A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

I wouldn’t even mention the fact that, once again, there are several different nightmares, except for one tiny detail:

This movie doesn’t take place on Elm Street, either.

Of course, once you think about it, the only movie that has a complete tie TO Elm Street is the second movie. Freddy possesses a person who lives on Elm Street, who subsequently goes out and does his killing for him.

But in the first movie, Tina is the first to die. I’m not sure where Tina lived, but it sure didn’t look like Elm Street. And I know for a fact that her boyfriend was in a jail cell when Freddy killed him, and that cell wasn’t on Elm Street.

All in all, this series has some title problems.

There’s a larger question here, however: How is it, exactly, that Freddy managed to return in the nightmares of various and sundry people?

In the first movie, he had been dead for quite a while. None of the kids, all of them in high school, could remember him. So he’d been dead at least a decade. What finally allowed him to come back? And by what means did he return?

And why did he choose to terrorize kids, when adults were responsible for his death? I mean, I realize he was a child killer, so, what? He just decided to go with what he knew?

All things being equal, if the second Freddy movie was really all about revenge, Freddy should have sent his avatar out to kill the people who killed Freddy in the first place. That’s at least logical, right? Right?

Sure.

Moving on.

In order to demonstrate that, like, the last movie was kind of dumb, but this movie is going to be, like, classy, the flick starts with a quote by Edgar Allan Poe: “Sleep. Those little slices of Death. How I loathe them.”

As the credits roll along, we get to watch a girl making a house out of paper mache. It’s after one in the morning, so she turns up the music, and slams some Diet Coke.

Her mom comes into her room. Mom has been out on the town. She refers to the teenaged blonde girl as Kristen, so we’ve got a name to hang our hat on. And just like Tina, mom has a “guest,” and doesn’t want to keep him waiting.

So she gets Kristen into bed, and shuts out the lights, even as Kristen protests that she’s having awful dreams again.

Kristen stares at the paper mache house she was making. It looks sorta-kinda like Nancy’s house, only it’s all boarded up. Of course, it might just look all boarded up because there are Popsicle sticks over the windows.

Kristen falls asleep. Then she wakes up. Somewhere, small children are doing the Freddy Chant.

Kristen stands up in her bed, and, hey… she’s not in her room any more. She’s in the middle of Elm Street, and there’s Nancy’s house, which is, indeed, all boarded up. And the front door is still red, which it was in part 2, but not in part 1.

Also, they perform the Freddy chant wrong: It’s supposed to be, “Grab YOUR crucifix,” and they say, “Grab A crucifix,” instead.

It’s like no one cares at all about getting these things right, I swear.

Kristen gets out of bed, and starts walking to the house. A bunch of kids are jumping rope while they do the Freddy Chant on the front lawn.

There’s a little girl in a yellow dress, riding a tricycle in front of the house. She asks Kristen’s name, but won’t tell Kristen her name.

Then the front door opens, and Yellow Dress rides into the house. Kristen chases after her.

Kristen heads down to the basement, because she hears Yellow Dress’s tricycle bell. How did she get down there? I mean, I know it’s a dream, but still. Those stairs would make for a bumpy ride.

Yellow Dress appears, and says, “This is where he takes us.” The furnace suddenly fills with fire, and Kristen can see the bones and skulls inside it. The little girl continues, “Freddy’s home.”

Kristen picks her up and runs. Down various hallways which wouldn’t actually be in anyone’s basement.

Since it’s a nightmare, Kristen gets stuck in some tar on the floor, so Freddy can run up behind her and just miss swiping her with his claws. As she escapes in the nick of time.

She runs down a hallway, enters a large room, and bumps into a corpse hanging from the ceiling. The she looks around the room, and sees that there are a LOT of dead people, all of them about her age, hanging from the ceiling.

Yellow Dress says, “Put me down. You’re hurting me.” Kristen looks down, and sees that the little girl is now a scorched skeleton.

She screams and wakes up.

She goes to the bathroom, and turns the tap… which turns into fingers, and grabs her hand.

Freddy’s face appears in the bathroom mirror, and does some evil laughing.

The other tap turns into fingers as well. The Freddy claws sprout from them, and they slash at Kristen. She screams.

Her mom runs into the bathroom, and Kristen, who is now fully awake, has one slashed wrist and is holding a razor blade.

There’s blood on the mirror. Kristen passes out, and her mom runs to her.

Next Shot: Psychiatric Hospital.

So now we’re meeting new people.

We’ve got Max, a black orderly type, who is doling out medication. He thinks all the recent suicides are because of the kids’ parents dropping acid in the 60s.

We’ve got Doctor Gordon, who has a clipboard and a smile for everyone.

And we’ve got Taryn, who has long black hair, and who isn’t sleeping. The doctor expresses concern, but not surprise.

We’ve got Jennifer, who has burns on her arms that she made with cigarettes. She wants to know when she’ll be getting her cigarette privileges back. I’m guessing not soon. As is the doctor.

A dude named Phillip goes running by.

And then Gordon looks in on a black kid, who I guess had some outbursts.

Another doctor, this time an older woman, comes up behind Gordon and they talk about the kid, and then a new doctor, just out of grad school, who’s been doing ground-breaking research on pattern nightmares.

I know you’re wondering if it’s Nancy. The answer is: Duh.

The other doc, by the way? Simms. Just FYI.

The two docs get a page. A suicide attempt has just been brought in, and she got all violent when they tried to give her a sedative.

It’s Kristen.

She kicks Gordon, and slashes Max with a scalpel. Gordon says they won’t hurt her, and she starts doing the Freddy chant, beginning with, “Five, Six, Grab Your Crucifix.” Yep, she got it right.

She proceeds to get Seven, Eight wrong (she goes with, BETTER stay up late, instead of GONNA).

And then, in the hallway, the “New Doctor” says, “Never sleep again.” And who is it? Yeah, it’s Nancy. I told you that.

Props to the continuity people, she’s still got that white streak in her hair. Nancy asks Kristen where Kristen learned the rhyme, and Kristen hands the scalpel to Nancy and hugs her.

I guess jump rope chants are the thing that unites us all.

Later, Nancy talks to Gordon, who refers to all the kids as survivors with severe sleep disorders. In his words, “Insomnia, narcolepsy, bed-wetting.” The nightmares are the common thread. They’ll do anything not to sleep.

He also mentions some kind of boogeyman.

You know, here’s the thing: If a bunch of kids all come to your hospital, all with sleeping problems, all of whom mention some freaky dude named Freddy who comes to then in dreams, wouldn’t you take it a LOT more seriously?

Gordon’s all, “Well, none of them want to sleep, and they all have bad dreams about THE SAME GUY. Dum-te-dum.”

Great work, doc.

Gordon tells Nancy she did a nice job with the new patient, and Nancy gets ready to leave. She drops her purse, revealing a bottle of pills. I’m sure that’ll be important.

Gordon hands her the pills, and tells Nancy to go see Max to get the full tour.

Gordon finally asks about the Freddy Chant, and Nancy says it’s something the kids say to keep the boogeyman away.

Nancy walks away, and Gordon turns and sees a nun, dressed all in white. He keeps on looking at her, until she suddenly vanishes as people walk in front of her.

The next day, Max gives Nancy a tour of the facilities. He tells her which office she can use while her real office is still getting set up.

Nancy gets to meet Phillip, the sleepwalker. He makes puppets.

Then she meets Kincaid. He’s the dude who was locked up for being all violent.

Max warns Nancy that he kids seem nice, but that they’re dangerous to themselves and each other.

They walk by a boy who doesn’t talk. His name is Joey. Joey helps a nurse pick up some towels she dropped.

Nancy goes to Kristen’s house to interview Kristen’s mom about Kristen’s “suicide attempt.” Mom isn’t helpful, and has to get downtown. Nancy goes up to Kristen’s room to get Kristen’s things, and sees the paper mache version of her house.

That night, Gordon works on his computer. He looks up the drug Nancy is taking, because he is nosy. The drug causes dreamless sleep.

In her bed at the hospital, Kristen draws Nancy’s house and tries not to fall asleep. She fails.

She looks up, in her dream, and her door opens. Yellow Dress’s tricycle wheels in, leaving bloody tracks. Then it starts to melt.

Kristen steps back through the door, and closes it… and she’s back in Nancy’s house. There’s a roast pig on the table. It’s rotting. It growls at her, and she walks away.

I’ll give her credit: She at least tried to walk out the front door before going deeper into the house.

Kristen goes into a large room with a big rug on the floor. Something under the rug moves, which freaks Kristen out. Then it starts smashing the walls from inside the walls, which also freaks her out.

A giant black worm with Freddy’s head pops out of the floor, and starts eating Kristen, feet-first. Kristen screams.

In what I guess is her apartment, Nancy dozes, until she hears Kristen call out to her. Using the power of her brain. Or something. I have no idea. Nancy looks up and sees the paper mache Nancy house. She stands up, clutches her head, and falls back into her chair.

And then through her chair.

From there, she smashes through a mirror and into the room where Kristen is being eaten by the Freddy worm.

Nancy grabs a shard of glass, and stabs the worm in the eye. The worm drops Kristen, and looks at Nancy. And says, “You!”

Nancy tells Kristen to run. Good plan.

They exit the room, and slam the door, and Nancy tells Kristen to, “Get us out of here.” Kristen’s eyes get all squinchy, and they vanish. Nancy wakes up in her room again, still sitting in the same chair.

She sees she has a cut on her hand, from the mirror glass.

The next day, Nancy brings Kristen’s Nancy House to her and tells her that she used to live in that house.

Nancy continues, “Have you ever done that before? Pulled someone into your dream?”

Kristen said she did, when she was like four or five she’d bring her dad into her nightmares, to make things better. She stopped doing it after her parents got divorced.

