The Life and Times of a Midwestern Movie Addict

So we've come to the end of the Elm Street series (admittedly in a somewhat in-ordered way) and today it starts over full circle.  People everywhere are being reintroduced to Freddy Krueger, who is now being played by Oscar-nominee Jackie Earl Haley, and the reviews are disappointingly mediocre so far (though for me it is disappointing how predictably closed minded they are...more on that when I actually discuss the new Elm Street tomorrow).  However, we still have one more of Englund's turns at bat to go and it is my personal favorite.  Picture it, its 1993 and Freddy had been killed off 2 years ago...yet people still wanted more of the Springwood Slasher.  Enter Wes Craven, who is approaching the 10 year anniversary of his first entry in the series and who has started mulling around the effects that horror has on those who both watch it and create it.  What is horror and is it harmful?  It certainly was to Heather Langenkamp who, due to her popularity as ...

I know, I know...I'm late.  I should have had this one up last night and I never got to it thanks to a large buildup of Netflix discs and long rehearsals....we're doing our spring musical right now, so I obviously have no life.  So I'm just gonna cheat and do this one today and part 7 tomorrow, which should work just fine.  Anyhoo, this is part 8 of this series, but also part 11 of another.  Yes, the infamous match-up between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger...an idea that had started as a fanboy's wet dream (no pun intended) and then morphed into a real idea that was trapped in development hell for years.  Many of us thought it would never happen, and for a long long time it didn't.  However, when Scream revived horror in the 90s and the 80s icons like Michael Myers began being brought back...then it seemed that the time was ripe for Freddy and Jason to retake the scene.  Finally in 2003, almost 20 years since the original Elm Street opened, horror f...

Part 6 started out as a much more ambitious project with several main characters, the return of Alice and Jacob Johnson as characters, and a big subplot dealing with Freddy's past and his eventual demise.  However, like all ambitious horror sequels of that time...the budget was cut and the studio interfered in the creative process.  They also decided to add a gimmick to the mix...3D, and that meant neutering the finale even more so that they could film the scenes properly.  Sad thing is, the 3D effect didn't turn out all that great in the end and so cutting the finale down came to nothing...and the way they finally "killed" Freddy was really stupid.  Still, there's a lot to like about Part 6 if you look closely.  So here we go...day five and movie 6.  Say hello to Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare . When the film begins, an unidentified teenage male is having a nightmare where he is thrown from a plane, falls down a hill, and is then hit by a bus drive...

Ah, another day...another Nightmare.  This time we will be looking at Part 5, a dark and gothic little entry that tried (perhaps too late) to return Freddy to his darker roots and concludes the little trilogy that began with Part 3.  The nightmares were shot in dark, 'James Cameron' blues and hues of sickly yellows and browns and featured particularly gruesome ends for their characters (without being overly bloody).  Freddy was still jokey, but he's a bit more mean-spirited like in Part 3 and his very appearance inspires dread...rather than cheers and whoops.  Also, Freddy's plan is a bit more icky this time out...using the dreams of an unborn child to bring himself back to life and start anew.  Part 5 always gets a very bad rap...often lumped together with the worst of the series and I've never understood why.  It advances the story once again into something a little different, and it tries to make the whole affair dark and spooky again.  I honestly t...

...And we're back with the second half of today's Elm Street coverage, covering the second of the 'Dream Fighter' trilogy as I'll call it, Part 4...the one where the production values went way up and you could feel the 80s dripping from every pore.  Well of course you can...it was released in 1988 when the bright colors and crazy hair of the 80s was reaching its apex and the 90s were quickly approaching...every movie had a hard rock 80s soundtrack (including this one) and Freddy's popularity was rivaling Jason.  In fact, this summer saw the two horror Juggernauts battling each other for box office dollars (ok...so maybe one movie came out in June and the other came out in August but still) and there were already people who were either Freddy fans 'or' Jason fans...not both.  It was like liking either Star Trek or Star Wars.  This was also the summer that it was rumored that a Freddy vs. Jason movie would happen, but when neither studio could reach an agr...

Today's post is going to be a two-parter mainly because I have to watch two films today in order to get all 8 Freddy films done by next Friday so I can cover the remake...so I hope you guys are in for a lot of Freddy!  If you haven't already guessed, I'm going through the films in chronological order so today is gonna be Parts 3 and 4...which are two of my favorites, particularly part 4.  The third film in this series begins something of a trilogy which consists of parts 3, 4, and 5 and introduces the idea that, while Freddy can manipulate the dreams of his victims, so can the teens who go into these dreams and thus, special individuals emerge who can fight Krueger on his own playing field.  It also introduces the wise-cracking Freddy that began to become more and more prevalent in the series.  So lets dive in and enter the world of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors . The film begins with Kristen Parker building a model house and fighting sleep, forcing...

