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For other projects of the same name, see Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (disambiguation).

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, also called A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Final Nightmare, is a 1991 slasher film that was meant to be the sixth and final film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series. It was directed by Rachel Talalay with screenplay by Michael De Luca.

Though the film was panned upon its release, it was successful in the box office and was New Line Cinema's first film that was partially released in in 3D.

Plot

"Springwood, Ohio, Ten years from now

Mysterious killings and suicides wipe out entire population of children and teenagers. Remaining adults are experiencing Mass Psychosis. There is new evidence of one surviving teenager..."

—Opening dialogue

Set ten years after the events of the previous film, all the children and teenagers in Springwood, Ohio, except one survivor, are dead. Nearly all of the victims had died at the hands of Freddy Krueger, who returned through unknown means. Several children/teenagers committed suicide rather than die at Freddy's hands, and a few who sensed the danger fled Springwood. Because of Freddy's influence, the remaining adults in the town lost contact with reality as they all fell into mass psychosis; Some imagine invisible children and thought that everything is normal.

The aforementioned survivor, John Doe is on a passenger plane, which was flying through a heavy rainstorm. When he noticed a strange supernatural phenomenon, a little girl appears in front of John in the front-seat. telling him that Krueger is going to make him help him (though she didn't actually say his name) before going out of his sight.

As he began to have acrophobia, he begs a flight attendant to let him have another seat in another row, but she tells him that there is no other seat available. After she left, John tries to switch seats with a woman seated on his right by telling her that he is scared of heights, but she just tells him to stop being a "pussy". The woman was then suddenly ejected from her seat causing her to go through the roof of the plane, right after it burst open, and then out into the open sky.

A few seconds later, John's seat goes through the bottom of the plane, which caused John to fall through the sky while screaming. As he was about to crash into the roof of his house, he suddenly wakes up in bed. Thinking it was only a dream, he gets up and opens a window only to discovered that the house is now plummeting from the sky. John then hears a witch's cackle and looks out the window to see where it is coming from. The cackle turns out to be coming from Freddy Krueger himself, who is riding on a broomstick while wearing a witch hat and cape. He tells John through a Wicked Witch of the West quote, that he is coming for him along with his soul before flying off.

Ride a bus to Hell

Freddy driving John into Springwood's barrier.

Just as his house was about to crash, John tumbles out of the window as the house makes contact with the ground. Finding himself in Springwood, John finds a ticket booth where a creepy-looking conductor gives him a bus ticket and then warns to not miss the bus before letting out a creepy laugh. John was then hit by an approaching bus, which is being driven by Freddy, and it sends him outside of Springwood (a barrier that Freddy cannot cross). As John crashes through the barrier, he hits his head hard on a rock which knocks him out unconscious. Freddy, upon approaching the hole that John made, proceeded to closes the hole in the barrier and orders the latter to go "fetch" for him. When John regains consciousness, he was rendered amnesiac, due to his head injury, and he couldn't remember his own identity. He then starts walking away from Springwood and toward Central City.

Meanwhile at the Recovery House Youth Shelter in Central City, a teenage boy named Spencer Lewis is visited by his father, who expected changes in his son's behavior as Spencer would run away and even set his dad's car on fire, which is the reason why he is sent to the shelter in the first place. Mr. Lewis then warns his son that he won't come back the next time he leaves him at the shelter, though Spencer didn't seem to care, and while he is busy playing an electronic game, he just thanks his father for the visit. As Mr. Lewis leaves, a woman named Maggie Burroughs, who works as a doctor in the shelter, came in. Mr. Lewis expressed disappointment at her for not improving Spencer's attitude, as the latter is very resistant. Spencer, upon hearing this, and in his hatred, quietly calls his father a 'jerk'.

When Maggie asks him if he is okay, Spencer responded that he is, and tells her that his father had given ground news for him when he gets home in which he'll no longer run away nor set his dad's cars on fire. Amused by this, Maggie proceeded to tease him, saying that there are other ways he can get his father's attention aside from blowing up the garage. In response, Spencer tells her that when did just that, his father didn't even blink. He then tells her that all his dad wants for his son is to be just like him, like an exact copy, though Spencer states that he doesn't feel like playing football and date-raping co-eds. After Maggie tells him that he''l have to face his father one day, Kelly, one of the employees working in the shelter, came in with a pipe bomb, which he found in Spencer's room. Though the latter tried to make an excuse that he was just showing the kids in the shelter survival techniques, he was forced to run away when Kelly began to confront him. The latter tells Maggie that he has been confiscating Spencer's stuff before leaving to put it away with the rest of the "arsenal".