Nancy tells Kristen the man in her dreams was real.

And now? Group therapy time! We meet Will, who’s in a wheelchair.

Then, we’ve got Jennifer, the cigarette burner. She wants to be an actress.

And they reintroduce us to all the other characters we already met. Props to the movie for reminding us they have names, seeing as how most of ‘em are horror movie cannon fodder.

Finally, Phillip steps up to the plate and says that their dreams are being considered a group mass hysteria, even though none of them ever met before they came to the hospital.

Doc Simms thinks the dreams are brought on by guilt, and other psychobabble.

Now, granted, the many writers who worked on this movie had to come up with some kind of reason that they refused to believe what the kids were saying, but that’s mighty thin. Mighty thin. It’s like the people who made this movie went, “Who cares what the reasoning is? No one.”

Well, guess what. I care. I do. This is my caring face.

Just before bed Will, Joey, and Taryn all play something that’s probably supposed to be Dungeons and Dragons, but probably isn’t, because who has the money? Taryn thinks it’s sort of lame.

Then Max shows up and makes everyone go to bed.

Max turns out the light, Joey and Will debate who is going to take the “first shift.” Joey has to stay up, while Will sleeps. One whimper, and Joey has to wake him up.

Nancy and Gordon have dinner. Nancy says that her mom died in her sleep, and she and her dad don’t talk very much now.

She goes on to tell Gordon that his patients are in real physical danger, and he should give them all Hypnocil. Gordon says nay. Nay! Because dreams are nothing to fool around with.

At the hospital, Phillip and Kincaid sleep. One of Phillip marionettes starts to twitch, and its blank face twists until it looks like Freddy. Continuity credit 2.0: Freddy isn’t wearing his glove, his fingers just sprout claws.

Just like part 2! At the end! With the claws! I can tell you’re excited by this.

Freddy Puppet uses his claws to cut his strings, and drops to the floor.

Phillip wakes up, and sees his puppet get real big, and turn into the actual Freddy. Who is wearing his glove.

Lame.

Freddy extends a single claw, and slashes at Phillip four times. One for each limb. His arms and legs now each have a hole in ‘em, and a tendon, or some other such muscle, extends out of each hole.

Kincaid wakes up (I think he actually does so, it’s not just another dream-in-a-dream) and sees Phillip, who is known for sleepwalking, sleepwalking. But, you know, it looks to us like he’s being dragged along on marionette strings. Only we can’t see the strings.

Kincaid tells Phillip to wake up, only Phillip doesn’t, and so Kincaid, who is not a helper, tells Phillip to have a nice stroll.

So Phillip keeps on walking. Past the nurse, and through the front door. Which is locked. So he literally walks through it, as though it weren’t there.

Sitting awake in his room, Joey sees Phillip standing at the top of a high tower. So he wakes up Will, and takes him to the window. Will yells out, “Don’t do it!” and other such things.

Joey goes to the front desk, lets the nurse know he’s agitated, and then steals her food tray so he can slam it against bedroom doors as he runs back to his room.

In Joey and Will’s room, other kids gather, and scream up at Phillip not to jump.

Phillip tries to fight off Freddy, Freddy cuts his “strings,” and Phillip falls to his death.

The next day, it’s group therapy time. Naturally, the doctors think it’s a sleepwalking accident. Or he killed himself.

The kids don’t think so. For obvious reasons.

Either way, they decide to sedate everyone at night, and lock their rooms up while they’re at it.

Kincaid freaks – he doesn’t want to be doped.

Nancy says they can’t dope the kids, they’ll be defenseless against their dreams. And, surprise, surprise, Gordon decides to give all the kids Hypnocil. His cohort is against it, and basically says if it doesn’t work she’s going to hang Gordon out to dry.

Kincaid spends the night in solitary, singing about how he’s not going to dream any more.

Jennifer sits up, watching TV. Max tries to get her to turn it off, but Jennifer begs him not to – she says she can’t handle the nightmare after what happened to Phillip.

Taryn comes out of the shower and bumps into an orderly who is really, really happy he pulled night duty because he totally wants to open up the pharmacy for Taryn. It’s weird and creepy, since the movie doesn’t establish any sort of previous relationship for the two of them. He’s basically just some guy who knows she’s an ex-junkie.

Bleah.

Taryn says to stay away, or she’ll go to Max.

Jennifer pulls a half-finished cigarette out of the ashtray, even though it didn’t belong to her. She lights it up, takes a drag, and then burns herself with it in an effort to keep awake.

She changes channels, her head nods.

And then the dude interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor turns into Freddy, and the TV fuzzes out.

Jennifer gets up. And here comes the Freddy chant. And also, screaming. Jennifer goes over and hits the fuzzed out TV, which sprouts Freddy arms and grabs her. Freddy’s head pops out of the TV, and says this is going to be Jennifer’s “big break” into TV.

Then she smashes Jennifer’s head into the television.

Max comes in, and finds Jennifer hanging there, quite deceased.

The next day, Gordon is at a funeral. Which means they set up the funeral pretty quick, I guess. I suppose when your kids keep killing themselves, you want to get them in the ground before anyone has much time to think about it.

The nun Gordon saw before comes up behind him and tells him it’s okay to grieve, and asks what faith he follows.

He says science.

He says he’s seen her before. Her name is Sister Mary Helena. She says only one thing can save the children. “The unquiet spirit must be laid to rest. It is an abomination to God and to man.”

Gordon is freaked. Nancy calls to him from a few feet away, and Gordon excuses himself.

Nancy didn’t appear to see the Sister. They leave the cemetery.

They have dinner at Nancy’s place, and Gordon talks about how the kids are slipping through his fingers.

Nancy says maybe Gordon is ready for the truth. Gordon decides to trust Nancy.

The next day, they have a small group. Nancy tells the kids all about Freddy. She explains that Freddy killed all her friends. And she says that all the kids in that room? They’re the last of the Elm Street Children, who helped to burn Freddy alive.

I’m sorry, I just choked a little bit trying to swallow that.

Here are the problems with that statement:

First, Nancy should really, really, really be dead. At the end of part 1, she was in a car that was clearly Freddy, surrounded by her dead friends.

Second: Her mom “died in her sleep,” which makes almost no sense, since she wasn’t having any Freddy dreams.

Even this movie, mere seconds ago, implies that the children of the Freddy-killing parents are the targets of Freddy’s wrath.

Uh, I guess. Except in Part 2, Freddy just went right ahead and attacked a kid whose family never lived in town until, you know, just now.

So we’ve got some major confusion as far as Freddy’s agenda goes. And since Nancy lost her fight with Freddy, Freddy should have been free to torment these other kids for four years.

Except, of course, he just stuck to the new kid, whose parents had nothing to do with Freddy’s death.

The kids, meanwhile, appear to have never heard of Freddy, or guessed the identity of Freddy, over the last four years, despite the fact that Freddy, in the FLESH no less, went on a major rampage in their town.

And now I’m just rambling, I fear. Moving on.

Nancy thinks Kristen is the key to defeating Freddy, even though Nancy appears to have no game plan whatsoever. After all, Nancy was the girl who failed to defeat him last time.

(Also, didn’t they say she went crazy? In part 2? Anyone want to pretend that 2 never happened? I mean, except for the part where Nancy’s mom died, because they carried that over…)

Whatever. Gordon blocks out all the light in the room, and decides to try mass hypnosis.

He puts everyone under, including Nancy. They all wake up a second later, and Kristen apologizes that it didn’t work.

Gordon tells Nancy she’ll have to face facts. They need to try something else.

Joey sees the cute nurse, and she leads him away, via flirtation. She takes him into a room, and tells him that he’s cute.

In case the audience hadn’t figured out this whole thing is a dream sequence, we go back to the Group Room, where everyone is talking about trying again. Gordon is reluctant, until the balls of his little desk toy start flying around the room.

Also Will, who is in a wheelchair, stands up. And in case we don’t get it, he tells us that in his dreams he can walk. And he’s a wizard master. He turns the ball into a butterfly.

Kristen does gymnastics.

Kincaid bends the metal legs on a chair.

Taryn is dressed all in leather, and has knives.

In his little room with the nurse, Joey unzips the nurse’s dress, at her request. There’s kissing.

Suddenly, their tongues are stuck together.

Joey panics, but not enough to talk. The “nurse” spits out four tongues, which tie Joey’s arms and legs to the bed.

And the nurse, of course, turns into Freddy.

The mattress under Joey falls away, leaving Joey dangling over a fiery pit filled with bones.

In the Group Room, the lights blow out. They know Joey is in trouble, but now they can’t get out of the room.

The room starts to shift, and change, and start on fire. The walls start to close in.

Then the door opens. It’s Simms.

Simms just sees a bunch of people asleep, with Joey lying on the floor. She wakes everyone up and says “Code Blue.”

A moment later, in movie-time, Joey is lying in a hospital bed with a tube down his throat. He’s in a coma.

Gordon’s boss fires Gordon and Nancy.

Gordon begs Simms to listen to the kids, and tells Nancy that this is out of their hands now.

Gordon packs up his stuff and puts it in his car. He looks up at the tower Phillip jumped from, and sees the Sister again. He breaks into the tower and climbs to the top.

In the top of the tower, there’s a storage/junk room. He finds the Sister up there. She says, “This is where it began.” Apparently, the worst of the criminally insane were shut up in there, back when it was still open.

And at one point, due to an unfortunate accident, so was Amanda Krueger.

When the authorities found her, and took her out, she was pregnant. Freddy was “The bastard son of 100 maniacs.”

It seems that in order to defeat Freddy, Gordon has to find his remains and bury him in hallowed ground.

So, you know. So much for the philosophical, “Just tell him he’s a dream and he’ll have no power,” idea. Oh. And defeating him using the power of love. That didn’t work either.

