A Gust of Insanity: The Wind (1986)

The Wind (1986) (AKA Edge of Terror)
Rating: ***
Starring: Meg Foster, Wings Hauser, David McCallum

From Nico Mastorakis, the Greek director known for the 1986 action/slasher hybrid The Zero Boys and the 1976 mean-spirited exploitation Island of Death,  comes this odd direct-to-video piece about a man, a woman, and the most antagonizing winds in cinema that wasn't a tornado.

Sian Anderson (Meg Foster) is a writer who needed some peace and quiet to work on a new book, moving from her posh Los Angeles pad to visit a strangely deserted Greek town known as Monemvassia. There, she settled in a cliff-side house and was warned by the landlord that the winds at night can get ridiculously strong, so he highly advised her to stay indoors by then. She did exactly that, but not before encountering a strange handyman named Phil (Wings Hauser) who claims to know a thing or two about death.

This turned out to be less of a bluff when Sian later spots him burying the freshly murdered landlord, thus a deadly game of cat-and-house begins. With the winds cutting her off from reaching help, can Sian survive the night against a sickle-wielding predator?

I guess I'll start with acknowledging the elephant in room as while The Wind is an intense slasher/thriller hybrid, it's not without some pretty distracting flaws. For starters, there isn't much of a story to work with since it's really no more than one long slasher climax wherein the lead girl gets chased all over the house. Right around 20 minutes into the movie, we get our first kill and the stalk-and-chase comes after like a steady stream, cultivating to set-pieces that I would go as far as compare with the trap scenes from the Home Alone movies, complete with Foster's character utilizing available household objects and spatting out one-liners in every chance she stops the killer from getting in.

As smug and plotless as I find this, I guess this kept the film straightforward and rarely boring but at a price that the tone can get uneven, leaving little to no clues where all of this was heading to. There is actually a slight nod that says all of this might just be in Sian's head as she did managed to write about the landlord's death with impossible accuracy, but we never got any clear conclusion regarding this. Anybody else who encountered the killer handyman ended up dead and the movie itself finishes with an underwhelming take with an openness so wide, one would just question themselves what exactly did they just saw.

However, despite the story making little sense in the end, The Wind is still a decent thriller with a minimal yet workable bodycount and a lot of fair stalking and small-scale siege scenes. The script, as I mentioned, can get clunky, doubling in corniness with the performances of our two opposing characters. Thankfully, if it hits right, it's a fun ham-ride that does well with a side of buttered popcorn and some sodas.

I also came to love the scenic quality of the movie and too the decent cinematography that goes well with it. Perhaps if it had a more thought-out plot, it could have been a better flick, but I will give The Wind a pass for trying to break some of the home invasion/women-in-peril slasher tropes, even if the end product mostly resembles one. Let this wind guide you to and through a strange time if you get a chance to catch it!

Bodycount:
1 male brained with a fire poker
1 female hacked on the back with a sickle
1 male hacked through with a sickle
1 male falls off a cliff
Total: 4

It's More Violent. And Shittier: Violent Shit The Movie (2016)

Violent Shit the Movie (2016)
Rating: 1/2
Starring:  Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Antonio Zequila, Lilli Carati

Well, shit. This just has to happen, right?

The original Violent Shit was released in the very late of 80s Germany, directed by underground gore film aficionado Andreas Schnaas, which tells the tale of a random madman simply going about hacking and dismembering victims left and right. And that was it.

What the original lacked in story, it makes up with copious amount of gore to the point that it may have reinvigorated the German underground shock genre, as well as landing Schnaas in a position as an underground cult favorite wherein he continues to create gore films, among my personal favorites being Anthropophagus 2000 (1999) and Nikos The Impaler (2003).

Three sequels later, Violent Shit returns under a new director and a new dwelling; bye-bye Germany, hello Italy!

Now, unlike the original, Violent Shit the Movie painfully yet failing in many means imaginable tries to have a plot; apparently the main killer from most of the Violent Shit entries, Karl the Butcher, disappeared some time ago and was never caught. When a string of similar murders start popping up in modern day Rome, however, a pair of detectives, German investigator Hans Ebert and Italian Aristide D'Amato, are positive that the culprit is none other than Karl himself. Though this claim is met with skepticism among their colleagues, the duo head on and begins looking into this possibility.

