Bad Dreams Movie Review

I think my older sister had this on video and that's how I came to see it. My strong memories of it suggest that I saw it more than once, though. I found it scary enough as a kid.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

The entire premise of Bad Dreams falls apart by listening to the philosophy of the Jim Jones-like cult figure at the beginning who leads a 1970s hippie youth cult known as Unity Field in mass suicide. The deepest thing he espouses is that “life and death are two different states of being.” Whoa! If charismatic cult figures only peddled such cheap nonsense, they’d have few followers. One young girl escapes the flaming death trap at the last moment and wakes from her coma thirteen years later in a psychiatric institution.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors Movie Review

This was always the Nightmare film I was most familiar with. It was probably on TV more often than the others when I was old enough to be watching TV on my own at night. So this one scare me the most.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

For the third A Nightmare on Elm Street film, New Line wisely brought Wes Craven back on as a producer. The result is that rare horror sequel that is better than the preceding film. Even if it doesn’t quite surpass the directorial skill of the original, it remains a creepy and occasionally fear-inducing effort. It is more disturbing than scary because Freddy Krueger, at a certain point, ceases to be a scary icon. He’s endowed with, dare I say, too much personality. His grotesque visage is all he has to summon visceral fear.