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From Gotham to Gautham: Batman (1989)
1989 was a big year for Batman. It was his 50th birthday and it was the year he would appear in a major motion picture for the first time in 23 years.
Beginning in the early 1970s, Batman (and comic book) fan Michael Uslan tried getting Hollywood interested in bringing Batman back to the big screen. After pitching his idea to producer Benjamin Melniker, the two went from one studio to the next, eventually winning over the producing team of Jon Peters and Peter Guber. Still, there was little interest. Until the end of 1978.
With the success of Superman: The Movie, Warner Bros. wanted to do what DC Comics itself had done 40 years prior and follow the film up with a new superhero movie. They brought the property back to Warner Bros. (who owns DC Comics) and began the task of bringing Batman to the big screen again. However, nothing seemed to work. Treatment after treatment was pitched to Warner Bros., which would agree, and then change their minds. Tom Mankiewicz, who’d ghostwritten revisions to Mario Puzo’s script for Superman and Superman II when Richard Donner was on both projects (and given the onscreen credit of Creative Consultant), even wrote a treatment. Getting the right director was difficult and pinning down the tone of the movie, and character, was also difficult.
After his success with the Warner Bros. release of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), Tim Burton was asked to direct. Not a comic book fan himself, he was intrigued by the imagery of Batman and the Joker. More treatments were written and things weren’t official until Burton’s next movie, Beetlejuice (1988), was successful. Warner Bros. officially greenlit Batman and the stage was set for one of the biggest film franchises of all time.
I knew none of the above. I was a kid, fer chrissakes! What I did know was that in December of 1988, Entertainment Tonight promised a first look at the new Batman movie and I was intrigued. They showed a part of the trailer and I was blown away. I distinctly remember Batman turning around to face the camera, bloodied, his mask dark rubber, ears tall like they were in the comic books. I’d already heard that Michael Keaton–whom I knew from Mr. Mom, Gung Ho, Johnny Dangerously (I love this movie!), Beetlejuice, and a movie I loved called The Dream Team (I haven’t seen it since about 1990, so forgive me if it’s bad)–would play Batman, and I wondered how that would be. I didn’t understand, at that time, the controversy of the decision other than he was known as a comedic actor and Batman was an action/adventure role. I didn’t really know that Batman was supposed to be dark because, even though I had a bunch of Batman comic books from the early-1980s, I hadn’t really read them. I was too young when they came into the house. I still had them and would go back and reread them, but at this point, that was still months away. Seeing that first glimpse of Keaton as Batman got me excited, but I was still a little confused. To me, Adam West was still Batman. I was 11 years old, give me a break.
How could anyone not have seen Keaton as Batman?!
Sometime around March the marketing machine really started and Batman tee shirts, posters, lunchboxes…the list goes on…started popping up. I remember walking through JC Penney at the local mall and seeing a bunch of Batman tee shirts, for someone my size! At this time, superhero clothing was still for little kids. I was in sixth grade (my last year of elementary school, back then). Also, I was a “husky” 11-year-old.
Batman was everywhere. One of the first adult novels I ever read on my own was the paperback novelization of the movie, written by Craig Shaw Gardner.
1989 was a big year for movies, and that summer was particularly good. It featured not only Batman, but also Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. I got to see Batman, Indiana Jones, and Freddy Krueger in the movies that summer. The other two I saw on VHS when they came out. Either way, it was a good summer.
We went to see Batman a week or two after its release and there was still lines going around the building. We saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids instead. Finally, my father took me one Saturday afternoon to see it. By now, I’d read the novelization and had read a behind-the-scenes magazine. The movie still left a big mark on me.
The Daylight
Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Last year, when it was announced that Ben Affleck would play Batman and geeks cried out in a rage, I laughed at them. Maybe they were too young to remember, but I do remember the Michael Keaton fiasco. His Bruce Wayne stands apart from any that had come before or since. He is seemingly a normal guy, looks completely normal. He certainly does not look like someone who dresses like a bat and fights crime at night. Yet, it totally works because of this. As Wayne, he is scattered and scarred, trying to find some sort of normalcy but having trouble. When we meet him at a charity benefit being held at Wayne Manor to help save Gotham’s bicentennial festival, Vicki Vale (played by Kim Basinger) taps him on the shoulder and asks if he knows who Bruce Wayne is. He says no, she thanks him and walks away, and he stands there with a pen he’d been using to sign something with. He realizes he has the pen and doesn’t know what to do with it. He stabs the soil of a huge potted plant with the pen, leaving it there, to be instantaneously retrieved by Alfred (Michael Gough), who also saves a champagne flute. It’s the perfect introduction to a man who continues being the child he was when his parents were murdered in front of him. It’s only after a strange conversation with Vicki Vale and reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wuhl) that we see him in his true self, looking at a bank of monitors in the Batcave.