All the while, we soon find out that a strange professor has acquired Karl's corpse and been keeping him to be resurrected again and again to kill off people. Why? Coz reasons. Just, reasons. No explanation given. He probably just gets his rocks off from seeing gory mayhem and random killings, but if the film provided any shred of reason for this bald shmuck to keep a supernaturally gifted killer and controlling him like a meat puppet, I apologize but I probably missed it from all of that useless and awkward dialogues.

With the movie starting off with a retelling of how Karl made his first kill as a child, I was looking forward to an updated and possibly more structured retelling of the original Violent Shit. Instead, this is some sort of sequel/midquel that takes place in a different stomping ground, which shouldn't be a problem if only the dang plot makes a whole lot of sense; in fact, the whole supposed murder mystery angle is really just one big red herring as all it was leading to is just a barrage of gory deaths for the sake of gory deaths. No consistency. No reason. Just people being butchered by Karl the Butcher and just that. For its worth, these were really great kills. A good dose of gore and special effects were used for the massacre and this is perhaps the movie's only highlight, but why are we forced to wait a good hour or so before a film called Violent Shit give us violent shit?

In fact, why is this a part of Violent Shit's franchise? Karl the Butcher is hardly here and whenever he does appear, he's some bald shmuck's minion? I barely have any respect for this killer but after seeing this dreck, not only is it gone, it's existentially absent in my world. As in I don't know any Karl the Butcher anymore.

Add in terrible acting, Italians (and a few Germans) awkwardly trying to speak English on a tone, near sluggish pace, barely any real action in its direction, and worst of all, the audacity for them to use Claudio Simonetti's awesome score from one of my guilty pleasure Dario Argento giallo Opera (1987), this film is an insulting piece of shit that literally killed any interest for me to see any other Violent Shit movies. I don't really know or understand why this even exists, but I guess some folks just love this series enough to beg its creator to keep pushing forward. Not a bad thing, again, but perhaps Mr. Schnaas could have found someone more...competent?

Yeah, let's go with that.

I apologize for anybody who is forgiving or hardcore of a fan enough to like this, but it takes more than gory deaths to make me respect this. Violent Shit the Movie (2016) is just plain shit.

Bodycount:
1 female hacked to death with a meat cleaver
1 female murdered, later seen being dismembered
1 female slashed to death with a razor
1 male had his throat crushed
1 female repeatedly cut with a knife
1 female slashed to death with a knife
1 male found with a stabbed throat
1 female found slaughtered
1 male had his throat cut with a knife
1 male shot
1 female hacked on the back with a machete, spine torn out
1 female gutted with a machete
1 female had her throat crushed
1 male pinned to a tree with a machete, castrated
1 male ran through with a machete
1 male decapitated with a spear
1 female had her throat crushed
1 female hacked on the face with a knife
Total: 18

Wanna Play Cowboys?: Death Valley (1982)

Death Valley (1982)
Rating: ***
Starring: Paul Le Mat, Catherine Hicks, Stephen McHattie

At times, simplicity in a plot can go a long way if executed rather unconventionally.

From a glance, Death Valley (1982) doesn't sound like your typical slasher flick as it doesn't deal with busloads of teenagers driving to their doom. Instead we have Billy, a young boy from a divorced family, being sent off to a holiday with his mum Sally and her childhood bud-turned-boyfriend Mike, which the kid isn't too excited about as he would rather spend some time with his beloved dad.

Determined to give the boy a good time, Sally and Mike decided to drive through the near-barren Arizona desert to visit a Western themed novelty town, who Billy is a fan of. Amidst their trip, they stop at the titular Death Valley to take a break, wherein the boy stumbles upon a seemingly empty mobile home and picks up a peculiar looking frog necklace. Unknown to him, however, the necklace belongs to a serial killer who just recently murdered the van's occupants and, after being made aware of this little slip-up, is now determined on snuffing the life out of the tyke and too those who got in the way.

For a good slice of the run, Death Valley (1982) focuses on the dynamics between lil' Billy and the trying Mike as they awkwardly attempt to either trust the other or be trusted. Sometimes these building moments can get a bit cheesy and half-hearted, quite not sure if it is intentional or the acting was a just tad off, but it does call for some developments rarely tackled by other slasher flicks of its decade, showing both boys as flawed yet understandable in the simplest manner.

