After watching Freddy’s Tricks and Treats, I can see why Freddy’s Nightmares never did catch on. The budget is super low, the acting is pretty sub par and Freddy just kinda stands around, spouting random one liners every once and awhile. It’s a shame really, as a series about our favorite 80s killers, would be awesome and the potential was there, but alas, it failed big time, lasting only two seasons and never being released on DVD (unless you get your hands on a bootleg copy, which really is just recorded from VHS). As for the episode I watched, Freddy’s Tricks and Treats takes place at first on Halloween, so it was clearly obvious I needed to watch this one for October, sneaking in this review just under the wire.
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: Freddy harasses a young medical student on Halloween night, driving her to the brink of madness and beyond.
Tatlock’s Quick ‘n Dirty Recap: Mariska Hargitay stars as Marsha, a medical student, who is trying to study hard on Halloween night, avoiding the parties and heading to the morgue to cut up a dead guy. The lack of sleep is starting to get to her and she eventually starts seeing a burnt man in a fedora and red and green sweater, who keeps popping up out of nowhere and attacking her. Mark, Marsha’s friend, wants her to just party hard that night and she can’t do that, as she was always raised to study hard and avoid boys by her Grandmother. Her Grandmother was a real hard ass, which plays into the first half of the story. After a few random and strange events, we head into the second half of the story, which deals with Marsha trying to recover from her bad dreams and gets the help from Zach, a young student, who is studying dream patterns and brings in Marsha to record her nightmares (really, it’s just so he can watch her undress in her naughty dreams). Will Marsha escape Freddy’s clawed grasp, or will she be another in a long line of slain Springwood teens?
Tatlock’s Opinion: It’s my understanding that there are only a few select episodes that deal with Freddy directly, so it was kinda nice to pick one that was really all about the dream demon. As for the episode, overall, it was a bit of a letdown. It runs at a lengthy 46 minutes and the first 20 minutes or so are not too bad, with Freddy terrorizing this poor student, to the brink of madness. However, the last 20 minutes stretches on far too long and is fairly boring. This episode would’ve certainly be better off doing some slicing and dicing and cutting that time down to a nice half hour length.
Freddy Krueger himself, played by Robert Englund, is always a nice treat and here he isn’t any different, although he is neglected to just kinda popping up randomly and saying something catchy, which honestly, isn’t all that different than A Nightmare on Elm Street 4. The makeup work on Freddy is great, with Kevin Yagher doing the job, so it’s nice to see that Freddy wasn’t part of the low budget problems, only everything else was, with cheap sets, cheap acting and cheap story.
Verdict: The first 20 minutes or so of Freddy’s Nightmares: Freddy’s Tricks and Treats isn’t too bad for a Halloween themed Freddy episode. The last 20 minutes though, drags on and on and I started to grow tired and I have a feeling you will too.
Rating: 2.5/5 (-2.5 for the low budget, acting and second half of the story. +2.5 for Freddy looking good and the first half of the episode being not half bad.)