Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Nightmare on Elm Street 7)

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Nightmare on Elm Street 7) title

AKA : Nightmare on Elm Street Part 7

Tag Line : This time staying awake won't save you

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Nightmare on Elm Street 7) No sooner had the sixth Elm Street film, "Freddy's Dead", been released, rumours began to circulate that the original director Wes Craven was going to return and bring back Freddy Kruger to finish him off his way. And as horror fans where soon to discover, the rumours proved to be true.

This time the film starts with an entirely new plot and reunites original cast members Robert Englund and Heather Langencamp with original director Wes Craven, who all play the parts of themselves and their original screen characters.

The film basically revolves around Heather Lagencamp who, along with some of the other original cast members, have just started having nightmares about the films character Freddy Kruger.

It turns out that director Wes Craven has been working on a new Elm Street movie, based on the images in the nightmares he's been suffering of late. But unfortunately, the nightmares he and the other cast members have been experiencing are more than just dreams and so his new script is quickly becoming a terrifying reality.

It turns out that the character of Freddy Kruger is not content with living in the fantasy world of movies and so wishes to break into reality by striking at the original cast members. Heather begins to realise what is happening and tries to convince the others. Wes knows far more than he's letting on, Robert Englund thinks she's mad and the other original cast members, which includes John Saxon and Nick Corri, aren't convinced either.

In the meantime the real-life Freddy character, who is now armed with a razor fingered bio-mechanical hand as opposed to the old glove, proceeds to start bumping off selected crew members who are either involved with the new film or had worked on the first one. One of these being Heathers husband Chase Porter (David Newsom), who gets killed in his pickup truck when he falls asleep at the wheel (in a parody of what happened to Dan in Part 5 [and 4])

In the end, fantasy and reality merge into one, as Heather and and some of the other original cast members actually become their original movie characters. Forcing Heather to confront the real-life Freddy character in order to stop him.

When I finally got around to watching this movie, I was actually quite impressed by it. This is by far the best sequel in the series, even though they should never taken it past part 3. The film focuses on the possibility of characters from fantasy coming to life, rather than just lining up more dozy teens to be picked off, even though it was rather reminiscent of "Candyman".

Basically it is a film within a film, which also successfully parodies some of the elements from other Elm Street movies, such as the aforementioned truck crash, or Freddy's fascination with Nancy's son which was very reminiscent of Part 5 : The Dream Child. You can also sort-of see where he got the idea for "Scream" in this one.

Overall marks : 6/10

Other Information.

Alternate tag lines, "Freddy's NOT dead!", "Miss me?", "This time staying awake won't save you...", "On October 14th, terror no longer stops at the screen".
The "bio-engineered" hand/glove that Freddy uses in this film (as opposed to the glove used in the prior films) was actually derived from the artwork of the original US theatrical poster and video box covers of the first "Nightmare on Elm Street".
Look out for additional former cast and crew members returning as themselves during the funeral scene, these include John Saxon, Nick Corri, Tuesday Knight (Kristen from part 3) and producer Robert Shaye.
One of the nurses in the hospital was played by Wes Cravens Daughter Jessica.
Producer Robert Shaye's sister Lin also makes an appearance as one of the nurses. She also played the teacher in the original "Nightmare on Elm Street".
All of the earthquake sequences in the film were actually filmed one month prior to the Los Angeles quake of '94. The real quake struck only 2 weeks before the end of filming. Subsequently, a unit was sent out to film drive-by footage of actual quake damaged areas of the city. The cast and crew believed that the earthquake scenes that were filmed before the real quake struck were perhaps a bit overdone, but when viewed after the real quake hit, all were frightened by the realism of it.