Afterthoughts

This page has a mini-review of every episode of FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES, with episode 1 all the way at the bottom (where it belongs- it's awful!) and #44 at the top.

I know what you're thinking: Why did you devote so much time and thought to such a disposable, low-quality show (easily the worst of the late 80's TV horror boom, which included MONSTERS, TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and TWILIGHT ZONE) that got unceremoniously canceled after two seasons and will probably never be officially released, thereby making this of interest to a fringe audience only?

Good question, good question.

Anyway, there are a lot of reasons this show failed. I really believe the main one was money. This show is just starving for some production values. Every episode looks cheap because it was filmed on tape and shot with a ridiculously short schedule that clearly didn't allow the creative folks to execute things correctly.

The second one is the two-act structure. If they wanted to do a half-hour show, they should have just spent the money they used on a half-assed hour-long episode and used it to make a full-assed half hour episode that would probably be much higher in quality. The constrained structure also keeps the viewer from getting too involved in the story and tends to make events feel garbled and rushing towards a contrived finale.

The third one is the endless dream sequences. It's like every episode has a quota of nightmares and the script is just a device for them. Story is secondary. The dreams are almost always repetitive and maybe one in ten actually adds anything substantial to the episode.

The fourth is the awful acting. This probably goes under the money category, but still, more than half the episodes in this series have actors that are completely and utterly incompetent and seem to have no clue what they're saying or doing. If it happened once or twice, it would be forgivable, but this is a constant.

You can't say it was the limitations of network TV because it wasn't on network TV. It only played late night on UHF stations. Although there were never any nipples shown, this show had endless amounts of female flesh on display and the gore was graphic and intense. TV limitations have nothing to do with this series' artistic and financial failure.

So that's my two cents. I watched every episode out of an idiosyncratic fascination with a childhood interest. Enjoy my analyses, I hope you get a laugh out of them.

44- Life Sentence

This is another episode that's basically a crime drama with gratuitous, pointless dream sequences. Delete the nightmares and insert some court scenes and this would be a sub-par LAW & ORDER episode. It's about a guy who blows his chances at parole due to his paranoia about getting killed and a warden who kills an inmate accidentally and tries to get elected as sherriff using what he learned from the victim.

This was the last episode of the series and it goes out not with a bang, but with a whimper. I'm sure they knew this would be the last episode, but there's nothing special or unique about it whatsoever. It just fills in 45 minutes and ends. This show had its ups and downs, but it's unfortunate that it went out on such a bland note.

I'd love to end my review of the last episode with some sort of whiz-bang insult, but it's not that bad. I should point out that there's a scene where Freddy's in a cell with a guy and Freddy drops a bar of soap and makes the guy bend over to pick it up. Freddy proceeds to stab the guy with all four finger blades- guess where? You probably guessed right. Happy trails, FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES.

43- Prisoner of Love

This one has particularly nasty twist endings on both halves of the show. Overall, it's actually a pretty good episode, about a prison chaplain who falls in love with a female inmate and is betrayed by another inmate. There are some above-average ethical dilemnas and internal monologues about the obligations of a "Man of God."

It's not particularly fun, but it's some fairly well-crafted drama with only a few clunky moments dragging it down.

42- Dust to Dust

This is a sequel to the uber-awful "Prime Cut" episode. This one has a lot less shame and is more of an all-stops-out idiot comedy. The cannibals from that episode join a 12-step Cannibals Anonymous program to help cope with their problem but they lapse and end up eating a guy who was infected with a biological weapon. They get kidnapped by the government and experimented on.

This has acting and production values about on a level with a public access comedy show. There's something admirable about these people willing to say and do the stupidest things imaginable, but this doofy story really had no business on FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES.

41- A Family Affair

This is a fluke in the series- an episode with an almost all-black cast. The acting is well above-average for the series and the plot, about the damage caused by an affair, is a bit more serious than most. The only hammy acting going on here is by a WHITE woman. Stupid honkies.

The second segment has a Bergman-eque game with death and a surprising anti-drug message. Freddy doesn't even crack a smile on his closing remarks, he just says "Drugs. Now there's a real nightmare." Moralizing statements from an undead serial murderer may be questionable, but it was nice to not hear him make a stupid joke about drugs the way he does about everything else.

