By Terry Sherwood
Fan-produced film continuations are an industry in itself. Having viewed some of the love of Nightmare on Elm Street fandom in the documentary Hollywood Dream & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, I was not surprised to see this dedication. Many of these works are full-length, often with sequels of their own spanning a new line of stories and situations in the familiar worked.
Entering into the dream world of terrors the short seventeen-plus minute Bill Crossland wrote and produced the film Dream Girl. Billing itself as a tribute to Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was made in celebration of its 40th anniversary, the work packs a lot of punch within a small run time.
Tormented by her nightly encounters with the dream demon himself, Amy makes a desperate attempt to prevent the curse of Freddy Krueger from being passed on to another generation. Coming off more like Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, you have Freddy’s razor glove making an appearance during a maternity exam.
All the roles are well played. Travis Anderson takes a turn as Freddy Krueger and particular fun from Lexie Faith as Linnea Clark whose character name is an homage to Linnea Quigley and influential Director/ writer Bob Clark who wrote the original Black Christmas.
Dream Girl has a lovely setup that suddenly mutates into practical effect sequences from Damian Leon’s Terrifier series as Krueger wreaks havoc in the operating theatre. Gore to an excess I will say, which seems to be a norm without purpose except to sensationalise and create an impact for the small film.
Gone is the tongue-in-cheek humour of the original series replaced by disgusting remarks, like the phrase ‘Your body my choice’ uttered before dispatching someone. If that’s the filmmaker’s thrill to use the toxic masculinity phrase making Freddy “evil’ there are better ways.
The lovely film looks and feels with committed actors following it with a “killing machine” Freddy and the gore result is hollow from some they will only remember the bloodletting.
Watch Dream Girl below –
Bloody Flicks 