Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare is a 1991 horror-fantasy film, the sixth, and as the title suggests, intended to be the last film in the series of films featuring Freddy Krueger. However, the box office success of the film prevented the series from ending (much like Friday the 13th parts four and nine). Another film, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, was produced following this film. Though the film was critically panned, it was New Line Cinema's first film that released in 3-D.
Plot
In the year 1999, all the children of Springwood are dead, except one, and all the adults are in mass psychosis. The survivor, John Doe, is confronted by Freddy Krueger in his nightmares (at one point inside a house that is falling from the sky, and Freddy appears, Wicked Witch of the West style). John then gets hit by a bus driven by Freddy which sends him to a town outside of Springwood (a barrier that Freddy cannot cross). As he crashes through the barrier, John hits his head on a rock. Freddy closes the hole in the barrier and says that John is going to "fetch" for him. When John wakes up, he has anmesia and cannot remember who he is.
At a youth shelter, Carlos, Spencer, and Tracy plan to run away after Spencer's father, who wants Spencer to conform to his lifestyle, gives him a hard time. The police find John and take him to the shelter, where he tells Maggie Burroughs, an employee, 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, and a water tower. Doc tells her there is a connection, and also explains a picture of three Dream Demons who roam the dreams of the living until they find someone twisted and evil and gives them the power to cross the lines between dreams and reality.
Maggie takes John back to Springwood in hopes that it will trigger a spark to get him to remember who he is. While driving in the van, John hallucinates thinking he sees a girl and nearly causes the van to crash. It is then that they discover Carlos, Spencer, and Tracy having stowed away. When they reach Springwood, Maggie tells them to call Kelly to tell him where they are and then drives back to the shelter. The phones are dead and they cannot find their way out of Springwood, so they stop at at the abandoned house that once belonged to Nancy.
Meanwhile, when Maggie and John go to a 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 why Freddy hasn't killed him.
Carlos falls asleep inside the house and begins to dream of his mother. Freddy takes his hearing device (which he uses because his mother physically abused him and damaged his hearing ability) and magnifies it so everything is extremely loud. After tormenting him by dropping pins on the ground and scratching a chalkboard with his razor glove, he scratches it so much that Carlos's head explodes. Meanwhile, Spencer gets high and falls into a dreaming hallucination. Tracy goes to get Maggie and John as Spencer is sucked into the television by Freddy where he is in a video game and is attacked by Freddy's character who resembles his father. When Maggie, Tracy, and John get back, Tracy and John enter the dream world in an attempt to stop Freddy, but Freddy kills Spencer by knocking him into a hole which materializes in the real world. Maggie witnesses him fall into the hole.
Maggie wakes Tracy up before Freddy can kill her and takes John away from Springwood. John, still asleep, finds himself in his house which begins to burn. He jumps out a window and activates a parachute. Freddy reveals to him that he is not his son and that he was using him to get to his daughter. He cuts the ropes of the parachute and places spikes directly below John as he falls on them. Before dying, he tells Maggie that Freddy's child is not a boy. John's body vanishes after his death. Freddy is able to enter Maggie's mind, and as they drive away from Springwood, the barrier is broken.
When Maggie talks to Kelly, she discovers that neither he nor anyone else remembers Carlos, Spencer, or John. Doc, who is able to control his dreams, tells her that Freddy didn't just kill them; he erased them. Later, Maggie, Tracy, and Doc each have nightmares about Freddy; Maggie discovers that she is Freddy's daughter, and now he can kill more victims outside Springwood. Freddy tells Doc that the dream demons gave him his power, and Doc tears off a shred of Freddy's sweater before he wakes up.
Realizing Freddy can be pulled out of the dream world, Maggie, Tracy, and Doc set up a plan to defeat Freddy. Maggie enters the dream world with a pair of 3D glasses, allowing her to enter Freddy's mind. She sees him killing the class hamster in school and then being made fun of for being the son of a hundred maniacs; she then sees him older, practicing self-mutilation as his alcoholic foster father, Mr. Underwood, physically abuses him, and Freddy killing him, and then freddy's death where the dream demons entered him. Finally, she witnesses him strangling his wife Loretta in front of Katherine Krueger (Maggie Burroughs) for finding out that he killed the kids of Springwood.
Maggie pulls Freddy out of the dream world, and they fight. They appear evenly matched (though Maggie knocks off Freddy's clawed glove, and later breaks his hand) until Tracy and Doc throw several weapons to Maggie and she pins him to the wall with knives and throwing stars. She then puts on his clawed glove and stabs him with it. Tracy throws her a pipe bomb and she sticks it in his chest. Doc tears the door down and the three of them escape as the bomb explodes, killing Freddy and releasing the three dream demons, who fly away.
Maggie then says "Freddy's dead."
Sequels
Though this was intended as the last Freddy film, three separate sequels have been made. One, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, has Freddy appear in a world outside the Nightmare on Elm Street series; Freddy vs. Jason, takes place within the Nightmare on Elm Street timeline, depicting Freddy's return with the help of Jason Voorhees, and their subsequent battle. Finally, A Nightmare on Elmstreet was rebooted in 2010.
Click on the end credits to link!
Box Office
Early promotional poster
With a widely 3D release on September 13, 1991, Freddy’s Dead opened with $12,966,525 on its first weekend, becoming the highest grossing film of the series until Freddy vs. Jason broke its record. On the second weekend, I still holds the first place but drop to only $6,626,378. It finally dropped to No.11 on the 5th weekend, with a box office success of $34,872,033, becoming the third highest grossing Nightmare on Elm Street film at that time, and now it is still sets the 5th highest in the series.
Critical Response
Although Freddy’s Dead made a box office success, it received mostly negative reviews from both the critics and the fans. The film holds an poor overall score of only 21% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes it the second lowest rating Nightmare on Elm Street film. The critics panned the film’s poor 3D visual and its handicapped comedic film style. In Nightmare on Elm Street Encyclopedia DVD features, Robert Shaye apologizes to the fans about the film’s poor reception.
On the official Nightmare on Elm Street Films website interview, Robert Englund repeat the reporter’s question about his view on the film, he only says: “Good Poster.” In his book Hollywood Monster, he comments that Freddy's Dead is one of his personal least favorite Nightmare film's in the series, and he also describes the film as "The weakest Nightmare sequel ever".
While the film was widely panned by the critics, some fans also believes the film is one of the worst Nightmare on Elm Street films along with Freddy's Revenge and 2010 Remake.
Trivia
- When Spencer falls asleep he sees Glen Lantz
Glen on NoES 6
Deleted Scene
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Photo Gallery
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare has a Photo Gallery.
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