After he was laid to rest in Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 needed to resurrect Freddy Krueger, and did it in the stupidest possible way. Perhaps as a consequence of wanting to provide viewers with a dramatically satisfying final act, almost every entry in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise ends with Freddy being clearly defeated, often in a way that implies he’s gone for good. Obviously, fans of the franchise don’t really want Freddy to disappear forever, so they’re willing to except that his reason for returning in the next film might not be the greatest.
Sometimes, such as in the case of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Freddy’s defeat in the prior film is just simply ignored, as the story starts with Freddy back operating as normal. That also happens in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, which doesn’t bother to explain how Freddy returned after Alice sent him packing at the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child.
When it comes to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master though, one of the multiple credited screenwriters decided to bring Freddy back to life in a way that continues to confound new viewers today, over 30 years following the sequel’s release. The film overall is popular, but that scene is inexplicably stupid.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 Resurrects Freddy With Flaming Dog Pee
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 dealt with Freddy in one of the more creative ways to date. Nancy Thompson’s dad and her love interest Dr. Neil Gordon went to where Freddy’s remains had been stashed, then buried them in hallowed ground, although not before Freddy was able to finally kill Nancy. Undoing that believably would’ve never been easy, but A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 just threw up its hands and went crazy. The first death in the film occurs when surviving dream warrior Kincaid goes to sleep, only to find himself in the same junkyard where Freddy was buried.
Kincaid’s dog (named Jason as a nod to Friday the 13th) is also in the dream with him, which itself makes no sense as Kristen is the one able to pull people and seemingly animals into her dreams, not Kincaid. Anyway, Jason the dog goes over to where Freddy’s bones are buried, and pees on his grave, with the pee lighting on fire. Again, none of this is even remotely explained. For whatever reason, the flaming dog pee leads to Freddy’s resurrection, a sequence with special effects so cool it almost makes one forget the insanity they’ve just seen. Kincaid’s dog runs away, and Freddy rises, eventually killing Kincaid. While it might be tempting to chalk Freddy’s cringe-worthy method of resurrection up to popular 1980s writing aid cocaine, in this case it’s likely due to the Hollywood Writers’ Strike of 1988, which led to much of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 being rewritten on the fly during filming. Considering that, it’s almost a miracle the final cut turned out as well as it did.
