Movies Seen Recently: The Haunted Palace, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3

The Haunted Palace (1963) – The cuckoo in Roger Corman’s nest of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, this one is named for a Poe poem, but draws most of its inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, transplanted into a vaguely pre-now semi-European, semi-New England milieu.  Vincent Price is the old sorcerer Joseph Curwen done in by the Arkham townfolk for finally going just a bit too far with his necromantic goings-on; Vincent Price is also his great-grandson Charles Dexter Ward, come back to the ancestral home to claim his long-abandoned property.  Of course, as unlikely as it is, the townsfolk realize that Ward is the spitting image of Curwen! Actually, that’s not so unlikely around these parts, as everyone in town is the spitting image of their ancestor who done Curwen in; the pub is still full of all the same actors, just wearing different hats now.

It’s Price’s show, of course; as white-bread Ward is slowly possessed by Curwen’s soul, he undergoes great changes in expression and mannerism that vanish in an instant when the spell wears off. And Curwen would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for meddling Dr. Exposition, the local medical man who knows everything about the Necronomicon and like eldritch truths.

Great corny fun, and a much more watchable adaptation of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward than 1991’s The Resurrected.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) – Every horror franchise has one installment which takes a huge left turns from the rest of the franchise.  Halloween had Season of the Witch, with haunted Stonehenge-infused Halloween masks. Friday the 13th had A New Beginning, featuring a non-Jason copycat killer. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 had a better excuse, at least; it was the first attempt to sequelize what hadn’t been meant as a sequelable movie.

Elm Street 2 was also my first Elm Street movie, so I have a soft spot for it.  Although it doesn’t have a lot of fans (and is often dismissed as “the gayest horror film made up to then”), it was a good faith effort to make a sequel without it being a retread.  And although it really has nothing to do with future continuity, it did introduce elements to the ongoing franchise:

• Jeff Yagher’s makeup designs, which were intended to be much better in closeup than David Miller’s original work;
• Freddy being more pleased with wisecracks as he torments his victims
• The “Elm Street” house (i.e., Nancy’s house from the first movie) as an iconic image, despite there being nothing in the first movie that really tied Freddy to that specific house in town.

There’s also a little feint (not much, but it’s more than we get anytime thereafter) at reminding us that the pre-deceased Freddy Krueger hadn’t sought out teenagers as his main prey; he killed children.

The movie’s major plus — which really was never replicated in any succeeding installment — is that it truly is dreamlike, despite dream sequences being almost non-existent.  The entire sequence of foggy-headed Jesse wandering all the way from his own darkened street to the all-nite S&M club, meeting his sadistic coach, and returning with him to the school to run laps… It’s got a very dreamlike non-logic to it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) – With Wes Craven returning to have a hand in the story and screenplay, this sequel both returned more to his original vision from the first movie, as well as attempted to close the book on the story. (Of course, as we all know…)  Its major strengths are:

• It manages a requisite cast of diverse teens who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with each other in a high school social setting, as they’re all confined to the mental hospital because of dream-related self-harm;
• The added backstory emphasizes that even when alive, Freddy — “bastard son of a hundred maniacs” — was a human monster.
• There’s a good balance between Freddy simply tormenting his victims, and using “novel” dream visions — based on each characters’ personality and failings — to come up with interesting kills.  (That also set a pattern for further sequels, which would fill their running time with “ain’t it creative” kills to mask other failings.)

Major weaknesses? Some godawful acting, and a script that displays extreme silliness right alongside its strong scenes, with each character’s “dream power” taking the cake.  (“In my dreams, I’m beautiful… and bad!” ‘Nuff said.)