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Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010) Review

Never Sleep Again bluray cover

Starring:  Heather Langenkamp, Wes Craven, Robert Englund, Robert Shaye, Sara Risher, Lin Shaye, Rachel Talalay, Jack Sholder, Jacques Haitkin, Amanda Wyss

Directed by:  Daniel Farrands, Andrew Kasch

Written by:  Thommy Hutson

Running time:  240 minutes

Rated:  Not rated (for language, violence, intense scenes)

 

It was the early 1980’s and New Line Cinema was in its infancy.  Up until then, New Line was only distributing movies, founder and CEO Robert Shaye was looking for a film project to make for themselves that was going to put the company on the map.  After directing Swamp Thing in 1982, Wes Craven was shopping his script for A Nightmare on Elm Street around to all the major studios with little interest.   Shaye and New Line took interest and decided to option the script and taking a huge chance, gave the film a green light with Craven as director.  What happened after that is the stuff of Hollywood legend and the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was born.

The original Nightmare film was destined to become a classic and would spawn seven sequels, a remake film, a A Nightmare on Elm Street movie postertelevision series, comics, novels, and more.  The Nightmare films have been called the most frightening and imaginative horror franchise in motion picture history.   Now whether you agree with that statement or not is purely subjective, but one can’t deny the indelible mark left on the genre by dream demon Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare films.

Image Entertainment has released on Blu-Ray for the very first time, the ultimate Nightmare documentary, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.  This exhaustive documentary takes a look at nearly every aspect of the Nightmare films and the series that even as a huge fan of the series, there were details I found out that even I didn’t know before.

The documentary is broken up into two platters, the first of which contains the documentary itself and the second disc contains the supplemental material.

In the documentary, each of the Nightmare films has its own chapter devoted to many aspects of each movie.  The chapters are as follows:

Don’t Fall Asleep – As you would expect, this examines the origins and filming of the original, A Nightmare on Elm Street in (1984).  This chapter covers the humble beginnings of the script to getting it filmed, the special effects, the casting process, film distribution and much more.  There are interviews with most of the cast members including Wes Craven, New Line CEO Robert Shaye, Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, and more.

A Nightmare on Elm Street part 2 movie posterKill For Me – This chapter examines the second film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985).  It details how the first sequel came to be from start to finish with spotlights on the underlying “gay” themes of this film.  There are again interviews with all the major cast members and filmmakers involved.

We’re The Dream Warriors – This chapter examines the third film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987).  This section takes a look at most of the major key points of the second sequel including bringing back the popular Nancy character and discusses the huge hit song “Dream Warriors” by Dokken and much more.A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 movie poster

How Sweet Fresh Meat – This chapter discusses the fourth film in the now hugely popular series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988).  This chapter discusses how then unknown director Renny Harlin was hired to direct through the film being made and distributed.  Interviews with cast and crew are highlights.  This turned out to be the highest grossing film in the series.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 movie posterWelcome To Primetime – This very interesting section highlights the television series featuring Freddy Krueger, Freddy’s Nightmares (1988-1990).  It is explained in this chapter how the series came to be from development through its entire run.  Key cast and crew are interviewed including Robert Englund, Wes Craven and more.

It’s A Boy – In this chapter, the next sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 movie posterChild (1989) is examined.  This section highlights how coming off of the high of The Dream Master led to this film getting made.  It discusses most of the key points of pre-production, filming, casting, special effects and more.

Every Town Has An Elm Street – This chapter discusses the next film in the series, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Chapter (1991).  The Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare movie posterfranchise was now running out of steam and producers wanted to end the series.  This section goes into detail on how they planned on killing Freddy off for good and talks about the filming process with key interviews with cast and crew.

Meet Your Maker – This chapter discusses the seventh film in the series, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994).  In this section, the producers learn you just can’t keep a good monster down and decide they had to bring Freddy back again, but the Freddy character had become a comedic caricature of his former self.  The filmmakers decided to go with a script by Craven himself bringingWes Craven's New Nightmare movie poster 2 Freddy back, this time as a more evil demon.

Place Your Bets – This chapter discusses the highly anticipated Freddy vs. Jason (2003) film.  This film had been trying to get off the ground for over a decade to no success.  This section talks about how the film finally saw the light of day including the controversial hiring of Ken Kirzinger to play Jason instead of fan favorite Kane Hodder.

The House That Freddy Built – This informative chapter discusses how New Line Cinema was absorbed into its parent company Time Warner in 2008 and forced out founder and CEO Bob Shaye.  The studio went from its small beginnings to a mini-major studio all due to the success of the Nightmare films, hence the studio would always be known as the house that Freddy built.

Disc two of the collection includes a wealth of supplementary material including, hours of extended interviews not seen in the finished documentary, a first look at Heather Langenkamp’s I Am Nancy documentary, For the love of the Freddy Vs Jason 2003 posterglove, Fred Heads: The ultimate Freddy fans, Horror’s Hallowed Grounds episode – Return To Elm Street, Freddy vs. The Angry Video Game Nerd, Expanding the Video Game Universe: Freddy in Comic Books and Novels, The Music of the Nightmare: Conversations with Composers and Songwriters, Elm Street’s Poster Boy: The Art of Matthew Joseph Peake, A Nightmare on Elm Street in 10 minutes, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy Teaser Trailer.

This collection is a fabulous look into all of the Nightmare films from beginning to end.  There is so much ground covered here it almost is too much to take in.  There are over 100 interviews with cast and crew that give such an intimate look at the characters and films.  It’s great to see what many of these people look like today.  If you’re even the slightest bit interested in the Nightmare on Elm Street films then you owe it to yourself to watch this documentary as it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.   I highly recommend this film for every horror fan.

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4 ½ out of 5 Pentagrams!

Watch the trailer for Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy here,

Michael Juvinall

I am a Horror journalist, producer, ravenous Horror fiend, aficionado of the classic Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, Werewolves, and all things Horror.

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