This transitions quite nicely to the slasher portions of the movie, pretty much starting early with Billy stumbling upon a murder site and going on close calls with one intense scene involving the killer spotting the bespectacled Billy alone inside one of the novelty town's attractions and begin shooting live rounds at his young target, who in turn not knowing it was for real. Things subdue once a while only for the ball to get rolling again no soon after with Mike and Sally going on a date and leaving little Billy alone at a motel with a hired sitter. And we all know how sitters end in a film like this.

What soon leads is a third act filled with fairly entertaining stalk-and-hunt sequences as the kid finds himself prowled upon by a loonie who spouts obscurities and loves to tap dance on rooftops. As silly as some of these scenes are, they are equally fun and tense as the killer has no problem showing just how unhinged he is, destroying anything and anyone to intimidate his targets and even packing a nice but slightly foreseeable twist regarding him.

Overall, as a slasher, Death Valley (1982) tries to play a different game by broadening its casts as people rather than just characters. Though this seems only applied to the main leads, it still works quite an advantage for the movie as not only we learned to feel for the leading family, but it also brought something new to the table, at least for its time when nearly all slasher victims are dumb horny teenagers. In turn, the film barely boasts a high bodycount and some of the kills were on the tame side, but if the final product is a steady flow from point A to point B, with bloody good stalkings and killings to boot, I'm okay with it! 

With all of this, I say Death Valley (1982) is a worthwhile watch for slasher fans and for willing horror junkies who wouldn't mind some cheesy family drama over their dead teenagers. Tame as it may be, it at least has character!

Bodycount:
1 male gets a throat cut with a knife
1 male found with throat cut
1 female slaughtered offcamera with a knife
1 male hacked with a pickaxe
1 female gets her throat cut with a knife
1 male shot dead
1 male hit by a car, lands and impaled on an agave plant
Total: 7

When The Ripping Goes West: A Knife for The Ladies (1974)

A Knife for the Ladies (1974) (AKA "Jack the Ripper Goes West", "Silent Sentence", "A Knife in the Dark")
Rating: ***
Starring: Jack Elam, Ruth Roman, Jeff Cooper

It's 1882 in a small southwestern town of Mescal and a knife-wielding killer is taking the lives of local prostitutes and no one, not even their local sheriff Marshal Colcord (Jack Elam), seems to know who the culprit is.

Understandably worried, the town official goes to the city and asks Ed Burns (Jeff Cooper), a young investigator, to take over the case, much to the immediate disagreement of Marshal. The two is in no friendly terms due to this, landing blows of criticisms and punches at one another, but when the slasher takes more victims and a man is wrongfully hanged for the crimes, it seems that the town is growing shorter in number and in patience, and the two lawmen have no choice but to team up and finish this reign of madness before its too late.

An early western genre-bender with a murder mystery and buddy cop taste, A Knife for the Ladies (1974) is a simplistic 70s cheese ride that dabbles enough elements from the genres it is mixing to result an okay and easily digestible plot, more or less a murder mystery set in the old west, tackling little cowboy cliches of bar brawls and gun fights (so little that I only counted one shoot-out and one fist fight), and focusing more on developing some of its characters and the build up to the identity of the killer.

However, it is still easy to see why A Knife for the Ladies (1974) is such an obscurity among the horror community, too, as it's also hardly violent and exploitative enough to satisfy one's craving for gore and sleaze. The horror elements are instead an easy bunch, pretty much standardized stalk-and-stabs that looks unremarkable and replaceable by other better proto-slasher hokums, and sign of sleaziness are reduced to one boob shot early in the movie. Still, this isn't to say the film failed to be entertaining for its worth and I am quite satisfied with the 30s/40s pulp fiction feel of the story as well as the talents involved.

Usual movie baddie Jack Elam took a developing role in here as the gruffy and uninterested sheriff Colcord who started out as a sloppy and temperament character, but later has a change for the better after drunkenly mistreating a son-figure and ending up having a fist fight with Burns.

On the opposite side of the coin is Jeff Cooper as Ed Burns, a detective with a deductive skills to rival. As much as I want to like this character, his development in the story was on a steady roll and he's just the smart and good looking contrast with Elam's character. There aren't much flaws to this character aside from clashing early with the town sheriff and he is relatively the same from the beginning to the end. Nevertheless, Cooper does a fair job sustaining the figure's presence, even if he wasn't that explored.

