ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 11th
"A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5:
THE DREAM CHILD" released in 1989
THE DREAM CHILD" released in 1989
Watch the A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child trailer below!
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On the eve of graduating high school, dream master Alice (Wilcox) has a dream where she has become Amanda Krueger (Beatrice Boepple) on the day she was accidentally locked in the asylum with over a hundred maniacs, only managing to wake up once the inmates start to attack her. Fearing she may be losing control of her dream powers, Alice confides in her boyfriend Dan (Danny Hassel) who reassures her that Freddy (Englund) is long gone and to enjoy graduation with their friends, Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter), Greta (Erika Anderson) and Mark (Joe Seely). While walking to work that night, Alice experiences a "waking" dream, finding herself back in the asylum to witness Freddy's birth - a deformed, hideous creature that immediately escapes the delivery room, with Alice in pursuit. Leading to the chapel, Alice is unable to stop the baby from turning into a resurrected Kreuger, who triumphantly exclaims, "It's a boy!". Before Freddy can attack her, Alice is saved by a vision of Amanda, who starts to tell Alice how to stop her unholy son but is cut off when Alice awakens. Alice alerts Dan of Freddy's return, but Freddy gets to him first killing him in his truck. Now alone, Alice finally determines how Krueger managed to return when Yvonne (who is also a candy stripper at the hospital) tells her Alice's pregnant, and that Freddy is using the dreams of her unborn child, Jacob (Whit Hertford), to haunt the dreams of her friends. Knowing that Amanda holds the key to destroying Freddy, Alice must now race against time to release Amanda's spirit and destroy Krueger before Freddy takes control of her son!
Alice Johnson: You can't come back! I locked the door on you.
[Freddy springs up behind her]
Freddy Krueger: Well, I found the key!
Top: Alice (Lisa Wilcox) must face Freddy one more time;
Above: Freddy: It's a boy!
After the successful release of Dream Master, executives at New Line Cinema decided is was time to try and incorporate more mature themes into the series. The idea of focusing the A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 around children and birth was hatched by New Line Cinema Executive Producer Sara Risher, who was a new mother at the time and constantly had her child and its well-being in her mind. The filmmakers decided to build off this because they felt that teenagers and 20 somethings who were fans of the original film were beginning to reach the age where they were likely thinking about settling down and having families. Development executive Michael De Luca held a open casting call to primarily "splatter-punk" writers for pitches on the next Freddy outing. Among the early pitches was a treatment by David J Schow entitled Freddy Rules, and focuses on a concept called the Coma Pit (the one place even Freddy is afraid to go). De Luca would eventually hire writing partners John Skipp and Craig Spector after being impressed with earlier novel, The Light at the End. After Skipp and Spector delivered a first draft, New Line turned to screenwriter Leslie Bohen for further rewrites (Bohen had originally pitched an idea of Freddy as baby for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3).
[locks Greta in seat]
Freddy Krueger: Bon appetit... bitch!
Top: With Freddy's return, all Alice friends, Mark (Joe Seely), Greta (Erika Anderson),
Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter) and Dan (Danny Hassel) are in danger;
Above: Alice is too late to save Greta from Freddy!
As Bohen worked on the script, New Line hired director Stephen Hopkins to helm Dream Child in mid-February, and had the unenviable task of delivering the film for an August release, with a script that was still unfinished! Production began nevertheless, with William Wisher Jr. and (returning to the project) David J. Schow contributing some rewrites and the final shooting script being a patchwork of pages from all previous drafts put togther by Hopkins and De Luca only a few days before photography would begin - virtually nothing of the screenplay by John Skipp and Craig Spector made it into the film (according to Skipp, only the phrase "It's a boy" was retained), while only around half of Leslie Bohem's screenplay was kept (in fact Skipp and Spector had to fight to get credit for their work on Dream Child, eventually credited as writing the story).