40- Funhouse

This one follows a sleazeball cable guy through two adventures of degenerate romance. The first part's about a jealous ex-husband and the second part's about a not-so-jealous current husband who lets his wife cheat on him. The first one's lame, the second one has a Scooby-Doo ending that's at least good for a laff or two.

Take note of the fact that Freddy appears in a dress and long blond wig at the end of this episode. His experiences with Jesse in NIGHTMARE 2 (the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN of the ELM STREET franchise) seem to have affected him permanently.

39- Interior Loft- Later

This episode is basically an excuse to re-use the main set from the last episode and it's only slightly better. An artist fakes his own death to increase the value of his art. But all does not actually end well for him! Ooga booga! Then a tangential character from the first segment takes center stage in the second one as a con artist who manipulates the two women he lives with. But all does not actually end well for him, either!

This one's only for drooling adolescents who want nothing more out of their television than women in bras. The acting's cheeseball-o-rama and everything that happens is so tedious and annoying, I'm not even going to waste any more thought on it.

38- Interior Loft

This one's another adolescent sex fantasy about a woman who gets stalked by a fan obsessed with her phone sex line and eventually this turns her into a psycho sex killer herself. The second half has the same plot as the notorious low-budget flick KILLING SPREE but with a different ending.

I can't come up with any feasible reason for anyone ever wanting to see this episode.

37- Prime Cut

This isn't even a half-baked vampire story, it's a quarter-baked one. I hate vampire stories anyway and the first half is a particularly bad one. The second half reveals that the first half was all a dream (whatever) and shows the people involved in it have been in a plane crash and must resort to cannibalism to survive.

This episode mainly consists of the lead female writhing around in her underwear. Somebody please fetch her some dignity and self-respect, she seems to have misplaced hers. Interestingly, graphic cannibalism is usually a no-no on television (it's generally forbidden in R-rated movies, too), but it happens here and in lots of episodes on this series.

If underwear and cannibalism are all you want in an episode, this one has both. Enjoy. Congratulations on having no taste.

36- Easy Come, Easy Go

This is a sequel to the far superior "Lucky Stiff" episode. It's more of the same shenanigans- thrice-married adulterous whore uses another man to knock off her husband, fails, then someone else comes into the picture to knock her off and fails. Bunch of people die and it's all very pointless.

Notable for the appearance of well-known actor Wings Hauser. He hams it up enjoyably and doesn't seem to be taking any of it very seriously.

35- What You Don't Know Can Kill You

The only nightmare in this show is the one being had by the person watching it. Wait-you mean it was real? I actually sat through it? NO!!!!!!

The first half is about an unethical hypnotherapist and the second one is yet another unwatchable mistaken identity story where a guy gets plastic surgery that makes him look like a mob informant. Dumb ending on the first segment, dumb AND pointless ending on the second segment.

I want my 45 minutes back.

34- It's My Party and You'll Die If I Want You To

This okay episode is about a B.S. spirit channeler who Freddy decides to possess and use to kill a whole slew of people, then knocks her off. In a second half, connected by a strand about as thick as a microbe, Freddy crashes the dreams of people who come into town for his class year's high school reunion. There's a notably graphic severed-hand gag where blood sprays like something out of Monty Python.

This isn't great television by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a solid enough way to kill 2,700 seconds. An entertaining though silly teenage character returns here from the "Photo Finish" episode, too. He manages to survive both episodes! Good for him. I'm sure his family and friends are very proud of him.

33- Dreams That Kill

This is a fairly cool episode, even though it's hammier than Porky Pig diving into a swimming pool of pepperoni.

It's about Freddy demanding a talk show host cancel a segment on dream deaths and then turning him into a catatonic vegetable when he refuses. Lotsa brutal torture going on after that since Freddy's pissed and the guy can't wake up. The second half has some half-baked science fiction action with the talk show host's brain cells (and nightmares about Freddy) being transfered into a crash victim's brain.

It's got some entertaining moments, though there's too much Freddy. This is one of the rare episodes where he has too much to do (he's usually only present for a few painful seconds to make some lame wisecracks) and it probably would have been more intense and creepy if he were in the shadows.

32- Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

This is a lame sequel to a previous lame episode, "Bloodlines." It mystifies me that the makers of this show do follow-up episodes to only the WORST ones in the bunch.

The first awful segment is about a babysitter babysitting a house with a crazy person in the basement. Eeks! I'm-a scared! The second half is about the crazy person getting out and taking over the babysitter's identity. There is nothing scarier or more entertaining than mistaken identity. Believe me, I checked.