The writing for these two leads is one of the best elements of the movie, the other being the actual procedural itself that while may be boring for some, it is still a decent watch in a TV thriller sort of manner. And as any murder mysteries, we also have a set of red herrings such as the former deputy-turned-bar man, a surgeon, a barber-slash-mortician, and even Mescal's founder, an old woman who lost her son to the murderer. These characters have their run as possible suspects but with the way they were portrayed, it soon becomes a tad obvious who is and isn't knifing around the town's brothel. I will say, though, that some of them did lead to some interesting plot points on the film and they're played fairly for a bunch of standard casts.

I do wish we got more of these main and/or recurring characters involved with the horrors or at least have the climax more engaging than be a slight hybrid of Friday the 13th (1980) and Psycho (1960) endings, but nevertheless, even if the film couldn't do away more blood, gore or bodycount, the final product is far from terrible.

A Knife for The Ladies (1974) is pretty much one edited boobies away from being a TV movie with cheese, character drama and lite murders. Think Murder She Wrote with Jessica Fletcher replaced by a wall-eyed drunk sheriff and a 70s Doctor Who clone in the old American west. It is not a perfect viewing experience, but it is bearable to say the least, thus only recommendable to very open or patient genre fans.

Bodycount:
1 female had her throat cut with a knife
1 female stabbed, later found with a throat cut
1 male found hanged
1 male shot dead
1 male shot dead
1 male shot with a shotgun
1 female found with a throat cut
1 male knifed on the chest
1 female shot
1 male knifed on the chest
Total: 10

A Friday The 13th At Elm Street: Freddy VS Jason (2003)

Freddy vs Jason (2003)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Robert Englund, Ken Kirzinger, Kelly Rowland

My children... from the very beginning, it was the children who gave me my power. The Springwood Slasher, that's what they called me. My reign of terror was legendary. Dozens of children would fall by my blades. Then the parents of Springwood came for me, taking justice into their own hands. When I was alive, I might have been a little naughty, but after they killed me, I became something much, much worse. The stuff nightmares are made of. The children still feared me, and their fear gave me the power to invade their dreams, and that's when the fun REALLY began. Until they figured out a way to forget about me. To erase me completely. Being dead wasn't a problem, but being forgotten, now that's a BITCH. I can't come back if nobody remembers me. I can't come back if nobody's afraid. I had to search the bowels of Hell, but I found someone, someone who'll make 'em remember. He may get the blood, but I'll get the glory, and that fear is my ticket home...

It's been years since Freddy Krueger ultimately bit the dust in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and he isn't loving it. Stuck in Hell and desperate to reclaim his glory as a feared and unstoppable otherwordly madman, he somehow found his way into another slasher's personal hell, wherein a masked juggernaut methodically and repeatedly murders those he deems worthy of punishment.

Said juggernaut is Jason Voorhees, a silent hulk of pure hate and undying vengeance, dragged to into his own eternal forest in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Thinking Jason is the perfect pawn for his little plan of spreading fear and confusion in Elm Street, Freddy manipulates the giant's soft spot for mum and orders him to visit the town and slaughter a few teens. It was all going according to plan as the youths dwindle down and the adults grow paranoid of the possibility that Krueger is returning, but it all went too far when Jason crashes a rave and massacres anybody he can grab.

Realizing that he needs to stop Jason before the big guy kills off all of his kids, Freddy decides to finish off Jason but only to find out that they might be too evenly matched and the battle between these two horror icons may not be that easy to win.

All the while, Lori, an Elm street teen, finds herself and her friends caught in between the two madmen's clashing. When it appears that they are the only people with some idea of what's going on, they settle with Jason being the lesser evil and must aid him to keep Freddy at bay. When secrets are revealed and more lives are taken, the fight between these monsters may become more personal for Lori.

Ah, Christ. Where do I begin?

I was 13 when Freddy vs Jason came out and at first, I was unmindful of it until my dad pointed out that Freddy was his childhood movie monster and I then realize that Jason was the "boogeyman" I saw on my old TV one time when I was just five. (or so) It seems that these two horror icons were, at some point, a part of my family's pasts and it kinda made me cherish these baddies even more as I grow older and slightly mature in recent years, for not only giving me something to bond with my folks, but also for reinvigorating my love for horror movies and making me a bit aware of the existence of slasher flicks. (I only became a full slasher fan after I read my first HorrorHound magazine while transitioning to college. The issue that listed their top 20 underrated slashers.)