Given just four weeks to shoot Dream Child, Hopkins had to keep continually shooting on one stage, while another set was getting dressed and ready on another stage, and run and back and forth between them all day directing the action. One of the most dynamic scenes in Dream Child was the scenes in the asylum, where audiences finally get to meet Freddy's father, one of the inmates played by Robert Englund without make-up! During filming the scene, most of the extras playing the asylum inmates (who were not professional actors) actually rushed at Lisa Wilcox when the cameras started rolling, with Englund having to struggle against the mob and actually shield Wilcox from them!
TRIVIA: All of Mark's drawings were supposed to come alive during his death scene but were too long and were cut down.
Top: Jacob (Whit Hertford) appears in Alice's dreams;
Above: Inside Jacob's dreams, Alice watches Freddy feed the souls
of his victims to her child!
All death sequences were cut down significantly in order to avoid an X-rating. Dan's original motorcycle death was longer and contained much more gore. Many sequences showing Dan's face racked in pain were cut, along with his screams and Freddy's laughter. Scenes which are seen on screen for only seconds are minutes long on film. The entire sequence is much longer, and the timing of Freddy's quips are different. Greta's dinner scene was also edited. Originally, Freddy filleted the Greta-doll with the claw-glove causing it to spurt blood everywhere and then force-fed her its innards. Shots of the guests laughing were cut. Also, after Freddy said, "You are what you eat," she looked down and realized he had gutted her and was feeding her mush from her own stomach. This explains why the Greta-doll in Mark's dream is bleeding from its torso. Finally, Mark's demise was also cut. As Freddy shreds the paper in the unrated release, his face is animated and shows him screaming along to his cries of pain until Freddy cuts his paper head off. While not making the final cut, all three scenes can be viewed unedited in the original unrated release.
Amanda Krueger: Your birth was a curse on the whole of humanity.
[Freddy hisses]
Amanda Krueger: I will not allow it to happen again. You brought me back to give you life, but now I must take yours.
Freddy Krueger: We'll see, bitch. We'll just see.
Top: The spirit of Amanda Krueger (Beatrice Boepple) returns to confront
her evil son!; Above: Amanda finally manages to trap Freddy... at a cost!
Released after just eight short weeks of post production, Dream Child would prove a commercial disappointment, becoming the lowest grossing movie in the franchise at $22 million (it would later be beaten by Wes Craven's New Nightmare in 1991, with figures of a little over $18 million at the box office). Despite the filmmakers intentions, critics and fans didn't want their favorite dream killer tackling mature issues like single motherhood, and a confusing plot caused by the incomplete scripts did not help either! Caryn James of The New York Times wrote that the film "doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is - a genre film that won't totally insult your intelligence or your eyes". Time Out reviewed Dream Child as "a flimsily plotted but visually impressive addition to the endless Freddy Krueger saga", and the TV Guide writing, "Director Stephen Hopkins does an imaginative job in visualizing the bizarre, freely associative nightmares and produces some memorably surrealistic scenes". In an interview posted on Nightmare on Elm Street Companion, Lisa Wilcox praised Nightmare 5's Gothic tone, but also pointed out that several scenes and parts of the film's plot perhaps are too sensitive for the audiences, and even Robert Englund stating that Dream Child was his least favorite film in the series next to Freddy's Revenge and Freddy's Dead.
TRIVIA: Both horror author Stephen King and comic book writer Frank Miller were offered the job of writing and directing this movie.
Top: Special Make-Up Effects Artist R. Christopher Briggs applies
final touches to the "iron man" for Dan's death scene;
Above: Director Stephen Hopkins with Robert Englund
With this reaction to Dream Child, perhaps is was no surprise that the next film in the series would also be intended to be it's last; Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. Directed by longtime Nightmare series associate producer Rachel Talalay, Freddy's Dead would star a new crop of upcoming teen actors, including Breckin Meyer, with veteran performers Lisa Zane, Yaphet Kotto and Englund himself (including a host of cameos, with Roseanne Barr, Tom Arnold, and Alice Cooper). With the final nail in Freddy's coffin, many believed Krueger was gone for good, until his original creator, Wes Craven decided to resurrect him one more time for Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), and bring back the original star, Heather Langenkamp playing a fictionalized version of herself. Like Dream Child, New Nightmare would also have strong themes of motherhood and protecting their children from Freddy's clawed clutches!
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 33%
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