Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
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 Freddy's Dead: The Live Action Looney Tunes episode, featuring a fedora-wearing boogeyman with a finger-bladed glove.
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Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (also known as A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Final Nightmare) is a 1991 American slasher film and the sixth installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, released on September 13, 1991. The film is the sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and was originally intended to be the final installment of the series; Wes Craven's New Nightmare was released three years later but takes place outside the series canon. A canonical sequel, as well as the crossover film, Freddy vs. Jason, was released in 2003 and a remake/reboot of the 1984 film released in 2010. This was New Line Cinema's first 3D film release.
Plot
Murderous ghoul Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has slaughtered every last child in his hometown. He ventures on to a new location, scouting fresh young victims to hack up with his finger blades. He arrives in a small town in which his long-lost daughter, Maggie (Lisa Zane), works as a therapist for troubled youths. He attempts to recruit her for his dastardly pursuits, but she has other ideas. Father and daughter meet for a bloody showdown that will determine Freddy's fate once and for all.
Why It Didn't Save The Best For Last
- The film doesn't even try to be scary and goes for outright comedy most of the time, thus turning the entire Nightmare on Elm Street film series into a dead horse.
- Freddy is way too goofy and out-of-place in this film, even worse than in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (through not too much worse as the 2010 remake film). He says and does many cartoony and unfunny things, including:
- Acting like the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and saying "I'll get you my pretty, and your little soul too."
- "No screaming while the bus is in motion," and saying it in a hammy way.
- Acting like an uncontrolled monkey while Carlos is deaf.
- Playing a video game and making stupid sound effects also not to mention the video game's graphics were designed in MS-Paint and poorly drawn such as the 8-bit Freddy or Spencer's Dad also making this an early 2000s flash game or an MS-Paint animation.
- Freddy's infamous smile when he has the power glove, to the point it became a meme.
- Pushing a bed of nails while acting like Wile E Coyote.
- Spencer’s kill is awful. It involves Freddy using a demonic version of the Power Glove to put Spencer in a video game, then make him jump to his death in a bottomless pit.
- Lame gore effects, which make it feel more like a low-budget Troma film than something from a major studio. In particular, Carlos is shown to have green blood for some reason when Freddy makes his head explode.
- Laughable dialogue such as, the 8-Bit spencer's dad's "BE LIKE ME!".
- Like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Freddy gets all kinds of additional powers that make no sense, even worse than Freddy's Revenge, including:
- He can now alter things in the real world when nobody nearby is asleep.
- He can cause the kids he killed to be erased from history.
- He can go inside Maggie's head even when she is partially awake (she also conveniently falls partially asleep in that scene).
- He can now create an Elm Street in every town.
- Some of the characters are uninteresting.
- Maggie is a bland protagonist who is often revealed to be Freddy Krueger's biological daughter, which was never been told in the previous films.
- She would also return in the comic, Freddy vs Jason vs Ash: The Nightmare Warriors, where she turns against Ash from the Evil Dead films, along with the survivors from the previous Friday The 13th films, and A Nightmare On Elm Street films to help her father take over the world with the Necronomicon.
- Major retcons to the continuity of the series:
- None of the previous films mentioned Freddy having a wife or child.
- None of the previous films revealed that his entire reason for killing children was because his child was taken away after he murdered his wife.
- However, Freddy killing children and his wife was the reason his daughter was taken away.
- Alice, Yvonne, nor Jacob, the survivors from the previous movie, The Dream Child, are in the film nor are mentioned. So what exactly happened to them? An early script revealed that Alice was killed by Freddy and that John Doe is actually a grown-up Jacob, but the final version doesn't make any of this clear.
- Tracy turns out to have been sexually abused by her father. It feels way out of tone with the rest of the film, and would have fit better in one of the darker earlier entries in the series.
- For some reason, the producers decided to have the film's climax shot in 3D, even though there wasn't a 3D fad in the early 90s. What's more, all the 3D effects look absolutely horrible, even when viewed in 2D.
