And that’s it. Unfortunately, now that the fourth movie is done and the fifth one is underway, I fear I won’t have anything interesting to talk about.

We’re dropped immediately into a blue-filtered sex scene. Oh wait. I put on an old Michael Mann film by accident. No wait. I didn’t. This is the right movie. I just saw Lisa Wilcox’s name. She’s back for another go-round. And her boyfriend’s here, too. They just conceived the Dream Child.

Watch out world.

Oh and now she’s stepped into the shower. Looks like we’re diving head-first into the big pool o’ movie cliches. But hey, at least she’s naked.

This entry into the Nightmare canon was directed by Martin Scorsese. He apparently thought– wait, really? Let me check that.

This entry was directed by Stephen Hopkins, further proving that if you direct one of these things, you go on to better things. Like Lost In Space and Ghost And The Darkness. Actually, he did crank out more than twenty episodes of “24” early in the run of the show, so I appreciate that. And then up next he’s doing “The Reaping” with Hillary Swank. He’s probably–

Oh hey, the movie’s still on. Amanda Krueger’s giving birth in the OR from hell. “Holy shit,” says the doctor, “What is this?” And then hairless troll doll scurries out into dreamland. I think I prefer the pissing dog resurrection of the last movie.

By this point in the series, we abandon all hope. We’re so far gone from the original concept that the festivities have become a gnarly black thread studded with little gristly bits of special effects creativity. There’s nothing scary going on here. There’s nothing even ironic or true. It’s just an exercise in self-aware pop culture kitsch.

Okay, now Alice’s boyfriend is dead. He just turned into Ghost Rider and crashed headfirst into a plot device. I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a black cat leap out of a shadow. Oops, and while I was writing that, Greta died too. An anoretic’s nightmare. Freddy Krueger, never less scary than when dressed in a chef’s hat saying things like, “Bon appetit, bitch,” stuffs Greta’s face full of food. And then she croaks.

Speaking of black cats, I used to hang out with a neighborhood cat I called Mooch, after the character in the comic strip, Mutts. He was cool. I’d be typing away, late night, and he’d just wander in. One look around, a twitch of the whiskers, and he’d saunter over to the couch and curl up next to me. Kinda like this: Hello. Food? No. Dogs? No, as usual. Fuzzy Man? There he is. Yawn. Soft. Sleep. He was a muse sometimes. I would sit at my desk, laptop humming, and he’d curl up next to me under my desk lamp, dreaming his cat dreams in a land where all the bowls of food are big, all the dogs are all pent up, and everything else makes small, quick movements. Mooch got eventually got carried away by an owl. No joke. I had moved him down to Camarillo and one day–

Oh good, Kelly Minter’s about to die. She drives me crazy in this movie. In fact, I haven’t seen her in a movie yet that I’ve liked her in. Just rubs me the wrong way. Oh wait. She’s not dead yet. The comic book artist friend (everyone has one of those) gets sucked into the dream in a “Take On Me” moment.

That’s an A-Ha reference.

“Faster than a bastard maniac!” screams Freddy, and in the process sinks this movie so far below the surface that angler fish are trying to eat it. And now comic book artist friend is dead.

I wonder if Lisa Wilcox ever had a moment when she said to herself, “My god, this movie is gonna be angler fish food.”

Finale courtesy of M.C. Escher.

Barf.

Oh and Kelly Minter survives. Who’d a thunk it?

Made for about $6 million this managed to pull in about $22 million during its theatrical run. That’s a lot of disappointed moviegoers.