DVD Review: Never Sleep Again
Never Sleep Again (2010)
Studio: CAV Distributing Corporation
Release Date: May 4, 2010
Directed By: Daniel Farrands & Andrew Kasch
Cast: Wes Craven, Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp,
Review By: Annie Riordan
I couldn’t sleep for shit last night.
No, my insomniac tendencies are not due to a burn-scarred pervert with Gilette’s on his fingers chasing me through dark dream corridors. I had restless legs and woke around 1am to find that my cat had hogged the entire goddamned bed, stretching out her mutant kangaroo feet and shoving me over to the edge of my mattress where I had retracted into a very uncomfortable fetal position. When I tried to move her, she bit me. Nice.
However, as I sit here in my sleep-deprived state, wondering who the hell snuck into my room last night and rubbed napalm into my eyeballs, I find myself in the perfect frame of mind to review a four hour long documentary about the Elm Street series. See? You can find the good in almost anything if you look long and hard enough! (…oops! there goes another rubber tree…)
Four hours may seem like a dauntingly long time to sit in front of the TV, but for the diehard devotee of the Freddy Krueger franchise of films, four hours is a mere handful of peanuts. This documentary/retrospective isn’t content to merely showcase its installments, interview its cast members and offer up a bone-dry synopsis of each. Never Sleep Again – narrated by Heather Langenkamp, Elm Street’s Ultimate Final Girl – isn’t afraid to expose its flaws, peel back its scars and laugh at its own ludicrousness.
Beginning in ’84 with a poverty stricken New Line Cinema literally forcing the first Elm Street onto the screen, right up to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and the global phenomena that is Freddy, this exploratory plunge into the iconic slasher series doesn’t leave out a goddamned thing. (Well, the remake isn’t mentioned, but why should it be? It’s a totally different film!) Gathering up as many cast members as possible, NSA is like watching a family reunion at an insane asylum as everyone from Heather and Robert, right on up to a smokingly MILFy Lisa Wilcox and a shockingly gothy looking Tuesday Knight share memories, favorite lines of dialog and juicy bits of gossip with us. Yes, Wes Craven and Robert Shaye hated each other at times. Yes, the subtext of Nightmare 2 was purposely homoerotic. Yes, the TV show Freddy’s Nightmares sucked ass and was merely a ploy to milk as much money as possible from the franchise. Every dirty secret is laid bare with a refreshing frankness that just makes me love the series all the more, despite how godawful shitty some of the films were. Who knew that Brad Pitt turned up in an episode? I didn’t. Wow, srsly?
(By the way – best interviewee, hands down, has got to be Ken Sagoes who portrayed Roland Kincaid in Elm Streets 3 and 4. The dude is fucking hilarious!)
Nothing is sacred, and even the Fat Boys and the decrepit members of Dokken are interviewed about their cheesy contributions to the pop-culture surrounding the legacy. I admit it: I owned the singles for both “Dream Warriors” and “Are You Ready For Freddy?” as a teen, and thought the videos for both were way cool. What the hell did I know? I was a goddamned pothead at the time.
Whether you’re a fan of one or all, you’ve simply got to see this documentary. I’ve never had four hours pass by so quickly. You simply cannot call yourself an Elm Street completist or even a full blown hour geek unless you catch this most excellent filmography.
Now if you don’t object, I am going to go hogtie my cat and take a nap.
