To me, the screenplay for Dream Warriors was the best Nightmare script to date, probably because it was written by a trio of Hollywood heavies: Wes Craven, Frank Darabont, and Bruce Wagner. Since the first Nightmare, Wes’s most notable, memorable work was in CBS’s updated version of The Twilight Zone, which proved that he still had as good of a grasp on the surreal and scary as anybody in the industry. Darabont was a Hollywood newcomer, but anybody who read the script could tell that the guy had some serious chops, and probably wouldn’t be surprised that he’d later turn the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption into one of the great films of the nineties. Bruce Wagner was also a talented newbie who would make a mark several years later with his Hollywood-based novels Force Majeure and I’m Losing You. Together, these writers concocted a clever little sequel that I think deserves consideration as one of the hundred greatest horror films of all time. Over the last twenty-five years, I’ve met tens of thousands of Freddy fans, and I think it is fair to say that if they were all polled, Nightmare 3 would win as fan favorite.
Chuck Russell, who also had a hand in the screenplay, was making his directorial debut, but as was the case with Jack Sholder from Nightmare 2, the guy overcame his lack of experience with sheer moxie and artistry. This was by far the most complex of the Nightmare movies to date—bigger sets, bigger effects, bigger cast—but Chuck handled the whole production like a wily veteran. (Seven years later, he directed the seminal Jim Carrey FX vehicle The Mask, whose $18 million budget was only slightly eclipsed by the combined total of the first four Nightmare flicks. He would also go on to helm The Scorpion King in 2002.)
Chuck came across as the hardest-working director in showbiz, always the first to arrive on the set, and always the last to leave, possibly because he was enjoying the opportunity to play with that big toy-train set that a Hollywood movie can be. The late eighties was one of the most exciting times in Hollywood for anybody with an affinity for special effects … that is, if you had a big budget. Nightmare 3’s budget was $5 million, which was barely enough to cover an explosion on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But luckily for us, Chuck and New Line assembled a crew who had the heart, skills, and vision to make our effects appear expensive. Chuck would ask, “Guys, I need Freddy to burn like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Can you do it for a hundred bucks?” and our guys would say, “Shit, Chuck, we can name that tune for $99.99.” This gifted young FX crew could watch a new effect in a big-budget movie and duplicate it for pennies on the dollar.
Bob Shaye and his creative gang at New Line also assembled one hell of a cast for the movie. Heather Langenkamp was back and, as always, a real trouper. The character Kristen was played by a nineteen-year-old knockout named Patricia Arquette, whom all the young males in the cast desired. These lovelorn boys were writing her mash notes and buying her flowers, and one particularly desperate young man turned to me for advice. He whined to me, “Patricia’s sooooo beautiful. I’m never gonna feel love like this ever again. What should I do?” He even asked me to help him with a love letter. I felt like Cyrano de Goddamn Bergerac.
A pre-Matrix Laurence Fishburne had a small part, and Dick Cavett and Zsa Zsa Gabor appeared in cameos. With Zsa Zsa in the movie, the already blurred lines between on-screen dreams and reality became even more surreal. Ms. Gabor, who was probably just grateful to be asked to appear in a movie again, apparently didn’t read the script or bother to do any research on the Nightmare flicks. I guess her agent told her, “I have a job for you,” and all she said was “Great. Vhat time zhould I zhow up, dahlink?” not realizing that she was about to throw down with a burnt-to-a-crisp serial killer. During the fake talk show where she’s interviewed by Dick Cavett, all her reactions seen on film were 100 percent genuine. She didn’t know who the fuck Freddy was, so when I jumped out, she had a mild freak-out. Cavett, who always had his finger on the pulse of pop culture, knew exactly who and what he was dealing with and looked wholly unfazed and handled the whole faux TV interview with aplomb.
Also making her film debut, breathtaking young model/ actress Jennifer Rubin played Taryn, the spiky-haired, dream-warrior junkie-girl who gets a fatal heroin injection from Freddy. At one point, the track marks on Taryn’s arms come to life and turn into little, hungry, sucking mouths. Those tiny mouths required an extensive special effects makeup session, with Jennifer having to hold her arm motionless for almost seven hours. The FX team did meticulous work, except for the minor error of putting the mouths on the wrong arm. Major bummer. Which, of course, meant Jennifer had to repeat the entire process.
