The Guilty Snob

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Nothing about “Dream Warriors” particularly stands out at first glance: it’s name is very similar to the next two films in the series, and it has all the baggage that comes with being the followup to a disastrous sequel in a slasher film series. But from even a cursory glance at the credits (which are more impressive now than at the time) it’s clear that more effort was put into than “Freddy’s Revenge”. Wes Craven has a story credit, and Frank Darabont worked on the script. Heather Langenkamp reprises her role from the original, something nearly unheard of in horror sequels, and the supporting cast includes future stars Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne. My favorite film composer, Angelo Badalamenti, is credited for the score, hot off his brilliant work on the previous year’s “Blue Velvet”. So this isn’t your average slasher sequel. Still it’s doubtful that anyone would expect that it’s as brilliant as it is, or that it’s worthy of being considered among the very sequels ever made. I certainly didn’t.

You’ll notice that I refer to “Dream Warriors” as a sequel, and that’s really what it is, despite the “Part 3″ in the title.  It does retain the timeline of “Freddy’s Revenge” though, taking place six years after the events of the original (which was set in 1981, despite it’s 1984 release). It also is consistent with the fate of Nancy’s mother in that film: everyone claims she committed suicide in the living room, though it’s clear that Freddy killed her. I’m still not sure how this fits in with the ending of the original “Nightmare” (wouldn’t it be the bedroom?), but I’m willing to play along. Everything else from the second film is jettisoned: there’s no mention of Jesse or anyone living in the Krueger house after Nancy moved out (the house is now boarded up and appears dilapidated), Krueger can no longer possess people or affect them outside of their dreams, and his telekinetic powers are mercifully absent.

The premise of the film is brilliant, as it immediately discards comparisons to the original, and turns “Dream Warriors” into a completely different kind of film. The difference between this film and the original is as extreme as that between the first two Alien or Terminator films, yet it still feels connected to that film in a way that “Freddy’s Revenge” didn’t. The setting this time is not Elm Street, or even Springwood. The main center of action is Westin Hills, a psychiatric hospital that seems to be located a short distance from Springwood. There is another rash of teenagers having terrible nightmares again, this time more widespread than the last. Though it’s never made clear what exactly the kids have been diagnosed with, all of them seem a little off: perhaps driven mad by Krueger’s nightly visits, or simply affected by the medication, which of course, proves useless. All the doctors there try to convince the kids that their nightmares are simply side effects of their subconscious, and once they deal with their own issues, the nightmares will stop. However, the kids aren’t as convinced, particularly since they’ve realized how similar their dreams are. That is, until a brilliant but unorthodox young psychiatrist arrives at the hospital: Nancy from the first film, of course. She seemed on the verge of madness by the end of the first film, but here she has overcome her demons and become stronger, more resilient and mature. Heather Langenkamp’s performance in the first film was inconsistent, and at times shrill, but she is absolutely wonderful here, making Nancy recognizable as the same character from the original, while also showing how she’s changed in the years since. She explains that the teens are the last remaining children of the parents that killed Krueger, and that he’s come back to finish the task. After convincing the resident doctor, Dr. Neil Gordon that she’s telling the truth after the first child dies, they undergo a kind of hypnotherapy with the kids, allowing her to teach them to take control of their dreams. Each of the teens has certain dream abilities, the most notable of which is Kristen’s power to pull others into her dream, thus making it possible for them to team up against Krueger on his own turf.

The brilliance of the film lies in the way that it doesn’t even try to repeat it’s predecessors. The opening scene is very creepy, and resembles many of the dream sequences in the previous films, but after this the movie more or less gives up on horror completely. It doesn’t even really follow the slasher movie formula: the kids aren’t victims, but strong minded individuals who team up to fight Krueger. Though Kristen (Patricia Arquette) seems to be the final girl (she is the center of the action, has special powers, and is the most attractive) two other kids survive the movie, the adult characters are as central to the story as the teens, and the death scenes tend to aim for interesting visuals and dream imagery over traditional scares. It is not remotely puritanical or sexist either: the female characters tend to be stronger than the men, the victims aren’t predominantly female or in a racial minority, and there’s never any icky sense that any of the victims pay for moral mistakes that they’ve made. Best of all there are no virginal “good girl” characters, or slutty victims: for once in this sort of film the women are not defined by their sexual activity. There’s a sense of fun and adventure here that’s not present in the other films; the dreams are at once terrifying and exciting, as the kids discover they have abilities they couldn’t imagine in the real world. It’s more of a darkly comic fantasy than it is a slasher flick, though some of the same DNA remains.