So, personally, this is one of the many movies that withstood my test of time thanks to the point that it's really just an easy-to-remember slash-a-thon. Freddy vs Jason is too much of a popcorn movie to be forgettable for its outrageous set-up, cheesy compose, over-the-top violence and a few shred of dark moments to keep everyone interested and the tone grim when needed.

One thing I really came to like about this movie, however, is that it managed to bring out the best of the two franchises as we are treated with some pretty decent nightmare sequences that actually felt terrifying despite their occasionally cartoonish and often surreal takes, and too loads of gore and humanly impossible murders courtesy of the man behind the mask. Interestingly, it seems that the two franchises have to give up something to make way for the other in turn, such as Freddy's killcount (disappointingly just one, not the counting flashbacks) and that the plot seems to focus more on Mr. Krueger while Jason is just there to cut up some teens (and the occasional adults) and be the more sympathetic monster among the two.

Curiously, Jason here's also given more of a personality than any of the earlier Friday titles; we actually get to see him react at the presence of his "mother", one moment silently following her orders, then seen standing seemingly ashamed that he disapproved his mum. Then we see him grasping his machete in rage as he realizes that Freddy duped him and, hell, we even find out that despite the many times he ventured through lakes and even the friggin ocean (See Jason Takes Manhattan), Jason is actually afraid of the water and was nearly defeated thanks to this fact.

Fan favorite Jason stuntman and actor Kane Hodder didn't wore the mask for this one, much to many fan's dismay, but I will risk saying as I think I like Ken Kirzinger's take the most out of the Friday movies. Yes, this version's felt and look more like a lumbering oaf than a brutish hulk but I believe Kirzinger's got the size right and the slow deadness to his portrayal just added the unpredictability to the monster's brawn and mayhem.

Freddy, in turn, is opportunistic, exploitative and slightly more terrifying here seeing that he is a calculative maniac. We get a good look of how much of a sicko he is as he takes great pride of his child murders, bullies Jason into a world where the big guy re-lives his terrible childhood, and actually molests one of his victims in a rather unsettling display. Robert Englund, thankfully, gave it all to this last and scariest take on the bastard son, successfully making me feel more for some of his victims and, of course, rooting for his grand defeat should it ever come.

The way I see it, this is New Lines trying to bring back Freddy's glory days as a nightmarish monster that meant to be feared (and, for all honesty I think they got it made here), while giving Jason, their newly adopted movie monster, an opportunity to try and connect with the audience as the more rootable villain despite the likely fact that he will have the equal chance of slaying the cast. In a way it works, as both slashers gave something for their fans to cheer upon and they eventually dish out all they could at one another.

And dish out they did; thankfully, the movie paces itself nicely enough to smooth through some of the more building moments, giving us a chaotic roller coaster of slasher murders and violently disturbing dreams until we finally get to all the punching, elbow drops, beatings, trapping, slicing, dismembering, eye-gouging, and even a decapitation as the two icons spared little time to give the other a fighting chance, or at least make sure that the other is covered head to toe in gore and blood.

In fact, even before the fights, Freddy vs Jason's other winning aspect had to be the gore. It is phenomenal may it be CG or practical, and it actually gets better with each dead teenager, though starting the movie with perhaps Jason's best kill (and the first murder he committed in Elm street) was just genius. However, I will admit that the ultra-violence might also be the film's own flaw as the good multitude of it had dumbed down the characters and the plot itself, leading to some laughable blurbs and head-scratching questions.

For example, if Freddy manipulated Jason to just simply "wake up" and kill, why not just pose as Mama Voorhees again and simply tell Jason to "go home" or "go back to sleep" instead of fighting him to the death? Freddy saw how much will Jason has to just come back to life, what's not to say he would have done the same when he is ordered to stop and rest again whole posing as his deranged mother? Then there's the rushed backstory as to why Lori's boyfriend was locked in a clinic and the plothole of Freddy killing an adult if he was only after kids. This said, it is safe to say the movie was made for the fans and maybe some decent horror aficionados out there, but it is definitely not for everybody, especially for those expecting more than just a dumb slasher.