And while I’m at it, on a biological level, Freddy couldn’t be the son of more than one maniac. I realize that doesn’t sound nearly as freaky, but it’s still true.

Nancy sits with Joey, and tells Freddy to let him go. Scratches appear on Joey’s chest, telling Nancy to, “Come and get him.”

Nancy and Gordon drive away, and try to figure out what to do. Nancy knows that Freddy’s body was burned, and his remains were hidden. Only one man knows where Freddy’s body is, now.

Voting? Anyone? Guesswork? I’ma go with Nancy’s dad. Except, of course, all of those other kids in the hospital are Elm Street kids, which implies their parents helped to put Freddy on ice.

Unless the kids really all lived on the same street, in which case they SHOULD have known each other before they came to the hospital, which would contradict something that was said earlier in the movie.

Otherwise, they should be able to ask Kristen’s mom where Freddy is.

At the hospital, Kristen freaks over the fact that Nancy has been let go. She’s dragged to the “quiet room” for sedation. This is gonna be bad for her.

Nancy takes Gordon to see her dad. In a bar. No idea how she knew where he was.

Nancy tells her dad that Freddy is back. Dad isn’t convinced. Nancy gets up and prepares to walk away.

Gordon gets a page. It’s the kids, paging him to tell them Kristen is about to get shanked by Freddy.

Gordon tells Nancy to go to the hospital. Then he goes to get all rowdy with Nancy’s dad, over the location of Freddy’s bones. He says they’re going on a little scavenger hunt.

In solitary, Kristen walks around, trying to stay awake.

Dad takes Gordon to a church. Gordon fills a bottle with holy water. He also takes a crucifix. A priest stops him, so he gives the priest his driver’s license, and says he’ll be back.

Nancy goes to the hospital, and Max keeps her from seeing Kristen. Nancy asks if she can say goodbye to everyone else. He gives her five minutes.

Nancy goes to the TV room to find the remaining kids. They’re going to have a “last group.”

Dad takes Gordon to an auto salvage yard. He says he’s not sure he can find the remains any more.

Meanwhile, Nancy asks the three remaining kids, Will, Taryn, and Kincaid, if they really want to try to help Kristen in the dream world, because it’ll be totally, like, dangerous as stuff.

They all say they’re in, so Nancy hypnotizes them again. Of course, I question how it is that Nancy can also hypnotize herself at the same time…

For that matter, how did Gordon do that earlier?

They all pass out just as Kristen passes out. Now they’re all in solitary together. Group hug!

They make plans to find Joey, but then claws start ripping through the padding in the walls.

Nancy tells them not to get separated. But it doesn’t work.

Padding flies through the air, and Kristen wakes up in her room. It’s the start of the movie all over again, with mom coming in and telling Kristen to go to bed. Kristen says she doesn’t want to be alone, mom steps into the hallway, and Freddy grabs mom and cuts off mom’s head. Which keeps on nagging Kristen about her problems.

Freddy goes after Kristen, and Kristen gets all gymnastics-y. Which allows her to escape into Nancy’s house.

Elsewhere in the house, Taryn hears Kristen’s call and goes looking for her. Instead, she ends up in an alley. She pulls out her knives, and starts walking. There’s a homeless dude there.

Naturally, he’s Freddy. Knife fight!

Freddy asks why they should fight. He holds up his hands, which are now hypodermic needles. He says, “Let’s get high.”

Taryn’s old track marks start opening and closing like hungry mouths, and Freddy jams his finger-needles into Taryn’s arms.

Will, also separate from the group, wanders down a dark hallway, looking for everyone. He’s attacked by an evil wheelchair. It hurts his leg.

Will says, “I am the Wizard Master,” and he shoots green fire-type-stuff out of his hands. He destroys the chair. Then he tries in on Freddy. Who grabs him, and stabs him with his knife-hand.

In Nancy’s house, Nancy and Kristen finally find each other. Then the wall starts to break. It’s Kincaid. He breaks the rest of the way through the wall.

They talk about the fact that they haven’t found Joey yet, and Kincaid decides he’s going to talk smack at Freddy.

Suddenly, a door appears in the middle of the room. It opens up. It’s a stairway down to the boiler room of evil.

In the auto savage yard (I know, you forgot. It’s okay.) Dad takes Gordon to a pile of cars and says that Freddy’s remains are in a Caddy. Which is under a bunch of other cars. Gordon uses a shovel to pry up the hood.

And there they are. The remains.

Dad goes to the car and gets ready to drive away, only Gordon has the keys. Gordon tells Dad that Dad is about to attend a funeral. One that’s long overdue.

Nancy and the kids finally reach the boiler room, only it looks a lot more like Nancy’s basement. With the furnace. And the fire. Though all the trash piled up everywhere is new.

Joey is there, tied over a pit. Nancy says to let him go.

Freddy decides to oblige her, and the tongues holding Joey up loosen, one by one.

Nancy grabs his arm, just as he starts to fall. Kristen does some gymkata on Freddy. Kincaid just goes for plain old force, and ends up in a Freddy-holding-him-up-by-his-neck position.

Nancy says Freddy has never been this strong, and Freddy peels back his sweater so you can see his chest, which aside from a lot of burn scars, also has screaming faces poking out of it. Freddy says, “The souls of the children give me strength.”

Ah, there we go. A reason for Freddy to keep on attacking kids.

Suddenly, Freddy vanishes.

In the auto yard, Gordon and Dad dig a grave. Dad hears something. All around them, cars are trying to start. Lights turn on, windshield wipers wipe, and so on.

Dad says to bury the bones. Gordon reaches for them, and they reform into a skeleton, which attacks Gordon. I think it has claws, but it’s tough to tell. Though I’m perplexed. If it’s Freddy’s glove, where did they get it? It was in Nancy’s basement, but then Freddy’s avatar had it, so…

Better not to think about it.

For that matter, this would be completely unprecedented. Neither of the two men are dreaming, so Freddy’s bones shouldn’t be able to attack. It just makes no sense at all. At. All.

Anyway, the skeleton puts a beat down on Gordon, and then attacks dad. It tosses Dad onto a bit of jagged metal, which passes through dad, so that’s probably it for him. Unless it’s not. I’m sure we’re going for dramatic effect here.

Gordon tries to fight off the skeleton with a shovel. It takes the shovel from him and knocks him into the freshly dug grave. It starts to bury him, then roars (how? It has no vocal cords, right?) and crumbles back to bones.

Still in the dream, Kristen, Nancy, Joey, and Kincaid walk through an ugly red hallway with a lot of mirrors in it.

Freddy appears in all the mirrors, and all the different Freddys grab the various kids and pull them into different mirrors.

Joey yells, “Nooo!”

The mirrors shatter. The other people fall to the floor.

Nancy says, “He’s gone. It’s over.”

Nancy is a moron. Really. That’s the only way I can think to explain why she thinks that worked.

Dad appears, in a bunch of sparkly light. I’d say it’s a little over-the-top, but that would be an insult to the phrase, “Over the top.” But it gets worse. He calls Nancy princess, and says that he’s “crossed over.”

He wants to tell Nancy he’s sorry for all the things he’s done, and that he’ll always love Nancy. Nancy says she’ll always love him, too.

She hugs him.

In turn, he turns into Freddy and stabs her. She drops to the floor.

Then he slams a door shut behind Kristen, and prepares to stab her a lot.

Nancy pops up behind Freddy, grabs his hand, and stabs him with it. One of those poor soul-faces probably just took a blade to the eye. Ouchy.

Out in the auto yard, Gordon wakes up and gets out of the grave. He shoves the bones into the grave, along with some holy water and the crucifix, which I seem to recall he said he was going to return.

And he says, “Please, God, for the children. For Nancy. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Lay this spirit to rest.”

Freddy vanishes in a spinning flare of light.

Kristen says she’s going to dream Nancy into a beautiful dream, forever and ever.

And then, it’s another day, and all the survivors are graveside. Nancy is dead.

Gordon looks around as the priest does his thing, and sees the Sister. He goes to find her, and, big shock, the nun was Amanda Krueger.

That night, Gordon goes to sleep. He has Nancy’s dream statue, and the now-completed paper mache Elm Street house next to his bed. A light clicks on in the house.

Just a reminder, folks: The crucifix didn’t work. Told ya.

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

You know, this title is just as screwed up as the last one. Because once again, it’s not A nightmare, it’s MANY nightmares.

Plus, for what is Freddy seeking revenge? As near as I can tell, he WON. All the kids are dead, or so it would seem. So he already got his revenge.

Perhaps those problems will be dealt with in this installment? Sure. That’ll happen.

As our story begins, a yellow school bus drives down the block, pulls over, and lets some kids out.

But don’t worry about them, because then we get to watch inside the bus while it drives some more.

And stops. And drops off some kids. And drives some more.

And drives some more. And drops off some kids.

Finally, we’re down to the last two girls, and one dude in the back. The girls are all, “Hey, do YOU want the geeky dude?”

At which point, the driver goes barreling past his next stop. One of the girls calls out that the driver missed her stop. He keeps driving. She calls out again, and then the driver just keeps driving until he zooms over a curb and into a dusty, scrubby, almost-desert area.

We see the driver’s hand, which has the Freddy glove on it. Also, the driver is suddenly wearing the Freddy hat.

And then there’s more dangerous driving, and screaming, until the bus hits a big bump, flies in the air, and then crashes.

The two girls and the guy look outside the bus while the ground crumbles beneath them, leaving the bus trapped on two huge columns of rock over a giant canyon.

Up front, Freddy stands up.

Outside, one of the pillars of rock crumbles, so the bus is balanced on a single column of rock.

Freddy keeps on walking forward, while the kids scream about trying to keep the bus balanced so it doesn’t tip over.

