Saturday, February 6, 2016

Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy (1988)

I was just lamenting the other day that I miss renting my horror on VHS because of all the great trailers that played before the feature film. I used to have a pen and paper handy to write down new titles to check out when I returned the movie to the video store.

Lucky for us Portlanders we still have a few video stores around that offer VHS rentals of the rare movie that hasn't yet been converted to another format - like Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy.

Being that I was such a big Freddy fan when I was a kid it's a little surprising that I never watched or even really knew of the Freddy hosted television show about the good people of Springwood and their untimely deaths. But my husband had watched a few episodes on cable when he was a kid so he was eager to revisit the first episode, which also happens to be the origin story of Freddy. Though I suspected it would be pretty terrible I was totally game. I mean, I like terrible. Terrible can be fun.  Freddy's Nightmares: No More Mr. Nice Guy, turns out, not fun, just terrible.

School play kind of terrible. Public Access kind of terrible. The kind of terrible that becomes fascinating when you start to realize that HUNDREDS of people were involved in making and distributing the terribleness and yet it still, somehow, against all odds, made it to television. And. AND! It was directed by Tobe Hooper! I mean, I know that Tobe also directed Eaten Alive and Funhouse (actually a personal favorite though not good) I still have high expectations of him because, well, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was just THAT GOOD. (We won't talk about Poltergeist. You wouldn't like me if we talked about Poltergeist.)

The only positive thing that has come from this experience, aside from the pure visual pleasure of watching anything from 1988 (that hair! those outfits!) is that I can now say that I've seen the first episode of Freddy's Nightmares. Now the only thing left to do is to make some friends who would actually be impressed or even know what the hell I'm talking about.

2 out of 5 Stars

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