31- Monkey Dreams

The first half of this is a lame segment about a gambler whose luck runs out and tries to make a killing on contacting extraterrestrials. He fails, but in an unusual way. This character was in the even worse episode "Memory Overload" and he finally dies here. I'm not sure what made the creative team think he was so compelling a character that he needed another episode. He was in one scene in the previous show and he was upstaged by a desk.

The second half seems to be a really clumsy, heavy-handed anti-animal experimentation polemic (by and large, that's all it is), and I was ready to dismiss it. But then there's a tragic twist ending that almost brought a tear to my eye. It's unusual for an episode of this show to be so touching, but it really hit me hard.

30- Bloodlines

Ugh. The first half is a crime drama in the vein of Shock SuspenStories, only it's really bad. A guy escapes from prison and terrorizes his family. His son fights back. That's about it. It must have sounded better when it was pitched in some filthy corporate story pitching room. The execs greenlighting it were probably like, "Stuff happens? Fine, film it. Here's $40. It airs next Thursday."

The second half is the worst OMEN ripoff I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few. The little girl who Mommy believes is the Antichrist even has a rottweiler and a scene where she makes someone fall off a second-floor railing. There's a dream sequence where they discover the kid's mother was a jackal. All IDENTICAL TO THE OMEN. They just didn't care.

29- Silence is Golden

My only reaction to the first half, about a smash-mouth DJ and his comeuppance at the hands of a mime, was "Hey! That DJ guy was the gay secret service shooter in MY FELLOW AMERICANS!" That's about it. He's got a good voice, I guess. And the segment has one of the most menacing mimes I've seen lately.

The second half once again shows some hard-boiled detective influence with its tale of a jewelry heist gone wrong. It's a fair enough story, but the pointless nightmare sequences tend to just get in the way of the plot. It's more of a film noir than a FREDDY'S NIGHTMARE.

28- Lucky Stiff

This is one of the better episodes and has a fairly smooth story that flows between the first and second half. It's got a couple memorably gruesome scenes such as a man holding his spurting severed heart in his hand as it sprays all over his wife.

The story is nothing TALES FROM THE CRYPT hadn't already done a hundred times, but it's still fun. A man dies and his adulterous wife discovers he was buried with a winning lottery ticket and she uses then throws away her adultery playmate after she gets the ticket back. She's gets rich but is tormented constantly in the second half (by one of her undead husbands, come from beyond the grave to wreak revenge most foul? MAYBE, JUST MAYBE!).

Her first husband's performance is likable and entertaining, it's a shame he disappears after 5 minutes. Overall, this one's worth a look.

27- Memory Overload

Wow, this one sucks! A professor with a drinking problem is haunted by his past in the first half and the only good part there is the opening sequence where he gouges a female student's eyes out. It would have been more poignant if the performances were better and the twist ending wasn't so predictable.

The second half is just awful. A woman has adventures in cybercrime with a computer that narrates the events in the voice of a hard-boiled detective. Whoever wrote that one was smoking a particularly unhealthy brand of crack. Nothing to see here, move along.

26- Photo Finish

A formerly succcessful photographer tries to get back in the fame game and gets some help from Freddy. But Freddy demands something in return! (It's the lady's eyes)

Anyhoo, the second half is a more intriguing story about three FBI agents trying to solve a triple murder. It seems like a ripoff of MANHUNTER since the lead agent does the same thing William Petersen did in that movie: study the scene of the crime, put himself in the mind of the killer, and say stuff into a tape recorder like "You shot that woman! Didn't you, you so-and-so?! But why did you move the body? You sick so-and-so, why did you move the body?!" It was lame in MANHUNTER and it's lame here.

This one has more than its fair share of effective moments. Lotsa gore, too. Above average.

25- Welcome To Springwood

A mentally unstable woman + a mixup with the moving company = sheer terror!

I guess that's the equation the coalition of creative folks working on this show were working with. The ending is something of a surprise, to their credit. The second half, with its classical romanticism and flashbacks to past centuries, is a bit sophisticated for a show hosted by a wisecracking undead child molester. The first half is endlessly repetitive and the second half is endlessly dull.