Freddy brings back his arm to do some slashin’ and…

Cut to someone chopping up a tomato on a cutting board. It’s a mom-type, who has a husband-type and a daughter-type. They all hear a scream upstairs. A kind of girly scream.

The daughter-type asks why Jesse can’t wake up like everyone else. Mom says he’s just having a bad dream.

Yep, girly-screaming Jesse is a dude.

As it turns out, he’s a dude with no shirt, covered in sweat. Also, he was the geeky dude on the bus.

He heads downstairs, and there’s banter. Dad wants Jesse to finish unpacking. Mom wants dad to fix the air conditioning. Dad says it just “needs a shot of Freon.”

And sister wants to get the claw fingers out of a cereal box of Fu Man Chews. I know. It sounds like I’m making it up, but I swear to you, I am not.

At any rate, Jesse sees the claw fingers and poos in his shorts a little bit, because of course he just had that horrible dream.

So we’re having problems already, because it appears Freddy is going to get his so-called Revenge on Jesse here, even though Jesse’s parents have just moved in and weren’t involved in the murder of Freddy in any way.

Though I guess “Freddy Kills a Bunch of Random People for No Reason” isn’t much of a subtitle.

We solider on.

The doorbell rings. It’s “Lisa,” who Jesse knows and dad doesn’t. She’s cute, in a “We have no budget and it’s the 80s” kind of way.

Lisa and Jesse get into Jesse’s car and drive away. Jesse’s car has no key – he starts it by pressing a button. When Lisa expresses concern that someone might steal his car, and he notes, not incorrectly, that the car isn’t really worth stealing.

Later, at school, Jesse is playing softball in gym class. And looking at Lisa. He’s all smitten, so he doesn’t notice when someone hits the ball, and it conks him in the head.

Jesse gets taunted.

Jesse, in turn, tags out the dude who conked him in the head on the next play. Guy’s name is Grady, by the way. Grady doesn’t like being tagged out, so he pulls down Jesse’s pants.

The chick Lisa is talking to expresses a heartfelt enjoyment of the showing of Jesse’s bum.

Grady and Jesse get into a fistfight/wrestling match.

The gym teacher breaks it up. Eventually. And makes the guys do push-ups.

Jesse and Grady wonder when they’ll be allowed to leave. Don’t they have, like, another class? Guess not.

Grady continues to ask Jesse questions. He wants to know whether Jesse and Lisa are, you know, doing it. I guess this is supposed to be, like, what now? Male bonding? It’s kind of icky.

Finally, the teacher lets them go, and Grady asks where Jesse lives. While they get dressed. Turns out, Jesse now lives in Nancy’s old house. The story goes that mom locked Nancy up in the house and Nancy went crazy. After she saw her boyfriend butchered in the house across the street.

So… Nancy is alive, then? And Glen is still dead. And there’s no mention of the other two dead kids, yet. But still, attempted continuity. Let’s see how THAT plays out.

Jesse leaves, and we get a shot of the house at nighttime. As I recall, it used to have a blue door. And now it’s red. Strange.

Jesse can’t sleep, so he gets up and goes downstairs. He opens the fridge, and a bottle of some kind of liquid hits the floor and shatters. Jesse grabs a paper towel, and sees something moving outside.

So he goes outside to check it out. Great. We have one hero, and he’s an idiot.

Outside, Jesse sees some kind of fire in the basement. He looks through the basement window, and he can see Freddy, burning something in the wood stove.

So Jesse goes back into the house, and instead of finding his parents and going, “Um, there’s a dude in our basement?” He goes to the basement door, and opens it. Sure enough, there’s a fire.

So he closes the door, and calls to his dad. Took him long enough.

Someone tries to open the door from the other side. Jesse calls to his dad again. Then he runs from the door… directly into Freddy. Who says, “Daddy can’t help you now.” He shushes Jesse.

He says he needs Jesse, and that they have special work to do. “You’ve got the body. And I’ve got the brain.”

Freddy pulls the skin off his skull, so you can see his brain. Uh… I know, that sounds wrong, but that’s what happens. I guess Freddy has no skull. Explains a lot.

And now we’ve established two things that the makers of this movie don’t understand: that words mean things, and also, basic human anatomy.

Once again, Jesse wakes up covered in sweat. Mom and dad come to comfort him.

The next day, Jesse has trouble staying awake in biology class. Even after his teacher throws a heart on the desk.

As Jesse sleeps in class, a boa constrictor appears, out of nowhere, and wraps itself around Jesse’s neck.

Jesse wakes up, screaming. Turns out it’s an actual boa. The class boa. The teacher admonishes him.

Later that day, Lisa is swimming in her pool when Jesse calls.

Moments later, Jesse tries to leave the house, but dad says he can’t go until his room is unpacked.

Since it’s the 80s, Jesse puts on a cheeseball keyboardy song, throws on some sunglasses and unpacks via montage. This lasts right up until mom and Lisa open his door without knocking.

Ah, hijinks.

Jesse says that he was cleaning his room, and Lisa offers to help. So the movie jumps to when they’re almost done, so that Lisa ask Jesse where his can that says jock itch goes.

She goes to put away his sweaters, and finds Nancy’s diary in Jesse’s closet. Lisa says that Nancy was “before my time.” Wasn’t that a year ago? Yeah. It was. So I guess Lisa is new in town as well?

Lisa reads the diary. First she finds an entry about Nancy watching Glen “get ready for bed.” It’s maybe a touch naughty.

Then they start reading another entry, which first sounds kind of naughty, but then turns out to be about Nancy’s Freddy nightmares. This gives Jesse pause.

Then they find the entry where Nancy talks about Tina’s death. Lisa sees that Jesse is distressed. Jesse tells her the whole “Glen told me about Crazy Nancy” story.

The next morning, Jesse wakes up bathed in sweat (man, am I sick of typing that). He turns on the light, and discovers that all the plastic in his room has melted or is melting from the heat.

So Jesse, who was just covered with sweat in a room where everything is melting, puts on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and heads down to the basement.

He finds the wood stove, which now looks a LOT bigger, and he opens it up. And there’s Freddy’s glove, still wrapped in cloth. A fire pops up in the stove.

Freddy stands in the corner. He tells Jesse to try the glove on for size. He continues: “Kill for me!”

Jesse runs, and trips, and when he “wakes up,” the glove is still there, and the fire is out in the wood stove. Though the stove is still smoking. I guess I can pretend the guy was sleepwalking, but I’m not convinced he also lit a fire while he was at it.

The next day, Jesse tells Lisa about his dream, and yeah, he uses the word “sleepwalking.” Lisa, in turn, wonders if he’s having premonitions, the way some people solve crimes.

Lisa asks to borrow the diary. Her friend Kerry walks up and says that she got the invite to the party.

Lisa gives Jesse a kiss on the cheek and heads to class.

Later, in gym class, Grady and Jesse talk. They make fun of the gym teacher, he hears them, and they get to do pushups again.

That night, Jesse’s mom covers the parakeet cage, and then whines that it’s really hot in the house. Dad goes to check the thermostat. It’s 97 degrees.

Suddenly, the parakeet cage starts shaking around. They pull off the cloth, revealing that one parakeet has killed the other. Jesse opens the cage to stop the bird, and it escapes. The family does battle with the evil parakeet. At least until it bursts into flame and then explodes.

The parents, naturally, try to find a rational explanation that involves either, a) a gas leak, or b) Jesse blowing up the bird with firecrackers.

That night, Jesse tries to sleep again. He looks around. All the plastic stuff is no longer melted.

So he heads downstairs (again) and stands by the sink. Lightning hits the dishes. So Jesse decides to go out in the rainstorm. With no shoes on.

He ends up in a leather bar called Don’s Place. He orders a beer. He pours it into a glass. His gym teacher stops him from drinking it, and then he has to run laps in the gym. He’s told to hit the shower. He hits the shower.

While Jesse showers, his gym teacher hears a noise in his office. The racket strings are super-heating and snapping. Then the balls start attacking him. This barely phases the gym teacher.

He hits the floor and crawls towards the door.

Two jump ropes leap off the desk, wrap themselves around the gym teacher’s arms, and start dragging him down the hall.

In the shower, all the showers Jesse wasn’t using start to turn on.

Jesse turns, and sees his gym teacher getting dragged into the shower. The teacher is dragged to his feet, his arms are tied to pipes over his head, and his clothes are stripped off. Then invisible bullies start whipping the teacher in the rear with wet towels.

Jesse keeps watching. The whipping stops. Steam covers Jesse. When we see “Jesse” again, Jesse is gone and Freddy is in his place. Freddy slashes the gym teacher, the gym teacher dies, and blood shoots out the showerheads.

Steam comes up, steam vanishes, and now there’s Jesse again, only he’s wearing the Freddy glove. He screams like a little girl.

And here we are, in Jesse’s house, as Jesse’s mom and dad run to the front door.

Two cops and Jesse are outside. The cops tell Jesse’s parents that he was wandering around the road. Naked.

Jesse comes in, and dad has two questions. “What are you taking, son? Who are you getting it from?”

Jesse insists he’s not taking drugs. Dad seems perplexed.

Jesse goes upstairs to go to bed.

The next day, Jesse’s dad starts taking the bars off the windows. Mom thinks Jesse needs to see a shrink. Dad thinks he needs a methadone clinic.

And Jesse thinks he needs to take Lisa to school.

When they get there, the cops have arrived. The gym teacher was killed the night before. Jesse is freaked out.

That night, Jesse can’t sleep. Again. He gets out of the bed in his underpants (hoo boy) and goes to his desk drawer. The Freddy glove is in there, crawling around. Freddy’s voice says, “Kill for me.”

So Jesse gets dressed again, and leaves his room. He opens the door to his sister’s room, and finds his sister jumping rope and doing the Freddy chant.