- The method by which they "permanently" kill Freddy, is the same one that Nancy used to deal with him in the first film. Considering that Freddy went on to appear in five more films and murder half of the population of an entire town, that should have clued someone in that this wouldn't have been an effective solution. (Most likely they were keeping open their options for the seventh film in case this one did well, though the eventual New Nightmare was set in the "real world")
- Speaking of ripping off the method from the original film, this film rips off parts of the other sequels, too:
- The bus nightmare from Freddy's Revenge
- The youth center element from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
- The scene where Tracy, Carlos, and Spencer drive through Springwood and keep landing at the same place is similar to Alice and Dan driving in a loop in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
- Freddy trying to convince and win someone (in this case Maggie) over onto his side is what he tried to do with Jacob in The Dream Child
- The feeding tube tunnel from The Dream Child.
- Speaking of ripping off the method from the original film, this film rips off parts of the other sequels, too:
- Abrupt ending that feels unsatisfying for the finale of a film series. Maggie blows Freddy up with a pipe bomb, announces that "Freddy's dead", and that's it.
- Much like how the Friday the 13th film series had announced its fourth film as the "Final Chapter", this ended up not being the final film in the series. Even ignoring New Nightmare, which isn't set in the same continuity, Freddy would make his eventual return in the crossover film Freddy Vs. Jason.
- Has some weird, pointless and unnecessary cameos like Tom Arnold, Roseanne Bar, and even Johnny Depp, who also appeared in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street as Glenn. But here, he only appears for about 13 Seconds.
- Despite the fact the title is called Freddy's Dead, it only has 5 kills; Carlos, Spencer, John, Freddy's stepdad, and Loretta Krueger (Freddy doesn't really count actually since he is revived in Freddy Vs. Jason). With a name like The Final Nightmare, you would expect the movie to have a massive body count, but that isn't the case here. It has 4 less kills than Freddy's Revenge, and has less than Dream Warriors and The Dream Master.
- After Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare was a box office hit, The same comedic and wacky cartoony elements would ruin another Friday the 13th film distributed by New Line Cinema titled Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
Redeeming Qualities
- Decent twist halfway through, when it turns out that Freddy's kid actually isn't "John Doe", but rather Maggie.
- A few creepy scenes with Maggie and the other characters exploring Springwood, which is now filled with mostly-catatonic adults trying to act as though they still have children.
- The soundtrack is great, such as Goo Goo Dolls - I'm Awake Now and Iggy Pop – "Why Was I Born? (Freddy's Dead)
- Johnny Depp, Tom Arnold, Roseanne Bar, and Alice Cooper all make interesting cameo appearances in this movie, even if they served no purpose.
- Some of the self-aware dark humor is pretty good.
- Amount of good dialogue, including " Hey! you forgot the Power Glove!".
- The 3 main deaths have some decent qualities. Carlos’ death, the head explosion, is pretty cool, the TV spilling blood for Spencer's death is a nice touch, and the effects for John's death are neat.
- Despite its ending, there's a epic battle between Maggie and Freddy Krueger.
- Carlos, Spencer, and Tracy are decent characters.
- The performances are good.
Reception
While the film was a box-office hit, and at the time the third-most successful Elm Street film, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare was negatively reviewed and is widely regarded as the worst film in the series, along with its fifth film and the 2010 remake. It currently holds a 22% positive rating on film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 4.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Reducing the once-terrifying Dream Reaper into a goofy caricature, this joyless climax will leave audiences hoping Freddy stays dead.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 39 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". On IMDb and Letterboxd, the film earned the ratings of 4.9/10 and 2.2/5.
Series creator Wes Craven later revealed that while he watched all the sequels to prepare for writing New Nightmare, he thought this one was so bad that he didn't even bother watching it all the way through.
Trivia
- This marks the last appearance of Freddy Krueger until Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday as his bladed gloved hand grabs Jason Voorhees's battered hockey mask and dragging it into hell And Wes Cravens New Nightmare As a tall trenchcoated green fedora wearing freddy krueger like demon.
- Maggie would return in the comic Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash: The Nightmare Warriors Where She Turns against ash and the rest of the survivors of the nightmare on elm street and friday the 13th films to help her father and jason to get the Necronomicon.
- The scene where Freddy Krueger when he has the power glove became a meme.
- It’s known to be Cody Leach’s most hated slasher film and most hated horror film of all time
Videos
External Links
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare at the Internet Movie Database
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare on Rotten Tomatoes
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