24- Heartbreak Hotel

A tabloid reporter discovers that the stories he writes come true. I know, I know, right now you're leaping out of your chair, grabbing the computer monitor with unbridled enthusiasm, shaking it while jumping up and down and shouting "Wow! That's original!" Well, you're wrong. It's not original. It's been done. Many many times. This has a slight but witty twist that proves you will die a horrible death unless you learn to use proper grammar.

The second half is another cliched story about a guy with amnesia who has a dangerous secret! Wow, I was on the edge of my bean bag chair waiting to find out what his secret was. It turns out he wasn't who he thought he was. Sha-zam! Wasn't this TV series supposed to have something to do with Freddy?

23- Dream Come True

This episode's about a pop psychiatrist trying to "cure" a teen of his Freddy nightmares (he fails) and a cameraman trying to prove the existence of Freddy (he fails). This episode tries to have surprising twist endings and scares galore (it fails).

The second half is a retread of the homoerotic classic NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 since it's about a guy Freddy possesses in the real world to do his wicked deeds. The teen in the first one, David Kaufman, is an actor with a familiar face that you've probably seen in a ton of things but I guarantee you won't be able to identify even one of them. I checked his imdb filmography and he doesn't have this episode listed on it. Wonder why?

22- Safe Sex

This is probably the best FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES episode. It feels like a mini-NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movie since it actually stars teenagers and they're being menaced by Freddy. Both segments of the show are about the same teenage Goth gal who two different boys are obsessed with. Things end badly for one of them. I won't tell which one! Shame on you for asking!

There's lotsa mayhem and some fairly witty dialogue (thanks to horror scribe David J. Schow) that isn't actually ruined by poor performances. The acting is okay at its worst and that was a nice surprise. Top-notch, by this show's standards.

21- Identity Crisis

This one is stoopid stoopid STOOPID.

The first half is this dumb-dumb story about this middle-ager confronting how he outgrew his hippie ways and "sold out" while his son is a yup-and-coming savvy business guy. Lots of dumb dream sequences pervade this one and it's only the 21st or so time that it ends by saying the main character was dead all along.

The second half is worse. It's about this teenage gal who's constantly angry at her mom, probably for never taking her to Drama Club as a child so she could learn to act. None of this is believable or even watchable for so much as a split-second.

Insert over-the-top brutal insult here. Pretend I said something really mean about this episode. Whatever it is, it applies.

20- The Light at the End of the Tunnel

There's a pretty cool story about self-help voodoo used to terrorize a sleazy video store owner in the second segment. And there's DICK MILLER in the first one. Any judgment I pronounce on this episode should be taken with a grain of salt because having my eyes graced with the epic coolness of Dick Miller causes me to lose my objectivity almost every time. (He's "Mr. Futterman" from GREMLINS if you don't know who I'm talking about. Visigoths.)

Miller has some great lines in his segment about a sewer worker who's terrified of tight spaces. It has some good scenes and effective nightmare moments. The second segment, though repetitive, works surprisingly well because the person being tormented is such an unremittant scumbag.

This episode is often misidentified as "Freddy Something" because it has the notorious opening sequence where Freddy takes over an episode of "Thirty Something" by stabbing the father and hanging the mother. This show is all about the family values.

19- Missing Persons

This one's got a pretty funny story about a babysitter who's trying to overcome her eating disorder but fails and starts pigging out then turns into a monster who tries to eat the kids. It's got talking food that mocks her. Gotta love that.

The second half is a forgettable tale of a midlife crisis-er who finds his identity switched with a criminal and finally learns to appreciate the life he has- but it's too late because he's DEAD. Great story.

Have fun with the first half and just ignore the rest.

18- The Art of Death

This one is particularly campy with its story about an illustrator whose comic creation comes to life and does his bidding and says stuff like "I live to serve you, master!" I give his performance an A for Awkward. There's a classic death scene where a spinning white treadmill turns red with blood and not much else interesting happens.

The second half is another lame-o REPULSION ripoff about one of the victims in the first segment who's claustrophobic. Her bad acting is contagious- everyone around her seems to catch it and sometimes come down with even worse cases.

17- Love Stinks

This episode has the rarest of rare attributes for this show: A Great Performance. This is provided by Jeffrey Coombs, who was already known at the time for his lead performances in RE-ANIMATOR. He makes even the worst dialogue work with the sheer conviction of his performance.

