Every A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Movie RANKED!

[Music] what do you think i think we're dead meat real dead meat go ahead and laugh you guys find the fine little pasta welcome to dead meat your one stop shop for gruesome kills and cheesy jokes i'm that cheesy jokes they're james agenese and today i'll be ranking all nine a nightmare on elm street films from worst to best including freddy vs jason and the 2010 platinum dunes remake a nightmare on elm street is one of what i called the big three of horror franchises the other two being halloween and friday the 13th what these three series have in common besides a crap ton of installments is an iconic killer who has transcended the sometimes niche world of horror michael myers jason voorhees and nightmare's very own freddy krueger are known to most people even if they've never watched a horror movie since the 1980s the three of them have been the face of horror even if two of them haven't shown up in any new films lately a nightmare on um street is my favorite of the big three franchises just as freddy krueger is my favorite of the big three villains i'm a man who likes to try new things i don't usually want to see the same shit over and over again that's why i love this franchise the variety it offers the tone evolves from fantastical but mostly serious to flat out looney tunes ask the style from gothic and kinetic to self-aware and reflective throughout it all freddy transports his victims to ever-changing dreamscapes and kills them in ways that are amazing humorous and sometimes disgusting the victims themselves while sometimes acted amateurly are weird and offbeat the counterculture crowd these aren't the sexy babysitters and camp counselors killed by the other guys freddie goes after the outcasts and i love them all for it that brings us to fred kruger himself a horror movie villain is lucky to have one iconic distinguishing feature the bastard son of a hundred maniacs though fucking rolling in them he's got the hat he's got the sweater his face looks like burnt cheese and of course he's armed with one of the greatest weapons in all of horror dumb the dirty leather glove affixed with razor blades his finger knives that's all before we get to the fact that he stalks you while you sleep which is terrifying and that he's a wisecracking literal bastard who's way too fond of saying bitch we'll see bitch this bitch welcome to my world bitch unlike jason and even michael who are sometimes the teensiest bit sympathetic frederick kruger is a shitter through and through dude killed kids when he was alive and some versions more than killed them and he kills them in his death all while being a mean-spirited shit-talking bully it's great before we get going i want to thank today's sponsor nordvpn fred krueger is kind of like sleep malware just go with it and unfortunately the elm street kids didn't have any protection against him but you can protect yourself against real-life malware with nordvpn's next generation encryption keep your internet data behind a wall and your id is safe nordvpn's layers of security will help keep your private things private including your location and in a rarity for modern companies nordvpn doesn't track or collect your private data a huge privacy plus that i very much appreciate right now get a huge discount on a two-year plan by going to nordvpn.com deadmeat and use code deadmeat to get an additional bonus free there's a 30-day money-back guarantee too so you can try it risk-free that's nordvpn.com deadmeat promo code deadmeat to give you digital peace of mind to ensure my rankings were accurate and up to date i rewatched all nine movies for this video while it changed some of my positions it reaffirmed my feelings for the series overall for the most part even when a nightmare movie is bad it's interesting and plenty of them are bad but some of them are great i claim no objectivity here this order is simply my opinion at this specific point in time i'll give you my reasoning and you can disagree if you want just don't be a dick about it alright let's go number nine when i say i love the nightmare franchise there is one exception to that rule the 2010 remake a nightmare on elm street produced by platinum dunes like i said i value creativity in film and nothing is less creative to me than a remake without substantive changes i can't get over how unnecessary this movie is it feels lifeless from the dim lighting to the morose looking cast most egregiously rooney mara who sleepwalks through the movie as nancy thompson it's an insult to the fiery assertiveness that heather langenkamp gave the character also it may just be my minor prosopagnosia speaking but jesse and quentin look like the same fucking guy to me no disrespect to kyle galdner i've seen him and most of the other cast members put in excellent performances elsewhere no movie is without its merits and this reboot does have some neat visuals i especially like the scene at the pharmacy near the end also jackie earl haley does his best stepping into robert england's enormous shoes as freddy his version is darker than any scene in the original series yet still retains that sick sense of humor that's crucial to the character now that you got me what game do you want to play next fuck you oh sounds like fun but i just