The next morning, still half-asleep, I stumbled into the makeup FX room and was shocked to see the mirror covered with graffiti. The mystery tagger had used red lipstick instead of spray paint. Amid the lightning bolts, squiggles, and frowny faces, right in the middle was a single phrase: DA MAKEUP DONE GOT ME!!! Apparently, after almost a dozen hours in makeup, Jennifer snapped. I can’t say I blame her one bit. There have been days in the makeup chair when I’ve contemplated arson.
I’ve heard stories about actors who have been in the business far longer than Jennifer who have had major issues with makeup too. In 1984, my old pal Gary Busey played football coach Bear Bryant in a biopic called The Bear, and apparently the age makeup made him itchy and self-conscious, and it drove him nuts. Lori Singer, the cello-playing beauty of Fame fame, reportedly suffered through and could barely endure an elaborate witch-makeup session in Warlock, courtesy of my old producer Roger Corman. In The Bride, Sting’s contribution to the Frankenstein canon, the actor playing the creature apparently had such an intense allergic reaction to the makeup that production temporarily ground to a halt. And word on the street was that Leo DiCaprio despised the synthetic hair he had to wear as the aging Howard Hughes in The Aviator. Some people can handle it, some people can’t. Getting that shit put on and taken off your face every day for hours on end can be a real bitch.
Some difficult moments also occurred outside the makeup room on the set of Nightmare 3. One evening, we were shooting a scene in Freddy’s hellish boiler-room lair, using a converted warehouse across the street from the gritty, fortresslike Los Angeles County Jail. Heather and Patricia were supposed to run down the stairs from a high platform constructed near the warehouse’s ceiling, wind their way through boiling cauldrons of multicolored stuff, and attack Freddy; this meant that the girls had to begin their entrance from a ledge where the actresses could barely stand up straight. Making matters worse, the night crew had just finished painting all the interior sets that morning, and some of the stuff bubbling away in the cauldrons was actually paint.
I was down below on the floor waiting for Chuck to call action, and I realized that the entire warehouse reeked—once all the stage lights had gone on, the still-wet scenery paint had heated up, and thanks in part to the solvents being released from the bubbling-paint effect, the fumes had gotten noxious. Down where I was, it smelled pretty bad, but I could live with it, so I didn’t pay much attention to the odor. However, waiting for their cue up at the top of the set, Heather and Patricia almost succumbed to the poisoned air, especially Heather, who nearly passed out from the fumes and could have fallen God-knows-how-many feet to her death.
That night, after everybody went home, Kevin and I—whom people had started referring to as the Siamese Twins because we were practically glued together (literally, we spent so much time touching up the makeup with medical adhesive)—finished my makeup removal around four forty-five in the morning. With some Vaseline residue still on my face and a bit of crusty, dried fake blood coming out of my ear, we trudged out of the warehouse into the dawn, dragging ass because we were so fucking exhausted and starving. (I don’t eat much when I have the Freddy makeup on because, when I do, the natural oils in food cause my lips to come unglued, and when my lips come unglued, Kevin comes running across the soundstage and attacks me with his little, stiff glue brush, and believe me, nobody needs that.) Parked fifty yards ahead of us, in the street in
front of the jail, there was a hard-core Mexican catering truck, the kind that some people refer to as a roach coach or a ptomaine wagon. We were so hungry that we didn’t care. If our burritos were seasoned with roaches, so be it.
Unless you’ve had a friend or relative serve any time, you probably don’t know that in California, when you’re released from jail, you’re let out in the morning, bright and early, which was why a small crowd was in front of the security gate—mothers, daughters, sons, girlfriends, wives, all waiting for their loved ones to be sprung. Right behind all these friends and family members were about a dozen prostitutes. You might ask yourself, why would a bunch of hookers stand right in front of L.A. County Jail at the crack of dawn? Simple: the first thing some of these just-freed men want to do is to get laid. What these horny cons didn’t realize (or did they?) was that a couple of the prostitutes were transgender, one of whom presumed that Kevin and I might be potential clients and cut in line to proposition us.