It's about a kid working the graveyard shift at a pizza parlor where Jeffrey Coombs makes pies with "special ingredients." It's people, in case you didn't guess. This is the second half of the episode and the first half was so forgettable, I watched it two days ago and I have no clue what happened. It couldn't have been important.

16- Cabin Fever

This one's about a corporate weasel guy freaking out and hallucinating on an airplane about terrorists, his dad, his company, sex in the lavatory, you name it. This episode throws everything against the wall but none of it sticks.

The second half at least builds some tension. It's about his fiancee (well, ex-fiancee- the guy dies) being tormented and terrorized by some backwoods folks out in the country. You ever notice there are no normal rural people in horror movies?

Freddy has a scene where he's making wisecracks while sitting on the wing of the plane like the demon in the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Terror at 20,000 Feet." This episode isn't worthy to lick that episode's pinky toe.

It's worth noting for ELM STREET buffs (who else would be reading this?) that the leading lady in this episode was Tracy, the tough female lead, in FREDDY'S DEAD. Also, Freddy himself (Robert Englund) directed this episode. And, except for parts of the second half, he does nothing special here.

15- School Daze

This one might be the worst of them all. Maybe. Probably. Any way you slice it, it's really really really bad.

The first half is about a guy (a real NONCONFORMIST^TM) who won't change his ways and finds out that students are being turned into robots. Maybe this is where DISTURBING BEHAVIOR got their plot from. Eh, who cares? The second half is about another kid stressing about the SATs and it just consists of the same dream of him arriving for the test unprepared over and over and over. You just want to scream at the makers, "We get it! He's stressed about the SATs! Get on with it!"

This episode needs to be flushed down the toilet, retrieved from the sewer, then flushed down the toilet again, because one flush is too good for this crap.

14- Black Tickets

Starring Brad Pitt! Really! And the story's about his character's struggle to grow up and handle a mature relationship. Isn't that what the real Brad Pitt is still struggling with, 20 years later? Life imitates fart.

The first half is about a couple's failed attempt to elope and has a few cool moments of surreal dread. The second half is about the wife's conflicted emotions about motherhood while Brad Pitt does a horrible job acting.

Pitt has no charisma and gives no indication that he's anything other than just another pretty face in this episode. He's upstaged by a pair of psychotic hillbillies who run a hotel of horror. They do a much better job with the material.

13- Deadline

This one's pretty lame. An obituary writer experiences the deaths of the people he writes about through dreams and this eventually drives him to jump to his death. Then, in a very loosely connected second half, a girl who survives a car wreck is haunted by the people who died in it.

It's not gleefully bad and there's no memorable moments, except maybe one where the girl is trapped in the flaming car while her friends, undead and covered with burns, laugh at her. That was a momentary flash of cool.

12- The End of the World

This episode haunted my psyche to no end when I caught parts of it at age 9. The imagery of a little girl getting her legs run over and then a mother falling off of a ladder and landing on a concrete driveway is still pretty intense to my adult eyes.

This one's about a teenage gal seeing her past in a dream and things she does in her dreams change her reality. It's badly staged and acted, but still watchable. Then the weaker second half is about her premonition of nuclear war and the government's attempts to use her, which is very 80's in its cold war paranoia vibe. Good thing we're not afraid of Russians and nuclear warfare anymore. Living in fear sucks.

The grotesque imagery in the first half and the intensity of about half of the first half's drama make this a classic, albeit a half-assed one.

11- Do Dreams Bleed?

The Chopper is chopping people in Springwood and that's bugging some high school athlete who takes his overacting very seriously. There's some intrigue about who the Chopper is and there's some psychological warfare between the athlete and his coach.

The story actually flows smoothly from the first to the second half (except for some gratuitous exposition and flashbacks at the midpoint), though it's pretty darn predictable if you're paying any attention at all.

Freddy delivers another one of his classically awful lines in one of his host segments: "The Chopper!? I just hate cut-rate competition!" Get it? The Chopper cuts people. It's a pun. Funny. Sigh.

This one's about average and the man behind it is director Dwight Little, who helmed the underrated HALLOWEEN 4 (The only good sequel in the series. It's true and you know it).

10- The Bride Wore Red

This is probably the most sexually retarded episode yet. A guy's having doubts about getting married so a stripper gives him a lecture while stripping and rolling around on the floor in the middle of a crowded nightclub. Wow, that's like a metaphor or something! Later, this guy is terrorized by the stripper (or "clothing-challenged individual," to be politically correct) until he's scared into going through with his marriage. And then I woke up and realized I just dreamed this episode. Or did I?

