[Frankie Teardrop]

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5: THE DREAM CHILD – I wonder if I can hear those Freddy claws scraping the bottom of the barrel, but as I’ve not yet seen the notorious ‘Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare’, I’ll reserve judgement. On the other hand… I liked it. It’s a total mess, no more than the natural consequence of a load of studio execs going “who cares, just pile on the effects,” but I enjoy that kind of bad. Scene after scene of ludicrous dream shit, a strange tone that marries bleak mean spiritedness with eighties knockabout splatter humour, characters no more than mere devices, effects gratuity that strains for the depths of nightmare but instead brings us the hilarity of someone turning into a motorbike just because that character liked riding his moped… Freddie’s one-liners are the most sentient thing about it.

GHOSTS OF MONDAY – A mysterious hotel bigs up its dark history, hoping that Julian Sands will reel in the punters after he uses an incident of mass poisoning there as the basis for a paranormal documentary... etc. GOM is a strange one, a microbudget cheapie that starts with ghost stuff, throws in an Argento-esque murder scene, then finishes by piling on just about any reference to hotel-based horror ready to hand (nods to ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Beyond’ are the tip of this not particularly impressive iceberg.) Somehow this all connects with a Lovecraftian sea-cult and something slimy in the cellar. Again, it’s a bit of a mess, and it chafes a little knowing that this was one of Sands’ final venues, but I quite liked its tossed salad approach. And it’s short enough to stay below the boredom threshold.

ALL AMERICAN MURDER – Stude with attitude Artie hits Squaresville after a bit of arson prompts his relocation to an uptight campus populated by Aryans and horny faculty wives. When his new gf is murdered, embittered cop Christopher Walken steps in to teach him a life lesson… and gives him twenty four hours to nail whodunnit or face life in the slammer. ‘All American Murder’ is such an odd little film. I loved it. It has the surface quality of a post-‘Heathers’ campus-based TV drama – sort of – but then ditches it for an almost giallo-like structure organised around this ludicrous ‘solve your own crime in a day or you’ll be sorry’ device. It rolls with a quasi-noirish swing whilst spouting wildly snappy dialogue, throwing in jarring spurts of gore, and shackling together its two leads as a weirdly contrived buddy cop / surrogate father – son team, and it’s difficult to know what it’s trying to do with all these incongruities apart from boil them up to watch the pan overflow. I was hooked though, not just because of Walken; the whole damn mess (yep, another one) feels at odds with itself but somehow totally works, which might betoken greatness behind the camera for all I know. Speaking of, apparently Ken Russell was originally slated to direct – the mind boggles, it’s crazy enough as it is.