are back to their normal lives. However, when Kristen dreams that she is in Freddy's old boiler room, she summons Joey and Kincaid into the dream, afraid Krueger might be back. Joey and Kincaid, disgruntled, insist that Freddy is gone. The next day, she meets with her boyfriend, martial arts enthusiast Rick Johnson, and their friends—Rick's shy and quiet sister Alice, Sheila, an asthmatic genius, and Debbie, an athletic girl who dislikes bugs.
That night, Kincaid falls asleep and awakens in a junkyard, where Freddy has been accidentally resurrected. Freddy kills him. Joey falls asleep and Freddy pulls him into his waterbed and kills him. Kristen is heartbroken to learn that the boys are dead. At dinner, she realizes in horror that her mother has put sleeping pills in her dinner because she has not been sleeping. She tries to resist but falls asleep. Since she is the last of the Elm Street children, Freddy goads her into summoning one of her friends into the dream so that his fun can begin anew. She summons Alice, and Freddy throws Kristen into his boiler. Before she dies, Kristen gives Alice her dream power. When Alice and Rick arrive at Kristen's house, they see her bedroom on fire and that she has burned to death.
At school, Alice falls asleep during class and inadvertently brings Sheila into her dream. Freddy kills Sheila and makes it look like an asthma attack. Rick starts to believe Alice and has a dream where an invisible Freddy kills him in a martial arts dojo. With each death, Alice changes—she gains the abilities and personalities of her dead friends. Freddy targets Debbie next, transforms her into a cockroach, and crushes her in a roach motel. Trapped by Freddy in a time loop dream with her crush Dan Jordan, Alice tries to ram Freddy with her car to save Debbie but collides with a tree in reality, injuring Dan, who is rushed into surgery.
In a dream, Alice rescues Dan but he gets injured, which prompts his surgeons to wake him up when he starts bleeding out in real life. Alice now has to face Freddy alone. She uses her friends' dream powers against him. When he is about to win, she remembers a nursery rhyme called "The Dream Master" that instructs for one to show evil its reflection. She forces Freddy to face his own reflection, which causes the souls within him to revolt. The strain tears him apart. Alice's friends' souls are released and leave Freddy a hollow husk. Months later, Dan and Alice are on a date when Dan tosses a coin into a fountain. For a moment, Alice sees Freddy's reflection in the water, but ignores it as they walk away.
Robert Shaye appears uncredited in a cameo role as Alice's teacher talking about a positive and a negative gate of dreams and Aristotle's dream philosophy.
A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise originator Wes Craven presented his own pitch for the fourth Elm Street film, but producers Sara Risher and Robert Shaye turned it down, instead going with the "Dream Master" pitch as a progression of the "Dream Warriors" concept from the previous film. Risher explained that:
I approached Wes for an idea for the fourth film. I always go to Wes first each time. His idea was illogical. It was about time travel within dreams that broke all the rule of dreams. We decided not to go with that. When we decided to go with [William] Kotzwinkle's 'Dream-master' idea, which we thought was terrific, I told Wes we were doing that.
Shaye felt that Craven's idea did not have the impact the producers were looking for. Craven and his writing partner Bruce Wagner were later contacted about doing rewrites for the script, but turned down the offer as Craven felt that they should have been approached as artists of the original material.[11] Brian Helgeland was at New Line Cinema around Christmas 1987 about a script named Highway to Hell, a pitch that was turned down by them and would not be realized until 1992; the company was desperate to get Nightmare 4 going as they lacked both a script and a director for the film at the time. Mike De Luca begged Helgeland to have a try at it and come up with a script within two weeks; he went to his parents' house and finished the script within nine days, sending it to New Line with FedEx.[12] Helgeland's script was a rewrite of William Kotzwinkle's original script. Ken and Jim Wheat, under the pseudonym Scott Pierce, were brought in next for further polishes; the Writers Guild of America credited the shooting script to Hedgeland and the Wheat brothers, with Kotzwinkle and Hedgeland receiving story credit.[13][14]
In an interview with Midnight's Edge, director Tom McLoughlin said that after completing Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986), New Line offered him the job on The Dream Master. His one caveat was that he wanted creative control. The studio could not adhere to the demand, specifically because they had already begun filming without any director. McLoughlin said:
"When I finished Friday, I was offered Nightmare 4 and went to New Line, met with them, and I said, 'I love Freddy, I would love to do one of these, but I really want to do what I just did, where I had creative control'," he explained. "And they go, 'Well, we're already shooting.' 'What?' 'Yeah, we're already shooting, we're shooting like two different units for the visual effects' and something else, puppets or something. And I said, 'Without a director?' 'Yeah, we kind of know how we're going to make these things.' And I went, 'That's not the way I work.' So I turned it down, which of course made (Nightmare 4 director) Renny Harlin's career."[15]
