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An ex-career soldier moves with his two teenage children
to Springwood, but no sooner do they arrive than a mutilated
body is removed by police from a house across the road. Jade
immediately begins experiencing frightening nightmares every
time she sleeps, balanced only by a mysterious benign little
girl who tries to warn her. When she shares a dream with her
brother and witnesses his brutal death, she realises her own
life is very much at risk. Then she meets goth girl Kaylee,
who tells her about Freddy Krueger...
Freddy appears to be centring his attention on a group of
brainy geeks at a school. After three of them are violently
dispatched, the others get together to formulate a way to
fight back. There is the suggestion of summoning an Aztec
dream demon to fight Krueger, but for that a sacrifice is
required and that begins a dissension in ranks.
There's a certain amount of happenstance conformity at play
here. My last review was of Wes Craven's Deadly
Blessing, and here I am reviewing a graphic
novel based on his best-known creation immediately afterward.
I am pleasantly surprised by this book for two fundamental
reasons. The first is I naturally thought the story would
be based on the script for the first Nightmare film,
but instead we have two original tales. Secondly, I'm not
a huge fan of the Freddy films, because for me wisecracking
and punning at every opportunity negates the chill factor
very much present with the silent but deadly Michael Myers
and Jason Voorhees. Happily, I can report that Freddy's "cleverness"
is kept to a bear minimum.
Both stories, written by Chuck Dixon, are entertaining and
different in their dream environments. The first, Freddy's
War, is more traditional, but works better for its simplicity.
The idea of imagining your own weapons in a dream comes straight
out of Graham Masterton's Dream Warrior books, but
Freddy has a bizarre answer to the firepower.
Much
of The Demon of Sleep takes place in an Aztec location,
wherein Freddy himself is used sparingly as the major player.
The dream demon, as realised by Kevin West and Bob Almond,
reminded me somewhat of the Beast from the X-Men, but
I'm only nitpicking here.
On the whole this is an impressive release.
Ty
Power
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