"You are all my children now..."

New Line started out distributing films for people who get high and see movies ... Reefer Madness ... fast forward to 2008 ... Harold and Kumar

wells-- i've always wondered how new line publicity staff was instructed to handle the gay aspects of 'nightmare 2' back in the day...was it off-limits or embraced?...or even an issue?...

also, btw.... it was just announced that deluca is going to participate in the las vegas junket for his movie '21'.....i'm guessin' there will be a lot more 'new line' talk than '21' talk.....

Help yourself...FUCKER!

I never thought about it til now, but Freddy was such a reprehensible character. The murderer of children who is killed by vengeful parents and yet he's become this fun, evil cult character. That's some marketing.

I've been very interested to hear what DeLuca has to say about this.

I'm with ya Scooterzz... next to Brokeback, Nightmare 2 is one of the most homoerotic mainstream films I've ever seen.

It's a good question, Wells. Was that ever discussed?

mutinyco: I had the same exact quote in my head when I saw the posted pic. And I'm not one who can quote many films, even the ones I've seen multiple times.

Thanks to Wells for pushing the Freddy brand. My favorite horror icon of them all.

I thought the red head in Elm Street 2 was smoking hot back in the day. Of course, I was just a little kid with raging hormones, so I might have been wrong. I just remember that I was pissed that she didn't get naked. So long ago.....

Respect to Wells. It took another 15 years for DeLuca to be canned for the same reason!

I've seen the Wells footage from the Freddy DVD. Having read his thread-counting propaganda for years now, I was shocked to see him pop up in the special features for movie that appeals to the most base aspects of the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers it was intended for.

Did DeLuca greenlight LOTR before he got canned?

I've never liked the NIGHTMARE films for the simple reason they broke their own rules for cheap/lazy "surprises." A horror film has to abide by its own rules, because otherwise why care what happens to the characters if they really have no chance to survive?

The ending of the first one was a pathetic attempt to duplicate the ending of FRIDAY THE 13TH, which scared the shit out of everyone when it came out because it earned the right to. NIGHTMARE's message seemed to be "Fuck you assholes, it's our film and we can do whatever we want to get a scare."

I nominate the following as the most unintentionally ironic thing anyone is likely to say this week (barring politicos' statements Tuesday night):

"My biggest accomplishment was selling the idea of Freddy Krueger (as played by Robert Englund) becoming a kind of midnight-show cult figure ..... Thank God in heaven I wasn't there during the Lord of the Rings era."

I could be remembering this wrong, but I seem to recall that they rushed out Nightmare 2 before they realized what they had. It vanished without a trace. But then they put it in re-release after word of mouth had spread on the first one.

They got progressively sillier as they went on, but the first one still has some genuine shocks. And it's got the immortal John Saxon, which is nice...

I did enjoy "Critters". (Even "Critters 2", didn't make it beyond that. More sad Oscar ommisions.)
Thought it was more funny than scary, I did get a good fright from the first one after the film. My friends and I walked home in the dark to my second story apartment. There was an outside stairway to the door and when we came to the bottom of the stairway a hairy creature came bounded down the stairs and past us. It must have been a cat or a raccoon or an oppossum. But at that moment, we all would have sworn it was a "Critter".

Fuck Bob Shaye and fuck New Line. Troma forever! :)

But seriously for a second. Fuck Bob Shaye and fuck New Line. Shaye should be kissing the ground every Time Warner CEO walked on for the past decade. New Line could have easily been absorbed into Warner Brothers anytime in the past decade, even when Ted Turner's opinion still mattered for something and especially after the merger with AOL, when TW needed to do some serious belt-tightening.

In the end, New Line gave us John Waters, two great Freddy Kruger films (both directed by Wes Craven), Peter Jackson's second act, Se7en, Dark City... and a bunch of bad Freddy Kruger films, a bunch of bad Critters films, two woefully inept Bob Shaye movies that make the oeuvre of Joe Roth look like classics in comparison, Lost in Space, Paul Thomas Anderson, Chris Tucker, and worse of all, Brett fucking Ratner. Not exactly a glowing epitaph. I gave up on them many years ago, shortly after the strobe-light logo was replaced.

And I thought Sweeney Todd was disturbing!

I do love movies that don't have background music telling us what to feel...

doh. I got confused about what I was commenting on! that was meant for glenn kenny's entry about 10 rillington place. ignore me please!

The first NOES is a true iconic horror classic, and before SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and BLAIR WITCH, the last movie to actually scare me in the theater.

The film is a bit sloppy with some dumb dialogue, but Craven is brilliant for tapping into primal fears using dreams. And for using Johnny Depp.

I love it when Tina sees Krueger for the first time and he starts bugfuck chasing her.

The sequels do not exist in my genre world.

... " Bob Shaye movies that make the oeuvre of Joe Roth look like classics " ...

I will take Book of Love and Last Mimzy over Coupe De Ville and America's Sweethearts any day ...

Critters fucking rules.

Or, at least it did until I knew Wells was involved.

Critters fucking sucks!!!

Goddam krites.

As slasher serieses go, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise had the most consistent quality. Even at their worst, there'd be some kind of inventive dream kill or gross-out far more interesting than anything in the Jason or Michael sequels (keeping the same actor in the killer role may have been a big factor). And what other series of films can claim that part seven was one of the best?

Not to mention the line-up of directors involved over the years: Wes Craven, Renny Harlin, Rachel Talalay, Stephen Hopkins, Ronny Yu...not a bad list of alumni. (Jack Sholder, who did part 2, now teaches film at a small North Carolina university where my dad also teaches. He's probably jealous as hell at his fellow Nightmare grads)

Didn't Friday the 13th rip of Carrie, as did every other horror movie at the time? Or were you referring to some other aspect of the ending?

I prefer Nightmares 3 and 4 over 1 and 2.

Renny Harlin forever.

Wow, so that's what happened to Jack Sholder? I thought he was going to go places-- Alone in the Dark has some hilarious moments and marked the beginning of Martin Landau's comeback, The Hidden was an instant cult film and Renegades, though it has the ridiculous casting of two Brat Packers as world-weary cops, has one great car chase scene. I thought he'd break through at some point but instead... TV, Supernova and pfft.

Havens, not a fan of PTA?

"I will take Book of Love and Last Mimzy over Coupe De Ville and America's Sweethearts any day."

How about we forget Shaye and Roth ever directed and leave calling the shots to true auteurs like Lloyd Kaufman?