The most commercially successful of the entire series, Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was released in 1988, and was directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2,Deep Blue Sea,The Prison and the upcoming Exorcist:The Beginning) a year after the highly successful Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

In this entry, we pick up with the survivors of part 3, Kristen (Tuesday Knight - IceMaker), who has the power to pull people into dreams, and when in dreams can perform wild acrobatics, Joey (Rodney Eastman - Deadly Weapon) who used to be a mute, but had the power of speech in his dreams, a trait he has carried into normal life, and Kincaid (Ken Sagoes - Intolerable Cruelty), who in dreams had super-strength. They have now got out of the Westin institute and are integrated into normal highschool life.

Kristen has a boyfried Rick (Andras Jones - The Demolitionist), and is friends with his twin sister Alice (Lisa Wilcox - The All New Adventures of Chastity Blade), super-brain Sheila (Toy Newkirk - the OJ Simpson Story) and fitness freak Debbie (Brooke Theiss - Catwoman). Alice has eyes for Rick's sporty friend Dan (Danny Hassel - the China Lake Murders), who is the subject of one of her daydreams. She apparently has these all the time, a fact her alcoholic father (Nicholas Mele - I Am Sam) is constantly on her back about.
But Kristen is having trouble sleeping. She is paranoid that dream demon Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund - The Mangler) is going to return from the dead again to finish what he started at Westin, and is constantly pulling Kincaid and Joey into her nightmares, much to their annoyance. But one night Kincaid falls asleep and awakens in the junkyard where Freddy's skeleton is buried. Out of nowhere, his dog Jason (no doubt a nod to Friday the 13th series villain) urinates fire onto where Freddy is buried, causing the ground to cave in and the dream demon to be set free. After Kincaid tries to fight Freddy off, he is eventually beaten and killed by the freshly charged serial killer. That same night, Joey dreams of a sexy naked lady in his waterbed (while listening to Billy Idol no less), of course sexy lady turns out to be not at all sexy, or female, and Kristen is the last Dream Warrior left. Naturally upset, she refuses to sleep, much to the confusion of her friends, who clearly don't know about her past. But when her still obnoxious mother (Brooke Bundy - Explorers) tricks her into taking sleeping pills, she accidentally pulls Alice into her dream. You see, this was Freddy's plan all along, because he couldn't get to the new generation of Elm Street kids, and had to use Kristen's own power against her, as she didn't mean to pull her friend in. With her job done, Fred offs Kristen, but spares Alice, for Kristen manages to transfer her gift onto Alice before she joins the tortured souls on Freddy's chest.
One by one, as Kristen's friends fall to Freddy, after she inadvertantly gave them too him, Kristen starts to gain their personal traits. Rick was a martial arts fanatic, and suddenly she has his nunchuk skills. Sheila's motto was "mind over matter". A phrase that Alice now finds herself using. When it is only her and Dan left standing, but Dan taken to hospital and sedated, Alice realises she will have to use all of these inherited skills to free her friend's souls, rescue Dan and put an end to Freddy.

Acting in this entry isn't that great, but isn't all bad either. Tuesday night, who has the name of a porn star and the voice of an 80s wannabe pop star (and sadly the looks of the latter), is a pretty poor replacement when compared to Patricia Arquette, whose role she has taken over. With that said, she isn't terrible, but needless to say she isn't a household name.
Lisa Wilcox is quite good as the confused by her newfound powers Alice, but I wouldn't say she is proper leading lady material. She seems better playing the quiet, shy Alice in comparison to the battle ready one from the end of the movie.
But the show is once again stolen by Englund, who really does try his best, despite the fact the evil monster he once turned out as has become a wise-cracking moron anti-hero. He does still occasionally use the body language that helped make Freddy scary, but when he is blasting out tragic dialogue. (example being: To Joey before drowning him in a water bed "hows this for a wet dream!")

The special effects in the movie are fairly good. Freddy's makeup looks pretty good, and the insect transformation effects are pretty good as well.
It does have it's share of embarassing effects moments though, one example being when Alice develops her nunchuk skills, and the more complex moves are shown with her back to the camera, 'her' being blatantly played by someone with a wig on. A wig that isnt even the same colour as Wilcox hair.
Another moment would be the 'burnt' effects on Tuesday Knight, that make her look like she slipped and fell onto a plate of barbecued food.

The music in the movie is not even remotely scary. While the original music gives it a go, it just doesn't work with the visuals. The movie also features quite a lot of chart music, (a 90 minute advert for the OST), which ranges from the great/comical (Billy Idol,Vinnie Vincent Invasion) to the horribly misplaced (Sinead O'Connor). If you were wondering, my comments about Tuesday Knight sounding like an 80s pop star were based on the fact that she was one, and we are subjected to one of her songs played over the opening credits.

Where this movie falls down, is that it just isn't scary. At all. None of the deaths in this movie are gruesome, and they are usually pretty boring and predictable. You see, Freddy takes a personal trait of each character and kills them in a way associated with it, Debbie hates bugs, so dies by being changed into a cockroach and squashed. While this is a well accomplished effect, it just isn't scary. The original movie's opening death, where Tina was clawed all over a room was scary. And probably took far less effort than any of the ridiculous deaths on offer here. The part proceding Kristen's death, on the beach, was just plain embarassing.

This was well into Freddy's transformation into a pop culture icon, and it wasn't long before he made his way onto the small screen in the ridiculous Tales from the Crypt like show Freddy's Nightmares. He doesn't skulk in the shadows in this movie, he isn't shadowy at all. I'm surprised they even mentioned the fact he was a child killer, considering the fact they seem to want to sell Freddy as being cool here.

The fact the plot is just silly doesn't do the movie any favours. While it doesn't have a plot point that just destroys the movie like
Dream Warriors did, but it certainly does have some eye-raisers. How, after half of the wing died in mysterious circumstances, did Joey,Kincaid and Kristen get out of Westin? how did they manage to make so many friends without getting bullied? how can Joey talk? why does Kristen pull in Alice, why her? and most importantly of all, how does A)a dog urinate flame and B)burning dog urine resurect Freddy?.

Freddy's rebirth is one ridiculous piece of film. Why does the dog do it? how does the dog do it? who the hell wrote such a ridiculous piece of plot. I actually thought Dream Warriors had one of the best ways of disposing of Freddy, so to see it undone in such a lame manner really annoyed me.

The ending in this movie was ok, but I wouldn't rank it as one of Freddy's better demises.
On the whole, the movie is watchable and mildly entertaining. It isn't the worst in the series by a longshot, but it isn't anywhere near the top of the list either. I think an average score is what it deserves, because while it has a number of baffling plot points and non-scary deaths, I still found it more entertaining than part 3. The film at least has the good grace to be totally stupid, and not just be a decent movie that spoils itself with some plot that was poor. You see, this is where the Nightmare series really went from being watched to be scared to being watched to be amused by how stupid it is. This entry can't even claim to have a good idea behind it pulled off poorly like the two sequels prior, and the one that comes after, it is just stupid.
And to be a fan of the Nightmare series you need to be able to appreciate stupid, and if you are a fan of the other movies, I don't see why you wouldn't at least see this as an amusing evening's viewing if nothing else was on.

But the only other people I could recommend this to are those who view Freddy as the wisecracking anti-hero, because if your only exposure to him has been in the first movie, or New Nightmare, then he probably won't like this. Personally, I was brought up on both types of Freddy, so can handle this for what it is, a watchable, but mediocre at best sequel.

Other Related Reviews
Nightmare on Elm Street
Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age