As the casts are pretty forgettable if not for their death sequences, and Monica Keena's Lori seems too dazed to do anything Final Girl-worthy (Though her cleavage seems to get my attention. What? Don't tell me only Freddy and I noticed?), Freddy vs Jason really is Freddy versus Jason. Upstaging against the other by doing what they do best, may it be toying with their victims and spewing one-liners, or simply hacking and slashing in silence.

Still, production looks impressive (despite some hokey CG effects and a few goofs) and the energy of it all is simply enthusiastic, so I think all was never lost. I believe it is best to just view this with all our noggins switched off and just enjoy two gladiators of horror try to dismember the other, all for the sake of our cheesy entertainment and gruesome mayhem that had been on the works for two friggin decades. Will it hold up? Hell, it's Freddy vs effin' Jason! If your childhood self can stomach Tom and Jerry cartoons, then I don't see how two slasher legends cannot be of your cup of tea? (Unless you're not into blood and guts. If that is so...what the hell are you doing here?)

Bodycount:
1 girl had her eyes gouged offcamera (flashback)
1 male burned to death (flashback)
1 female impaled to a tree with a machete (dream)
1 male seen with a missing eye (dream)
1 female seen with a throat cut (dream)
1 male repeatedly stabbed through with a machete, folded in half
1 male found beheaded
1 male slashed with a machete
1 male and 1 female skewered with a rusted pipe
1 male had his head twisted
1 male impaled by a thrown flaming machete
1 male slashed with a machete
1 male slashed with a machete
1 male slashed with a machete

1 male gutted with a machete
1 male slashed with a machete
1 female slashed with a machete
1 male seen with wrist slits (dream)
1 male burned, face sliced with a razor glove
1 male crushed by a metal door
1 male electrocuted via current
1 male sliced in half with a machete
1 female stabbed with a razor glove (dream/flashback)
1 male hits a shelf bracket, bled to death
1 female hit by a machete, crashes against a tree
Total: 26

(c) Google Images

Let's All Remember...

The sacrifices and hardships a mother had to go through

just for the sake of doing it for their children.

It's a kind of love that even the most terrifying monsters either fear

or understand.

Happy Mother's Day from your friends here in StickyRed!

Skin The Cat: Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
Rating: ****1/2
Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Jeff Davis

It's funny to ponder that if the studios have agreed with the late Wes Craven, the director and writer of the original Nightmare On Elm Street, to not franchise his monster, Freddy Krueger, we may not have the same kind of Freddy so well recognized today. For all we know, he could have remained in the shadows and started, instead, a darker and edgier take on future quip-spewing maniacs. But, the obvious truth is he didn't; Freddy branched out and became a household name that either brought fright or delight to those who hear his name, depending if they remember him as a vicious child murderer that kills you in your sleep or a wise-cracking monster with outlandishly cartoonish powers.

Thankfully, Mr. Craven decided to direct his monster one last time for the 90s. A meta-take on the series that placed Freddy back in the shadows in a hauntingly good way.

Set in the real world, it's almost the 10th Anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street and one of its stars, Heather Langenkamp, is currently dealing with not only an obsessed fan who have been phoning and mocking her in Krueger's voice, but also a series of vivid nightmares that seems to hint the presence of Freddy himself. Dismissing this as mere stress, Heather would soon realize that a new Nightmare film is in the making and her husband Chase Porter (fictionally in this movie) is one of the film's special effects artists.

Adding for the worse, their son Dylan slowly begins to act strange as he quote Kreuger's lines and gets nightmares wherein the burnt maniac appears to be preying on him, despite never seeing any of the Nightmare movies. After the boy goes through a rather violent and disturbingly cryptic fit, Heather begged Chase to come home from work one night, only for him to be killed in a car accident that somewhat left him with a peculiar looking mark. One that resembles a ghastly clawing.

Soon, Heather would learn that Freddy Krueger himself is attempting to break into the real world and has targeted her in a way to destroy the only one who could defeat him. When her son gets abducted by this monster and reality itself begins falling apart, it's up to her to become Nancy Thompson once again and finish the bastard son of a hundred maniacs once and for all.

First, I will start with the flaws since from my eyes, this movie only has a few. For one, being a film of near-two hour run, Wes Craven's New Nightmare definitely has a lot of time to fill up as a slasher movie of very limited kills. If anything, calling this a slasher is a really big stretch since it more of a psychological character and situation study with a supernatural and fantasy tone, focusing on Heather Langekamp's fictional portrayal of herself and her attempts to understand and cope with a predicament that the parallels real world terrors.

