August 19, 1988

  This time it's A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, New Line Cinema's latest installment in the highly successful series that has broken box office records and made Freddy Krueger a phenomenon throughout the world. Unlike many sequels, which seem to fade into oblivion, each chapter in the Nightmare series has gone on to become a box office record-breaker. New Line's Robert Shaye feels the reason is a six letter word: Freddy.
  "Freddy Krueger is the man audiences love to hate," he explains. "Freddy has become a great anti-hero. The world was ready for a character like him. He struck a chord in a large number of people." Shaye also feels that while the Nightmare flims are certainly entertaining, there's more to them than just thrills. "We've tried to give the films a certain intelligence," he noted. "There is a certain wit and an understanding of fear and how it affects people. That's what entertainment and art are all about." According to actor Robert Englund, who's Freddy, the character has become a worldwide phenomenon. The reason for the film's enormous popularity is simple: Freddy is absolutely evil--and there is nothing that can beat him or best him. Renny Harlin, director of the newly released horror thriller Prison, comments, "To make a great sequel, you've got to do everything a little better and with more originality. For this film, I wanted to develop stronger characters and relationships. A film can have all the special effects, but if the audience doesn't care about the characters, you are lost. Great films need great characters."
  Harlin is convinced that he has found a great character in Alice, played by Lisa Wilcox. In the latest film, Alice, a shy and introverted teenager, watches as Freddy destroys all of her friends one by one. Realizing that she can control her dreams, Alice absorbs her friends' good qualities and uses them to take on the ultimate villain, Freddy Krueger. For Wilcox, who is making her feature film debut, the role was an exciting one. "I'd always been a fan of the films," she explained, "and I knew it would be a great experience working in one. This was a very unique role for an actress." She admitted that the special effects in the film presented a challenge. "Doing a film with as many complicated special effects as this one had does make the job of acting a little more difficult," she noted. "Not only did I have to concentrate on acting, but at the same time, I had to always be thinking about the various special effects, many of them which would be added after we were through filming a scene."
  Principal photography began in 1988 in Los Angeles. In addition to on-location shots throughout the city--including an auto junk yard, a graveyard and a specially-built Elm Street house--many of the film's interiors, special effects and stunts were filmed on stages in Valencia, north of Los Angeles.
  It was especially fortunate for all, including Robert Englund, that most of the film was shot on a sound stage. While filming in a park in San Pedro, south of Los Angeles, the cast and crew experienced first hand Freddy's enormous popularity. The part, which was made over to look like a beach, complete with 30,000 tons of sand and dozens of palm trees, was the setting for a scene where Freddy attacks a victim. Word of Freddy's presence in San Pedro soon spread. By afternoon a large crowd had formed. In full make-up, Robert Englund talked with his fans and signed autographs. The next morning, over three hundred people came to see Freddy. The local police were called in to escort Freddy to the set. When he was finished filming for the day, Englund went back to his trailer only to find it covered with dozens of people. Englund and his make-up man had to dive into the trailer. By this time the people were pounding on the roof. Englund threw pieces of Freddy mask out the window and eventually signed more autographs to quiet the rioting fans. Undoubtedly, Freddy is a giant among horror heroes.