| A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Stephen Hopkins |
| Produced by | Robert Shaye Rupert Harvey |
| Written by | Characters: Wes Craven Story: John Skipp Craig Spector Leslie Bohem Screenplay: Leslie Bohem |
| Starring | Robert Englund Lisa Wilcox |
| Music by | Jay Ferguson |
| Cinematography | Peter Levy |
| Editing by | Brent A. Schoenfeld Chuck Weiss |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | August 11, 1989 |
| Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $8,000,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $22,168,359 (Domestic) |
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is a 1989 American slasher film and the fifth film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series. It was directed by Stephen Hopkins. The film's general tone is much more gothic and dark than the films before, and used a blue filter lighting technique in most of the scenes. The film's main titles do not display the "5" which was used in all of the promotional material, TV spots, trailers, and merchandise. The main titles simply say "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child".
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Taking place almost a year after The Dream Master, Alice and Dan have now started dating and there is no sign of Freddy Krueger. Alice begins to have dreams of a young nun, with a name tag for "Amanda Krueger", being locked away in an asylum full of maniacs. Upon graduating from high school, Alice and Dan plan their getaway to Europe. Alice has made some new friends: Greta, a supermodel in training; Yvonne, a future Olympic diver; and Mark, a comic geek.
As Alice makes her way to work she finds herself back at the asylum. Alice is wheeled into an operating room on a stretcher, wearing Amanda's uniform, and screaming in pain. As Alice looks around she sees Amanda Krueger on the table, instead of herself, giving birth. As the baby is delivered, Amanda clamors to get to it. The baby breaks free from the doctors and escapes the room. Alice follows it into a church rectory, the same place that Alice defeated Freddy in the previous film. Before she can stop him, the baby finds Freddy's clothes and quickly grows into an adult. Amanda shows up to help Alice, but is disrupted when Freddy slams the church doors closed on her. After these events, Alice finds herself at work, but four hours late.
Alice immediately phones Dan who leaves their friends and rushes over to the diner. Before Dan can make it he falls asleep and Freddy (after transforming Dan into a very literal speed demon) forces him to drive into another vehicle. Alice, after watching Freddy take possession of Dan, faints in the middle of the street. At the hospital, she is informed that she is pregnant with Dan's child. While recouping, she meets a young boy, Jacob. Yvonne later informs Alice that there were no children on her floor, nor is there a children's ward at the hospital. Freddy begins to kill Alice's friends one by one as they fall asleep. First is Greta, by forcing her to eat herself to death. Freddy then goes after Mark, and only after Alice draws herself into Mark's dream does Mark start to believe Alice. Alice requests an early ultrasound for her baby, and she soon realizes that Freddy is using her child to get into her friend's dreams. Alice also discovers that Jacob is really her unborn son. While Alice is looking for Amanda's body, Yvonne is attacked by Freddy. It's only when Yvonne barely escapes Freddy, thanks to a little help from Amanda's soul, that she accepts what Alice has been telling her. Shortly afterwards, Mark finds a comic depicting the entire events to that point and is drawn into his own nightmare. While there, Mark sees an image of Greta and finds his "dream power", the Phantom Prowler. He attacks Freddy, but is ultimately killed by Krueger and cut to pieces (literally, as he was turned into a paper character in his nightmare).
Alice sends Yvonne to the now-abandoned asylum (former Westin Hills) to release Amanda's soul while she sets out to free Jacob. Freddy pulls her into a M. C. Escher-like labyrinth to try to slow her down. Freddy goes back into hiding inside Alice as she finally catches up to Jacob. Upon the revelation that Krueger has been hiding inside of her the whole time, Alice forces him out, but almost dies in the process. After being released by Yvonne, Amanda arrives and instructs Jacob on how to defeat Freddy. Jacob, releasing the power that Freddy has given him, forces himself and Freddy to revert back to an infant. Alice picks up Jacob and absorbs him while the now-infant Freddy tries to escape. Before he can escape, though, Amanda picks him up and absorbs him back inside. Freddy begins to fight from within and the church doors close. A couple of months go by; Alice gives birth to Jacob, and is finally at peace from the nightmares.
In the film's last scene, the children who appear throughout the series and are used as omens of Freddy's presence are shown, humming the familiar song "One, two, Freddy's coming for you..." wearing church outfits. They are next to Alice, her father, Yvonne and baby Jacob.
The film was critically panned, and has an overall 29% 'rotten' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Along with Freddy's Revenge, Robert Englund has cited number 5 as one of his least favorite Elm Street movies in his book Hollywood Monster.[1]
The film opened in 1,902 theaters making $8.1 million in its opening weekend. The domestic gross was $22.1 million, making it the second lowest grossing Nightmare movie.
1990 Fantasporto Awards
1990 Young Artist Awards
The graduation sequence was considerably cut down, which included Alice's father giving her the camera. As a result there are a number of minor continuity errors such as Alice holding airplane tickets moments before Dan gives them to her as a surprise gift.
An unrated version of the film was originally released on VHS and Laserdisc. This version contained longer, more graphic versions of Dan, Greta, and Mark's death scenes. In Dan's scene, cables can be seen sliding under the skin of Dan's arm, a large piece of the bike pierces his leg, and the skin on Dan's head is much more graphically torn off while he screams in pain. In Greta's scene, Freddy slices open a doll that begins to bleed and Greta is shown to have a gaping wound in her stomach, from which Freddy starts to feed to her. Also Mark's demise when Freddy starts to kill him . As of 2010, New Line Cinema has yet to officially release the uncut version of the film on DVD; however, snippets of these scenes are found in the Nightmare 5 section of the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.
The soundtrack featured ten tracks. The first side was essentially all heavy metal, with the second side essentially being all rap and hip-hop.
Bruce Dickinson, famed singer of heavy metal band Iron Maiden, wrote and performed the song "Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter" for this movie's soundtrack. The song, later re-recorded by the band Iron Maiden itself, went on to be #1 UK single.
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