can't bring myself to care about a movie i've already seen before the worst parts of the nightmare sequels are when they retell freddy's backstory as if we didn't know who he was welcome to freddy 101 but in those movies it's only a few minutes in a single scene this is a whole damn movie of what we already know with the impressive practical effects of the original swapped out for fake looking cg i think it could have been decent if it had had more confidence and explored some of its new ideas more the micro naps thing is an interesting concept as is the potentiality of fred kruger being an innocent man but in the end they made him even more guilty and monstrous confirming the character as a child molester even though that was never explicitly indicated before remakes aren't inherently bad but they should have a purpose other than making money for the life of me i can't say why this movie exists other than to cash in on one of the most popular names in horror number eight at number eight i have 1989's part 5 the dream child a weird boring mess i normally be drawn to the gothic aesthetic and i think the premise of freddy returning through an unborn baby's dreams is great but those minor pluses are more than cancelled out by the movie's negatives where do we even begin i guess with that graduation scene which is indicative of how poorly this film is edited by me on my own maybe i should spell it out for you did you catch all that i didn't edit that scene even though a character disappears between two back-to-back shots that's exactly how it plays out in the movie and it doesn't make any goddamn sense maybe i should spell it out for you what the fuck is going on there maybe i should spell it out for you yeah maybe you should not that i really want to hear anything that greta has to say she's just off-brand debbie from the previous film like how all these characters are off-brand versions of the ones killed in part four it's impossible to ignore the superficial similarities and similarly to those characters these folk are written to have two traits and nothing more she's on the swim team and works at the hospital he draws comics and hates the sight of blood she's gonna be a supermodel and has a controlling mother that's it that's all they give us i'm grateful that lisa wilcox is still here kicking ass as alice johnson but handsome dan gets killed in act one repeating the same cardinal sin that hurts part four dream child is when freddy gets too cheesy for his own good with a significant increase in his one-liners compared to parts three and four damn it's also the first time i run into special effects i don't like the stop-motion fridge food and diving board look like something out of an mtv commercial the worst thing about the movie though is the kid i don't like ragging on kid actors because it's never their fault they're fucking kids but this movie shouldn't have relied so much on this kid or had him do that shitty freddy voice near the end i wanna learn stuff from you teach me as always i'll give credit where it's due i like the mc escher bit at the end and the kills are memorable and creative bon appetit bitch is horrifying dan's accident includes that kick-ass motorcycle stunt and mark getting shredded and bleeding out ink is an awesome visual effect even though you all know how i feel about super freddy yes [Music] super freddy sucks mostly though this movie's just boring i don't need a ton of kills in my freddy film but three is pretty damn low especially when all the time spent between them drags or gets too ridiculous like with that giant rectum that keeps showing up part 5 caps off the dream blank trilogy and is the worst version of what those movies are no wonder they decided to kill off ready in the next installment oh speaking of which number seven at number seven is 1991's freddy's dead the final nightmare we all know this movie is a steaming pile of shit not only is freddy krueger a parody of his former self it's also got the weakest acting of the series which is saying something but i didn't put it in last because unlike those other two films it's not boring freddy's dead is an absolute train wreck but it's one that piles up onto itself every few minutes i just can't look away from the ever-growing twisted heap of bad decisions why is this 30-year-old woman in a child's dress and pigtails oh it has something to do with alice cooper sure yeah that makes sense there are some things i legitimately love in this movie i think the hearing aid sequence with carlos is a perfectly constructed classic comedy act a vaudeville vignette in its finest form it's creative funny and ends with a head blowing up what the fuck more could you want i enjoy the brief psychedelic scene before it gets to the crappy video game gag and there are a few jokes that got a legitimate laugh out of me nothing is gonna make me get off this bed but i can only rank a movie so high for being so bad it's good most of the attempts at humor are corny and poorly done no i'm playing with power i don't mind corny humor my channel's full of it but it should at least make sense it's traveling time that's not a thing also i don't need everyone to be on yafikkoto's level rest in peace but i'd appreciate stronger acting in the lead role i'm sorry but lisa zane makes some weird decisions here it's distracting