A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

Robert Englund, receiving star billings for the first time, is delightful in his frequent incarnations as Freddy, delivering his gag lines with relish and making the grisly proceedings funny.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is by far the best of the series, a superior horror picture that balances wit and gore with imagination and intelligence. It very effectively mirrors the anxieties of the teen-age audience for which it is primarily intended. [19 Aug 1988, p.17]

Directed by the Finnish-born Renny Harlin, it's a deft, fluid piece that rushes from one surrealist epiphany to the next, and along the way displays a craft and imagination far above the norms for the genre. Read full review

Harlin's arsenal of conceits and visual effects--pirouetting overhead angles, dancing trigonometry formulas, a pizza flavored with tiny human heads, a lot of fancy play with a water bed, and much, much more--keeps it consistently watchable and inventive. Read full review

Surprisingly watchable for the third sequel and despite its general predictability it's entertainingly inventive. Read full review

It seems that with Part 4, Freddy Krueger has just about run out of gas. Getting further and further away from creator Wes Craven's original concept, the series has declined into a plotless series of special-effects set pieces featuring Freddy slicing and dicing a variety of teenagers in their dreams. What the films lack in narrative, however, they make up for with pure cinematic panache, and the latest installment is no exception. Read full review

Elm Street 4' does have an endless onslaught of astonishing, often grotesque special effects .Mr. Harlin only has to keep things moving, which he does with restless camera work, swirling high above Freddy and his victims. Freddy, who says I am eternal, seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, immune to directors and scripts. Read full review

In-jokes for horror-film fans abound (the dog is named Jason, the monster in the Friday the 13th series; a cafe is the Craven Inn - Wes Craven directed the first Nightmare on Elm Street), and it's possible that those fans will be satisfied with the expensive, surreal special effects unleashed by director Renny Harlin. Everyone else is apt to agree with the teen-ager who dismisses Freddy by saying, "We all got better things to dream about." [19 Aug 1988]

As always, the teen actors are disposable, and even Robert Englund seems to be sleepwalking through Freddy. In the best Nightmares, Parts 1 and 3, the bad dreams not only made sense, but reinforced the idea of pattern psychosis and brought viewers into the dreamscapes. In 4 they're just cold splashes in the face. Read full review

The movie is heavy on shock and gimmickry, thanks to Renny Harlin's frenetic and flamboyant direction. The wafer-thin plot is little more than an excuse to showcase the astonishing achievements of special-effects makeup artists. [19 Aug 1988, p.D9]