My Thoughts on Never Sleep Again: The Extras

Now that you know my thoughts on the Elm Street Legacy feature I think it would also be great to touch base with the special features because the second disc is full of them. What I first want to get into is list of extra interviews that they didn’t use for each of the sections and I loved every minute of them. They were more trivial and added more information to some of the segments that only diehard fans would ever want to hear like: this is what the ‘soul chest’ was made out of. However, one extra in particular made me get all teary again and that’s when Kim Myers (who played Lisa) was reunited with Mark Patton (who played Jesse) for the first time in 20 plus years. They hugged for about 5 minutes and both of them were so emotional. It’s stuff like this that makes Nightmare On Elm Street differ from some of the horror movies. In a way, I too was reunited with the cast and crew from the films.

On a deep personal level, one of my favorite extras was the interview with James Rolfe, creator of Cinemassacre and the Angry Video Game Nerd. To us AVGN fans he made one of the best video game reviews of the NOES game. He shared with us his personal experience with the Nightmare movies and he brought up a really good point about Freddy; a point that I always bring up to my friends. He stated that what made Freddy so unique was that he had a face when all the other killers wore a mask, and that Robert Englund stuck with the films all the way until Freddy vs. Jason whereas most of the masked killers were played by various people. I had what some would call a ‘geekgasm’ when the AVGN was interviewed with one of the best documentaries about one of the best horror film series.

They included an entire segment dedicated to the soundtrack for the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and if anybody that knows me… you’ll know that I am a huge soundtrack geek. They got into the gory details as to what was going on in Charles Bernstein’s head and how he came up with the original score. They talked to other composers and they even brought in Dokken to talk about how they came up with the idea for ‘Dream Warriors.’ Bernstein brought up some points about the score that I never even thought about so in a way I was learning a little something about soundtrack composition.

One person on the special features collected Nightmare on Elm Street props and he had a massive collection of wardrobes, props, Freddy masks and the infamous ‘lost glove’ from the first movie. There was a science to figuring out whether or not it was real and it peaked my interest. One of the best segments was dedicated to the glove of Freddy Krueger and how it became a cultural icon both in the horror realm and in general. They talked about how it has always been associated with evil and the metaphoric symbol it stands for. They tapped into Robert’s take on the glove and had a special segment that showcased people and websites that make real Freddy gloves from K4 Gloves to Boiler Room Creations all the way down to KrueGear.

Probably one of the most captivating and entertaining segments of all was the locations featurette. They took us on a tour of all the locations from the first movie throughout California and told what scene it was from and how it was executed. They showed us the interior of the high school and the host told us how Wes tricked and faked the scene to make it look like the corridors were structured in a fluid way when the reality of it was geographically incorrect. What made this segment even more memorable was that they brought back some of the cast members to the locations and to see them, now, act out the scenes was really fun. However, when they brought Heather back to her ‘home’ it struck a cord and you can see her eyes light up as she stared at it. It was truly awe-inspiring.

There is so much more that I didn’t tackle from the costuming, to the poster work all the way down to the video games and the stuff that they slapped the Freddy Krueger name to. Most documentaries will only have a few leftover interviews but The Elm Street Legacy goes beyond that and pampers us Fred Heads with mini features for us to indulge in. It tells you everything and if you can’t find it on the feature, I’m sure you’ll find it on the extras. As I stated with the review of the feature, this is a must buy DVD for any horror or film fan… it’s documentary filmmaking at it’s best.

Hats off to everybody that worked on it.