Nightmare On Elm Street 4, A - The Dream Master Details

Alice (Lisa Wilcox) goes through the blood-stained looking glass in one of the best Freddy Krueger episodes, given a wonderfully different European art-horror feel by future blockbuster director Renny Harlin. Winning Wilcox takes on the talents of her deceased friends to become the Dream Master, the ancient guardian of positive scenarios, poised to counterattack Freddy's negative nightmares in this beautifully photographed redefinition of the pop-culture formula. Harlin puts a fresh spin on the recurring nightmare cliché and there's a marvellous scene where Wilcox is flung into the on-screen action from a cinema balcony. A better symbol of the effectiveness of this particular segment of the potent box-office series would be hard to find.

A mixture, as before, of spectacularly unpleasant special effects and grotesque humour, except that Freddy is now firmly established as the star.