With Jim Sabatini

Freddy's Dead - The Final Nightmare

Rated: R for violence
Reviewed by: Frank and Chris
Release date: September 13, 1991

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), the maniac who killed children in Springwood, Ohio, and was burned by the parents of the murdered children, continues to show up in the local teenagers' nightmares, in this sixth and final in the Nightmare on Elm Street series.

Using the teen's vulnerabilities, Freddy stalks his prey by attacking them at their weakest point. A deaf boy is destroyed by his fear of losing his hearing aid, and another who smokes pot is enticed by psychedelic music into popping into a video screen and becoming Freddy's pawn.

Besides the teens who are usually on their own in their quest to kill Freddy, they are now joined by two adults, Maggie (Lisa Zane), a teen counselor, and Yaphet Kotto, a psychologist who treats troubled youths by analyzing their dreams.

Freddy becomes more of a personality instead of just a killing machine in this film. His past, including an abusive father who beat him with a strap, and his wife when she discovers his workshop where he kept his knife-fingered gloves, is explored.

The previous Nightmares were lavishly sprinkled with spectacular and imaginative special effects. Freddy's comic asides are not as clever and film clips from prior Nightmare films, which rollover the closing credits, only point this out more clearly.

The last 10 minutes of the movie is filmed in 3-D and is dark and blurry, and makes Freddy's final Nightmare anti-climactic. Too bad Freddy wasn't given a more fitting farewell.