The 'Nightmare On Elm Street' Thread

[Stephen@Cult Labs]

Well yes but the blu-ray's are distributed by Warner and they're both owned by Time Warner.

[Peter Neal]

I had a massive crush on Heather Langenkamp in my late teens too- which was even further enhanced by her getting my all time favourite female dubbing voice in the German language version of the original "Elm Street".

The first and "New Nightmare" are easily my faves, but I do get along fine with almost all of the sequels- except for "Freddy's Dead"- with "The Dream Master" being the first one I caught at the theatre after sneaking in slightly under age

"Freddy's Revenge" is such an odd teen horror flick, but I even like that one for all its obvious ill judged character- and plot decisions.

I actually read the novels to parts 1-5, with each adaption straying further away from the actual movies, but considering the tight production schedule and almost annual appearance of new Freddy flicks in the late 80's that's may be not too much of a surprise; some of those differences might point at alternate earlier script drafts being used for the books as inspiration.

I even had the scores of parts 1-4, the latter on vinyl.

As most of the recent remakes held some entertainment value for me on one level or another (except for the "Prom Night" and "April Fool's Day" updates), I'm still looking forward to the "Elm Street" relaunch.

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by stevoj

I didn't like the comedy either,seems to me that movie makers seem to find that injecting a healthy dose of humour will keep things interesting,and It's not just Freddy,Chucky descended into pure comedy and even the Lethal Weapon films went from thriller to comedy by the fourth one.

I liked the first and even the second Elm Steet films,purely becuase they were (almost) straight horror and I liked Wes craven's New Nightmare for the same reason.

The least said about Seed of Chucky the better IMO. Bride... was awesome though.

Great pictures there from The Reaper Man The large NOES 2 one is brilliant!

[Peter Neal]

Originally Posted by The Reaper Man

Yeah,they'd all look good in HD,but is it not New Line that owns them?

Warner owns all the New Line titles in Germany and a few other territories, hence the German BluRay of the first film coming from Warner.

Other Blus of the "Elm Street" franchise will probably have to wait a bit, as parts 4 AND 6 are still on the "index of restricted movies" over there, with parts 1,3 and 5 only splipping from that dreaded list last year and the "FSK" finallly showing the sense to downgrade them to "FSK 16".

I guess a full R2 Warner Blu box of the series won't happen until they've succesfully gotten "The Dream Master" and "Freddy's Dead" freed from the "index"

May be another (UK?) distributor will beat them to it.

[nekromantik]

Originally Posted by iluvdvds

The least said about Seed of Chucky the better IMO. Bride... was awesome though.

Great pictures there from The Reaper Man The large NOES 2 one is brilliant!

Yeah Seed was quite poor but I did enjoy Bride.
Not heard much news about the remake.

Originally Posted by Peter Neal

Warner owns all the New Line titles in Germany and a few other territories, hence the German BluRay of the first film coming from Warner.

Other Blus of the "Elm Street" franchise will probably have to wait a bit, as parts 4 AND 6 are still on the "index of restricted movies" over there, with parts 1,3 and 5 only splipping from that dreaded list last year and the "FSK" finallly showing the sense to downgrade them to "FSK 16".

I guess a full R2 Warner Blu box of the series won't happen until they've succesfully gotten "The Dream Master" and "Freddy's Dead" freed from the "index"

May be another (UK?) distributor will beat them to it.

Entertainment in Video own the rights to all 7 in the UK, as they are the ones who released the DVD boxset over here. Comming to blu aint a good thing with EIV tho as they have a bad track record of Blu's of older titles. Have a look at Underworld Series even though its not that old, the boxset on Blu was not very good as the first 2 movies were MPEG 2 transfers.

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Just finished watching the fan-made film Freddy Vs. Ghostbusters! It's a lot of fun and full of injokes. Check it out at the official site or YouTube. It's pretty good for a no-budget film.

[Peter Neal]

I almost forgot about that one, but around 1990 Germany had "A Nightmare on Elm Street" RADIO PLAYS on 6 tapes (which I still own but haven't heard in years):

http://www.hoerspiele.de/hoerspiele/...e.asp?code=545

The radio plays featured partially voices from the series' German language dub and were a strange hybrid between the actually movies and the novels.

2 tapes covered the events of one flick, only part 3 would have ended up on 3 tapes, but the radio play series ends just after Joey falling into coma, leaving the plot quite hanging there...

Apparently, the series got cancelled due to parents protesting against Freddy radio plays


Mind you, in the late 80's-late 00's most of the actually "Elm Street" movies were listed on the German "index" and most commercial radio plays (in the early 90's anyway) are made up of fairy tales etc for kids and harmless crime stories for those entering their youth.


youtube link to the first episode of the German "Elm Street" radio play series:

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Thats brilliant Peter! I had no idea about that. I wish there was an English version of this though, I would luv to hear it (and understand it ).

I really do find it to be such a shame that horror no longer has quite the same impact. Sure there's still merchandise available to buy and sure there's other little gimmicks out there, but now there's such a huge emphasis on the internet (which is great, don't get me wrong). Maybe it's just because I wasn't around back then and so I've got a warped, and idyllic, idea of how horror used to be. I think I'm going to have to start collecting more than just horror films, but merchandise, etc too.



I've been making my way through the NOES series again, watched Dream Master last night and thought it was a lot better than I remembered. The cockroach nightmare has always been one of my favs in the franchise, although the quick deaths of the Dream Warriors wasn't too good (Joey's one of the best characters!)

Is it just me or does Rick remind anyone else of Chandler from Friends? Maybe it's just me Probably.

[Peter Neal]

You're certainly right about the merchandise thing there, though the availability of all those neat 80's horror mags, models etc without the net was very much dependent on which neck of the world you were living in.
I caught me that exclusive Fango magazine dedicated to the "Elm Street" series (coming out around the time of "The Dream Child's" release), but digging out all those fan treassures in my present day's family household from the cellar etc is a completely different task from finding them back in the day...

[iluvdvds@Cult Labs]

Very true Peter, but I would've thought, what with the internet, that merchandise would be bigger than ever. Ah well.


Watched Freddy's Dead and New Nightmare again last night. FD was SLIGHTLY better than I remembered and NN was slightly worse that I remembered

FD has some excellent moments in there - especially the Johnny Depp cameo followed by Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (LUV THAT SONG!) and the beginning of the deaf nightmare. But then it went too far - Spencer's nightmare started of great, but was ruined and taken to extremes when he started to jump up and down! Not to mention the whole Wicked Witch moment.


As for NN - I always saw that as one of the better sequels, and it certainly is one of the most innovative and intellegent, I'd say. Although it does sag a bit during the middle, this quickly changes and it gets back on track quickly - especially the hospital and the highway scenes.