For the first time, the series realizes all the possibilities of the dream world setting, and the deaths are much crazier and more surreal: Freddy controls a boy like a puppet with his tendons, and makes walk off a bridge, he kills a recovering drug addict with needles in place of his razors, he attacks Kristen in the form of a giant worm, and he can take on the appearance of any person, which provides a powerful moment at the film’s climax. The dream world is no longer limited to dark, industrial hallways: now one room can lead into a completely different one, an indoor hallway can lead outdoors, and anyone can come crashing through the mirrors. The film’s effects certainly aren’t realistic looking, but they’re a fine example of how imaginative special effects artists could be in the 80′s, and the film is a secret treasure trove of great effects, from a stop motion Freddy puppet to a live action/animation combination late in the film. However, a fight with a stop motion skeleton near the end is a giant misstep, as the effects are so dreadful that it’s impossible to enjoy what should have been a fun moment.

The characterization and acting throughout are a strong suit of the film, and are by far the best of the series. Though I can probably only name a handful of the kids in the movie, I can recall all of their faces and personalities (aside from Joey, a pretty personality-free character who survives the entire film for some reason). This might sound like faint praise, but there are seven central kids, plus the characters of Nancy and Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson), who get the best character development in the film, and the film is only 96 minutes long. It is certainly an ensemble film, a rarity in the horror genre: there’s no clear central character. There’s not a lot of time for character development, but the film does a very good job fleshing out the central adult characters and Kristen (Patricia Arquette), who fills the “final” girl role (even though two others survive the movie). The others are likeable, and fleshed out enough to care about, however, and this is the rare slasher film where you can’t be sure who is going to die and because of this, and the relatively strong characterization, there’s a weight to the deaths. Aside from one near the end of the film, none of them are likely to be tearjerkers, but the characters aren’t just personality-less ciphers lining up for Freddy to kill them, as in the next three films in the series.

However, any discussion of this movie should note that many of the changes in this film ended up derailing the series, the comic tone most of all. The comic one liners from Freddy in particular, eventually remove any element of menace that Englund could give the character, turning him into more of a wacky uncle that kills the occasional teenager than a deadly child murderer. Some of his one liners are painfully bad (“Tongue tied, Tommy?” he asks as Tommy is literally tied down with tongues), but often the jokes manage to still be threatening and seem pretty consistent with Freddy’s personality in the first two films. Even the infamous “Welcome to Primtime Bitch!” line is actually pretty effective and chilling in the context of the film, though I’m not sure it’s worth the trend it begins of Freddy ending every sentence spoken to a woman with the word “bitch”. Though this film eventually ruins the character, it is my favorite of Krueger’s appearances: he is menacing but also has a distinctive personality. As terrible as Krueger is he still enjoys a good joke, like the rest of us: this humanizes Krueger in a way that never makes him less scary.

Interestingly, the next three films in the series are not tepid retreads of the first film, but of this one, though they graft a much more generic slasher film structure onto surreal set pieces and tongue in cheek humor. I think this is telling: this film has a kind of magic about it, and is a near perfect mixture of humor, action, horror, good performances, and effective storytelling. This is the definitive “Elm Street” movie for me, and it’s one of the few sequels in history that not only lives up to the original, but outdoes it.

“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master” (1988)

I really have very little to say about this one. It is without a doubt the least interesting and memorable of the Elm Street films. The offensively bad first half hour is the only thing that really defines it: the rest settles for mediocrity. You can tell it’s going to be rough from the get go: the actress playing Kristen has changed from the distinctive Patricia Arquette, to the blandly pretty Tuesday Knight (apparently Arquette was pregnant and couldn’t reprise the role: she dodged a bullet with this one), and the opening scene looks more like a Bonnie Tyler video than anything remotely threatening or scary. There’s a whole lot of flowing curtains, lightning flashes, and dramatic slow motion in this film, courtesy of hack director Renny Harlin, who wouldn’t know dramatic tension if it punched him in the face. The film looks crisper and more expensive than the others, but also much blander, like a high budget CW show. The score (by Craig Safan, no Angelo Badalamenti), always unsubtle in this series, is now a pulsing, pounding mess: you know what parts are supposed to be scary because the music starts blasting at top volume for no reason.