“See this bat on my chest? You’ve never seen it before, and you ain’t gonna see it again!”
His acting as Batman is somewhat stilted and emotionless, but this makes sense for someone trying to conceal his identity. The costume itself provided lots of limitations. In trying to achieve accuracy between the comic books and the movie, the costume designers chose to make the mask and cowl go right down to the cape. Unfortunately, the latex foam rubber used to make the mask meant that Keaton couldn’t turn his head without ripping the cowl from the neck. Also, with the thickness of the mask near his eyes and around his head, he had trouble seeing and hearing. Taking all this into consideration, Keaton did a helluva job. Even without it, his tone was correct for the movie overall.
Jack Nicholson obviously needs to be mentioned, though I almost ask myself Why bother? Everyone knows he did an excellent job as the Joker. Yes, he may have hammed it up some, but the character hams it up. He had the energy that Cesar Romero brought to the role (mustache and all) in 1966-1968, but was sinister and deadly. And as much as I’m a Robin Williams fan and truly think he would’ve been great in the role, Jack Nicholson as the Joker seemed like destiny. Not only that, but he brought a certain amount of respect to the movie.
“You can call me…Purple Hickey Man!”
The production design is pretty amazing. The idea of making a wholly original city that looks like a nightmare come to life is inspired. Taking the idea that Gotham City is a tortured, sickly, corrupt city and then making it look that way in an outward manifestation was bold. Anton Furst’s designs are nightmarish and effective. Compared to the studio backlots used in the serials as well as the 1966 TV series, or the Los Angeles skyline and surrounding country roads, and unlike Superman: The Movie (and Superman II), which used New York City as its Metropolis, this film had Gotham City as its own thing, unlike any other city. It was a place you’d barely want to walk in the afternoon, never mind after dark.
Spoooookyyyy.
The Batmobile. How do you top the 1960’s iconic Batmobile? Well, here you go. It’s sleek, sinister, and not at all kitschy. It’s a more realistic Batmobile, to be sure. Where the 1966 Batmobile (as well as most of the comic book versions before and after) were gaudy and seemed to almost be an advertisement to the city of Gotham that Batman had arrived, this Batmobile is scary.
But does it have SiriusXM? Baba Booey!
Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s butler (and surrogate father) is amazing. Understated, elegant, and fatherly, he is the heart of the movie. In the scene where Bruce Wayne and Vicki Vale have their first date in Wayne Manor and end up eating with him, he turns a clichéd scene into something real. Throughout the movie, he is truly the one Bruce Wayne listens to. You get the idea that while he goes along with Wayne’s idea to dress up like a bat to kick some criminal ass, he doesn’t completely agree with it. As such, one of the movie’s most controversial scenes makes sense. More on this later.
The introduction to District Attorney Harvey Dent is a great thing, and the fact that they cast a black man, Billy Dee Williams, to the part is even better. It meant that there was the idea that a sequel could be made and that one could see Dent’s transformation into Two-Face. Because of knowing for this movie, it would make the tragedy of his story that much stronger. Williams turns in a solid performance, too, though he’s not given the screen time he should be.
“I’ve flown the Millennium Falcon and helped topple an evil Empire. How come you can’t find out who Batman is?”
Danny Elfman’s score is top-notch. The opening titles music alone (a slow reveal of the bat symbol) is as good as John Williams’s Superman theme (or his Star Wars or Indiana Jones themes, for that matter). Where Williams’s Superman theme was bold and hopeful, heroic, Elfman’s Batman theme is heroic, sure, but also dark and mysterious. The rest of his music is every bit as quirky as director Tim Burton is, and bold as the hero Batman is.