As Kelly left, a teenage girl named Tracy Swan suddenly came in running as she was being chased by a security guard. When the guard, whose nose is bleeding, reported to Maggie that Tracy was beating up one of the kids, though the girl counter-argued that the kid she was beating was trying to make a sexual advance on her, Maggie tells the guard that Tracy doesn't want to be touched before reminding her that she has a session today, but Tracy reminds Maggie that she has a class with Doc, who works as a therapist, before leaving. Meanwhile at an alleyway, John was found by the police and was taken to the shelter.

In a workout room, Tracy is busy boxing a punchbag while her friend Carlos Rodriguez watches on. He then proceeded to tease and goad her into delivering brutal blows, in which she narrowly struck Carlos. When Tracy goaded him into sparring with her, he takes off his hearing aid to further mock her, revealing that he is deaf. When he tossed it away, Spencer, who is also their friend, catches it and puts it back on Carlos' ear. When Spencer insisted Carlos that he talk back to her for once, the latter reminds him of talking back the same way he did with his father before warning him to stop talking back, as it becomes hazardous to Carlos' health, due to his deafness. The three then plan to run away to California.

Arriving at the shelter, John tells Maggie Burroughs, that he can sense that he might die if he falls asleep. Maggie, meanwhile, has been having frequent dreams about a girl with red ribbons in her hair (again, Katherine Krueger), and a water tower, which appeared to be blurred memories. Doc tells her that there is a connection, and also explains of three Dream Demons who roam the dreams of the living until they find someone twisted and evil to give them the power to cross the lines between dreams and reality.

Maggie takes John back to Springwood in her van, hoping that it will trigger a spark to get him to remember who he himself was. While driving in the van, John hallucinates the same girl from the plane, who yells, "GO BACK!", and nearly causes the van to crash. It is then that they discover Carlos, Spencer, and Tracy, who had stowed away in the van, as it is part of their plot to run away. Stopping by a town fair in Springwood, Maggie tells the three to call Kelly on where they are and then return to the shelter, but if they can't handle it then they had to call the authorities. While Carlos, Spencer, and Tracy explored the town fair, John discovered something very strange; there are only adults and no children. Upon finding a phone booth, Spencer tries to call Kelly only to find out that the phone is out of order. Suddenly a childless woman immediately embraced them and began to strangely treating the trio as if they were her own children only to then be stopped by her husband.

Creeped out by the strange behavior of the adult, Tracy, Carlos, and Spencer leaves in the van on Maggie's orders. Shortly after they left, Maggie decided to go to the local school so they could find answers on why the bells of a local tower had mysteriously rung. Meanwhile, Tracy, driving the van with Spencer and Carlos, was unable to find a way out of Springwood, as they were only going around in circles. Stressed, Spencer, who is a stoner, began smoking a cigarette, which earns him the disapproval of Tracy and Carlos, though Spencer tried defended himself, claiming that smoking helps him relax. When a frustrated Caarlos asks Tracy if she wants to use the map they have to find their way out, she refuses it, saying that she doesn't need a map. They then decided to stop at an abandoned house, which once belonged to the late Nancy Thompson.

When Maggie and John go to a local school, the teacher (who is unstable and talking to imaginary kids just like all the other adult inhabitants of Springwood) mentions Freddy's child being taken away. John believes that he is that child, and that is the reason why Freddy hasn't killed him. While at the school, they look at a collection of missing person posters and newspaper articles related to Freddy's pre-death serial killings. They clearly relate to younger than teenage children.

Meanwhile, back at 1428 Elm Street, Carlos falls asleep and begins to dream of his cruel and abusive mother, who is actually Freddy Krueger, who brutally took Carlos' hearing aid (which he uses because his mother physically damaged his hearing ability), before starting to play on Carlos' inability to hear anything. When the latter begged Freddy to give him back his hearing aid, the latter did so without hesitation. When Carlos puts it it back on his ear, the hearing aid suddenly becomes a parasite and it latches itself onto Carlos. It turns out, Freddy had magnified the hearing aid so that every noise/sound Carlos hears will become extremely loud. After tormenting him by dropping pins on the ground, Freddy began scratching a chalkboard with his bladed-glove, which emitted an ear-screeching sound that causes Carlos' eyes, nose, and left ear to start bleeding until his head eventually exploded, allowing Freddy to absorb the his soul.