Eventually, the director's work was given to Harlin, who had previously directed only two low-budget feature films: a Finnish action film Born American in 1986 and an American horror film Prison in 1987. Rachel Talalay claims that she and the other producers felt that since the audience was so familiar with Freddy Kruger at this stage, it would be harder to replicate the scare factor of the first two films; instead they decided to continue in the same vein of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) rather than focus on pure horror. Harlin felt that Freddy had become the James Bond of the series,[16] the one the audience roots for, saying:
We've reached a point where the audience sees Freddy as the hero. They come to these movies to hear his funny lines and see him do those amazing things. And because of that popularity, I'm faced with showing Freddy in a more heroic light and giving him more screen time. People will still fear him, but they will also be cheering him on.[17]
Rick Johnson, played by Andras Jones, was originally slated to die in a Freddy-induced elevator accident in the dreamworld. According to the producers, this scene had to be cut for budget concern reasons and was rewritten with the infamous karate dojo scene seen in the theatrical picture.[18]
“They asked me to come back for 4 but at that time I was starting to break into kind of meatier roles. I had just done a movie of the week about teen pregnancy called Daddy and I was really liking getting deeper with my work. I love the horror genre and the Freddy franchise but I was chomping at the bit to try other things as an actor.”
— Patricia Arquette (2017)[19]
The role of Kristen ParkerinDream Warriors had been the debut role for Patricia Arquette, but was recast with actress Tuesday Knight for the sequel; producer Sara Risher said she was disappointed at the time that Arquette could not reprise her role, commending her as an "integral part to Nightmare 3" and as well-liked by the rest of the crew.[18]InAssault of the Killer B's: Interviews with 20 Cult Film Actresses it is stated that "Patricia Arquette reportedly fought the [horror genre] label, turning down a hefty offer to reprise her heroine role, instead favoring more dramatic roles and becoming a respected thespian in the Hollywood community".[20] Knight had been the first new actor to be cast for the film other than the four returnees from the previous film.[21] Returning actors Rodney Eastman and Ken Sagoes expressed disappointment that the character of Kristen had to be recast and of the defaulted reunion with former co-star Arquette, while Knight on her part has admitted to having felt out of place due to the recasting.[18] On the auditioning for Alice, Lisa Wilcox recalls that "I did a screen test with Tuesday Knight, who'd already been cast as Kristen Parker. We did the scene where we're sitting outside the school talking about having matching luggage. Then I did another screen test with Brooke".[20]
Over 600 actresses auditioned for the role of Alice, which was eventually given to Wilcox. She had previously auditioned for a role in the previous film, Dream Warriors, but failed to land it.[22] In the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010), Harlin describes that he and the producers were looking for "somebody [he] could make seem timid and vulnerable in the beginning and who can then in a believable way become kind of like Sigourney WeaverinAliens or something like that", and that "[he] found lot of sort of hardcore tough chicks but [he] could never believe they could be weak and vulnerable – then [he] found a lot of mousy girls that when they try to be tough and strong capable, they fell on their face."[18] According to Wilcox, the casting directors failed to find the right actress initially, and so went through the pile of rejects that she had been put in. The reason for this first rejection, as she was told initially by the casting manager, was that she looked too much like "a cheerleader", and was deemed too pretty to play the part of the introverted, mousy girl Alice started off as.[23] Wilcox then countered by toning down her looks as much as she possibly could:
I basically wimped myself out. I wore no makeup, wore my worst color (which is yellow) and just showed up looking like hell. Their reaction was, "Is that Lisa Wilcox?" After they got over their shock, they gave me the role.[22]
Ellie Cornell has claimed that she was in line for auditioning for a lead role in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in 1988.[24]InHorror Films of the 1980s, she describes that New Line Cinema was looking for an 'Ellie Cornell prototype', a 'girl next door', but she had already landed the role of Rachel CarruthersinHalloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) shortly before the auditioning for the role in Dream Master took place.[25] Lezlie Deane, who later starred as Tracy SwaninFreddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), also auditioned for roles in Dream Master and Dream Warriors.[23]
The creative process was bogged down by the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike, forcing Harlin and the producers to improvise much during the filming. Wilcox and Jones wrote their own dialogue for Alice and Rick after the death of Kristen while watching their old home videos, such as "I saw it happen in my dream". Many of the nightmare scenes were made up from ideas that Harlin came up with rather than from the writers' script.[18]
This film features the car junkyard set from Dream Warriors. This set was conceptualized by production designer Mick Strawn, who worked as art director and handled effects on the previous film.[26] Strawn also came up with the truck crash scene and the kaleidoscope hallway. The junkyard set is the only set used in more than one film. The set was built and filmed at a landfill in Pacoima, California.[27]
According to Never Sleep Again producer Rachel Talalay recounted a meeting between Harlin and James Cameron; Cameron enquired how Freddy was being resurrected for this film to which Harlin replied "a dog pisses fire".