Tim Burton’s direction is brilliant at times. His quirky storytelling ability that led him to direct Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice (which was originally going to be directed by Wes Craven, with a darker, meaner script) and made them instant classics doesn’t seem right for Batman, yet he does a great job with the piece. The movie could move a little faster, and the dialogue could be better, but overall Burton’s vision of the characters–and of the nightmare that was Gotham City–made the movie unique and made it a movie unlike many other superhero movies, before or since. It’s set in a time unto itself. It could be the 1940s, except the TVs are all in color, and Vicki Vale’s wardrobe and car are definitely 1980s (so is Bruce Wayne’s wardrobe). I wonder if this is his way of saying that Vicki Vale is more progressive and ahead of the curve than those around her, or if it means that Gotham is behind the times. After all, she’s a visitor. Batman’s gear could be from the future. Burton’s vision is complete and the world he provides for us is complete.
The Darkness
Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale is all right most of the time, and terrible at others. Of course, how she got the part has become part of the legend of this movie, but I’ll repeat it for those who may not know (which is a Good Thing, it means you have a life!). Originally, Sean Young had been hired to play the part of Vicki Vale, photojournalist. Part of Bruce and Vicki’s date was supposed to have them horseback riding on the Wayne Manor grounds. About a week before shooting, Young was getting acquainted with the horse she was supposed to ride and she fell off, breaking her arm. The producers decided to recast the part since it was so physical. The list of actresses available in such short notice, with the talent they were looking for, was short. Basinger was on the list and she could drop everything and move to England for three-to-four months, so she was hired. Again, she’s not terrible, but maybe a little more time, a better script, something would’ve helped. In scenes with Robert Wuhl’s Alexander Knox, she goes from friendly to sharp instantly. Her delivery of some of the lines is almost as though she’s practicing them. I also think the script and/or directing has her screaming too damn much. She just came back from a war, according to the story, and now she’s screaming the classic scream queen scream in every other scene? Once or twice? Yes. But….
“I want to know if we’re going to try to love each other.” “I’d like to…act with someone who can act. Tim? Is Michelle Pfieffer available?”
I’m not a fan of Alexander Knox. Robert Wuhl is a gifted comedian. His HBO specials Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl and its follow-up are brilliant, but I can’t stand Alexander Knox. I couldn’t when I was 11/12, I can’t now. He’s supposed to provide comic relief, which I’m fine with, and he’s supposed to be the audience’s point-of-view, but I find him taking away too much screen time that I would’ve loved to have seen go to Bruce Wayne, Batman, or even Vicki Vale.
“Where’s my action figure? I mean, I…er…go after a thug with a club. Once.”
The writing and pacing are a little off. Part of this, no doubt, has to do with the 1988 Writers Guild strike, which affected many movies and TV shows that year (it’s mentioned in my essay on A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master). The dialogue in places is spot-on and perfect (the Joker’s dialogue, Alfred’s dialogue), other times it’s pretty bad (most of Vicki Vale’s lines, many of Bruce Wayne’s). As far as pacing, there are some cool action pieces throughout the movie, but there are times when it’s dull and boring. I also have to wonder if getting Jack Nicholson actually hurt the movie. He was billed before Michael Keaton, who played the title role! His fee and demands are stuff of legend, as is his earning on the back end (which is quite common now), but I wonder if having spent so much on Nicholson made the movie more about the Joker. Of course, one plot point that gets fans angered is Alfred letting Vicki Vale into the Batcave, something that co-screenwriter (and writer of the original story) Sam Hamm says he had nothing to do with, pinning it all on co-screenwriter, the late Warren Skaaren. While many have been very upset with this it does fall within the realm of possibility for this movie’s Alfred. There are certainly enough hints from Alfred that he wishes Bruce would lead a more normal life, and that Vicki might be a way to that life. So I’m not mentioning that as a bad part of this movie. Because the real thing, I think, is–
Batman kills everyone. In the comic books, the one thing that separates Batman’s style of vigilantism from that of, say, Charles Bronson’s Death Wish character is that Batman will not kill. Batman will break every law in the book if it means getting the culprit, except for killing. In the stories when he’s had to kill, it often leads to follow-up stories where he’s dealing with the killing. In 1989’s Batman, though, Batman is like Rambo. Off the top of my head, Batman kills: Jack Napier (accidentally, though Jack actually survives both the fall into and the submergence in a vat of green chemicals, Batman doesn’t know that until the Joker appears); Joker’s thugs when the Batmobile drops bombs in Axis Chemicals in an attempt to kill the Joker; in Gotham Cathedral, at the end, one of the Joker’s goons leaps from a high place and falls through the floor (while Batman didn’t kill him, he didn’t try to help him, either, which I think comic book Batman would have); and another of the Joker’s goons gets dropped down the length of the cathedral when Batman swings up, grabs him with his calves, and drops him to his death; and, of course, there’s the Joker, who Batman uses the Batbolo (?!) to tie to a gargoyle as the Joker’s helicopter is trying to lift him away. Killing the Joker was a huge mistake because it meant that he couldn’t appear in any sequels. Of course, I’m sure that movie magic would’ve brought him back, as so often happens in comic books, but it would’ve been weak.