The second half at least has an unintentionally funny dream sequence as the guy's wife has this paranoid nightmare where she's a little girl and her father warns her what will happen to her if she tells her mother about his infidelities. The rest of it is by-the-numbers lady-going-nuts business.

This episode is also notable for Freddy's appearance as a DJ, replete with headphones, shades, and a turntable. He looks in the camera after scratching a record and enthusiastically proclaims, "Time for Gavin to face the music...with Rapmaster Freddy!"

If you're wondering why Warner Bros. has not released this show on DVD (nor are they ever likely to), read that last paragraph again. That says it all.

9- Rebel Without a Car

This is another example of a horrible first half giving way to a moderately entertaining, though pretty much unrelated, second half. The first half is "Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" again where a guy rebuilds a car and has adventures around town with it that don't matter because he was actually dead all along. Spoiler in that last sentence, watch out for it.

The second half is a strained drama about the dead guy's girlfriend trying to get into a catty sorrority that treats her like dirt. They even mock her for having a dead boyfriend! After one humiliation too many, she takes revenge.

And it's bloody revenge, indeed- there's more blood spilled in this episode than in the R-rated NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 (which came out around the same time). I was amazed at the brutality of something like this that was made for, and successfully aired on, TV. The censors must've not even bothered looking at late-night filler like this show.

8- Mother's Day

Juvenile sexuality is back in full swing with the first half of this fairly lame episode, which plays more like an 80's teen comedy than anything resembling horror. A new kid in town has people invade his house and throw a party, which he has to keep under control or face the wrath of his stepfather. Parents suck, man! Yawn.

The second half is about a radio DJ who accidentally causes a homicide by being insensitive. The ethical issues presented raise it above the mess that makes up the first half, but it's still a pretty tedious and repetitive series of nightmares where she's haunted by her actions.

The standard-issue bad acting and writing really cripple this episode because it keeps the characters from being realistic or involving despite the compelling story. Many lines are delivered like the characters don't understand what they're saying. It's called rehearsals, people. They're not expensive.

7- Sister's Keeper

For some reason, this episode has a good reputation among online FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES chatter. I can't fathom why- it's the pits! The twin lead actresses seem to be having a contest as to who can give the worst performance- and they both win. The story is stupid and seems like the writers were running low on ideas so they just decided to reuse and wipe out characters from the pilot episode, which was, despite its abundant awfulness, not as bad as this one!

The twin daughters of the cop who set the Fredster on fire in the pilot are menaced by Freddy to the point where one of them becomes mentally unstable and they decide to gang up on him in their dreams to stop him. And they fail, probably because they have no talent. There's also this stupid stupid subplot where the mousy twin trades places with the extroverted one. Oh, the entertaining shenanigans that erupt from that bit of whimsy! A veritable comedy of terrors!

"Sister's Keeper" is horrible, wretched, and awful. And it's bad, too.

6- Saturday Night Special

This is where the show's adolescent sexuality really comes to the forefront. Many episodes that follow have women that randomly strip, come on strong, and start making out with the main character. Since it happens so often, it seems the show's creators think this is the ideal way for women to behave, but it's pretty stupid and annoying to watch if you're old enough to shave.

A guy tries a computer dating service, reluctantly lies about himself, and ends up with a foxy lady who uncovers his lies and takes revenge while writhing about in a bikini on a zamboni. I'm not making that up.

The second half is a fairly clever story about people's obsession with appearance (Though I find it hard that a podunk middle-class town like Springwood would have such a prosperous plastic surgery industry). It has some above-average gross-out makeup effects and a handful of good moments to make up for the usual bad acting and dull dialogue.

This episode makes no sense if you think about it because- SPOILER ALERT!- the first half was all a dream the guy had before dying and the two female characters in the second half were introduced in that part- but they NEVER EXISTED IN REALITY, they were only in his dream! It seems the filmmakers didn't care enough to separate reality from dream and that may be a nitpick, but it happens a lot on the show and this sloppiness reeks of "who cares?"-ness on the part of the producers.

5- Judy Miller, Come On Down

This episode beat REQUIEM FOR A DREAM to the punch with regards to the scene of a woman obsessed with a game show getting hallucinogenically sucked into it. The first half concerns her family woes and culminates in a series of cathartic nightmares and, eventually, victory on her TV show in the real world. The second half is actually much more interesting- the couple starts to fall apart after they strike it rich and an old woman from the future comes to warn the woman about her fate.