Kevin and I politely declined his/her invitation. But since I was still wearing almost as much makeup as the, ahem, young lady and was kind of sympathetic to her plight, I pulled out my wallet and said, “Let me treat you to some breakfast.” The three of us stood there chowing down on the best burritos I’d ever tasted and watched the smoggy L.A. sun rise over the jail. As the ex-cons trickled out of lockup and into the welcoming arms of family and friends, our new transgender acquaintance polished off her burrito, daintily dabbed her mouth with a napkin, touched up her lipstick, and declared, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I have some dicks to suck.” A little walk on the wild side. Cue Lou Reed.
AS WITH THE FIRST Nightmare, we shot a couple of interesting scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut, most notably one featuring a female Freddy. One of the kids in the hospital has a Freddy dream in which he’s being seduced by a sexy nurse. The nightmare evolves into a kinky S&M fantasy, but becomes less M and more S when the ropes that bind the kid to the bed become Freddy tongues, and the nurse’s face morphs into Freddy’s, but her topless torso, which features a pair of perfect Playboy breasts, remains smooth and inviting … that is, for a moment. All of a sudden, the veins in her areolas come to life and turn into Freddy-like burn scars and snake up her cleavage, past her neck, and onto her face. (I’m pretty sure Kevin enjoyed the four hours it took to apply makeup to those tits.) This troubling, erotic transformation didn’t make the final cut for some reason. Occasionally I find myself signing bootleg stills from the missing sequence. Especially in Europe. Ooh la la!
After Nightmare 3, the Freddy Krueger phenomenon was in full swing: Freddy was making appearances in popular comic strips and in political cartoons on the editorial pages of daily newspapers. My old hero Johnny Carson started doing Krueger jokes, and references to Freddy appeared on TV and in major motion pictures, including one by none other than Tom Hanks in Dragnet. All kinds of weird Nightmare merchandise was marketed throughout the country: you could find pinball machines, Freddy Krueger action figures, talking dolls, posters, comic books, plastic knife finger gloves, squirting Freddy heads, board games, calendars, playing cards, and decals. I would even eventually stumble upon a Freddy Krueger pillbox sold in a kiosk at Catherine the Great’s summer palace while on location in St. Petersburg, Russia. In Cyrillic on this unlicensed (sorry, New Line) sleeping-pill/Valium container next to Freddy’s likeness, it read, “Take one and he’ll come for you.”
CHAPTER 8
NIGHTMARE #8:
I’m on a rocky promontory surrounded by boulders baking in the hot sun. A childhood friend is trapped above me. I’m climbing down to get help, and my foot gets wedged in a crevice. I pry it out and resume my descent down the steep cliff toward a dead tree jutting from the stone. I reach a drop-off and can go no further. I try to climb back up to the dead tree. I’m stuck. I keep trying to climb down with no success. The frightening recurring image in the dream is a vertiginous look over the edge of the cliff. It’s dizzying and nauseating, like Jimmy Stewart on the stairs of the bell tower in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s been a long time since I suffered through this nightmare. But not long enough.
NIGHTMARE 3 RAKED IN A WHOPPING $45 million, so come 1988, New Line of course commissioned a sequel to the sequel of the sequel. Again demonstrating an uncanny eye for new talent, Bob Shaye discovered three young screenwriters who would together come up with a different twist for Freddy and his victims.
An untried twenty-seven-year-old wunderkind, Brian Helgeland launched his career in high style with A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Brian—who would go on to win an Oscar for his screenplay of L.A. Confidential, get nominated for his adaptation of Mystic River, and concoct such box-office monsters as Conspiracy Theory and Payback—demonstrated a keen sense of structure that would make him one of Hollywood’s highest-paid writers. Writing under the pseudonym of Scott Pierce, brothers Jim and Ken Wheat had a modicum of experience, but compared to Brian, they were practically grizzled veterans. Their first feature film was a 1980 sci-fiflick called The Return, which featured one of the odder casts you’d ever want to meet at a sci-fifest: Martin Landau, Cybill Shepherd, Raymond Burr, Neville Brand (from Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive), and my old friend and co-star Jan-Michael Vincent. Five years later, they codirected and cowrote a Star Wars spin-off TV movie for ABC called Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. I had auditioned for the original Ewok Adventure with Kitty Winn from The Exorcist. Neither of us got the part. Too young again.