and oh my god i almost forgot about the dream demon though honestly we'd all be better off if we did freddy's dead is a misguided if inevitable veer into full-on comedy for the series it might have killed the franchise for real if it wasn't for wes craven and the durability of fred krueger as a character number six this is probably my most controversial ranking but at number 6 i have part 4 the dream master from 1988. i understand why a lot of people would put this movie much higher for one it's got the most fun visual style of the series courtesy of french director renny harlan his camera movements perfectly match the nightmare settings of freddy krueger's world gliding around from overhead perspectives and trucking in at unnatural speeds his bag of cinematographic tricks may be limited but he wields them deathly and it's a treat to watch the cast is also enjoyable to watch despite the character issues i'll mention in a bit i adore lisa wilcox in the way she handles alice johnson's arc though i'll admit it helps i've met her in person and found her to be a lovely human being i'm also a big fan of toy new kirk as sheila and danny hassell helps make dan more than just a pretty face stream master's got a bunch of incredible scenes and though that can be said of every installment in the series this movies are among the best i hate that joey is killed so early but that waterbed sequence is fantastic sheila getting the wife sucked out of her is delightfully dark and traumatic and anytime screaming mad george gets to do his thing i will buy a ticket to that show his makeup effects for deborah's bug head peeling out of her face skin is up there with the best of the entire franchise i don't care much for rick's dream scene nor his character in general hello babe but there is obviously a lot to enjoy in this film just not enough for me to overcome its weaknesses one of my chief complaints with dream master is the same one a lot of people have with alien 3 the fact that it quickly kills off the beloved characters from the kick-ass previous installment but at least alien 3 made those sacrifices to tell an all-new story with all new characters dream master puts up a facade of continuity and pretends like it's the logical continuation of dream warriors at first it seems legit but by the end of act 1 the returning actors have all been killed and by the second half we're watching a whole new group of characters i wouldn't mind this so much if it didn't feel like the movie was gaslighting me it's as though dream master is saying what do you mean these have always been the group of friends you care about and kristen parker has always looked like that no she hasn't movie and she doesn't even act the same tuesday night has an entirely different presence than patricia arquette how is this the same character as the kicky screamy chick we saw fight freddy and where did all these friends of hers come from as much as i like the actors like i mentioned in the dream child section all the friend characters are just given two traits debbie hates bugs loves exercise check sheila she's got asthma and invents things great rick uh i don't know make him a karate guy ralph macchio's hip right bing bang bang we're done my other big problem is that every 20 minutes something new is introduced often in a ham-fisted way alice absorbing her friends traits as they die feels dumb and don't get me started on the dream master nursery rhyme things briefly mentioned in two throwaway scenes yet it becomes the final key to destroying freddy krueger what a load of shit i think dream master is when the series transitions from good stupid to bad stupid and begins to coast on its popularity instead of crafting a solid story freddie was at the peak of his popularity here and i think the series bought into its own hype just a bit too much number five smack dab in the middle of my list is freddy vs jason which i've really come around to since i killed counted this franchise three years ago back then i hated it but nowadays i think it could have been great had it been made in a different year instead of during the worst decade in horror movie history and also american culture i consider this movie's weaknesses a product of its 2003 production the cynical sarcastic characters who are all constantly assholes to one another the choppy low frame rate slow motion that makes it look like the movie keeps buffering and the fact that it fails to trust its audience to follow a simple story which results in scenes like that infamously awful exposition dump in the basement freddy died by fire jason by water how can we use that outside of those blemishes though i've come around to fvj mostly i think it's impressive that it exists in the first place nowadays every movie's gotta be a universe and interconnected but for decades it seemed unlikely that a matchup of two horror icons could actually happen freddy vs jason is a fanfic brought to life with a premise that makes sense to bring the two of them together freddy needs to be remembered in order to have any power and since the elm street kids have forgotten about him he uses jason to jog their memory perfect stylistically the movie blends the two series together quite evenly you've got scenes of imaginative hellscapes that should satisfy all the nightmare fans as well as scenes of