The Nightmare on Elm Street reviews

[famousmortimer]

No.3: Good review for a good film. I think you’re down on the others in the series, though- part 2 was creepy and excellent (and had less Freddy in it), parts 4 and 5 had that kick-ass heroine…well, I like them all, to be honest. Part 3 isn’t so much better than the ones around it.

But now that I'm getting into writing all these reviews, I'm feeling slightly guilty. I mean, I'm applying advanced techniques of literary criticism to these things, and they weren't intended for that. It's one thing to overanalyze films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and Tron. These are films of greatness, either designed to be great or achieving greatness in the creative process.
The Nightmare movies, Freddy vs. Jason and the Wes Craven films aside, are designed to be horror trash appealing to big audiences full of teenagers. No problems there; I like plenty of films like that. But it does mean I have to keep all that in mind, at least more than I was, when I'm reviewing these. No problem!

Thank you, Kyle. There has been a tendency in a few of the Mutant reviews to forget this. The majority of the films you guys review are trashy good-time entertainment and should be treated as such.

Laurence Fishburne in the credits as "Larry Fishburne"

He was called that until he got more famous. He’s Larry in “Apocalypse Now” as well, if memory serves.

[Lazario]

kyle said:

The Nightmare movies, Freddy vs. Jason and the Wes Craven films aside, are designed to be horror trash appealing to big audiences full of teenagers.

famousmortimer said:

Thank you, Kyle. There has been a tendency in a few of the Mutant reviews to forget this. The majority of the films you guys review are trashy good-time entertainment and should be treated as such.

I completely, completely, completely disagree. I mean, are we forgetting all about The Studio Game? These films would suddenly be taken seriously if big studios ever took a chance on them, but now we're judging them as less than they could have been because their budgets were smaller and they were embraced by lower-I.Q.'ed teen audiences? That is so against the idea of film appreciation and casts a bleek portrait of how to interpret cinema. I think some of you are being very superficial about this. Besides, I happen to think all of these directors (except for Jack Sholder) were trying to make something better than what their film was interpreted as, they just didn't focus on directing actors, just props and art and the look of the film. It's a simple mistake of inexperience. Or a stylistic choice. But it's a little more rare than anyone here is thinking it is.

[PoolMan]

lazario said:

I completely, completely, completely disagree.

Imagine.

[Lazario]

...all the people...

[PoolMan]

Actually, that's pretty clever...

[Lazario]

Nice to know I can achieve that once in a decade.

[PoolMan]

It's once every twenty years for me. I've been saving up.

[Lazario]

Actually, most people I know think I'm very clever. I'm just not good with large groups, I never feel comfortable in groups.

[Spiderdancer]

Me, neither. Ten people max. Unless I'm in a ballroom. Then it doesn't matter.

[Lazario]

Actually, after 4 other people - I'm useless.

[PoolMan]

I'm great with crowds. They can't shut me up at band practise. Though they try.

[Lazario]

You mean, within crowds? I can talk to people in crowds, but I'm no good with the crowd itself.

[PoolMan]

Oh not me. I love to speak publicly, whether formally or just off the cuff. I sit in the back of my band, and I basically spend all practise long firing off one liners.

Fr'instance, the other night we played a song where the drum music called for those little tiny cymbals (I forget what they're called... tympalis?). The drummers were all busy, so they gave them to one of our extra trumpet players. So there's all this laughter about how silly a grown man looks lightly tinkling a pair of 2" cymbals together, when I said "Don't worry Dave, those are awesome. The best part is pretending you're three stories tall and attacking Tokyo! RAAARRR!"

I don't think the band's used to people RAAARRRing from the back row.

[Lazario]

I'm not good at working the crowds because I used to be the funny kid in school, but I went to school at a place where after awhile, every kid was trying to be the funny one - the class clown. So my sense of humor became very alienated, or isolated among my core group of friends who have often asked me to join them in entertaining their friends. I can't be rude in front of large groups of people, I'm too complimentary and gracious around other people (comes from the fact that my father was always a real a**hole in public).