This film absolutely has no plot whatsoever: it doesn’t even attempt narrative coherence. Apparently the writers couldn’t think of any way to get around Krueger’s unusually definitive death in the previous film, because they don’t even try. Kincaid (Ken Sagoes, reprising his role from the last film) has a dream in which his dog, Jason (get it?… sigh) digs up the ground where Freddy’s remains were buried and pisses fire on it. This actually happens. Then there’s a big earthquake, Freddy comes out of it, and Kincaid’s dead. I thought it was pretty ahead of it’s time for the last film to let the only person of color survive, but here he’s the first to go here. Then Joey and Kristen get eliminated, in list like fashion. The film starts out seeming unusually connected to the previous one as far as continuity goes, but it’s soon clear that the filmmakers are just killing off loose ends. Somehow the film strips these characters of their personalities entirely, rendering them one dimensional cardboard cutouts. The death scenes are an absolute mess: they attempt to be wacky, surreal, and off the wall, but the general impression is just of confusion. Insane things that I won’t even attempt to describe happen in this film, but they’re so poorly executed it’s easy to get bored during them.

Of course, by the time Kristen dies, the film has introduced four more utterly dull characters to get killed off (though that may not be fair, two of them survive). There’s Alice (Lisa Wilcox, in the film’s worst performance, which is no small feat) an incredibly obvious final girl, her brother Dan (Andras Jones), who was Kristen’s boyfriend, and whose sole personality trait is his bizarre hairstyle and lame martial arts moves. Then there’s Sheila (Toy Newkirk) and Dan (Danny Hassel): Dan is only there to be a hunky love interest, and Sheila is a generic pretty face with no real personality (though she strangely lifts weights). The rest of the film just involves them being killed off in lame ways, after which Alice absorbs their spirits for some reason. She then ultimately uses these skills (well, kind of) to fight Krueger, before killing him once again by holding a piece of stained glass in front of him. I usually try to refrain from spoilers a bit but there’s not much to ruin here. The film does feature a cool bit of explanation though: Krueger can only enter the dreams of the children of those who killed him. He can only get to Alice because she absorbs Kristen’s spirit, but he kills off the other victims when Alice pulls them into her dream. It’s a cool idea, but terribly executed, as each victim’s dream is clearly their own dream, not Alice’s. It should be mentioned that this directly contradicts “Freddy’s Revenge”, but the series seems to have decided that the events of that film never occurred, which is fine with me.

So that’s it for this film: it’s not scary, it’s not funny, Freddy isn’t menacing at all (here he’s kind of dull and difficult to understand more than anything), it has one of the worst final girls of any slasher film, and doesn’t even really have any gore or memorable setpieces. Yet it is still not the worst film in this series, not by a long shot. Tune in next week to find out what film earns that dubious honor.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors: ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4: Dream Master: ☆

The first series up for discussion is the “Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984) films, which proves to be quite nearly a perfect case example of the art of the film series. Pretty much every type of film sequel imaginable is on display here: the quickie follow up that has little to do with the original, the “Aliens”-like genre shifting sequel that just might match up to the original, an escalating series of disasters that threaten to kill the series, the series finale, the high profile reboot, and a spinoff that crosses over with another series. There was also a remake of the original last year, but I won’t get to that since it’s not really a part of “Elm Street” canon, and it doesn’t seem very interesting.  Unlike most slasher flick series, which pretty much repeat the formula of the original poorly, “Nightmare on Elm Street” is constantly shifting its formula and reinventing itself, which proves to be both a good, and very bad thing.

But before we can get to all that we have to deal with the original. The film is a landmark in many ways: it re-popularized supernatural horror popular in America, it was the first slasher flick to feature a killer with real personality, and it was Wes Craven’s breakthrough into the mainstream. Also it’s really damn scary, a quality all too rare in the horror genre. However, the film is hardly impossible to improve on, and has a myriad of flaws that should not be ignored. The acting is uneven, the soundtrack is way over the top, the script is full of lame dialogue and seems to make up plot elements on the fly, and the whole thing completely falls apart in the last ten minutes.

The film has two qualities however, that more or less guarantee that any sequels will at the very least, be unusual and interesting. The first is the central hook of the film: the murderer is only able only kill people in their dreams. This means that any entries in the series will at the very least have to feature the two most compelling elements of this film: the surreal dream imagery and imaginative death sequences, and the utterly terrifying, surprisingly charming killer at the center of the film, Freddy Krueger (played by the inimitable Robert Englund). Plus there’s that glove with razorblade fingers, which is pretty much impossible to make not-scary, try as the sequels may.