In the meantime, Maggie and John arrive at an orphanage whose director, like the rest of the people, is insane and seeing invisible children. She says she knows Maggie and John and when the latter asks her to tell her who he himself is, the director reminds them that it is 'against the rules of the orphanage to give out information on the children.' Maggie shows John some kid drawings that were signed by a child with the name K. Krueger. John deduces that it must be Freddy's son and that the K might go from Kevin to Kyle. Maggie and John then left the orphanage to return to Elm Street.

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Freddy tormenting Spencer Lewis through a video game.

Meanwhile in the living room of 1428 Elm Street, Spencer gets high on smoking and falls into a dreaming hallucination. Tracy goes to get Maggie and John as Spencer is sucked into the television by Freddy where he found himself in a video game and is being attacked by game enemies that resemble Spencer's father and Freddy's in-game sprite. When Maggie, Tracy, and John get back, they tried to look for Spencer until John finds the latter being controlled by an unseen force. They tried to get Spencer out of his nightmare but since he was still under the control of the unseen force, he began to run amok throughout the house. While Maggie goes after Spencer, Tracy and John entered the dream world in an attempt to stop Freddy. Though Tracy was able to disconnect Freddy's controller, which Freddy uses to torment Spencer in the game, this attempt backfires when he uses a power glove to kill Spencer, both in the video game and in the physical world.

Maggie wakes Tracy up before Freddy can kill her and takes John away from Springwood. John, still asleep, finds himself back in his house, which begins to burn away in flames, and this forces him to jump out of the same window from before. As he was once again falling through the sky, he notices a string on his shirt with a tag saying "In case of emergency pull string". Upon pulling it, his shirt instantly turned into a big white parachute. The parachute bump affected John in real life, throwing him out of the van through the roof, causing Maggie to stop the vehicle. Back in the Dream World, while he is now floating down, John suddenly hears Freddy calling out to him. Looking up, he saw the latter in his parachute. As Freddy came down towards him, John tells him that he now knows on why he didn't kill him, but Freddy mockingly asks him if he is "daddy" and reveals to John that he is wrong before cutting one of the static lines of the parachute.

When John reminds him that he had let him live, the latter revealed that he is only using him to get to his daughter before severing the other static line of the parachute, causing John to once again fall through the sky. As he continues to plummet to the ground, Freddy places a bed of spikes directly below and John ended up falling on top of them, leaving him critically wounded back in the physical world. John tells Maggie that Freddy's child is not a boy, but before he could reveal to her that Freddy has a daughter, he, unfortunately, succumbed to his wounds and died. John's body vanishes shortly after his death. Because of Joh's accidental efforts, this inadvertently allowed Freddy to enter Maggie's mind, allowing him to kill more victims outside his hometown. As Maggie and Tracy drive away from Springwood, the barrier has been broken.

When Maggie returns to the Recovery House Youth Shelter and meets with Kelly, she discovers that neither he nor anyone else remembers Carlos, Spencer, or John. Doc, who is able to control his dreams, tells Maggie that Freddy didn't just kill them but rather erased them from most of everyone's memories. Later, Maggie, Tracy, and Doc each have separate nightmares; Maggie discovers her true identity as Freddy's daughter Katherine while Tracy, in her dream, finds herself back in her old home where she has a run-in with her sexually-abusive father, who died a long time ago. Always knowing that her father is dead, Tracy began beating him with a tea kettle before he reveals himself as Freddy. After a brief fight with him, Tracy forced herself to wake up by placing her wrists over a burning stove. Maggie hears her screaming and rushes into Tracy's room, where she saw the burns on her wrists. Tracy, finally knowing that Freddy Krueger is real, immediately goes to warn Doc, who learns from Freddy that the dream demons gave him his power, before Doc tears off a shred of Freddy's sweater and waking up from his dream.

Realizing that Freddy can be pulled out of the dream world, Katherine, Tracy, and Doc set up a plan to defeat Freddy. Katherine enters the dream world with a pair of 3D glasses, allowing her to enter Freddy's mind as well as access his memories. Entering Freddy's past, she sees him, as a boy, killing one of the class hamsters in school before being made fun of by his classmates for being the son of a hundred maniacs; Katherine then sees a teenage Freddy practicing self-mutilation as he suffers from physical abuse at the hands of his alcoholic foster father, Mr. Underwood, before Freddy kills him with a razor blade. Katherine then saw her father, now an adult, just before his death where he was met by three dream demons who entered his body, after they found him worthy of giving him power. In one final memory, she witnesses her mother Loretta Krueger being choked to death by Freddy for finding out that he had killed the children of Springwood, while their daughter, which was Katherine in her childhood and the same girl whom Jon encountered, watches on in horror, but she nevertheless made a promise to her father that she wouldn't tell anyone. Katherine then pulls Freddy out of the Dream World, and a fight ensues. They appeared to be evenly matched (though Katherine knocks off Freddy's glove, and later breaks his hand) until Tracy and Doc gave several weapons, such as knives, daggers, nunchucks, a crossbow, and a crowbar, to Katherine, which she uses to pin her father to a steel support beam and a wooden crate, causing him to lose his glove in the process.