The next morning, Jesse asks his dad about the murder across the street, and Crazy Nancy. Turns out dad knew. Oh, and we learn that Nancy’s mom “killed herself” in the living room.

This freaks out little sister.

Then the toaster starts on fire. Even though it was unplugged.

Jesse and Lisa go for a drive, and she tells him that even though the gym teacher is dead, in the exact way Freddy killed him, the teacher’s death is in no way Jesse’s fault.

Here’s a question: Why does Lisa go to Jessie’s house to get a ride to school every day? He’s the new kid, right? She must have had a way to get there before, and she doesn’t appear to live that close to him. So how does that work out?

Finally, Lisa reveals just where they’re driving. It’s Freddy’s old workplace. The boiler room is in an old, abandoned power plant. She also has copies of old news article about Freddy.

Lisa and Jesse go for a walk around the power plant, and Lisa tells him that Fred killed 20 kids. Lisa is hoping that Jesse can establish some sort of psychic link by being there.

But Jesse doesn’t “feel anything.” At least not until he sees an old burned, rusted, metal cabinet. He opens it up, and… there’s a rat living in it. Fake scare!

Back at Jesse’s house, the wood stove fires up again. A point-of-view shot floats from the basement up to little sis’s room. Freddy’s voice says, “Wake up, little girl.”

Jesse is standing over the bed. He tells her to go back to sleep. He goes to pull up the covers, and he’s wearing the Freddy glove again.

Jesse takes more anti-sleep pills, washing them down with a can of Coke.

The next morning, Jesse, who looks pretty drawn out, has some coffee and chats with his family at breakfast. His mom says he’s “looking better.”

While driving to school, Lisa tries to get Jesse to open up about his problem. But Jesse isn’t all that in touch with his feelings.

At lunch, Jesse manages to be all snappy and mean to his few friends. Including Grady.

Then it’s POOL PARTY TIME! At Lisa’s house. Dad is grilling, mom is chaperoning. Mom realizes dad is making the party lame, so she tells dad it’s “time for bed.” She’s kind of meaningful about it, if you catch my drift.

I think, if I were Lisa, I’d be kind of torn about the whole thing. The party is going to get better, but now she has to think about what her mom and dad are doing. During her party.

Jesse sneaks off to the changing room, and Lisa follows him in. She’s still trying to get him to talk about his feelings. Which is sweet and all, but really. We’ve been over this. And it’s kind of dull.

And there isn’t exactly a lot Lisa can do for him, outside of telling him to look into professional help.

Lisa says they’ll stay up all night. She’s not going to let anything happen to Jesse. Then she kisses him. So I guess she has some plans about how to keep awake all night. More kissing happens.

Upstairs, mom and dad drink some booze and turn out the light.

At which point, the kids turn on the crazy-loud music and bring out the beer. Mom and dad comment about how it’s kind of noisy, but, you know. Hey. They’re kids.

In the changing room, more fooling around happens, and then Jesse sprouts an eight-inch long tongue. He freaks. Lisa doesn’t see it, as it pops back into Jesse’s mouth at the last second.

Jesse clambers off of Lisa, puts his shoes on, and leaves. He doesn’t say anything. So she doesn’t see his freaky tongue, I’m thinking.

One cut later, and Jesse is about a foot from Grady’s face. Grady is lying in bed. Yes, that’s correct, Jesse actually broke into the dude’s house, and then the dude’s room, and got a foot away from him before alerting Grady to his presence.

He tells Grady he wants to stay the night. He goes on to say he killed the gym teacher, and snuck into his sister’s room at night, and that something almost happened with Lisa. But he’s super-vague about the whole thing.

Grady says, basically, “You had some bad dreams. And you should be with Lisa, not with me.”

I’m not going to say that “With” has a double meaning here, only because the movie kind of does that without any help from me. I’m kind of confused about the exact nature of Jesse’s problems, if you understand me. And I suspect you do.

Back at the party, Lisa tells her friend Kerry that she really wants to go help Jesse, but she can’t leave her own party. Kerry says, hey, no, you actually CAN leave your own party. So Lisa gets ready to leave the party.

Back in Grady’s room, Jesse is asleep, and Grady is trying to find something to watch on TV. But he can’t really find anything. So he opts to go to sleep, despite explicit instructions from Jesse.

Jesse “wakes up,” only of course he’s gotta be dreaming. He tells Grady it’s “starting to happen again.”

Grady wakes up, and asks what’s happening.

Knives sprout from Jesse’s fingers, and his arm starts to decay. He screams, and there’s an eye in his mouth. Freddy’s face pushes its way out of Jesse’s chest.

Grady, meanwhile, discovers that his door is locked, and he pounds on the door, telling his parents to open it.

After a few minutes, Grady’s parents go to Grady’s door, and pound on it, demanding to be let in.

Freddy grabs Grady by the neck and lifts him up.

Outside the door, Grady’s parents just keep on pounding. Freddy’s claws slash through the door, and blood appears in the slits. Freddy has just stabbed Grady with his claws.

I must clarify: From this point on, Freddy never again wears a glove. His knives now sprout from his actual fingers. I’d consider discussing the science of all this, but, well… it’s all a dream, right?

Except, at this point, it clearly isn’t a dream in any way, shape, or form. At this juncture, Freddy is in possession of Jesse. Otherwise, Glen would be alive. The rules of the first movie were, “You fall asleep, Freddy kills you.”

Whereas here, it’s, “Jesse falls asleep, and Freddy takes him over and kills other people.”

Which doesn’t make a lick of sense. But I guess when you want to get your part 2 out a year after part 1 hits the big screen, you shoot first and ask questions later. Much later. About 25 years later, in this case.

But where were we? Oh yes.

Inside the room, Grady dies.

Jesse stands in the room, looking into a mirror. Freddy is there, as his “reflection.” Jesse is once again wearing the Freddy glove. Jesse accuses Freddy of killing Grady. He throws the glove and smashes the mirror, but it doesn’t make Freddy vanish.

Outside, Jesse can hear sirens. So he gets ready to jump out the window.

A few minutes later, Jesse is at Lisa’s house again. He’s covered in blood. He confesses to killing both Grady and the gym teacher. Jesse says that Freddy is inside him.

Lisa says, “This is not happening,” and tries to explain it away. Badly. Jesse gets angry at Lisa, making her look at, you know, the blood that’s on his hands at this very second. Which Lisa is ignoring.

Outside, things are heating up. The hot dogs on the grill overheat and explode. As does the beer.

Inside the house, Lisa reads from Nancy’s diary again. Something about how, “Our screams were all he needed.” She tells Jesse that Jesse can fight Freddy. “You created him, you can destroy him!”

She tells Jesse that Freddy is living off of his fear. Jesse starts to freak out, and yell things like, “He’s coming!”

Around the house, locks start to lock. The fish tank explodes. Light on wires outside blow up.

Lisa looks around, and Jesse is gone. She tells Jesse to fight, and Freddy says, “He can’t fight me. I’m him.”

What do you know? There’s Freddy. Right where Jason was a moment ago. Despite the fact that Jesse isn’t asleep. Forget the fact that the word “Revenge” doesn’t make any sense in this flick. The word “Nightmare” is pretty much right out the window as well.

I mean, come on now. The rules are supposed to be, someone falls asleep, Freddy attacks the sleeping person. Not, “Freddy can sometimes take over people’s bodies for periods of time as the story deems necessary.”

No matter. Freddy attacks Lisa.

Lisa fights back, and runs for another exit door. The door is locked. Aren’t they always? She bumps into Freddy. They tussle. He bites her ankle. She kicks him.

Outside, the pool is boiling.

Inside, Freddy breaks a plate to show that he’s, like, angry and stuff.

Lisa picks up a butcher knife and calls out to Jesse.

Freddy says, “I’m Jesse now.”

Freddy’s mouth, with Jesse’s voice, asks Lisa to kill him.

So Lisa stabs Freddy a little. Not much. She calls out to Jesse again, and his voice says, “I love you, Lisa.”

Then Freddy jumps out the glass-paneled doors, smashing them, and vanishing into thin air.

Outside, partygoers try to figure out what just happened, with no success. And then Freddy jumps up out of… the ground? I can’t tell. It looks like he broke through the cement blocks that surround the pool, but they look more like wood panels. Which might just be bad special effects work.

Freddy looks around, in a sort of menacing way, and partygoers try to run away. Only now the pool is on fire, and parts of the fence appear to be electrified.

Freddy stabs a few people, and at least one is trampled. Finally, all the partygoers are standing in a big group, and one of them tries to calm Freddy down, saying things like, “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Which is really stupid, but you knew that.

Freddy kills the dude, looks menacing for a moment, then says, “You are all my children now.”

At that moment, Lisa’s dad comes running out with a loaded shotgun. He fires, and misses. Strangely, all the people still alive at the party don’t hit the ground in an effort to avoid being shot.

Lisa and Lisa’s mom come running up, and Lisa pushes on the shotgun so that dad’s second shot goes into the ground.

Freddy looks at Lisa and her family for a long moment, then starts walking towards all the remaining party members. They part like the Red Sea, and just as Freddy reaches the wooden fence he bursts into flames, vanishing.

Lisa runs back towards the house, and a short while later, she’s driving Jesse’s car. To the abandoned electric plant. Which has several lights on, despite the fact that it’s “abandoned.” But whatever.

Lisa walks into the plant, and two dogs with “human” faces (actually, REALLY poorly made masks) freak her out, but don’t attack.

Inside the plant, Lisa walks around. And walks around. And walks around. I mean, granted, good location, nice production value, but we’re pretty close to the end of the movie, so it would be nice is they picked up the pace a bit.