senseless slaughter with jason killing creatively like always the kills themselves and the effects in general are sadly a bit uneven all the fights between the titular twosome kick ass and i love that backwards ben bedkill but it's a letdown to see so much cg in a crossover between two series that excelled in practical effects a savini style head being twisted around would have been so much better there mind you i'm not saying that all the cg sucks i'm down with freddy piller and his 420 friendly hookah the last two things i'll complain about have to do with jason the water weakness thing is still a nonsensical shortcut to me and i wish kane hotter could have played him for this historical installment ken kerzinger's cool and all but his jason seemed sleepy-eyed and bored but hey that casting was a studio directive everyone involved on the actual film gives this thing their all from monica kina's non-stop tears as final girl lori to director ronnie u's tendency to bathe everything in colorful lights freddy vs jason is a dumb movie but it's a big fun dumb movie and that's exactly the kind of movie it should be number four at number four i have nightmare two freddy's revenge this movie is sort of the black sheep of the nightmare family lacking all the dream warring and one-liners that would define the next few sequels story-wise it's an orphan as well none of its characters or actors appear in the other movies other than robert england himself and freddie's quest to take over a high school boy's body so he can live in the real world is never brought up again [Music] as we all know by now that plot lends itself to the movie's reputation as a queer horror film but i don't want to say too much more about that here it's embarrassing but i still haven't found the time to watch scream queen the documentary about this movie made by mark patton who plays jesse personally i love how homoerotic the movie is but i understand it was an issue for patton who was closeted at the time so i don't want to make light of it any more than i did in the kill count especially since there's plenty to talk about besides how gay it is freddy's revenge is the first nightmare sequel and successfully builds out the fantasy elements whether it's bus driver freddy stranding a school bus on a rock spire or emphasizing the elemental connection between kruger and fire the fire motif creates an oppressively hot and sweaty tone and freddie never relieves the discomfort by making jokes or wise cracks of the first six films this is fred kruger at his darkest by far he ain't here to joke around he's here to rack up the most kills of any solo freddy movie and also adopt a bunch of teens not everything is great fred krueger running around in the real world kind of goes against his whole thing and the movie's story line is admittedly meandering with things happening without much cause and effect why does jessie go to that leather bar i don't know man but isn't that how dreams often work one minute you're at home the next minute you're running laps for your possibly predatory gym coach the reason i overlook these issues is because everything feels so real and grounded especially the well-acted characters it's not just patton and the meryl streep look-alike kim myers in the lead roles either i love robert rustler's grady and the bromance that develops between him and jesse after an adversarial start look grady you got some problem with me no bro just killing time and jesse's parents are the best out of any nightmare movie though that's admittedly a low bar most of the other moms and dads are neglectful alcoholics but hope lang and clue gulliger play sweet relatable characters who you can tell really care about their son jesse even if his dad accuses him of blowing up their bird with a cherry bomb even though freddy's revenge has its own story and characters it still pays respects to its predecessor not only does jessie live in the dope-ass elm street house he finds nancy's diary and reads a passage about glenn it's the perfect amount of continuity to make the movie feel like part of the franchise while still allowing the rest of it to be something entirely new as you'll see i prefer the nancy thompson arc over everything else but outside of her films freddie's revenge is a great stand-alone story for our favorite dream killer number three at number three we have a man getting closure with the series he created in wes craven's new nightmare released in 1994 10 years after the original new nightmare sees wes craven taking back the reigns of freddie and giving him a new life after he had made a fool of himself he did so with a creative meta-textual story two years before he'd turned the genre on its head with the self-aware screen in new nightmare the nightmare on elm street movies are a film series and the people who made them play fictionalized versions of themselves wes craven himself the man behind the finger knives robert england and the star of the show a now 30 year old and absolutely stunning heather langenkamp this premise proves fulfilling on a number of levels casual freddy fans can enjoy the callbacks to the first film which are often given a humorous twist screw your pass more devoted nightmare maniacs can dig on the numerous cameos including from actors like zoo garcia and tuesday night people who work