“Who’s Johnny now?!”
The Dawn
When the box office receipts cleared the air, Batman did several things: It revitalized interest in Batman in a mass way that hadn’t been there (except when news got out that Robin would be killed off in the comic books in 1988); it started a huge movie franchise for Warner Bros., who’d sold the film rights to Superman after Superman III; it gave DC Comics a popular film franchise character to capitalize on, something that hadn’t happened since around Superman III (because 1988’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was a turkey in every way); and it gave Tim Burton a shot at the big leagues. Up until this movie, Burton was the quirky director of quirky films that turned in a profit. After this movie, he was Tim Burton, the director of Batman. It allowed him to make what could arguably be called his most important movie, Edward Scissorhands.
The even bigger side effect, I think, is that the success of Batman brought a generation of kids to comic books that might have neglected them beforehand. Sure, the mid-to-late-1980s are filled with important comic books that showed the artform as something more than just throwaway entertainment. Names like Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman became household names for people who read a lot. If you were a reader, chances are you saw articles about Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen and V for Vendetta, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and The Sandman and may have been interested in them. But the huge success of the movie Batman brought kids like me into comic book shops for the first time to not only buy the various (and plentiful) Batman comics that existed, but got them interested in other titles. It even made comic books seem like a possible career path. I think that without Batman, I might not be writing this. Batman got me to look at comics again, to read them again, to go to the local comic book shop every Saturday, to want to draw and write them. This eventually got me into the local Waldenbooks, which eventually led me to buy The Shining by Stephen King, which made me want to ditch the art thing and just write.
With Batman, Warner Bros. had a new hit that could become a franchise. So of course, it wasn’t long before they approached Tim Burton about a sequel. And fresh off the success of Edward Scissorhands, he said yes.
“I’m Batman.”
Friday in Gautham Part VIII: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
Though the box office for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood wasn’t as high as some of the previous installments, it was still in the ballpark enough for Paramount to greenlight an eighth movie. This time around, longtime producer of the franchise Frank Mancuso, Jr., was out. Taking on writing and directing duties was Rob Hedden.
According to Hedden, he was one of the people who pitched for a Jason vs. Freddy Krueger crossover and was also a writer for the Mancuso, Jr.-produced Friday the 13th: The Television Series that ran on syndication at this point. The chance to write and direct the next film was something he couldn’t pass up.
Once again, Paramount gave permission to the writer/director to create a story in any way he wanted so he pitched taking Jason Voorhees out of Crystal Lake and bringing him to New York City. Paramount loved the idea and pre-production begun. However, even before production began, problems arose, mostly regarding budget.
This was, I believe, the second Friday the 13th movie I saw, again it was on Cinemax. My best guess was 1990 or 1991. I remember the teacher (Barbara Bingham) giving the star, Rennie (Jansen Daggett), a pen that she said she believed Stephen King used when he was a student. I also remember the boxer (V.C. Dupree) that Jason (once again, Kane Hodder) decapitates with a single punch to the head. There were other things I remembered faintly, too, that came back upon rewatching this movie.
The Day
Jansen Daggett as Rennie is attractive and likeable, though she’s not the best actress. She is also very 1980s. This is fun.
Jason likes her, too.
The attempt by Hedden to take the franchise to a new place, both metaphorically and literally, is to be applauded. He didn’t want to do yet another Jason-stalks-kids-in-the-woods movie. Taking Jason to New York is thrilling in many ways. First, just the What The Fuck? Factor of seeing Jason in Times Square is fun. And this is 1989 Times Square, so it’s not yet the full neon, crazed, carnival it is today. It still has a little of the old Times Square danger to it. Seeing Jason in back alleys and the like is also fun.
There’s a billboard in Times Square for 1989’s Batman, starring Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton. That’s fun to see. Now digital effects would have replaced the ad for the Warner Bros. film for a billboard for a Paramount movie, or maybe even something else entirely. Yeah, this has nothing to do with the story, I’m grasping at straws here.