Lisa stops, and reaches down, and pulls off the cloth she tied around the bite Freddy took out of her ankle. There are ants there. She makes sad mewling noises and tries to brush them off. Suddenly, she “comes to,” and the bandage is back over her ankle.

Lisa climbs a bunch of stairs, until she sees the rat. She freaks. A cat kills the rat. The cat seems to have Freddy teeth.

Lisa runs. She falls. She stands up. Freddy is there. He slashes at her, but misses. She runs.

She keeps insisting that Jesse is “in” Freddy, and that she loves him. She says things like, “I love you, Jesse. Come back to me.” She pulls off Freddy’s hat, and kisses Freddy.

Freddy pushes her away. This is clearly freaking him out.

The railing around Freddy starts on fire. Freddy starts to burn, but instead of doing something about it, he sits there while his face melts.

Lisa observes all of this from a few feet away while she sits and cries.

Eventually, all that’s left is a soot-covered body. It rolls over. And sits up. And pulls off its charred face and clothing.

And there’s Jesse. Lisa, crying, moves over to him. She embraces him. Fade out.

Fade in. A school bus arrives. Jesse comes out of his house. He’s all happy. He gets on the bus.

Lisa is there. As is Lisa’s friend, Kerry. Jesse says he’s just happy it’s all over, while the friend says, “That was a really great party.”

Uh. People died, lady. At least three that I saw. What’s wrong with you?

The bus hits a big bump. Jesse says he thinks that the bus is going too fast. He stands up and demands that the driver stop.

The driver does stop, to pick up another passenger. Jesse apologizes.

Lisa says, it’s okay. “It’s all over.” Then Freddy’s hand bursts out of Kerry’s chest, and the bus drives into the scrub, exactly the same way it did at the start of the movie.

Oh. Kay. Um, if anyone wants to tell me what just happened there, I’d be obliged.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

You know what no ever mentions when talking about these movies? Just how incorrectly titled they are.

Unless Freddy himself is the “Nightmare” of the title, we have to be talking about the various bad dreams that Freddy causes. They are not one continual mental horror, but rather a series of different night terrors.

So really, the movie should be called “Nightmares on Elm Street.”

But, hey. Wes Craven is almost certainly a multi-millionaire, and the series has spouted a bunch of sequels, and a remake. So what do I know? I’m just a guy writing a book.

Before all the nightmares, we get to watch the creation of the famous glove. We see a couple of hands choose a glove, and some blades. And then design little metal fingers to attach the blades to.

It’s creepy, to be sure, but I don’t know that it’s all that practical of a weapon. If you’re using it with your dominant hand, it’s going to be hard to do anything else. Like, say, tying up a victim, or grabbing someone trying to flee.

And if it’s on your non-dominant hand, well, try playing ping-pong with the wrong hand and you’ll see how useless it is.

So top marks on intimidation, but a D- for usefulness.

The blades slash through some cloth, and then we’ve got a girl in a nightgown, running down a pipe-and-steam-and-cement-block corridor.

A male voice says, “Tina.” She turns around, and sees a sheep, and hears an evil laugh.

All right then. I’m sure somewhere in the world someone is afraid of sheep. And pipes.

Tina keeps walking, and it’s clear things is some kind of steam-pipe-using warehouse.

She looks around, and there are the claws, slashing through cloth again. And then vanishing around the corner.

And here’s the creepy dude in the hat. She sees him and runs away, and then in the always popular horror movie fashion, he pops up in front of her.

Tina wakes up in her bed. Her mom comes in to ask if she’s okay, and Tina says it was just a dream. Mom points out that it must have been some dream, noting the rips in Tina’s nightgown.

Some dude pops into Tina’s room, asking if mom is “coming back to the sack, or what.” Which, for some reason, makes me feel even more icky than watching Tina get attacked.

Mom tells Tina to stop having those kinds of dreams, or cut her fingernails. Mom is winning no awards this year.

Tina grabs her crucifix off the wall, and the shot changes to sort of a hazy day, with little girls jumping rope and reciting:

“One, two Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again.”

Point of order: Does a crucifix help even a single person in this entire series? As far as I know, Freddy doesn’t have any sort of aversion to religious icons.

The next morning, Tina tells her two friends, Nancy (chick) and Glen (dude, and also Nancy’s boyfriend) about her bad dream, and about how it reminded her of that old jump-rope rhyme, the one about Freddy.

Nancy and Glen point out that it was just a dream.

Somewhere in there, Tina’s jerky boyfriend shows up to be a jerk for a minute.

That night, Nancy and Glen offer to spend a couple nights with Tina, whose mom had to go away for a couple of days.

Tina’s mom: the real nightmare of the movie.

Glen calls his mom, and plays a sound effects tape with airport noises so that she thinks Glen is staying at a cousin’s house. The cousin lives near the airport.

Naturally, the “airport” sounds run out too soon, but luckily Glen’s mom is trusting and kind of dopey, so he isn’t forced to go home.

Nancy tells Tina that she knew Tina would be fine, and Tina says all day long she’s been thinking about that guy’s “weird face.” And his “fingernails.”

This reminds Nancy of her dream. She dreamed about a guy in a dirty red and green sweater.

You know what this franchise needs? A crossover between “Nightmare” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night.”

Tina asks about the fingernails. Nancy says that mostly the creepy guy dragged them along things. And that they were more like, “finger-knives.”

Tina says they had the same dream, and Glen says that’s impossible.

Then they hear a sound outside. Something like, I don’t know, knives scraping along a wall?

Tina, Nancy and Glen all head outside, with Glen taking the lead and doing a little trash-talking.

Turns out it’s their friend, Rod, who tackles Glen to the ground and then confirms that he was making the noise, with a garden implement.

Rod asks what’s going on, Glen tries to get in Rod’s face, and Rod pulls out a switchblade. Glen steps back, and Nancy grabs Rod’s arm and says that it’s just a sleepover.

Glen is the least useful boyfriend ever.

Nancy takes the knife from Rod, closes it, and Rod makes fun of Glen.

Then Rod, who up to this point has been kind of a jerk, pulled a knife on everyone, and scared the life out of Tina and crew, takes Tina by the hand, and tells Nancy and Glen that he and Tina are going to use Tina’s mom’s bed, and Nancy and Glen can have “the rest.”

Nancy and Glen get ready to leave, but Tina comes back to the door and asks Nancy and Glen not to leave her alone with “this lunatic.”

There’s a reason Tina has nightmares about sheep: They have a higher IQ than she does, and that terrifies her.

Rod slaps a hand over Tina’s mouth and drags her away.

Glen tries to suck face with Nancy, but she shoot him down, because they’re “here for Tina now.” Yeah.

Later, Glen lies awake while Rod and Tina soil Tina’s mom’s bed. Afterwards, they promise to have “no more fights,” and Rod says that neither of them will have nightmares anymore.

Tina asks when Rod had a nightmare, and he points out, all grumpy-like, that dudes can have nightmares too. Then he goes to sleep. It seems Tina will not be getting any cuddling this evening.

Later, we catch up with Nancy, who is in Tina’s bed. The crucifix falls off the wall and Nancy sets it down next to her. Then she falls asleep.

Later still, Tina hears a sound outside. She shakes Rod a little bit, but he doesn’t wake up. She pulls a shirt on and goes to look out the window. Someone is throwing rocks at it. A rock jams in the window.

Nancy, still lying in bed with her eyes closed, doesn’t see the hands pushing against the wall. She opens her eyes, hangs the crucifix back on the wall, and lies back down.

(Look, I’ll go ahead and admit that was pretty creepy, but I’m not sure that it makes any sense at all. Do we assume that Nancy fell asleep for a moment, allowing Freddy to affect the physical world around Nancy? At which point, she woke up? I guess that kinda works as an explanation. I gotta wonder how often I’m going to be asking these questions.)

Tina, still dressed only in a shirt, walks outside, asking if somebody is there. Tina is literally doing everything she can to not survive this movie.

She steps out into the street, and there’s Freddy, looking all burned up. Freddy’s arms are really long, so that Freddy can scrape the nails of one hand against some nearby metal.

Tina runs, and of course, even though she’s going away from Freddy, she bumps into him. At which point, she turns around and runs the other way.

Tina continues to run back to her house, when Freddy steps out from behind a tree, as though he were in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. He tells Tina to look, and uses his glove to cut off two of his own fingers.

Tina runs up to her porch, screaming for Nancy. Freddy grabs her and pulls her to the ground. She reaches up to grab his face, and his face skin pulls off, revealing the skull and eyeballs beneath.

In Tina’s mom’s room, Tina screams for Rod.

Rod gets out of the bed. Luckily for us, after he finished showing Tina a good time, but before he fell asleep, he put on some underpants.

Under the covers, Tina is trying to fight off Freddy.

Rod pulls the blanket off of Tina, who is the only one in bed. Her eyes are still closed, so she’s still “asleep.”

She pushes herself around on the bed, her shirt pulls open, and four claw marks appear on her chest. She’s pulled off the bed, and into the air. She kicks Rod in the face, knocking him over.

Tina, screaming and covered in ever more blood, hits the floor, and is dragged up the wall and across the ceiling while screaming a lot. Rod keeps yelling out, “Tina!” but otherwise doesn’t stand up or try to help in any way.

Tina finally falls off the ceiling. She bounces off the now very bloody bed.

Nancy wakes up.

Glen and Nancy try to break into Tina’s mom’s room. Tina is WAY dead on the floor. Rod has vanished out a now-open window.

At the police station, two cops talk about what might have happened. They’re going to pin the whole thing on Rod. Granted, Rod didn’t do it, but given what little we know about Rod, this might not be such a bad thing for society.

At any rate, it turns out one of the cops is Nancy’s dad. He and Nancy’s mom ask Nancy what happened, and she says Rod isn’t, you know, THAT crazy, and that Tina dreamed this was going to happen.