in entertainment can appreciate the accurate depiction of set life and if you're fortunate enough to have horror movies be your job you can nerd out over seeing producers like sarah richer and bob shay show up new nightmare is great outside of its meta textual treats as well the story is so unique with an evil entity using freddy's popularity to manifest itself into the real world i don't love everything about the entity's appearance he's not slimy enough and his hat is too green but his new razer hand is pretty bitching and it's great to see the character actually scary once again i like the unsettling motif of earthquakes and the footage they were able to grab because of northridge still blows my mind that the movie's earthquake scenes were filmed a month before that 6.7 quake it's as though the movie actualized the earthquake just like its plot has a movie actualizing freddy plus its production design money couldn't buy as for the sets they did make themselves i love the labyrinth zone style dreamscape at the end it's a great way to get some gothic style freddy without having to sit through dreamchild again most of all though i care about the characters heather langenkamp is in top form and gives her best performance of the franchise here likely a product of her age and greater life experience her fictional husband chase is a supportive guy who believes and cares about her which is another nice thing about this franchise in general the heroes often have good partners like lisa in part two and handsome dan in four and five julie the babysitter is a solid side character whose death scene possibly improves upon the classic from the original and although wes craven is far from an actor his thoughtfulness comes through as he plays a version of himself a director who believes in the absolute power of storytelling the only cast member who's not always great is mikko hughes but again you can't rag on kid actors too much even if you end up laughing at their cries of anguish because of poopypants phase new nightmare is the first film in the franchise since dream warriors that feels like it's firing on all cylinders it's shocking that craven was able to make a movie this good and then two years later release a bonafide masterpiece what a guy number two you may be surprised to learn that my number two nightmare right now is the original a nightmare on elm street released in 1984. now let me say these top two spots are basically tied and for a long time the og was my number one but on this most recent re-watch of the series i shifted it to number two because it feels a tad bit slow compared to dream warriors if i were watching these for the first time it'd probably be in the top spot still but for people who know and have seen the series already i think it retroactively suffers from freddy being a known figure the movie does a great job slowly teasing out the terror of this dream killer but it does tease it out for a long long time by time nancy's reading his name out of his hat i felt myself saying yeah i know and just wanted to get to more freddy fun times that's not the movie's fault and again it's a near-perfect first time watch but since i'm far from a freddy virgin i'd put it as my number two which doesn't mean this movie isn't an awesome work of art nightmare came along after the halloween and friday imitators had run out of steam and revitalized the genre with its imaginative fantasy killer and though there may be a scene too many of characters talking about freddy mr krueger himself is flawless here dark scary and sinister but still smirking whether he's cutting off his own fingers or shrieking as a skellyface he's an instant classic and it's great that his final girl opponent after a 15 minute fake out with amanda weiss's tina gray is able to stand toe to toe with him and strength and resolve nancy thompson as played by heather langenkamp is the heart of this film and the trilogy that features her i can't believe she was only 20 years old here she's so self-assured and in charge and she ain't taking no shit from that sleepy ass glenn i just asked you to do one thing just stay awake and watch me just wake me up if it looked like i was having a bad dream and what did you do you shit you fell asleep the original nightmare has two of the most memorable kills in all of horror tina gray and glenn lance in their own separate bloody bedroom adventures glenn's being very bloody the practical effects in these and other scenes bring nightmares to reality in classic image after classic image all the while these visual elements are enhanced by charles bernstein's score john carpenter's halloween theme is an all-timer and harry manfredini's kikiki mamama is always quoted but bernstein's freddy theme is up there right alongside him a nightmare in elm street takes a fantastical conceit plays it seriously enough to be scary but still light enough to be fun it's an excellent tone to have in a horror movie and once again we owe it to wes craven a true master of horror number one and yet at this point in time i'm digging on dream warriors the most the third nightmare movie released in 1987 it's just such a fun ride from start to finish i love sirius freddy krueger in parts one two and seven but it's also fun to see him as a larger-than-life pop culture figure as evidenced by the kick-ass