Friday evening I came home somewhat moody.
What normally helps is enjoying ‘Mother Goose’ Amy (Anna Paquin) and Thomas (Jeff Daniels) in that fabulously comforting Fly Away Home … .
Instead I watched again poor Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) being dragged across the bedroom ceiling, her chest cut open, kicking, bleeding and screaming. (It was the screaming and her animal-like tormented breathing I found – still do – the most disturbing/unnerving back in 1984!) Here’s Tina’s Nightmare …

The maiden in the bathtub is of course not Tina Gray but Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), experiencing a bad dream too. Err … I considered Tina’s Pangs of Death – click the thumbnail above – a bit to gross and flagrant for a header image!

As you probably know Heather reappeared in 2 sequels.
In part 3 (Dream Warriors) she played a dream researcher (huhh?) helping some haunted and frightened kids at a psychiatric ward to fight their nightmares. Co-written by original creator Wes Craven, but I didn’t really like that movie, though I do remember Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne playing their parts, which is always a good thing.
What I encountered yesterday whilst googling was the 1994 flick New Nightmare, the only other sequel again written and directed by Wes Craven and, so I learned, therefore the only one to compete with the original Nightmare. Yes, I missed that completely! A remarkably original concept (then), where Heather performs a double role as herself and Nancy, Robert Englund plays friendly himself and fucking Freddy, and Wes Craven, as himself, explains to his audience the effect of horror on those who create it.
Please read the Wiki ‘Wes Craven’s New Nightmare‘.

I will buy me the dvd, but watched the complete flick last night on YouTube:

Well … next came the Scream trilogy … which makes perfectly sense.

Note: New Line Cinema also published movies like the 2004 Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the 2007 Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, where Marcus Nispel and Jonathan Liebesmen, creating both an extremely dark, evil and violent picture, are taking horror to it’s next level and where both Jessica Biel (I am looking forward to Powder Blue!) and Jordana Brewster (poor Chrissie: ‘The Beginning’ is extreme torture cinema) are acting so bloody great you can almost smell their fear.
How extreme? Very! ‘The Beginning’ makes you feel you’re watching a Snuff Movie!