A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 : The Dream Child

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 : The Dream Child title

AKA: A Nightmare on Elm Street : The Dream Child

Tag Line : Now Freddy's a daddy he's killing for two

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 : The Dream Child Well Freddy Kruger returns yet again for more mindless nonsense, as yet more teens doze off and fall prey to the razor fingered dream demon. Continuing the plot several months on from part 4, we are re-introduced to sole survivors Alice (Lisa Wilcox) and her boyfriend Dan (Dan Hassel).

This time Freddy is resurrected through the dreams of Alice's unborn baby after she finds she's pregnant (another reason why people should always practice safe sex). However, before Alice and Dan can settle down to domestic bliss together. Freddy decides to bump him off.

Having turned Alice into a single parent, Freddy then proceeds to move onto all their new chums. We're then given the usual tirade of teenage cast members starting to doze off, before suddenly snapping awake again, only to realise they're actually asleep then after a quick scuffle with Freddy, getting killed.

The mysterious Nun from part 3, who we all now know is Freddy's mother except she's looking a dam sight younger now (played this time by Beatrice Boepple), returns and helps Alice try to defeat Freddy, which they finally do in the usual unfathomable manner at the films climax which is set in the old tower at the mental institution from part 3. Except the whole building now appears to have been empty and abandoned for years, despite the fact it was still in use two sequels ago.

Basically, this film appears to be little more than a pointless continuation of part 4. The killings have totally lost all their impact due to the series getting too long in the tooth, and the scene where Dan is killed when he falls asleep at the wheel has got to go down in horror history as one of the stupidest ever, as EXACTLY the same thing happened to him in part 4.

Action director Steven Hopkins manages to achieve very little to cover over the fact that this film was nothing more than a money spinning exercise by greedy corporate film executives.

Overall marks : 4/10.

Other Information.

Alternate tag line "Freddy Delivers", "It's a Boy", "Evil Has Spawned", "Freddy has a Son".
Action movie director Steven Hopkins also directed the Sci-Fi/Horror "Predator 2" and the 1998 remake of "Lost in Space" .
Screenwriter John Script also penned the story for the 1990 low budget sci-fi/horror film "Class of 1999" which starred Malcolm MacDowell.
Rock group "Romeo's Daughter" recorded the song "Heaven in the Back Seat" for this movie which they also released as a single, the music video of which also featured excerpts for the film. Iron Maiden frontman "Bruce Dickinson" recorded the song "Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter" for the film, but this was ultimately not used and didn't appear on the soundtrack album. This was a great pity, as he subsequently re-recorded the song with the rest of Iron Maiden and released it in the UK on Christmas Eve that year. It went straight in at the top of the charts and was the Christmas number one for that year (although this fact was strangely overlooked by the Radio stations at the time).
The film was cut in the US to achieve an R rating. This removed a scene where one of the girls is force fed her own guts, and trimmed the scene where the motorbike "fuses" with the rider. An unrated video with these 2 scenes intact was later released onto video. The current US DVD though uses the cut R-rated version.
The original UK cinema and video release were of the uncut/unrated version. The current UK DVD is however of the cut US R rated version as it was ported over from the R rated US disc.