dokkan song dream warriors is when that mainstream appeal began but long before it became too over the top freddy's saying one-liners some among his most famous fucking bitch but he's using his humor as a way to be scary he's not just yucking it up for the fuck of it consider how cruel his attacks are to the individual dream warriors using elements from their troubled pasts or presents to tease and torture them like i said in the intro freddy krueger is an asshole your wish is my command and this might be him in his most perfect asshole state the team characters he's up against are plentiful but well-defined everyone establishes their character in their first or second scene so by time they're taking group naps together you know who they are and why they'd have these dream powers of course taryn's gonna be beautiful and bad yeah that's taryn sure their dream powers are kind of dumb if you think too hard or if not dumb themselves get dumb costumes to go along with them but there's so much heart to this dream war waged against krueger these kids like most nightmare protagonists are troubled and disbelieved it's fun to watch them find a way to fight back against the big bully fred all of them are earnest and great especially kincaid played memorably by ken sago kruger as for our lead patricia our cat's kristen parker is a relentless fighter who's fun to root for it's a huge blow to the series that arquette didn't want to return for part 4 and give us more of those ear splitting screams the effects are bigger and better than anything from the first two films with a variety of techniques all aided by kick-ass stunt performances i love when the walls blow up around kristin and i love the freddy worm that attacks oh my god i love when freddy turns into a stop-motion puppet and i love the sick effects when he turns phillip into a blood vessel marionette i love how nasty it is when freddie whips out those syringes to torture taran and i love when kristen's faucet handles turn into freddy hands to slasher i love so much about this movie's fantastical scenes that i can forgive it for the boring bullshit surrounding dr gordon his stuff with the mysterious nun who turns out to be freddie's mom and the weird kind of romance that he develops with nancy is definitely the biggest knock against the movie but hey at least his story intersects with the returning john saxon who is great as the surly alcoholic ex-sheriff donald thompson and of course you've got heather langenkamp returning as nancy thompson she's not quite the same nancy she's more passive than in the first film but that's because she's moved into a mentorship role she gets to play the seasoned veteran with the war scar of a white hair streak here to help the new generation and in the end pass things off to them it sucks to see or get killed but in a lot of ways it works since it serves as a nice middle point for the trilogy of 1-3 a new nightmare the other freddy movies are fun bonuses but they don't have the heart of the series heather langenkamp of course i'm biased when i say that because i know heather in real life we met at texas frightmare in 2019 chelsea and i did an escape room with her and lisa wilcox later that year and we were friends by time heather joined us for an interview on the podcast after filming that episode we asked heather to officiate our wedding which is now taking place in january of 2022 heather said yes and has already gotten ordained so in seven months chelsea and i will be married by heather langenkamp i still can't believe how awesome that is anyway that might influence my rankings just a little bit but let's be real those three were always gonna have my top three spots still like i said the nightmare series is special to me overall i'd put it in my top three horror franchises with child's play and saw freddy krueger is just the coolest and the effects are unmatched even though there's plenty of bad in the series most of the time i'm still having fun i'll keep doing these ranking videos on occasion as long as they're interesting to you but until next time i'm james agenese sweet dreams little meaties thanks a lot for watching this extra video which is longer than a lot of kill counts did not expect that workload if you weren't aware we're having some copyright issues that's why the they talk predator episode didn't come out on time last week fingers crossed we should have two more they talk episodes for you next wednesday and the wednesday after that we are trying our best here but just please be understanding there's a lot going on no matter what though we're all very appreciative for you tuning in and watching and subscribing so thank you be good people

Channel: Dead Meat

Views: 2,025,011

Keywords: horror, dead meat, movies, scary, films, kills, kill count, body count, james a. janisse, jaj, pine commander boogie, a nightmare on elm street, a nightmare on elm street theme, a nightmare on elm street dead meat, a nightmare on elm street movies, ranking horror movies, ranking scary movies, ranking every a nightmare on elm street movie, nightmare on elm street deleted scenes, nightmare on elm street ranked, a nightmare on elm street review, every nightmare on elm street ranked, movie

Id: Vg78SItDCjo

Length: 29min 16sec (1756 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 23 2021