The Night
All right, in the last essay I wrote that I wasn’t a fan of Jason’s makeup. Well, this movie’s is even worse. First off, it’s a step backward. Where Jason looked too withered and falling apart in The New Blood, in Jason Takes Manhattan, even though he’s been under water for however long between movies, his shirt has somehow come back together and some of his flesh seems to have regrown. Oh, and it’s changed color, too. And when they take the mask off, it’s the worst makeup of the series. Jason looks like a poorly drawn smiley face. And the mask, which had black fabric covering up the left eyehole through most of the series suddenly has both eyeholes covered, so no eyes remain. I always felt that seeing Jason’s eye(s) somehow made him scarier.
Have a nice day!
The acting is typically bad. The story has a bunch of teenagers going on a cruise from Crystal Lake to New York City for some school thing in biology class and there’s a hell of a lot more kids than it seems we ever get to know. And the ones we do get to know are the normal stereotypes that we never get the chance to care about. Even Jansen Daggett’s Rennie is little more than the typical quiet girl who will survive this horror movie through her cunning and innocence.
And while I applaud Hedder for attempting to take Friday the 13th in a new direction (how often have I written that or something like that in these essays?) it fails. Part of it isn’t his fault. Some of it was the budget. Some of it was, no doubt, the MPAA.
At $5 million, the budget for this movie was higher than any of the previous installments, but it still wasn’t enough. Apparently, the original script had most of the movie set in New York City, but Hedder was told that it was too expensive to shoot there. And even with shooting some of New York’s settings in Vancouver, time in the city (and on location) kept getting shorter and shorter. In the end, he had two days in actual New York and only the last third of the movie was set there.
The MPAA surely hurt the movie. By this point in the 1980s, Tipper Gore and other watchdog types were actively going after horror movies and heavy metal and anything that could seem too much for children. This is because R-rated adult entertainment is something that children regularly see. Well…maybe…but I digress. This movie is actually pretty tame compared to the previous movies (and those that follow). Most of the deaths happen offscreen. Jason comes into frame, lifts his arm, brings it down, and then we see the body at some point. There are exceptions to this, I already mentioned the fate of the young boxer on a rooftop. Compared to the crazy gore and gratuitous violence of, say A New Beginning, Jason Takes Manhattan is pretty tame. People don’t watch Friday the 13th movies for tame, though. They watch for over-the-top violence and gore.
Y-you mean…this is R-rated?!
Even with the constrictions brought on by budget and censorship, Hedder must take most of responsibility in the failure of this movie. From beginning to end, very little fits logically with the story within the franchise or even within the movie itself. Rennie sees the little boy of Jason throughout the movie, and he only slowly grows to look like how he did in the original. The way Jason is brought back to life is also odd. He’s electrified again, which isn’t so odd, by a giant electrical cable that runs under Crystal Lake, which gets frayed by a yacht. How does a yacht fit on this lake? Is it one of the Great Lakes? Or perhaps a great lake in its own right? Anyway, this cable–which is out in the open under the water–is frayed by the yacht’s anchor (which is light enough to be carried by the lake’s current but strong enough to break this huge cable) and the electricity goes up the cable to where Jason is under the broken dock from the last movie. It brings Jason back but not the girl’s father from the previous movie. His body isn’t even there. So not only do Jason’s clothes somehow repair themselves (as does his skin) but the father also disappears magically. At the end, Jason is essentially turned into the little boy, which is also weird and doesn’t make sense. His choices in direction aren’t always the greatest (the POV of the boxer’s severed head is stupid, because the boxer can’t see because he’s dead).
And let’s not forget how Jason suddenly appears in places. There have been jokes as long as these movies have been out how the killer will walk after his victims and always seem to get them. For Jason, the walking after victims really began in the fourth movie. In this movie, though, Jason begins to appear whenever needed. One example is on the cruise ship to New York. Jason is stalking a victim and the victim turns away, runs up some steps, only to be confronted by Jason, who somehow managed to get from the deck to the stairs without passing his victim. Now I can only assume that this was done because of Freddy Krueger. Freddy is known to do this trick throughout his film series, and this makes sense because he’s in a dream. Jason may now be supernatural, but he’s still in the real world and should adhere to at least some of the physics that we all live with. Yikes.