Ok, I know I'm making a post F aux Pas by making two posts in the same day and calling them day 1 and day 2...but the reason for that is because I meant for day 1 to be yesterday when I watched the first movie and day two to be the today when I watch the second movie but I didn't write day 1 yesterday because it was late and I was really sleepy (ironically enough) so day 1 was written earlier today and now I'm writing day 2 to coincide...are you sufficiently confused?  Because I think I just went cross-eyed.  Anyway, let's get right to talking about the second film in the Elm Street series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge . Jesse Walsh has just moved into 1428 Elm Street, the house that Nancy Thompson lived in in the first film, and five years have since passed (which means this movie either takes place in 1989, if movie one took place in 1984...or, since the graduation caps in movie five say 1989, it means that the first film took place in 1980......

Back in 1992 I watched one of my second horror films ever on VHS...it was a little film you might have heard of called Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare , the 6th film in the Elm Street series.  It was fresh to video and I convinced my Mom, against her better judgment, that it was more funny than scary and thus would not cause any bad dreams or deviant behavior.  Plus, it was supposedly the last one in the series and how could she deprive me of seeing that??  It ended up being a lot of fun for my little 8 year old mind, I got to see the main man...Freddy Krueger cut through some teens, make some funny one-liners, and get his butt kicked by Lisa Zane.  Sure, some of the cameos made no sense (Roseanne and Tom Arnold?) and it couldn't possibly have its 3D ending on video, but I didn't really know that the quality was shifty.  At that point, I was in macabre heaven (having loved dark stuff from my early years with Disney's The Adventures of Ichabod Crane ) and simp...

Well friends, I don't know if I mentioned a new guy I was talking to at the beginning of the month.  It was fun and we enjoyed the flirtations, and the first date even went well.  Then came the 2nd date...well, not so good.  You know how it goes, some things are going well but then it starts to go sour and you begin to wonder if you're really into the person.  Turns out, he was thinking the same thing and so I got the old proverbial dump tonight.  Though, can you really call it dumped if you only had two dates?  I dunno, but I saw it coming.  I probably would have broken it off too, but I was willing to give it one more date.  And you know what ticks me off about the whole thing?  Its not that he broke it off, though that is always disappointing (because you think...who am I gonna go on dates with?), but that I'm gonna be wondering why for a while.  I always want to know why someone isn't interested, mainly so I don't convince myself tha...

I must say, that part of being a gay man nowadays is using the word fabulous.  I'm not sure what it is, but we all eventually use it in our conversations.  They've even made jokes about it on shows like "Will and Grace" (yes, I know...its not exactly the most accurate of depictions of gay life...but then neither is "Queer as Folk" and the boys just LOVE that)...one of my favorites being when Will and Jack were 'training' a newbie friend of theirs.  He uses the word fabulous for the first time and Jack gets misty eyed and says "Baby's first fabulous!"  Why am I going on so much about the word fabulous?  Well, because it takes me back to the time when I first became enamored with the word, and the age of five, and it was all because of a wonderfully kooky film from 1989.  So follow me 21 years into the past and enjoy romping through the wilderness with the girls from Troop Beverly Hills. Picture it, Beverly Hills California in 1989.  Th...

What is the fascination with supernatural vixens in movies?  Over the course of many years we've seen the woman as the magical manipulator of men in films like Bell, Book, and Candle , Hocus Pocus , Fright Night: Part II , and Practical Magic .  Some have called this sexist, on one hand they have a point.  The woman in these films is commonly wicked, is trying to seduce and/or kill the lead male, and uses passive-agressive tactics to get what she wants.  Many critics say that these familiar manipulatory actions simply reinforce the idea that the woman has no power except through her sex and through making a man think he has the upper hand.  Others would say that this portrayal of the woman comes from the male fear of being manipulated into unwanted situations (like marriage), so therefore the woman is a predator waiting to trap unsuspecting men.  Either way, it paints the woman as a villain...however, people still love films like these and enjoy seeing the ...

I know what you're thinking (besides wondering where I've been for so long)...you're thinking that I'm about to talk about one of the film versions of Romeo and Juliet .  Afterall, I did just quote Juliet. Well...THINK AGAIN!  BWA-HA-HA!  Seriously though, it was a good guess.  I am, however, going to talk about another film in which the word 'rose' figures into the title.  Its a dark and moody little gem from the mid-80s that features a post-Bond and yet pre-comeback Sean Connery and a 15-year-old Christian Slater as Benedictine monks in Medieval times.  It didn't do very well in the cinema and has recently become somewhat of a cult favorite on video and DVD, but its story of mystery and church hypocrisy is certainly worth anyone's time be they casual viewers or big film buffs.  So sit back, relax, and listen to the story of The Name of the Rose . Brother William of Baskerville (Connery) and his young novice Adso (Slater) have traveled to a distant ...