Never Sleep Again

If you're like me, you know almost everything there is to know about the Elm Street franchise. Freddy is my favorite villain of all time. He gave me countless nightmares as a child, and ever since I became a rabid horror junkie, I made it my mission in life to read as much as I could about the crispy one. Interviews, Fangoria articles, wikipedia entries...I absorbed enough knowledge to make an Elm Street documentary. Y'know, like this one. That's why Never Sleep Again felt a little pointless to me. Every serious horror fan knows most of this stuff. No, not all of it, but at least 75% of it.

In this instance, 75% accounts for three hours of material. On the upside, people can point to Never Sleep Again as being the definitive Elm Street documentary. It certainly uses all four hours to cram as much stuff into your head as possible. I'm not saying that it's poorly made. Hell, it's awesome. I just had a hard time staying plugged in after the halfway point. I did appreciate how they handled some of the goofier sequels like Freddy's Revenge and Freddy's Dead (both of which are underrated, in my opinion). Addressing the former's homoerotic overtones was a wise move, as the topic lightened up the proceedings. Man, Mark Patton looks like a completely different person, as does the "hall monitor" girl.

The tidbits of minutiae that I was not privy to were quite interesting. I love how the teenage cast members of Dream Warriors went to Robert Englund for advice on how to woo Patricia Arquette. I would have done the same thing. What you get out of Never Sleep Again will depend on whether or not you're a willing participant. Personally, I wasn't willing to sit through four hours of anecdotes that I was already familiar with, and technically, I didn't. I fell asleep towards the end. No rating because I don't feel objective about this one.