| A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack[28] | ||||
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| Film score by
Craig Safan
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| Released | November 1, 1988 | |||
| Genre | Film score | |||
| Length | 41:51 | |||
| Label | Varese Sarabande | |||
| Producer | Craig Safan | |||
| Craig Safan chronology | ||||
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| A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by
Various artists
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| Released | November 1, 1988 |
| Label | Chrysalis |
| Producer | Kevin Benson (for New Line Cinema) |
| Review scores | |
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [29] |
There are two different releases of the music featured in the film. One is the music score, composed by Craig Safan, while the other was a soundtrack album with mostly rock or pop-oriented songs by various artists. The film score by Safan along with every other score in the film series was re-released in 2017 on the label Death Waltz Recording Company in an 8-CD box set named A Nightmare On Elm Street: Box Of Souls.[30]
There were ten songs on the soundtrack album.
Nine songs were played during the film that were not on the soundtrack album. Tuesday Knight, who acted in the film, contributed the song Nightmare to the film's soundtrack. She did not know until she watched Dream Master in the theater that it been chosen to be the actual title/intro song.[18] Nightmare does not appear on the official compilation released for the film. The master record of this song, previously thought for many years to have been lost or destroyed, has since been "uncovered in a box deep within the bowels of Warner Brothers" according to Knight.[31]
Producer Rachel Talalay would recall in 2010 that the inclusion of Sinéad O'Connor's song, "I Want Your (Hands on Me)" (from her debut album The Lion and the Cobra), was a contentious issue as the licence fee for the song was twice that of the others due to O'Connor's emerging success on MTV; producer Bob Shaye eventually relented and the song was included twice in the picture.
Since the Nightmare on Elm Street series was popular, many of the songs on the soundtrack had music videos:
The film was released on August 19, 1988, on 1,765 theaters in North America. The film ranked number one on its opening weekend and grossed $12,883,403.[32] On the second weekend, the film still ranked number one and grossed $6,989,358. It was in first place on the third weekend, then at second, fourth, and sixth in the next three weeks until it dropped out from the top ten list on the seventh weekend at number eleven. The film grossed $49,369,899 at the US box office and was the 19th-highest-grossing film of 1988.[32] It was the highest-grossing Nightmare on Elm Street film until Freddy vs. Jason was released in 2003. It is currently the third-highest-grossing film in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.[33]
"Nightmare 4 contains my favorite sequence in the entire franchise, and I'm not even in it! Alice is locking up for the night at the Crave Inn diner—get it? ... Crave Inn? ... Craven? ... Wes Craven? ... Weren't we clever?—then she and Dan walk out to his truck, open the doors, and get in, and then ... the sequence repeats ... and repeats and repeats in a time-disorienting, continuous loop. The first time I saw it, I was spooked because it reminded me of how my nightmares tended to function. That repeating exit was the most hypnotic, disturbing, and accurate depiction of a dream I'd ever seen."
— Robert Englund (2009) on the timeloop scene with Alice and Dan[6]
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 57% approval rating based on 30 reviews, and an average rating of 5.02/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master marks a relative high point in this franchise's bumpy creative journey, although the original remains far superior."[34]OnMetacritic the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[35]
Upon its release, critic Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the story line, performances, and special effects, stating that the film: "is by far the best of the series, a superior horror picture that balances wit and gore with imagination and intelligence. It very effectively mirrors the anxieties of the teen-age audience for which it is primarily intended."[36] Thomas then went on to commend Wilcox's portrayal of Alice, stating,
It matters not to Freddy that these kids' parents had nothing to do with his torching. In essence, however, the film is about how a shy, lovely teenager named Alice (Lisa Wilcox) with a widowed alcoholic father gradually gathers the courage to assert herself in taking on Freddy—and in the process wins the love of the handsomest boy (Danny Hassel) in her school. If the nightmare sequences are impressive with their Inferno-like images, the film's young cast is no less so. Nightmare 4 provides Wilcox with an exceptionally challenging screen debut.[36]
While criticizing the plot for being derivative of the previous films, critic John H. Richardson of Los Angeles Daily News described the film's special effects as "downright brilliant, matching and even improving on the amazing effects in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors."[37]
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Films directed by Renny Harlin
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United States
Speculative fiction
Fantasy
Horror
1980s