Start spreading the boooos.
Saturday the 14th
What might have been a fun jaunt to the city with a popular monster is a lame movie. The attempts at humor fail. There’s nothing particularly creepy or scary in the movie. And the one thing that the Friday the 13th movies always did well–gory death scenes–are trimmed to the point of nearly being safe for network TV (of the time, anyway).
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan no doubt caused more eyerolls than anticipation when the trailers first hit theaters. The film did the least business than any of the other movies in the franchise, earning a measly $14.3 million dollars. Its release date didn’t help any. Released on July 28th, 1989, it was smack-dab in the middle of one of the biggest summers the movies had seen. Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, and Ghostbusters II were all released that summer. Even the better-faring Freddy Krueger movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (released in August) failed to do the business its predecessor of the prior year did; $22 million compared to $49 million.
Between the poor audience reception, the fact that it was the eighth movie, and the fact that the horror bubble was beginning to collapse all around, Paramount decided that Jason’s trip to New York would be his last resurrection for awhile.
You knew I was going to do it…
A Nightmare in Gautham 5: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD (1989)
There were several reasons to look forward to the summer following the sixth grade, the summer of 1989. It was the last summer before I began junior high school (which I didn’t know would be hell). I remember feeling a lot anticipation for that summer. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was coming to movie theaters. So was Batman. I had seen Lethal Weapon on video and while Mom and Dad didn’t take me to see Lethal Weapon 2, I knew it wouldn’t be too long before it came to video. Ghostbusters II was also coming out (though I missed seeing that movie until it came out on video; the first of only two times I’ve seen the whole movie, the most recent was last year). The last thing that really got me excited was the last movie I’d see in the theater before the nightmare known as junior high (and pre-adolescence): A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.
My mother, who wasn’t hip enough to have liked The Dream Master, left it up to my father to take me. Diggit: Dad doesn’t like horror movies. For that matter, my father doesn’t like most movies. Old westerns, The Horse Whisperer (which I have yet to see), and maybe a few early Clint Eastwood movies, otherwise Dad just isn’t interested. But he loved me (the old man still does) and he took me.
The Dream Master was a huge hit. The Dream Child was not. Was it Freddy fatigue? Was it that despite large numbers of people who went out to see the fourth Nightmare, far fewer actually liked it? Was it that teen pregnancy was a little too close to home for the Nightmare demographic? Perhaps it was all those things. Perhaps none. Another cause could be that the Horror Boom of the 1980s was about to crash. Stephen King was taking a short break to deal with some personal issues, and there were too many bad books on the shelves and even more bad movies in the theaters and on video rental shelves.
The Dream Child was directed by Stephen Hopkins, who, like the two previous Nightmare directors, went on to have a pretty active career once moving away from Elm Street. The story was by the horror novel writing team of John Skipp and Craig Spector, and Leslie Bohem, who wrote the screenplay. Somewhere in my memory, I link the writer David J. Schow to the film, too. New Line was tapping into the Horror Novel Boom for creative ideas. If I’m wrong that Mr. Schow (who appeared in Borderlands 5 with me, Stephen King, John Farris, and others…go find a copy on eBay) had anything to do with The Dream Child, I’m sure someone out there will correct me.
Stephen Hopkins sporting a mullet. Freddy Krueger sporting his guns.
My feelings on the movie, released a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, have changed little in the twenty-one years since it came out. As a matter of fact, those early thoughts have solidified and become more adult. I actually have reasons for some of those feelings.
The Dreams
More continuity! This movie continues the story of characters we met in the previous movie. Woo!
Lisa Wilcox returns as Alice Johnson. Her performance in The Dream Master needed a little oomph until the end, but as I said in the last essay, it was probably that the director was about cool camera angles and flashy effects more than he was about acting. Wilcox does a far better job in The Dream Child, though she no longer looks like a teenager, even one graduating from high school. Her performance is solid and helps the movie flow. The only other comment I have is her hair. Her hair was dyed red in The Dream Master so people wouldn’t get her confused with Tuesday Knight. For The Dream Child, she sports her natural blonde hair. I’m always for the red hair, though.
Maybe she could be graduating from high school…. Nah, I don’t buy it, either.