Freddy Krueger explodes GIF

Freddy Krueger's body gets destroyed.

Under Freddy's urging, she puts on his glove and, to his horror, uses it to stab him in the chest, embedding the glove's blades into the support beam. Tracy then throws a pipe bomb to Katherine, which she then sticks into her his chest. After she greets her father a Happy Father's Day as well as giving him a kiss, Katherine escapes with Tracy and Doc. As the pipe bomb is about to blow up, a defeated Freddy Krueger mutters "Kids..." before the device explodes, which instantly kills him. As his body is destroyed in the explosion, this caused the dream demons inside to be released. Unable to revive Freddy in the physical world, they flew away to parts unknown.

After escaping, Katherine, in her triumph happily tells Doc and Tracy that "Freddy's dead".

Cast

Characters referenced only

  • Brook Yeaton - 7-year old boy murdered by Freddy Krueger
  • Mike Becker - 6-year old boy murdered by Freddy Krueger
  • Bobby Glass- 8-year old boy murdered by Freddy Krueger

Sequel

Though this was intended as the last Freddy film, a canonical crossover sequel, Freddy vs. Jason, was released many years later in 2003, in which it takes place between the events of Final Nightmare and Friday the 13th film Jason X. Freddy vs. Jason depicts Freddy's return with the help of Jason Voorhees, the main antagonist of the Friday the 13th film series, which will then lead to their subsequent battle with each other.

Box Office

With a 3D release on September 13, 1991, Freddy’s Dead opened with $12,966,525 on its first weekend, the highest opening of the series ever until the release of Freddy vs. Jason. It remained in first place on its second weekend, but dropped to $6,626,378. It eventually fell to the No.11 spot on the fifth weekend, with a total domestic gross of $34,872,033. This made the film the third highest-grossing film in the franchise after The Dream Master and Dream Warriors. It is currently the fifth highest-grossing film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series.

Critical Response

Although Freddy’s Dead was a box office success, it was panned by critics, and the film receives a 22% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics criticized the film’s poor 3D visual effects and its handicapped comedic film style. In Nightmare on Elm Street Encyclopedia DVD features, Robert Shaye apologized to the fans about the film’s poor reception.

Robert Englund replied to a reporter’s question in an interview about his view on the film: “(It has a) Good Poster.” In his book Hollywood Monster, he comments that Freddy's Dead is one of his least favorite Nightmare films in the franchise, and he also describes the film as "The weakest Nightmare sequel ever".

Besides its negative critical reviews, some fans also considered the film as one of the worst A Nightmare on Elm Street films along with A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and the 2010 remake.

Trivia

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Glen on ANoES 6

  • When Spencer falls asleep, he sees Johnny Depp, who portrayed Glen Lantz in the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film. Depp is credited as Oprah Noodlemantra and his character is listed in the credits as "Guy on TV".
  • The last 20 minutes of the movie was in 3D. In order to know when to put on the glasses, Doc gave glasses to Maggie to use in her dream.
  • The negative critical reception caused the filmmakers to make Wes Craven's New Nightmare.
  • During the film, Freddy's song appears in various parts of the film, but the "7, 8, stay up late" part of it, for some unexplained reason, does not appear.
  • This was the only film where Freddy makes use of his power to "erase" people from the existence and also the only one where he did not kill any girl, in addition to Freddy vs. Jason.
  • This movie was filmed from 14th November 1990 from February 1991.
  • This is the second movie in the series where the first protagonist (John) dies in the middle of the story. Kristen from the fourth movie was the first.
  • The secret room where Freddy forged his claws and kept the memories of his crimes was never presented in the early films, although the basement was the part of the house that was most visited.
  • Although John returned to Springwood, no adult there recognized him as a son or relative, presuming that his family had died or moved out of town.
  • Strangely, it does not occur to John to investigate his own home, 1427 Elm Street, for clues to his real identity.
  • It is unknown whether John, Carlos, and Spencer, although dead, were remembered again after the end of Freddy.

References

  1. Seibold, Whitney (2012-10-12). The Series Project: Freddy & Jason (Part 4). CraveOnline. Retrieved 2016-06-05.

External links


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