But first we have to talk about the plot of the film. After an astonishing opening credits sequence, which shows Freddy making that razor blade glove, Craven introduces us to Freddy with the perfect introduction to this series: Tina (Amanda Wyss) wanders through a large factory type building, filled with steam, frightened by the ominous laughter she hears around her. As she wanders through the factory, Freddy suddenly rips through a curtain and chases after her. She runs away, but as soon as she pauses to catch her breath, Freddy is suddenly there, and grabs her from behind. She wakes up, her terrified face framed in the foreground, with a crucifix in the background. Though this scene doesn’t reach the surreal heights of subsequent scenes in the film, and Freddy doesn’t say a word (though those opening credits speak for themselves), this scene pretty much encapsulates the entire series.  All the mainstays of the series are in place: the industrial setting, the rather cheesy 80’s score, much too loud and unsubtle to be effective (it’s hard to believe that the great Carl Bernstein was responsible), the brilliant use of light and shadow, and the inevitable yet surprising appearance of a man wearing a green and red striped sweater and a dirty old fedora, scarred by terrible burns (a makeup effect that looks great so long as it’s not too brightly lit). Plus that sudden grab from behind, which becomes all too familiar as the series wears on.

The next day Tina tells this story to her high school friends, straight laced Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), her rather dense jock boyfriend Glen (a fresh faced Johnny Depp, in his first film role), and her bad boy boyfriend Rod (Jsu Garcia, credited under stage name Nick Corri). It turns out that Nancy’s having similar dreams, and she and Glen volunteer to spend the night with Tina. Rod decides to crash the party, and has sex with Nancy, pretty much guaranteeing that she’ll be the first victim. Nancy, of course, refuses Glen’s advances. This series is actually pretty good as a whole at ignoring the sex = death rule of these kinds of films, but unfortunately it’s in full force here. As soon as Nancy falls asleep, she’s murdered, in the film’s most terrifying sequence. The first section takes place in Tina’s dream, in which we see Freddy chasing her down a dark alleyway, his arms impossibly long. He chases her down, and cuts off two of his fingers, grinning maniacally. He tackles her and rips off his face to reveal a laughing skull, an effect that is somehow terrifyingly artificial looking.  The rest of the murder is seen from Rod’s point of view in the real world, as the invisible Freddy slashes open Nancy’s stomach and drags her up the wall and onto the ceiling, leaving her screaming, leaving behind a trail of blood, before he finally drops her to the ground. Though the scene clearly owes a great debt to “The Exorcist” (1973), but the combination of surrealism and naturalism is still horrifying.

Here the story starts to get interesting: the police suspect Ron, since he was the only one in the room when the murder occurred, yet Nancy believes his claims of innocence, especially when she discovers that both he and Glen have been dreaming of the same man as she. She takes pills to keep herself awake at night, and when she briefly falls asleep, has terrible visions of a bloody Tina in a body bag, calling to her, and long school hallways that turn into boiler rooms. Things come to a head when she discovers that she can pull things out of her dreams, and discovers Freddy’s name, via his hat, which she grabs out of her dream. When she mentions the name to her mother, she discovers that Freddy was a child murderer who was arrested, but released on a technicality years ago. In retaliation the parents of Elm Street, including her mother, ganged up on Freddy in the boiler room where he used to take his victims, and burned him alive. However he never quite died, and lives on in the dreams of the children of Elm Street, hoping to get revenge on his murderers.

The rest of the film proceeds pretty much like you’d expect it to, but Craven’s excellent direction keeps it frightening and suspenseful throughout, in spite of some spotty acting. The structure is the best thing about the film: the best horror films are those that search for the answer to an intriguing mystery, while providing plenty of scares along the way. Best of all, through its dream sequences, “Nightmare” manages to find a way to be scary without resorting to death and gore. A scant four people are killed in the course of the film, and the murder scenes are often astonishingly brief: the greatest scares come from the ominous sequences, in which the characters wander seemingly endless hallways, and the scenes in which Nancy desperately attempts to stay awake, fearing death every time she closes her eyes.