The fairly straightforward narrative in the second half, combined with the lack of intrusive and gratutious nightmare scenes, makes for fairly compelling viewing. It's nothing original or classic, but it keeps this episode from being run-of-the-Fredmill crapola.

4- Freddy's Tricks and Treats

This is one of the more entertaining episodes. The first half is about a med student confronting her traumatic past and the second half is about a grad student exploiting her trauma for a science experiment. Freddy appears frequently and he actually participates in this episode's events.

The gore in this episode is notable- in the days before CSI, the autopsy scene was considered pretty grisly stuff. There's also an eye-gouging, mutilation, and a little girl kept in a cage. There's a couple moments in this episode where Freddy is actually somewhat menacing- something you only see in the first NIGHTMARE movie and a few parts in the third one.

Director Ken Wiederhorn hit with SHOCK WAVES (and KING FRAT) and missed by a mile with RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD II (and MEATBALLS II), so it's nice to see him not blow this episode.

There's some mild suspense and effective scares that make this a solid FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES. It goes without saying that this and every episode is cheap-looking and marred with flaws (they were all shot on tape with a massively rushed schedule), but this is one of the best.

3- Killer Instinct

This episode is redeemed by the lead performance of future TANK GIRL Lori Petty. In the first half, she plays a track athlete who uses a magic crystal to punish her enemies.

It's clumsy and silly (especially the teacher collapsing and coughing out a plethora of cotton), but Petty does her best with the material. The death-by-finish-line-decapitation on the track is also a clever creative touch.

The second half has nothing going for it except for Petty's appearances as a vengeful zombie. On a funny note, it looks like they have a stand-in for Petty in her last scene and the person looks NOTHING LIKE HER! They even show her in close-up several times, making no secret of the fact that the person is a ringer.

Even with its flaws, this episode is one of the better ones in the series. Credit Petty and director Mick Garris, who went on to do a great job adapting Stephen King's THE STAND and RIDING THE BULLET (let's not discuss SLEEPWALKERS or his SHINING miniseries...).

2- It's a Miserable Life

John Cameron Mitchell, who grew up to write, direct, and star in HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, gives a lousy performance in this lousy episode about a teen working the graveyard shift at a fast-food restaurant who is robbed at gunpoint. Then he gets shot. Or does he?

This should have been the pilot for FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES. It follows the formula of almost every episode that follows: stealing the premise of "An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge" (which was also stolen by JACOB'S LADDER, THE SIXTH SENSE, THE OTHERS, and plenty of others). The main character has a near-death experience then has a series of nightmares and hallucinations that make them confront their lives and actions but it turns out they were dead all along.

The second half of the show is about his girlfriend being taken to the psych ward and having another bunch of nightmares and hallucinations about her family and blah blah blah. The reason this and every show in this series has a complete break at the midpoint for a new story is because the hour-long shows were designed to be sold into syndication as 2 half-hour shows each. But not one episode was ever rerun even once. Oops.

Freddy appears once at the beginning and once at the end of each segment. This is status quo for his involvement with the show. Like a Ghoulie rising from a toilet, he rises from a vat of boiling french fry oil for his first appearance. That's pretty cool, at least.

This is a notable failure for director Tom McLoughlin, who made the fairly fun FRIDAY THE 13TH VI: JASON LIVES, which beat SCREAM to the punch with its slasher spoofery and satire by over a decade.

1- No More Mr. Nice Guy

This is the first and darn near the worst of the FREDDY'S NIGHTMARES series. It's a colossally horrendous retelling of Freddy Kruegger's trial and death by vigilantes. If you thought director Tobe Hooper (I can't believe this guy made the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) was making trash when he did THE MANGLER or SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION or CROCODILE, you ain't seen nothin' yet. It doesn't even follow the Wes Craven-dictated story of his last days, to boot!

You would think that the show at least used this pilot as a jumping-off point for some new Freddy adventures, but more than half of the episodes that follow have NOTHING TO DO WITH FREDDY WHATSOEVER. Making the pilot all about Freddy was completely pointless because the show really isn’t about Freddy at all.

Clumsy shots and editing, poor performances, and a general feeling that no one's really trying make this a pathetic start to the series.