This being said, the film is brainer and a lot more philosophical than the standard teen-kill, tackling subtext such as violence in media and how it affects not only its audience, but also those involved in making them. Heather's character, for one, is a young mother trying to stray away from her past as a slasher flick actress for the sake of her son, but finds this difficult as the past keeps coming back to haunt her, either in the form of a sinister voice over the phone, the undying love of a fictional murderer among its fans, or an ancient demon hellbent on destroying everything she loves. In the end, she learns that she cannot escape this darkness and learns that she has to face and fight it despite the odds, calling forth bravery and sacrifice that is well implemented with a gothic fairytale (Notice the Hansel and Gretel references?) and some mythology subtexts. (Apparently Craven's inspiration)

It is an odd path to make after the other Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but the idea is fresh for the time and made this one of the few movies in a series to approach this with take much thought, atmosphere and emotion. This is where New Nightmare shines through as a horror flick, taking its audience in places so rarely ventured upon by a film of its kind, challenging its viewers with ideas and themes that may appear straight out of it's franchise, but worked around to create something entirely different, far more sinister and more mature.

In terms of production, New Nightmare is just phenomenal; the score is hauntingly majestic and epic, especially around the climax where the film took place in a world resembling the ruins of Roman empire, sporting a thunderous opera. Cinematography and visual effects escalates in quality the more the movie inches to the final fight. (Even if some of the body horror effects looked a bit rubbery) The direction is among Craven's best as it gave us enough momentum to feel through the dread our protagonists are going through, may it be subtle or downright obvious, simply foreshadowing a true evil waiting around the corner, which might as well be the case seeing Freddy is literally everywhere.

The casts, in turn, are among the best portrayals I've seen, especially Heather Langenkamp in what could be her best role (then again, she is playing herself) and John Saxon in a rather more likable and warmer approach to himself as a good friend to Heather. Miko Hughes is one of the few child actors that surprisingly didn't annoy me so that's a big point for him. Heck, I would even admit that the most grueling part of the film for me is when little Hughes found his stuffed dinosaur slashed up by Freddy and crying out for it; I dunno why but the image of a child screaming for an imaginary protector when real horror is afoot really tugged my heartstrings. Perhaps I can relate?

And speaking of which, Freddy. Goddamn Freddy Krueger. In a way, we have two of him in this movie, both played by Robert Englund with one being a fun-loving movie monster who makes a surprising yet welcomed cameo appearance, and the other being an ancient force that seems a little too clean in terms of looks but nevertheless atmospheric, more savage, and less goofy. (Seriously, why does Gap Freddy look so clean? Least the coat looks awesome, why can't modern Freddy wear that in the new films?)

If there is anything I didn't like about this Freddy though (apart from slashing up poor Rex. Rest in pieces, stuffed dino), is his new glove. I know this was one way to tell him apart from the other Krueger but why can't he use that robotic claw at the opening? That idea is just pure win! Eitherways, at least the murders he unleashed were among the most slasher-esque in the series; they maybe few, but during those little moments when we get to see some blood drawn, they were savage and tragic, just like killings of the old Krueger before he became the slasher equivalent of The Looney Tunes' Wile E. Coyote. (No nudity or gore, however. But I never really saw a place for it in this movie) Though we do get to see him go a tad cartoony such as stretching his tongue and unhinging his jaw like a snake, thankfully we only get a few of these moments without killing any tone this version of Freddy is trying to accomplish, and accomplish he did despite his little screen time.

With many nods to the series here and there, New Nightmare is a welcomed entry to this franchise that dares to be different yet clamoring enough love for the original that it almost acts as a tribute movie made by a very creative and imaginative team. Wes Craven really outdone himself with this love letter of ghoulish proportions to the very movie that sparked his fame among us horror junkies and I believe, as a fan of both Craven and of this series, it will be criminal for me to not recommend this. If you want something different for your buck, your slasher needs, or is just darn curious what exactly is the fuss about, I will say give Wes Craven's New Nightmare a spin. It's smart, atmospheric, genuinely scary and it has goddamn Freddy Kreuger in it!

Bodycount:
1 male stabbed on the neck by a mechanical claw
1 male stabbed to death with a mechanical claw
1 male clawed on the chest, killed in car crash
1 female slashed to death with a razor claw
Total: 4