Some of the supporting cast is okay, too. Nick Mele’s return as Mr. Johnson, who is a recovering alcoholic (he wasn’t recovering in The Dream Master) plays a sympathetic role, a real character arc from his assholy tendencies in the prior movie. Danny Hassell returns as Dan, Alice’s boyfriend. His performance is all right, it’s just good to see a returning character. Of the new victims–er…um…teenagers–it’s really only Kelly Jo Minter as Yvonne who is worth watching. She was trapped in high school in the 1980s, stuck in Summer School, for instance.
Stephen Hopkins brings a gothic feel to this movie that is missing from The Dream Master and only hinted at in Dream Warriors. The sets are usually darker in this movie than in the previous and there are shots of the institution where Amanda Krueger (the writers have dropped the whole Sister Mary Helena name) worked that remind me of the best gothic movies. This is a man who could have made a really good Nightmare, given better material.
I’m a sucker for this shot, and those like it, in this movie. This is gothic.
Poor material or not, the idea of Freddy trying to use the dreams of an unborn baby is a good one. I know a lot of fans think it’s lame but I’m not one of them. Why not? If the execution is poor, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
The majority of the characters survive. This fact helps stop The Dream Child from bringing the Nightmare series too far into slasher movie territory.
The Nightmares
The weak cast. Erika Anderson as Greta, the bulimic/anorexic teen model, and Joe Seely as Mark, the skateboarding comic book geek, are both all right but weak. They have their roles to fill and both do so, but are (wait for it…) stereotypes. Kelly Jo Minter is able to make Yvonne rise over any stereotype she might be in. The people who play Greta’s, Mark’s, and Dan’s parents have all the depth of sitcom parents.
Joe Seeley as Mark and Erika Anderson as Greta are okay but flat. Danny Hassell as Dan is all right with what he’s given. It’s Kelly Jo Minter as Yvonne, though, that is watchable (and not because she spends so much time in a bathing suit).
The missed opportunities. Stephen Hopkins seems to be a director with talent. The movie isn’t too bad, except…well…I’ll get to that soon enough. It feels as though the screenwriter(s) could have taken the idea, the fear that all people have about being parents but especially a teenager with an unplanned pregnancy, and have gone further with it. Instead, we get a creepy kid with haunting blue eyes who keeps showing up, being creepy, and is calling Freddy his friend. We have a comic book geek taken out in a comic book dream, a bulimic/anorexic teen model killed by being fed to death (more on this later, too), and, well, other silly things that are supposed to be scary but are not. When Freddy comes back to “life” in the church from the last movie, he has a strangely long left arm and hunga-munga bare feet that last for only that scene. Why? Then Freddy’s face appears in an ultrasound nightmare. It’s scary only in that someone thought that would be scary. There was a lot more possibility with the material that seems to have just been put aside for the quick and easy. And if my two examples didn’t tip you off, then you’re gonna be shocked when I say that another nightmare is–
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. When he is reborn, after the required lame one-liner (“It’s a boy!”), there’s actually a creepy, nearly horrifying moment, if one can get past the stupidly long arm with the equally stupidly large hand attached (his gloved arm and hand are normal)¹. There are a few moments toward the end, when Freddy is walking down a corridor and the overhead lights are swinging and he blinks in and out of existence that somewhat works. Even the strange staircases-everywhere-ending that is reminiscent of a German expressionist film and M.C. Escher more than A Nightmare on Elm Street movie works. These are, I believe, Stephen Hopkins’s touches. Freddy, though, ruins this movie. He has become a comedian in this movie, yelling gallows-humor one-liners and making us, the audience, co-conspirators to his deviant acts.
“It’s a boo-ooyyy!” No, it’s Freddy with stupid feet and a stupid hand.
I understand that Robert Englund is a working actor and will go where the money is to pay his bills–Freddy Krueger was a guaranteed paycheck–but I would have to think that if you have helped build a character as strong, as memorable, and as scary as Freddy Krueger, you wouldn’t help dilute him. In a recent interview with Rue Morgue, he says that he and whatever Nightmare director he was working with on the later movies would often shoot two versions of a scene: one rife with quips and one-liners and another that was darker, meaner, and scarier, and that the editors/studio would often choose the former over the latter. Perhaps that is the case. New Line Cinema, in my book, had made some pretty terrible choices regarding the Nightmare movies thus far and didn’t really see them as anything other than cash cows. The art and thought Wes Craven put into the initial idea and resulting movie had been discarded before they even finished principle photography of that same movie, when Robert Shaye and New Line forced him to shoot different endings for cheap scares (and possible sequels?). By turning Freddy into a punk-antihero-lounge-comedian, they could sell more tee shirts, posters, dolls, etc., with his likeness.
