Halloween 2019: October 13th

New Nightmare (1994)

New Line never intended Freddy to stay dead for very long. Even at the time, it was well-known that Mr. Krueger's “death” was leading up to an inevitable “Freddy vs. Jason” movie, which ended up spending another decade in development hell. Fans were eager for another Freddy Krueger adventure, especially after the disappointing “Final Nightmare.” Yet his return would still arrive perhaps sooner than expected. Wes Craven, revisiting an idea he had since the first time New Line asked him to create an “Elm Street” sequel, would present the studio with an interesting idea for a new type of “Nightmare.” A dark and meta take on Freddy Krueger, “New Nightmare” would debut to general public indifference in 1994 before quickly being reclaimed as one of the best films in the series.

With its metatextual take – in which Freddy Krueger escapes the fictions of the “Elm Street” movies to attack the actors and producers of the films in our world, most prominently Heather Langenkamp – “New Nightmare” is not like any other Freddy movie. Craven sought to make a more nuanced, literary take on the character. Accordingly, “New Nightmare” is full of all sorts of heady ideas. The idea of Freddy being the current manifestation of a much older, primal form of evil – a primordial entity that feeds on the destruction of innocence – directly links the slasher killer with classical archetypes. Most pointedly, the witch from “Hansel and Gretel,” which is directly pointed out. (So now Freddy's furnace recalls both Hell and the witch's oven. Also see the shot where his shadow is cast along the wall, linking Freddy with “Nosferatu” as well.) The bed sheets become cavern-like, while Freddy's glove resembles the grasping claw of a predator more than ever, further connecting the film with ancient themes. And then little Daniel, Langenkamp's son, protects himself with a plush toy of a dinosaur, as if completing the caveman allegory in an odd way.

The kid is an important matter here. One can't help but assume Wes became a father before writing “New Nightmare.” The sequel directly asks what effect the horror genre has on the children of those who create it. Throughout the film, Langenkamp's son is tormented by ghastly visions, taping steak knives to his fingers, spewing green slime, and being directly targeted by Freddy. When combined with the subplot of Heather being harassed by a stalker, a true event, it suggests the possibility that the actresses – and the man who wrote the film – were seriously concerned that their work had a corrupting, negative affect on the world around them.

Yet Wes eventually comes around to a much more potent idea, one that argues for the importance of the horror genre. The Entity that assumes Freddy's appearance is an old one, yes. Maybe as old as human imagination. The only way to control the spirit is to tell stories about it. In other words: We tell stories that are grisly, that horrify, shock, and terrify in order to exercise the real demons that exist. It's a very literary argument for the continued existence of the horror movie. And an especially big concept to insert into the seventh movie in a franchise.

The meta element of “New Nightmare” is fascinating. It allows Craven to revisits characters and performers from the first film. Letting Heather Langenkamp, who has truly grown as a performer, play a version of herself reeling from the death of a husband and desperate to protect a sick child was a truly great idea. So was letting John Saxon return, this time as a father figure that actually seems loving. When Heather accepts her absorption into the text of “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” when she accepts the name of Nancy and Freddy marches forward, is one of my favorite moments in the movie. Robert Englund plays his avuncular true self while, as the revamped Freddy, he's especially chilling. While the thigh-high goth boots and trench coat look a little silly, overall I think Freddy's redesign for this film – and the biomechanical bone-claw especially – is pretty damn cool.

If there's any issue with “New Nightmare,” it's that the film is not nearly as scary as it is smart. Oh, it definitely has some A-grade shocks. The opening nightmare sequence, in which a mechanical Freddy glove springs to life and begins to slice faces and slashes necks, is effective. A later moment, where the small claw appears between a driver's legs in their front seat, similarly builds towards a nice shock. The film's scariness perhaps peaks early with an uneasy and unnerving nightmare at a funeral, where Freddy attempts to drag Daniel down into a grave. After that, “New Nightmare's” attempts at scares veer towards the histrionic. J. Peter Robinson's utterly bombastic score deserves some of the blame for that. Sequences where Freddy materializes in the sky and reaches down from the heavens, or a hundred Kruegers rush a fence, definitely come too close to feeling silly.

Ultimately, “New Nightmare” is too damn interesting to be entirely resisted. That it applies ideas that are so fascinating and thought-out to what had become, basically, a big goofy slasher series by this point is even more audacious. Maybe audiences couldn't get their heads around the meta twist in 1994, where the movie debuted to the lowest grosses of any “Elm Street” movie. (Though still certainly turned a profit on its 8 million dollar budget.) Or maybe Freddy was seen as thoroughly passe by that point, as the horror genre itself had largely burnt out its mass popularity by that point. Many see the movie as a predecessor to Craven's “Scream” tetraology, which would take the same meta-commentary on the horror genre to snarkier, more commercial heights. [8/10] 

I Bury the Living (1958)

A formative experience for my young horror fandom was reading Stephen King's “Danse Macabre.” My older sister is a huge King fan, ya see, and I inherited most of her old paperbacks when she moved out. I don't know what compelled me to pick up “Danse Macabre” but King's extended musing on the horror genre compelled me. I read almost the entire book over the course of a single night. Many of the titles recommended in the pages of that book were ones I had to seek out, as my flavor for the twisted and dark was only starting to develop. I've caught up with most of King's recommendations over the years. (Though the lack of availability of “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” means I still haven't seen it, though it doesn't sound like a true horror movie either.) For whatever reason, I hadn't caught “I Bury the Living” before. Considering I've been watching a lot of public domain movies this season, now seemed like as good a time as any.