The next morning, Nancy convinces her mom that she wants to go to school, even though she didn’t get any sleep the night before. Her mom agrees, on the condition that Nancy comes right home after school.

Nancy starts walking to school. She sees a dude in a suit and sunglasses as she walks. But when she turns and looks again, he’s gone.

And Rod grabs her from behind. He says he’s not going to hurt Nancy, and that he didn’t touch Tina. Which isn’t strictly true.

Suddenly, Tina’s dad pops out of the bushes, gun pointed at Rod. Rod runs. Nancy gets in the way of dad, but it doesn’t much matter. A bunch of cops come out of nowhere, and they cuff Rod and take him and his switchblade away.

Rod protests his innocence to Nancy as he’s dragged off.

Nancy’s dad gets all cranky and wants to know why Nancy is going to school. Nancy stomps off in a huff.

In English class, Nancy’s teacher gives a lecture on Shakespeare, and how things aren’t always what they seem. The teacher has a dude named John read from “Julius Caesar,” and Nancy falls asleep.

You can tell she’s asleep because she can see Tina, in a clear body bag, pawing at the bag and calling to Nancy.

Ah, the Julius Caesar bit ends in, “Were it not that I have bad dreams.” Okay, mister writer/director, you’ve proved you’re a smart dude. Move along.

Nancy looks back at the door and sees that there’s a pool of blood there, but no Tina. So she walks out the door and starts following the trail of blood. Someone is dragging Tina’s body bag around a corner, but the “person” doing it is invisible.

Nancy follows the trail of blood, turns the corner, and bumps into a girl wearing an orange-and-green sweater. Which is odd, since Nancy described it as red and green before. But I’m sure that will all be explained later, am I right?

Nancy keeps on walking, down a hallway which suddenly has a bunch of leaves in it, and the girl calls out to her. Nancy turns, and the girl now has blood running down her face, and Freddy’s glove. She tells Nancy not to run in the hallway.

Nancy turns and walks down the hallway, around a corner, and down some stairs. She’s still following the trail of blood.

Eventually, she gets to the basement of the school, and she heads into a room where no students are allowed. Looks like a workshop/boiler room.

Freddy steps out, and Nancy asks who he is. In reply, he lifts up his sweater, which looks kind of reddish in this light, and uses a claw to slash open his own chest. Green goo and maggots ooze out.

Nancy freaks out and runs away. Only the door seems to have vanished.

So, you know. More running. Pipes. Steam. Freddy doing the crazy laugh, and saying stuff like, “Gonna get you.”

Nancy says, “It’s only a dream.”

Freddy says, “Come to Freddy.”

Nancy burns her arm on a pipe, and wakes up in the classroom, screaming.

Her teacher yells at her to calm her down, and says she’s going to call Nancy’s mom. Nancy says she’s going home, and the teacher tries to get the class back on task.

Nancy stands outside the school and cries. Then she notices that she has an actual welt on her arm, from where she burned herself.

Nancy goes to talk to Rod in prison, and Rod once again tries to explain what happened. Which, of course, makes him sound crazy. He tells her that he had a “nightmare” the night before Tina got killed. And yeah, dude with razors for fingers.

Nancy pounds on the door to be let out of the prison.

That night, Nancy takes a bath and sings the Freddy rhyme, which is totally NOT what I would do in that situation, because it would creep me right out.

Nancy falls asleep, and the Freddy hand emerges from the water between Nancy’s legs. The hand reaches for Nancy, and it looks bad, when there’s a knock at the door. Nancy wakes up and the hand descends into the bath water.

Shouldn’t the hand have just, like, vanished? Or is the implication here that being a little groggy means that the nightmare can still affect you, even if you’re not totally out?

Regardless, mom warns Nancy not to fall asleep in the tub. She’s worried Nancy might drown. Mom has also heated up some warm milk for Nancy, which Nancy notes is “gross.”

She falls asleep, and Freddy pulls her under the water.

Under the water, Nancy is trapped under what looks like ice water, with one little hole of light.

When she pulls herself up out of the water, Nancy is still in the tub. She screams for her mother.

Mom uses a coat hanger to break into the bathroom, just as Nancy gets out of the tub.

Annnd… I’m officially perplexed how the whole asleep/awake thing works in this movie. I mean, granted, it’s creative and creepy and all that, but I’m not sure what the rules are, here. If Nancy was asleep, okay, she went under the water, and then… she pulled herself up out of the tub.

Only that means she was probably awake at that point. So Freddy should have been gone. Only he pulled her back under the water. So I guess she was still asleep.

But she kept on screaming, and pulled herself totally out of the water before mom even got into the room. Nancy was standing there in a towel. So when did she wake up, exactly?

Am I over-thinking this one? Probably.

At any rate, Nancy apologizes for scaring mom, and claims she slipped getting out of the tub.

Mom leaves. Nancy reaches into the medicine cabinet and pulls out some anti-sleep pills.

Later, in her pajamas, Nancy watches, “The Evil Dead.” Out of order. Seriously, if you know anything about “Evil Dead” at all, you’ll be totally perplexed as to what sequences she’s watching, because none of them match up.

Nancy turns off her TV, gets up, and looks out her window. She opens her window, and there’s Glen, who just climbed the trellis to see how Nancy is doing. Glen comes into the room, and they talk about how she freaked out in English class.

Nancy asks for Glen’s help. She’s going to “look for someone,” and Glen needs to stand guard.

I’m not sure why the movie is pretending that what’s going to happen is some big mystery. Anyone who understands basic logic knows Nancy is going to sleep, to try to locate Freddy, and Glen’s job will be to wake her up if she freaks out.

At any rate, a little later, Nancy, still in her jammies, walks out the front door of her house. It’s all foggy-like outside. Nancy keeps on walking around. She calls out to Glen. Glen pops out from behind a tree and says he’s watching.

You know what’s goofy? She’s not wearing any shoes. If it was me, and I was looking for a psychotic killer, I’d put my running shoes on before going for a walk outside. In the dark. But that’s me.

Nancy just keeps on walking. She goes to the cop shop, and peers in a basement window.

Rod is in there, in a little prison cell. Freddy walks in the door of the… you know what? This is going to take some description. Okay, first, there’s a little jail cell, and that has a door in it. Then there’s a little room NEXT to the jail cell, with a SECOND door in it. Freddy comes in that door.

Nancy calls to Glen again. Glen doesn’t answer.

So Nancy gets to watch Freddy walk right through the bars of Rod’s jail cell. She looks away, and back, and Freddy has vanished.

Nancy looks around again, and there’s Tina, all body-bagged up. A centipede crawls out of her mouth. There are more centipedes on the ground, at her feet.

Nancy walks around the edge of the cop shop, calling to Glen.

Freddy appears, and gives chase.

Nancy runs back to her house. She goes in the door, and up the stairs. The stairs turn to goo as she steps on them. Freddy smashes the little window in the front door and does some taunting.

Finally, Nancy gets up the stairs and into her room. She sees Glen lying there, asleep.

Nancy looks in the mirror, insisting that, “This is just a dream.” Freddy smashes through the mirror and into Nancy’s room. He grabs Nancy.

They tussle on the bed. They tussle on the floor. Nancy calls to Glen. There is more tussling, and Freddy slashes up a feather pillow. Nancy’s alarm goes off, and… Nancy wakes up.

I know. Big shock.

Nancy says several unkind things to Glen. Then she realizes that her mom is coming, so she shoves Glen out the window. Mom comes in, and Nancy tells mom that she was just having a bad dream, and that she’s going right back to sleep.

Then she runs to the window and calls to Glen again.

A short while later, Nancy and Glen head to the cop shop, and they demand the cop behind the desk let them see Rod, even though it’s the middle of the night.

Man, the police legal protocols in this town are for poo, huh? Or maybe it’s common for someone who witnessed a murder scene to go visit the alleged murderer in the middle of the night?

In the Rod’s jail cell, the sheets start to twist and move. Around Rod’s neck. Rod is, of course, asleep.

Nancy’s dad appears. He’s hanging out the office, trying to solve the murder. In the middle of the night. With their only suspect in custody. Uh-huh. Sure he is.

Nancy begs her dad to go down and check on Rod. Dad asks for the keys.

You know, I just came up with yet another question about police procedure in this town. Apparently, anyone can just walk up to the windows of the cop shop at any time and look down on the people in jail. They don’t even have, say, frosted glass or anything.

Can you imagine all the little kids playing, “Let’s go to the police station and watch the dudes in jail. Maybe they’ll have to poop!”

At any rate, Rod’s eyes are open, and he’s screaming for help while the sheet-noose drags him out of bed and across the floor. One would think screaming would be hard when you’re in a noose, but you would be wrong. So very wrong.

At any rate, the noose snakes up through the ceiling bars of the little jail cell (why are there bars there?) and the sheet hangs Rod real good just as Nancy, Glen, and her dad run in.

Too late. Rod is dead. Nancy and a surprising number of other people attend the funeral, even though they all think Rod is a murderer. This seems to include Nancy’s dad.

Post-funeral, Nancy informs her dad (and her mom, who’s standing right there) that the murderer is still out there. With a burned face, a “weird” hat, and a dirty red-and-green sweater.

Oh, and the knives, which are like “giant fingernails.”

Because as we all know, murderers never change their appearance in any way, in order to avoid detection.

Dad tells mom that Nancy should stay home for a few days. Mom wants to go one better. So she takes Nancy to a dream clinic. And I guess they just happened to have an opening, like, right away.

The nurses and doctors stick a bunch of wires on Nancy, and leave the room.

Nancy falls asleep. The doctor and Mom talk about what dreams are. While mom has a cigarette. Man, how can you not love a little medical smoking action? The 80s, man. When cancer didn’t exist.

