Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Directed by Rachel Talalay. Starring Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Robert Englund, Yaphet Kotto, Lezlie Deane, Breckin Meyer, Ricky Dean Logan, Lindsey Fields. [R]

A title full of broken promises… This sixth (but not last) entry is another pathetic rehash—more teenagers, more dreams, more killings, more one-liners, more boredom. Here, Freddy is out to get his kid (sired way back before his child-murdering ways were discovered and a whole suburban block rose up against him), but whatever interest there may be in the “family drama” is spoiled early on with a string of murders/set pieces that are too stupid to frighten and too inane to be genuinely funny; it doesn’t seem like it could get worse than “death by cotton swab,” but then there’s the video game sequence… Even the “Freddyvision” finale is the pits—the Krueger faithful never had it so bad. Leaves the viewer with plenty of “dead air” stretches to ponder what might have been had the producers not rejected the screenplay that Peter Jackson wrote. Curious parties may be interested in cameos from Alice Cooper, Tom Arnold, and Roseanne Barr, but they’re gratuitous and underwhelming; Johnny Depp (co-star of the first Nightmare) also shows up for about four seconds before Freddy whacks him in the face with a frying pan—yep, it really is that kinda movie. Followed by New Nightmare.

21/100