Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

This was the cap on a recent Freddy Krueger marathon, and even though I just finished watching them all, this talking-head / film-history doc's love and comprehension makes me wanna dive right back in. Beautifully breaking down every single Nightmare movie, and holding no detail or story or opinion back, it's a perfect companion for any franchise fan, and even a solid intro into the world.

I had a feeling the "Elm Street" documentary was going to be something special, but I had no idea just HOW special until the pre-ordered disc arrived early. Initially I presumed that the 240 minute running time listed was for all the material on the 2-disc set, but to my great surprise and delight, that's actually the running time for the main feature. A few cast members (Ronee Blakely, Johnny Depp, Patricia Arquette, etc) are noticeably absent, but practically everyone else who worked in front of and behind the camera on an "Elm Street" film is interviewed.

There's something here for even the hardest of hardcore Freddy fans (of which I am one), with lots of interesting stories and previously undisclosed revelations, never-before-seen photos and behind-the-scenes footage, some pretty nifty stop-motion animated recreations of key scenes from the films, laugh-out-loud anecdotes and much more! This puts every bit of bonus material that New Line's ever released to shame (excepting, perhaps, the long out of print Anchor Bay special edition of the first film -- though a few clips from that are included here too).

"His Name Was Jason," the documentary on "Friday the 13th" franchise already proved that the best way to do a documentary on a horror movie is to turn it over to the fans, but "Never Sleep Again" has raised the bar even higher. Kudos and thank you to the production team for putting together this incredible documentary!

Back in the late 1970's to early 1980's, Writer and Directed:Wes Craven (The Scream Series, Red Eye, Shocker) created one of the most memorable villains of all time and his name is Freddy Krueger (Played by Robert Englund until the 2010 remake with Jackie Earle Haley as the new Freddy Krueger). Originally Wes Craven's screenplay was rejected by every major studio and every big-name producer until producer Robert Shaye (Book of Love, The Last Mitzy) decided to produced the movie with his then small distributor company turned major studio:New Line Cinema.

This documentary interviews most major cast members of the original series (Except:Johnny Deep, Patricia Arquette, Craig Wasson, Bradley Gregg and Laurence Fishburne), including every director, make-up artists, screen-writers and more. Interviews are surprisingly honest, they talked about what worked and didn't worked in the series. Even the spin-off "Freddy Vs. Jason" is talked about with the cast & crew.

Directed by Daniel Farrands (Screenwriter of "Halloween 6:The Curse of Michael Myers") and Andrew Kasch made an extremely long but always entertaining documentary of the entire original series. It is certainly more fun to watch than "His Name was Jason" documentary, which Farrands was involved in and it is better than "Halloween:25 years of terror".

Interviews on all the movies are certainly fun to watch, especially the underrated but flawed "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2:Freddy's Revenge", considering how gay the movie is now! There's even an surprise interviewee on "Freddy Vs. Jason" is one of the biggest laughs of the feature.

Disc 1 is the entire documentary of "Never Sleep Again:The Elm Street Legacy". Which is nearly four hours long! DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) transfer and an good Dolby Stereo 2.0 Surround Sound.

Disc 2 includes slashed scenes:extended interviews of the entire series, featurettes and more. "Never Sleep Again:The Elm Street Legacy" is great fun and die-hard fans of the series will certainly have an ball watching it. Even non-fans will some of the interviews to be truly enjoyable. Don't miss it. (**** ½/*****).

When I first heard that a documentary was being done on the entire Elm Street series, I figured it would be a fun one-hour film that brought back a few key stars to discuss a few behind the scene stories and celebrate the pop-culture that is Freddy and the Nightmare Films.

Boy, was I wrong! Instead, the Makers of Never Sleep Again gave us the most definitive fan-based documentary that has no equal. It is a four hour wet dream with interviews from the biggest stars like Robert Englund to nameless extras like the people who burst out of Freddy's chest in Dream Master. Every film is probed in detail on story-lines, subtexts, and behind the scenes incidents. They even go into Freddy's Nightmares, the short-lived syndicated television show.

The four hour long documentary itself is worthy of the eternal praise of this film and would be more than enough to satisfy the biggest Fred Head's appetite, but Never Sleep Again give us more. It give us another four hours of extras that equal the entertainment value of the documentary.

Even with all of that, there is more. If you order from the Never Sleep Again website by June 1st, you get a signed poster from none other than the legendary Scream Queen herself -- Heather Langenkamp!!! If you did see the Remake and feel let down and ripped off...Never Sleep Again will most certainly make you feel better.

This was an excellent documentary and is probably going to cover any questions you would have about the series. The interviews are great and the cast and crew of every movie seemed to all have a great time with the films so they enjoy talking about the experience. This keeps the film fresh and enjoyable throughout and will keep even the most hardcore fans entertained.

The film goes through the movies one by one, speaking with various cast and crew about production and the film itself. It answers some questions and may even surprise you with some information ( IE NoES 2 having strong homosexual undertones completely surprised me. ) on each of the films. While the doc is 4 hours long, it never seems to drag and each film in the series is covered equally.

It's a wonderful companion to the series and I doubt any doc is going to come this close to being so complete and well done on any other horror series or horror flicks in general. A must own for any Freddy fan.