Nancy goes into REM sleep, and the doctor helpfully informs the audience that a 3 is a good dream, whereas plus or minus 5 or 6 is a bad dream. Then the numbers shoot way, way, way up. Nancy freaks out.

Mom and the doctor run into the room and wake her up. Part of her hair has turned white. The doctor fills a hypodermic up with a sedative and gets ready to stick Nancy. Nancy freaks out and pushes him away.

They look at Nancy’s arm. There’s a bad cut there.

Also, Nancy grabbed Freddy’s hat off his head and brought it out of her dream.

Back home, Mom and Dad argue about the hat on the phone while Nancy eavesdrops.

Mom hangs up, and Nancy walks in. We discover that Nancy still hasn’t slept. They argue about the hat. Nancy points out that Freddy’s name is actually written inside the hat.

Mom thinks Nancy just needs to get some sleep.

Nancy thinks maybe she should just crawl inside of a bottle and become a hooch-hound, like her mom.

Mom slaps Nancy in the face. Nancy steps away.

Nancy’s Mom says that Freddy can’t come after Nancy. He’s dead.

Nancy gets really upset about this, because her mom was acting like this was something Nancy made up.

Mom says Nancy needs to get some sleep. Nancy is, for obvious reasons, not convinced. She leaves the house.

She and Glen go for a walk. They stand on a bridge, eating food and talking about the Balinese way of dreaming. Apparently, they have a system they call dream skills. If they’re having a bad dream, they turn it into a poem or a song or something. All their art comes from their dreams.

If a monster attacks them in their dreams, they turn their back on it. That takes away the monster’s energy and is disappears.

They’re both really, really cavalier about this whole thing, seeing as how two of their friends are dead.

Oh, and important detail for later: Nancy is reading a book on how to booby-trap her house.

Nancy heads home, and discovers that her mom has put bars on all the windows. Nancy confronts her mom, who lights up a smoke. And tells Nancy to join her in the cellar.

Mom tells Nancy a story – story about Fred Krueger, a “filthy child murderer” who killed at least 20 kids in the neighborhood. They caught him and he went to trial, but someone signed the search warrant in the wrong place and Freddy was set free.

So a bunch of parents tracked him down in an old boiler room where he used to take his victims. They filled the place with gasoline and lit it on fire. Freddy is dead.

Oh, but there’s more! Mom took a souvenir. She’s got Freddy’s glove, wrapped up in a dirty cloth and shoved into a wood stove in the basement.

Icky.

At any rate, Nancy calls Glen and tells him the plan. Nancy will fall asleep, find Freddy, grab him, and Glen will wake her up. Since she’ll be holding Freddy, he’ll come with her, and Glen can hit him with a baseball bat.

Nancy tells Glen to meet her on her porch at midnight.

Just before midnight, Glen’s mom wakes him up and tells him to shut off his TV and go to bed.

Also just before midnight, Nancy’s mom tucks Nancy in and tells her to go to bed.

Nancy’s mom leaves her room, and Nancy hops out of bed. She grabs some coffee from a coffeemaker she has stashed under her bed, and gets dressed. She looks across the street, where Glen lives, and sees Glen’s parents standing out on Glen’s porch.

The parents converse on the porch, about how Glen’s dad thinks Nancy is full of the crazy.

Nancy opens her door and looks in the hallway, but mom is still out there, boozing it up.

So she tries to call Glen. Glen is asleep again. Glen’s mom answers, and Glen’s dad says he wants the phone. Dad hangs up the phone, and takes it off the hook.

Nancy’s phone rings, and she hears the screech of Freddy’s claws. She yanks the phone out of the wall, then gets mad because Glen might try to call.

Uh, no. If you can hear Freddy, you’re asleep, and the phone isn’t really out of the wall.

No matter. The phone rings again, Nancy picks it up to listen, and Freddy says, “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.” Then the mouthpiece becomes Freddy’s mouth, and his tongue licks her lips.

Nancy freaks and runs downstairs. She’s trying to get out the front door, but her mom has locked her in. Somehow.

Mom is drunk on the couch. Nancy demands the key. Mom says Nancy is going to get some sleep if it “kills me.”

Focus, people. According to your own rules, NANCY IS ASLEEP ALREADY.

Over at Glen’s place, Glen sleeps. Freddy reaches up and pulls him down through the bed, leaving a big hole. Blood geysers up from the bed and coats the ceiling.

Glen’s mom runs in, sees all the blood, and starts screaming.

The cops arrive a short time later. Nancy’s dad waves up at Nancy, since she lives across the street.

Dad heads in, and sees blood dripping through the ceiling into a bucket.

Nancy calls Glen’s house and asks to talk to her dad. She tells him that Freddy is doing all the killing, and she volunteers to go in and get Freddy if dad will be there to arrest him.

She demands that her dad break down the door in 20 minutes, and she’ll have Freddy.

Dad hangs up, and tells another cop to watch Nancy’s house, and call him if anything strange happens.

Nancy booby-traps her house. In less than 20 minutes, even though it looks like she does a WHOLE lotta work in there, with tripwires and gunpowder and such.

Nancy goes to talk to her mom, even though she just blew a bunch of her 20 minutes. They reconcile. Aw. Mom puts her hooch on the bedside table.

Nancy sets the alarm on her clock. She says The Lord’s Prayer. She sets the alarm on her watch to go off in 10 minutes.

Then we get an audio recap of, “What if they meet a monster in their dreams?”

At which point, of course, Nancy goes to sleep.

Moments later, Nancy is headed down the stairs of her house, and into the basement. She goes to the wood stove, and pulls out the dirty rag that had Freddy’s glove in it. Only, of course, the glove is gone.

She keeps walking, and finds another door in the basement, which goes, I dunno, even more downstairs. To the abandoned boiler room.

Then she goes down a circular stairway. At which point, she’s on some catwalks in the boiler room.

Then she climbs down a ladder off the catwalks. I realize this is all tension-building, but seriously, that took something like three whole minutes.

Once on the ground, Nancy calls out, “Krueger! I’m here!”

And it’s time to walk around so we can see all the production value again.

Nancy finds Tina’s crucifix, which, once again, hasn’t helped anyone at all.

But no Freddy, and no Freddy, and no Freddy. Until Nancy checks her watch. Then he appears from nowhere.

She runs – down the same spiral staircase she already came down.

Freddy attacks. She jumps. She lands OUTSIDE her house, because, you know, dream.

She sees that the alarm is about to go off on her watch, so she taunts Freddy again, and he pounces on her. She grabs him, alarms go off…

…

And Nancy wakes up. Part of her trellis came with her. But no Freddy.

She starts to babble about how she’s crazy after all, and suddenly Freddy pops up next to her bed.

Nancy smashes something over his head and runs out the door. She closes the door and hooks up a wire to the door handle, which will pull a sledgehammer onto Freddy’s.

Nancy screams out the window to the surrogate dad-cop. Surrogate dad-cop says everything is going to be all right.

Nancy runs to the front door and smashes the window, but the bars are in the way and she still can’t get out.

Freddy finally opens the door, and the sledgehammer hits him tummy. Freddy is mildly hurt. Then Freddy, who isn’t the brightest bulb in the flower patch, clutches his chest and falls OVER a banister and down the stairs, doing way more damage to himself by being stupid than Nancy managed with that sledgehammer thing.

Freddy falls all the way down the stairs and lands at Nancy’s feet.

She climbs over the couch, and they set off an explosive light bulb. Not sure what that was going to accomplish. It would be like setting off a grenade and hoping that the dude standing next to you would catch all the shrapnel. But okay.

Nancy breaks another window and keeps screaming for help, and here comes Freddy again.

Nancy goes to the basement, leads Freddy on a wild goose chase, douses him with some sort of flammable liquid and lights a match.

Freddy keeps coming, setting fire to parts of the basement as he goes.

Nancy goes back to the window and screams to her dad some more. He’s finally a little more willing to help now that smoke is pouring from the house.

Nancy takes the cops to the basement – only there’s a problem. Fiery footprints lead up the stairs.

Nancy follows them. Freddy is on Mom’s bed, attacking Mom. While on fire. Dad puts out the fire, using a blanket. Mom’s burned corpse sinks into the bed.

Nancy asks if dad believes her now.

A cop comes up from downstairs and says all the fires are out.

Dad embraces Nancy.

Dad heads downstairs after Nancy tells him to go. She says she’ll be there in a minute.

I’m a little confused by what sort of emotions I’m supposed to be feeling right now. Seeing as how dad the cop just saw some SERIOUSLY screwy stuff, this has to mean that Nancy is still dreaming all of this, right? Sure.

So, mom is probably alive, I’m guessing.

And that ain’t dad who just went downstairs.

Nancy stares at the bed where mom used to be. It doesn’t even look slept in.

The door slams behind Nancy. Nancy turns. The sheet on the bed rises, ghostlike. Freddy slashes his way through it, making death pronouncements.

Nancy retorts: “I know the secret now. This is just a dream. You’re not alive. This whole thing is just a dream. I want my mother and friends again. I take back every bit of energy I gave you. You’re nothing.”

Freddy jumps off the bed, claw outstretched. And… he vanishes.

Nancy steps forward, out the door, and…

Out her front door, into the foggy, sunny, morning air. Mom is there, talking about how she bottomed out, and now she feels GREAT. She’s going to stop drinking, because she “just doesn’t feel like it any more.”

Glen, Tina, and Rod all pull up in a convertible with the top down. It’s kinda reddish. Nancy hops in.

The top appears: It’s got Freddy stripes on it. The top closes up, all the windows roll up, and the gang drives away while Nancy panics.

Over on a nearby lawn, three little girls jump rope and do the Freddy chant.

Aaand Freddy’s arm smashes through the window in Nancy’s front door, grabs mom, and drags her, screaming, into the house.