Langenkamp proves to be an effective “final girl” (shorthand for the girl who always survives at the end of a slasher flick), but can often be shrill, especially in the scenes in which she fights with her parents. Craven’s script doesn’t help much either, often making her sound more like a whiny brat than a girl fighting for her life.  Wyss and Garcia are nothing but pretty faces, and while Depp isn’t bad, he doesn’t exactly show much sign of his star potential. The worst performances by far come from John Saxon and Ronee Blakely as Nancy’s useless cop dad, and obnoxious drunk mother, respectively. Both are incredibly wooden and play the characters as utterly clueless, inexplicably antagonistic characters: the mother seems more annoyed than terrified by Nancy’s. Also, bizarrely, Nancy accuses her mother of being an alcoholic about a halfway through the film, a claim that we have seen no sign of up to this point. However, after this season she’s hardly ever seen without a bottle in hand, and the character transforms from skeptical suburban mother into an over the top drunk. Englund is fantastic however, extremely menacing, but also strangely charming in the few moments when he speaks. Rarely has an actor made such an impression with so little screen time.

Ultimately “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is a highly enjoyable slasher film: it’s genuinely scary, has an imaginative premise that it executes well, at least up until the ending. It also has a lot more personality and genuine creativity than dreck like “Friday the 13^th“(1980), or even “Halloween” (1978). You can tell this is Wes Craven’s baby, and it seems much closer to his heart than the (far superior) “Halloween” was to John Carpenter. In an industry that so frequently tends to the formulaic and derivative, “Nightmare” manages to feel astonishingly original, genuinely frightening, and even deeply personal, even almost 20 years after its release.

“A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge” (1985) feels pretty personal as well, though I’m not sure I’d want to spend much time around the person involved. The auteur here appears to be one David Chaskin, a screenwriter of considerably lesser talents than Wes Craven: he only authored five other filmed screenplays, none of which I’ve ever heard of. His approach to continuing the franchise is apparently to take the original’s premise, quickly toss the whole thing out the window, and transform it into a pretty standard demon possession storyline that bizarrely doubles as a metaphor for how homosexuality is evil and must be cured. After what has to be the cheesiest opening titles ever put to film, begins with what is unfortunately its best sequence, a silly yet memorable sequence in which Freddy drives a school bus, containing only two ditzy girls, who we never see again, and Jesse (the inimitable Mark Patton), who looks like a Saturday Night Live parody of a stereotypical gay man from the moment we first see him, into the desert. Sure enough there’s some cheap looking lightning and an earthquake, which leaves the school bus teetering on a small platform over a bottomless chasm. Freddy stops the bus and edges closer and closer to Jess, threatening to send the bus teetering off the edge. Though this scene is cheesy and not particularly well executed, I have to give it some praise for seeming very much like an actual dream.

After this the film rapidly turns into an escalating series of sequences that don’t deserve to be described in terms any more articulate than “WTF LOL” moments: Jesse complains that something is trying to “get inside him”; Freddy acts like a rapist and pulls the skin off his head, revealing his brain; Jesse’s sitcom-like dad for some reason refuses to fix the air conditioning, even though the thermostat reads 95 degrees; Ron (Robert Rusler), a fellow athlete pulls down Jesse’s pants during baseball practice and informs Jesse that the coach “likes pretty boys like you”; Jesse puts on bizarre cheesy sunglasses and dances around in the most gay way possible while unpacking; a lovebird randomly explodes into flames, and the film isn’t even halfway over yet.

The film’s worst mistake is tossing away the original’s intriguing premise, only to bring Freddy into the real world to murder in a much more traditional fashion. Or at least that’s what would happen in theory. Instead the film simply elects to make no sense whatsoever; taking what ought to be dream sequences, and transposing it in the real world of the film. What made the original so effective was the distinct separation of the dream world and the real world, which made it terrifying when it’s revealed that they can affect each other: in this film there’s really no difference between the two.

The most inexplicable sequence of all comes when Jesse awakens from a nightmare, and wanders out into the rain (now possessed by Freddy…? It’s really impossible to tell). He stumbles into what appears to be a gay leather bar, which can’t be common in small Ohio towns. He orders a beer, and is immediately caught by his creepy coach, dressed up in a pretty tame kink outfit. The film then abruptly cuts to Jesse running laps in the school gymnasium, leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination to guess what happened between these two scenes. The coach tells Jesse to hit the showers, and messes around in the equipment room for some reason. Freddy then, apparently now endowed with telekinetic powers, attacks the coach with the balls (very subtle), pulls him around to the showers and ties him to the shower heads. I swear this scene actually happens. It goes even further as Freddy strips the coach naked and whips his ass with a towel several times, before a naked Jesse stabs him with the razor glove (who knows where that came from). The film then cuts to the next day, when Jesse arrives at school to discover that the coach’s body has actually been found, tied naked to the showerheads.