Robert Kraft has recently been elected as the director of a local cemetery. Part of his new duties is overlooking the plot layouts for the graveyard. The locations of the graves and who they belong to, or will belong to more accurately, is determined with a chart in the office. White-headed pins are shoved into the to-be-filled plots, black-headed pins are shoved into the currently occupied plots. Without thinking about it much, one night Kraft switches the white pins out for black ones in two random spots. The next day, the people who own the plots die mysteriously. Kraft soon discovers that he seemingly has the power to manipulate who will live and who will die simply by changing one colored pins or another.

“I Bury the Living” is a movie with one of those undeniably catchy premises that get under your skin. The act of switching out one set of pins for another is so simple. It's easy to imagine doing the same. This causes you to imagine what you would do in the same situation, if you suddenly found you had the ability to control someone's fate. In the film, Robert Kraft quickly spirals from disbelief, to blaming himself (realizing it can't be the pins but him with this power), to despair. Amazingly, the film never goes with the easy, cop-out solution of Kraft developing a God complex and going mad with power. Instead, he continues to toy with the pins out of curiosity and then a growing fear that he truly has been gifted with this terrible power. When he's given seemingly irrefutable proof that he has this ability, he quickly deduces no mortal man should have this strength and nearly commits suicide.

Helping sell some the film's heavy handling of its subject is a strong cast and some atmospheric direction. Director Albert Band – none other than Charles Band's father – puts together some interesting images. The cemetery map has a spiral pattern on it that increasingly begins to look like two eyes starring at Kraft, as if judging him for his actions. More than once, Band's camera zooms in close to the pins, recalling a globe or other spherical objects. A slip into madness in the last act also features some likably abstract imagery, of tombstones circling around a floating head among other far out shots. Richard Boone, previously of “Have Gun, Will Travel,” also makes for a decent everyman protagonist.

While “I Bury the Living” is well-known for its moody direction and for its surprisingly sophisticated handling despite having a exploitation title, the movie is notorious for something else too. It has a total bullshit ending. Spoiler alert for a sixty-one year old horror movie: It turns out Kraft doesn't have power over life and death. Instead, the cemetery watchman – who is being forced into retirement after forty years – is murdering the people Kraft accidentally targets as some oddball sort of revenge. Not only is this is a disappointingly grounded answer to a mystery presumed to be supernatural up to that point, it also doesn't make a lot of sense. It means Andy has to move awfully fast for such an old man, considering he was murdering several people in a night, and also surprisingly stealthy for a bearded old Irishman. In short, it's a bullshit reveal that doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.

King bemoaned the film's disappointing ending too. He wasn't the only one. Dave Sindelar of the late, great SciFilm also complained that much of the movie's spooky momentum is sucked out by the goofy, disappointing ending. This makes “I Bury the Living” a good candidate for a remake and, considering the film's public domain status, I'm surprised nobody has tried. Up until that bullshit twist, it is an involving and spooky supernatural thriller. By the way, Andy hums "Heigh-Ho Nobody Home” throughout the film. This is an old hymn associated with souling, usually considered the traditional ancestor of trick-or-treating. Meaning this movie is explicitly a Halloween film via association, as far as I'm concerned. [7/10]

Tales from the Cryptkeeper: Imaginary Friend

While several of “Tales from the Cryptkeeper: Season Three's” episodes have featured bullying in some way, “Imaginary Friend” is its explicitly anti-bullying episode. It revolves around two boys who are bored in their neighborhood. With nothing else to do, they decide to go and harass the new nine year old girl who has moved in across the street. The little girl only has two friends in the whole world: A little white kitten named Boo and the spectre of a towering man in a fedora. When one of the boys kidnaps Boo, the ghostly man launches a campaign of terror against the boys to make them return the cat.

“Tales from the Cryptkeeper” approaches the topic of bullying with the exact level of sensitivity you would expect from this ham-fisted show. Which is to say, none at all. To describe these boys as bullies is a bit disingenuous. Their behavior is less teasing and more of the work of budding psychopaths. Pushing around a nine year old girl and stealing her cat and psychologically torturing it are pretty extreme crimes for boys that age. (And you know a real life boy prone to stealing a cat wouldn't stop at just teasing it.) The ghostly imaginary friend is a pretty odd sight. His revenge almost could have been a spooky sequence. The boy hides under a car at one point, as the spirit stalks him, which might've been able to build suspense if the characters weren't so unlikable. And the animation wasn't so cheap and inexpressive. The ending implies the girl will become friends with her former bullies, a lesson pop culture absolutely needs to stop teaching kids. [5/10]

Forever Knight: Be My Valentine

I know it's October but I guess I'm talking about a Valentine's Day themed episode tonight anyway. A serial killer is targeting single women by sending them Valentine cards first. Nick Knight is on the case. Meanwhile, he's also decided to take his flirtations with Natalie up to the next level, realizing he may love this woman. However, that's when an agreement he made with LaCroix hundreds of years ago re-surface. See, after Nick first became a vampire, LaCroix fell in in love with his still-human sister. When Nick refused to let him turn her into one of the undead, LaCroix promised he would turn any woman Nick loved in the future into a vampire.

The crime plot is truly superfluous this episode. It's resolved half-way through the episode and never mentioned again. The actual focus is on Nick and Natalie's growing attachment and what LaCroix plans to do about it. After nearly two seasons of flirting, it's nice to see Nick and Nat takes things to a more serious level. Meanwhile, seeing LaCroix show a vulnerable side, when he's usually so above-it-all, is certainly novel. Those flashback scenes are genuinely fascinating to watch. The climax of the episode, a dinner between Natalie and LaCroix, starts out with a certain tension. However, I'm disappointed that Natalie is reduced to a catatonic state for most of the sequence. Still, this is a fairly strong episode for focusing more on its character than on the case-of-the-week. [7/10]