If The Dream Master is the movie where Freddy Krueger stops being scary, then The Dream Child is the movie where he becomes boring. The movie halts each time he comes onscreen with his wisecracks. Oh, and I’m not fond of the makeup on Freddy this time around, either. In certain lighting, from certain angles, it’s quite effective, but when well-lit, it looks horrible.
The censors. By the late 1980s, Middle Amurica had had enough, damnit! All these horror movies and heavy metal songs and MTV and titty magazines and the new Fox Network with their Married…With Children that actually had porn stars on, and that radio guy from New York, Howard Stern, with his filth and…well, their heads were ready to explode. It was bad enough when Freddy Krueger was playing in small theaters and drive-ins, but now he was everywhere! The Religious Right, Tipper Gore, and their ilk were determined to set America back on its righteous path by protesting Freddy Krueger. Matchbox’s talking Freddy Krueger doll, glimpsed in passing at the local Child World (I miss that place), was pulled off the shelf before it could make it under my Christmas tree. The Dream Child, which didn’t just feature a child murderer/molester come back for revenge as the hero, but also dealt with teenage sex/pregnancy, fetuses (we all know how much the R.R. loves fetuses), and any number of other things that could/would damage any unsuspecting child/teenager who could sneak into the theater to watch it. As a result, some of the effects were toned down. Dan’s death on motorcycle is edited down to be not as graphic, and Yvonne’s death is edited to that Freddy is no longer dipping into her innards to feed her (which leads to the question: Why does she have a bleeding belly? when we see her later on). Honestly, the cuts were minor, but one senses that the story may have suffered from the motivation of trying not to offend people who would never actually see the movie, anyway, but just stand outside the theater with their signs and damn those who did want to see it.
You didn’t see this in theaters. You might have seen it on video, but not the DVD, sucka. The funny (or rather sad) thing is that it doesn’t really matter, because “Bon appétit, bitch!” stopped the movie in its tracks.
The Morning After
My feeling when I saw it, weeks away from being 12, was: Not as bad as 2, not as good as 1, 3, or 4. I feel the same way twenty-four years later. The Dream Child shows signs of weariness. By churning out a movie a year, New Line Cinema exhausted the very people they wanted money from: the fans. Yes, the nine-to-twelve-year-olds were still excited by seeing Freddy in a new movie, but the older, more refined teenagers were growing tired. This is a shame because with A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger, New Line Cinema had on its hands the potential to make a few movies that were all good, scary, and thoughtful. Instead, it kept Freddy in a sort of veal cage, changing writers and directors, hiring actors with less and less skill, adding more and more special effects, and generally not giving a damn about the series that had put the company on the map.
Stephen Hopkins does a good job in the scenes leading up to Freddy and after he’s gone, but while Freddy is onscreen, he’s a joke. Super Freddy. Puh-lease. Freddy on a skateboard. “Bon appétit…bitch!” Come on. Shut the fuck up and be scary.
How could audiences have grown tired after this?!
Still, The Dream Child isn’t the worst of the sequels. It has some inspired moments, an idea that I still rather like, and some decently creepy, if not horrifying or terrifying, moments.
Freddy’s Nightmares–A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series continued another season after this movie, with Freddy’s makeup matching what he wore in The Dream Child. But the series, not very good to begin with, lost even more viewers and was canceled. Such is the way. After all, Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, and other horror anthology shows were also disappearing. Sales were beginning to drop on those horror novels and horror movies were beginning to sink at the box office.
New Line Cinema saw the writing on the wall and pulled Freddy out of the marketplace for a while. They were busy trying to acquire Jason Voorhees from Paramount Pictures. Just imagine what one could do with both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger….
One of the few creepy Freddy scenes in The Dream Child.
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¹One can argue that the very fact that Freddy exists in dreams makes it okay for his left hand and his feet to be oddly large, and I can except that if they remained so throughout the movie or if strange morphs of his body–aside from gimmick nightmares–were part of the norm. The only physical thing that changed with Freddy, other than the hat and sweater, is his face. One could argue that as different teenagers dream about him, they add their own twist, I guess. But…I don’t think it completely works. Maybe if each person dreams a different look for him, but not in the larger sense.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 