A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD

SYNOPSIS

After defeating Freddy Krueger in NOES4, Alice is once again having nightmares about him and 1428 Elm Street. The strange thing is, to see these nightmares, she doesn't have to be asleep! Since losing all of her friends in the past two films, Alice has become pregnant with her boyfriend Dan (from NOES4).

Dan is involved in a motorbike accident and is killed and Alice suspects that Freddy was the cause of it. After drifting in and out of reality several times, and each time meeting Freddy Krueger, she finds out that when the child inside her dreams, Freddy can use its dreams to break through into the real world. What Alice is seeing is the Freddy-plagued nightmares of her unborn son.

She witnesses the birth of Freddy by through Amanda Krueger's eyes in the asylum and we learn that Freddy was no ordinary-looking baby to start off with and the doctors do not think the baby can be human. In the dream, the baby Freddy runs away and is followed by Alice. She sees the baby Freddy start to grow and she realises that she has brought his back to reality!

After Alice wakes up, more of the Elm Street kids are killed. Greta chokes to death on her own stomach and in Alice's dreams, she meets a boy by the name of Jacob. She believes that this is actually her own son when he is older and thinks that he is trying to help her defeat Freddy.

After a fetal scan at the hospital, Alice realises that Freddy is not after Alice any more but is intent on trying to feed her unborn son, Jacob, with the souls of Dan and Alice. By doing this, Freddy can make himself be reborn through Alice as a real being. Alice's friends are killed off one by one and she meets up with the ghost of Amanda Krueger in her dreams. Alice figures out that, by leading Freddy to the asylum where Amanda was raped by the hundred maniacs, he could be stopped by the ghosts of them all. The plan works and the hundred maniac ghost rip Freddy apart but instead of dying, Freddy only turns into lots of little green and red striped spiders which then reform back to Freddy. The plan didn't work.

After running through a giant maze running from Freddy, the dream-child Jacob tells Alice that Freddy actually still lives inside her and as he says this, Freddy tries to push his way out of Alice's body! As Freddy and Alice battle for the second time in the film series, her friend Yvonne manages to find out where Amanda Krueger's body was bricked up and break the wall down. Her spirit is released.

Amanda Krueger's ghost goes into Alice's dream and tells Jacob, who is watching the fight between Freddy and his mother in horror, that Alice will not win unless he help her. Jacob tricks Freddy into thinking that he wants to be the new Freddy Krueger and that he wants to be given Freddy's powers so that he can live in the real world once again. Freddy gives Jacob his powers and his face becomes more Freddy-like. Jacob uses Freddy's own powers against him and opens his mouth really wide so the Elm Street children's souls fly out drag Freddy towards Amanda. He shrinks as he gets nearer and by the time he reaches Amanda, he is a baby again. She tells him that she forgives him for what he's done in the past and forces him to go with her back to the dream world. 

TRIVIA

Without a doubt the most confusing of all NOES films!

Freddy was killed by the angry parents in 1968, because his mother hung herself after his trial, and her tomb stone in part 3 said 1907-1968.

In the dream sequence of the asylum where Amanda Krueger was raped by the hundred maniacs one of the maniacs looked remarkably like Freddy. Presumably this was his father. (Of course this man was played by Robert Englund, the actor who plays Freddy).

David Miller the make-up artist that did Freddy's make-up in the original returned to do the makeup in this one. He took it back to the open sore concept that he started with, but kept the hook nose that Kevin Yagher added.

The most original effect in this movie was when Mark is turned into a comic book character and slashed, all of his ink runs out like blood. The comic-Mark dieing was achieved by drawing about 150 pictures of him and drawing each one with a lower level of ink and a different facial expression. They mounted the pictures on sheets of aluminum and had two holes in the 'floor' where the cells (drawings) were plugged into. They had to put each one in the same spot or the boy would look like he was jumping around. They shot it frame-by-frame with a background projection of the blood/ink flowing all over the floor.

BEST QUOTES

Freddy (to Alice): It's a BOY

Freddy (to Dan whilst on motorbike): Hey Danny, better not dream and drive

Freddy (to Greta whilst feeding her her own stomach): Bon Appetite, Bitch!

Freddy (to Alice) The party's just starting...

Freddy (before having a superhero-like battle with Mark): Faster than a bastard maniac...more powerful than a local madman...it's...SUPER FREDDY!

Freddy (to Jacob): Come to Papa!