I think the reason so many young creatives—and I don’t mean only writers, but also directors, cameramen, and special effects techs—gravitated to the Nightmare franchise and were willing to work for low pay was because these movies offered them a real chance to stretch. More so than in a television series, or a romantic comedy, or a straight low-budget indie flick, they could really show off, strut their stuff as long as they stayed within the budget of their department. Taking creative chances was not only accepted, but also encouraged. The dream sequences were particularly fertile ground because they gave people the opportunity to let their imaginations fully flower. Wes Craven and Bob Shaye had never been meddlesome backseat drivers. Once they hired you, they trusted you to deliver. They gave advice but weren’t always second-guessing you. Another plus was that although New Line paid you peanuts on your first gig, if you did a good job, they promised to hire you to work on other New Line projects. The next time out, you’d likely get a bump in pay and so on. They were true to their word; the minimum-wage interns on the first Nightmare were in the camera department by Nightmare 4 and could now afford a down payment on a house, drive cars that didn’t break down every four blocks, and even start families.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to spread their wings on Nightmare 4, Brian Helgeland et al. let it rip. For the first time in the franchise the three writers picked up the story more or less where the last Nightmare left off.
I’d been working my ass off on the series Downtown, so when the filming for Nightmare 4 started, I was beat. As tough as a movie shoot can be, it’s far less difficult than a weekly sixty-minute episodic drama with multiple locations. Television hours are a real grind; you’re always adapting to changing conditions and the commutes suck. (Tyne Daly had the right idea when she was on Cagney & Lacey: when the schedule became too grueling, she would sometimes sleep in the studio car overnight at the next location, which gave her time to learn her dialogue for the following day. By minimizing the schlepping back and forth, she gained precious hours of sleep and was able to deliver Emmy Award–winning work on an insane timetable.) On the other hand, television money was far better than movie money—I’ll take a V paycheck over an early Nightmare one anytime.
As had become the rule, another Nightmare meant another hot new director, and, boy, did we find a good one, a talented foreigner with a vision, Renny Harlin. A blond giant from Finland, Renny had already directed two films, one of which was Prison, a tight little ghost thriller that starred an unknown Viggo Mortensen. Rumor had it that duri
ng our shoot Renny hadn’t had time to find a place to stay in Hollywood yet, so he crashed on his agent’s couch. I’ve always liked that image: this big guy who went on to direct the megablockbusters Die Hard 2 starring Bruce Willis, Cliffhanger starring Sylvester Stallone, and Deep Blue Sea starring Samuel L. Jackson, curled up on the sofa like a husband banished from the bedroom.
Coming off months of long hours and rush-hour commutes on my weekly series Downtown, I was feeling like dog meat and certainly wasn’t thrilled with the idea of getting back in that fucking makeup chair and facing cold glue and those stiff makeup brushes every morning. I was dragging ass, and Renny, to his credit, realized it. In hindsight, you have to be impressed that the guy was perceptive enough to notice that even though the performance was okay, his star wasn’t inspired.
Renny was hip to all kinds of new technology, most impressively a piece of equipment called video assist. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: you take your video assist unit, attach it to the top of a camera, let it run simultaneously with the movie camera, then, once the scene is over, you can watch what you’d just shot from the exact same camera angles. Today, with digital film, that probably sounds antiquated, but back then, we thought it was pretty damn cool. Renny was a big fan of video assist and generally watched the shooting from behind an enclosed monitor rather than next to the camera.
Some of the shoot took place in the northeast end of the Valley, a sprawling area of extremely variable weather. It can be scorching during the day, then, once the sun sets, it can drop down to near freezing. The Universal Studios backlot is infamous for plummeting temperatures and ground fog. One Friday night we were out in the Valley, shooting the junkyard sequence, and it was getting colder and a damp wind was picking up. I was still alert enough to recognize that the set was phenomenal, as spectacular as any set I’d worked on. They’d stacked old wrecks ten high to form a canyon of junked cars, and when the headlights magically blinked on like evil eyes, it looked like a junkyard from hell. Where else would Freddy and his crazy mutt hang out?
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