I'm Your Boyfriend Now, Bitch!

There's a new trailer out for the 'reboot" (oh, how I hate that word) of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the 1984 Wes Craven classic that starred Heather Langencamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakely, Charles "Roger Rabbit" Fleischer and Robert Englund as the pedophile Fred Kreuger (it wasn't until the film's sequel that he was officially called "Freddy"). Oh yeah, it also starred this young unknown by the name of Johnny Depp, in his feature film debut (more on Johnny in my upcoming post about Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland).

In the movie, a small town's teenagers suddenly find themselves plagued by nightmares in which a horribly burn-scarred maniac stalks them with a razor-clawed glove. It turns out their parents had long-ago stalked and killed a local pedo, burning him alive in the high school boiler room, where he had been employed as a janitor. Years later, Freddy manages to invade the dreams of their children, taking advantage of the old urban legend that says if you die in your dream, you die in real life.

The movie was a sensation and spawned almost as many sequels as Friday the 13th, ending with 2003's Freddy vs Jason, a campy mix in which the two unstoppable Horror icons joined forces to take out local teens, but ended up battling each other for supremacy. Beyond silly, Freddy vs Jason was the nadir of both franchises, both of which should have been put to bed long ago (despite the calls for an Ash vs Freddy vs Jason sequel, which, thankfully, never happened).

As a young (23 - yes, I'm old) Horror fan who, at the time, adored 80's slasher flicks, I found the first film to be both original and effective, and Fred Kreuger was probably the most frightening Horror movie villain since Craven's mutant cannibal family in the original The Hills Have Eyes. Of course, as the franchise progressed and Freddy became an increasingly campy spouter of bad one-liners, I began to lose interest. That is, until Craven returned with 1994's A New Nightmare, which pitted Langencamp as herself, battling the fictional Kreuger made real through her son's own nightmares. The movie explored the fine line between fiction and reality, but fell apart in its last few minutes. And Craven's next film, the terrible Eddy Murphy vehicle A Vampire in Brooklyn seemed to seal his fate as a has-been. It wouldn't be until the Kevin Williamson-penned slasher satire Scream that Craven would redeem himself. I'm also a big fan of Craven's non-Horror thriller Red Eye, with Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox and giant-eyed "Glee" star, Jayma Mays.

And Craven's next film, My Soul to Take, seems to explore familiar territory in a tale about a serial killer who returns to his hometown to stalk children whose birthday's fall on the day he was supposedly buried. How much more can Craven mine from this concept? I'm not sure, but you can bet I'll be seeing it.

Anyway, here's the latest trailer for director Wesley Strick's "reboot" of A Nightmare...

Is it me, or does Jackie Earle Haley's version of Freddy sound an awful lot like Watchmen's Rorschach? At least this version of Freddy looks like he's actually been burned, rather than ravaged by some exotic, disfiguring virus. And yes, that's doe-eyed Kyle Gallner from The Haunting in Connecticut and Jennifer's Body as Quentin. I'll withhold judgment until I see the new movie when it comes out in April, but I remain dubious. If nothing else, I'll give it this: At least the damned thing isn't in 3D!

More, anon.
Prospero

Read More......

Three, Four... Better Lock Your Door

I hear so many people complaining about remakes these days (myself, often included). But it's hardly a new phenomenon. Cecil B. DeMille re-made both Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments. And I recently read that A Star is Born has been greenlit for a third remake. It just seems that lately, there are so damned many of them. And I suppose it's not so terrible when the movie being remade is older and can be done with the benefit of new technology. With that in mind, I guess I'm slowly warming up to the idea of the new version of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's been 25 years, afterall.

In 1984, director Wes Craven introduced audiences to Freddy Kreuger, a disfigured pedophile who attacked teens in their dreams. Based on the old wives' tale that if you die in your dream, you die in real life, Elm Street tapped into something we all have in common and twisted it like a knife (or in this case, a razor-fingered glove) in our collective guts.

Heather Langenkamp is Nancy, a young girl who has started to dream about an evil maintenance man. When she questions her parents (John Saxon and Ronee Blakely), they tell her it's nothing. Of course, when Nancy's friends start turning up dead, she knows something is terribly wrong:

It turns out of course, that pedophilic school maintenance man Fred Kreuger (he wasn't called "Freddy" yet) is responsible. When the people in town (including Nancy's cop father) discovered what Kreuger had done, they trapped in the boiler room and burned him alive. To take his revenge, he attacks their children in their dreams, killing them with that vicious glove. Soon, teens start turning up dead all over the place, including a young Johnny Depp in his first feature film:

A Nightmare on Elm Street went on to provide character actor Robert Englund (previously best known for a small role in the TV miniseries "V") with a lucrative career in an increasingly silly series of sequels and other horror films, like the 1989 version of Phantom of the Opera, The Mangler, 2001 Maniacs and Zombie Strippers! Craven eventually returned to the story with A New Nightmare, in which the movie character suddenly finds a life of his own and impinges on the lives of Langenkamp and her "real-life" family, which was the most interesting of the sequels. Of course, Englund took the character to a new low in 2003's Freddy Vs. Jason, in which he teams up and then faces off with Friday the 13th's Jason Vorhees.

So, now it's soon to be 2010 and Michael Bay (ugh) is producing an update (or reboot) of the franchise. The only thing that gives me hope is the casting of Watchmen's Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy:

So, what do you think? Can Bay and Haley successfully resurrect Kreuger from the silly, pun-spouting character he had become by the 90's? Or will the new version simply be masturbatory filmmaking at its worst? The proof, I suppose, will be in the pudding. You know that I always want to know your thoughts. Will you be making a visit to Elm Street next year? I probably will, but I hold no hope for a film better than last year's deplorable Friday the 13th re-boot.

On an interesting side note, before he was the voice of Roger Rabbit, comedian Charles Fleischer appeared as a psychologist in the original Nightmare...

More terrors, anon.
Prospero

Read More......