This is the point where everyone in the audience probably feels pretty uncomfortable. This film is essentially claiming that homosexuality is caused in young men via rape by older men (symbolized by both Freddy and the Coach), and is a disease akin to demonic possession, which results in violent behavior. This metaphor is also pretty much the only thing in the film that remains consistent throughout, climaxing in a scene where Jesse’s ostensible love interest, Lisa (Meryl Streep look alike Kim Myers) defeats Freddy by kissing Freddy, telling Jesse to “fight it”, and saying that she loves him. This is enough to help Jesse defeat Freddy, at least until the nonsensical final scene in which Lisa and Jesse chat with Lisa’s friend on a school bus (of course), when of course Freddy’s hand suddenly pops out of Lisa’s friend’s chest and grabs Jesse’s face from behind. There’s much, much, more proof of this message throughout the film, but these two scenes really encapsulate the metaphor, which turns what could’ve been merely a laughably terrible horror film into a pretty icky and nasty little flick. Though I know this film has long been forgotten, and probably didn’t hurt the gay rights movement any, it still makes it harder to enjoy the ridiculousness of the film.

But credit should be given where it’s due: though much less scary than the original, this film still has some very frightening moments, particularly a memorable scene in which Freddy bursts out of Jesse’s body to murder Ron, complete with a shot of an eye peeping out through Jesse’s throat. Freddy is still a very menacing figure here, despite having nearly godlike powers, and the makeup is greatly improved from the first film. And though it has very icky sexual politics when it comes to homosexuality, the film treats its female characters pretty well: all of the victims in the film are male, and Lisa is not only the strongest character in the film, but she is actually rewarded for being sexually proactive, rather than punished. However we shouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves: the main reason for Lisa to exist as a character is still to gain Jesse’s love, and keep him on the “straight” and narrow path. Yes that was a terrible pun.

That said the acting is terrible across the board, although Patton’s performance is hilariously campy, and Englund again manages to do wonders, this time with a terrible script and only 13 minutes of screen time. The music (definitely not by Carl Bernstein) is unspeakably terrible, and the film is shot more poorly than most sitcoms of the time, leaving the imaginative special effects to carry the film visually.

Overall, “Freddy’s Revenge” should be one of the worst sequels ever made: it’s a quickie cash in on a terrific film, it has no involvement from anyone who worked on the original (other than Englund), and completely disregards the plot and rules of the first film, and contains an icky and horribly dated social message to boot. However it still has more genuinely creepy sequences than it has any right to, has at least one unforgettable (in a good way) setpiece, and features some very cool effects work. It is also, sadly, nowhere near the worst film in a still (relatively) good horror series.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: ☆ ☆ ☆

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge: ☆ 1/2

Welcome to Serial Studies! This feature is devoted to taking a look at different film series, how film series progresses over time, and when and why they go wrong. Though there are many excellent and lengthy book series, film series have a bad reputation, generally because, at least until recently, they tended to be cheap, impersonal follow ups churned out to capitalize on the success of the original. There also aren’t that many long running film series: most of them consist of pretty one note, repetitive, increasingly terrible slasher flicks, a genre we’ll visit a few times in this feature. However, film series are starting to get a better reputation, and with Hollywood churning out all kinds of high profile sequels every summer, it’s a good time to examine film series and examine how they function.

Series of films are fascinating to look at, since they tend to be evaluated differently from ordinary films: rather than comparing them to other films in the genre, you tend to start comparing them to the other films in the series, and they tend to either succeed or fail by how they measure up to the original. The highest praise that can be given to a sequel can possibly achieve is not necessarily a great film in its own right, but that it equals or surpasses the original. Indeed, making a successful sequel is possibly more difficult and challenging than making a masterpiece: at least one great film is produced nearly every year, but the number of sequels that match up to the original can probably be counted on a person’s fingers. In any case, little time tends be spent evaluating unsuccessful sequels to films, much to my distress; in even the most tiresome retreads the way in which sequels add and reinvent the characters and mythology, even if they do so inadvertently, is fascinating to me. This feature hopes to correct this error, and perhaps even discover some hidden gems along the way. Check out my review of the first two Nightmare on Elm Street films later tonight!