The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story

The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story, by Jeffrey Cooper

February, 1987  St. Martin’s Press

I’ll start this review with an admission: I have never seen A Nightmare On Elm Street nor any of its sequels. But having read this novelization of the first three films in the series – which is yet another book Robert Mann hooked me up with – I now feel that I have. For my friends The Nightmares On Elm Street is essentially a straight-up, no-frills synopsis of the first two films, with the same blasé narrative approach extending to the third film…though it’s my understanding that the plot for the third film, The Dream Warriors, differs here from the actual movie. 

Each film gets about 70 pages of text, meaning that for the most part The Nightmares On Elm Street reads like a collection of novellas. But that isn’t a problem. What’s a problem is that author Jeffrey Cooper turns in the most bland prose I’ve ever encountered in a book; Paul Hofrichter would consider this book poorly written. It’s seriously a wonder it was even published, but I’m imagining the studio was behind the push. Copyright “The Second Elm Street Venture,” The Nightmares On Elm Street was likely timed to hit bookstore shelves at the same time that The Dream Warriors was released, so I’m guessing speed was more of a concern than quality. To be fair, Cooper does appear capable of putting a bit of an emotional drive into some sections, but for the most part the book comes off like he watched the first two movies and just wrote down what he saw, then took the same approach for the script of the third film. 

The most humorous thing is that, reading this book, you’d never get the idea that these movies were violent, R-rated horror flicks. The novel is curiously bloodless and the horror stuff is weak at best, mostly because the prose is so blasé. I mean Freddy Krueger will pop out of the shadows or whatever and there’s zero in the way of terror. I mean it will just be point blank blasé prose, like literally, “Freddy jumped out of the shadows,” and that’s it. It’s lame, is what I’m trying to say, and comes off like the work of an author who doesn’t give two shits about his assignment. In fact, hardly anything is even described. About the most we get is that Freddy wears a “Fedora hat” and has a scarred face. It’s like the author has done the bare minimum requirement to get the novel done. 

So anyway, the book runs to 216 pages, with a section of black and white stills from the first two films. In addition to the novelization of the first three films there’s a several-page “bonus” section detailing “The Life And Death Of Freddy Krueger.” The curious thing is that this bonus section has more bite than anything else in the book; it’s incredibly grim and has the dark humor one would expect from the films, and I wonder if it was even written by Jeffrey Cooper. Otherwise The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story doesn’t have much going for it, and would only be recommended for the collector. 

Actually, the book is almost written on the level of juvenile fiction. Other than a few utterances of “fuck” or the like, it’s PG at best. All the sex is off-page, but this too was humorous because all the protagonists are teens, for the most part. The sex is one thing in the films, where you can tell it’s a 20-something actors playing the role, but in the book it’s another thing entirely when you’re reading about a 15 year-old girl suffering from “sexual tension.” I mean I hate to sound like a reactionary prude but it made me downright uncomfortable at times. But then I flat-out loved the part where the possessed teen gal begged a guy to sodomize her in The Nursery, so I guess maybe it’s just the bland, boring prose that put me off instead of the content itself. That said, Cooper shows no compassion for any of these kids, so I guess that’s what you’d want from a horror novelist, just no holds barred. But then he shows no compassion because all these characters are ciphers at best. 

Well anyway, the novelization of the first flick takes up the first 70 pages, and again one would never get the idea that this was an R-rated horror movie. Nor does the reader get a good picture of Freddy Krueger, meaning that black and white section is a real help, because the photos do the job that Cooper’s prose doesn’t. No attempt is made of establishing the location nor any of the characters; the vibe really is very much that Cooper’s just popped in the VHS of A Nightmare On Elm Street and typed out the events as they transpired onscreen. We do get a brief prologue, though, that “ten years ago” Freddy, the “Springdale Slasher,” was hunted down and killed by residents of the community. 

From there we jump into the novelization of the first film. Cooper makes no attempt at setting the time or the place, but then that only adds to the skewed fairy tale vibe of the novel. Strangely, a gal named Tina seems to be our protagonist, as it’s through her perspective that the novel opens; she wakes from a dream, one in which Freddy was chasing her, and then goes to school and talks to her pal Nancy about it. But as it turns out, Tina will not be in the novel long, and Nancy will be the protagonist of this section – and also will return in the third section, ie the novelization of the third film. 

So I can save everyone the trouble of the belabored rundown: Freddy Krueger is appearing in the dreams of kids in this area and trying to kill them. The novel does not address the span of Freddy’s reach, though it seems to be confined to this specific area of Elm Street. Not that this is clearly established. For that matter, there is the promise of the theme here that Freddy is going after the children of the residents who killed him a decade ago. This theme bubbles to the surface, only to be forgotten; I’m not sure if it’s the same in the film. But at any rate, we do eventually learn that Nancy’s mother was one of the people who took part in the killing of Freddy, and what’s more she has retained a memento of Freddy’s, which she keeps in the basement furnace. 

The only problem is, even in this thin paperback, there are a ton of continuity errors. For one, the novelization of the first film seems to imply that Freddy was killed via fire: he was burned to a crisp by the town residents who cornered him and torched him. But then, the novelization of the third film – as well as the “life and death” postscript – state that Freddy was burned as a child. Also, the theme of Freddy getting revenge is poorly conceived, with no follow-through. When he tangles with Nancy’s mom at the end of the book, there’s absolutely no payoff to the fact that she was one of the townspeople who killed Freddy years ago – Freddy is just concerned with Nancy. 

There are other gaping plot holes besides. Like in the novelization of the first film, Nancy decides to trap Freddy…and there are all these dream sequences where she’s walking around, fully aware that she is dreaming. How Nancy became an expert in lucid dreaming is not explained. It took me personally years to do lucid dreams, and that was through focused effort. (The trick, by the way, is to sleep for at least six hours, wake up and do something – like walk around the house or whatever – and then go back to sleep. You will slip right into the REM stage due to the fact that you were just sleeping, but you’ve jogged yourself awake enough that your conscious mind is still active and will realize it when the dream starts.) 

But the bigger problem is that Nancy also has unexplained superpowers. Not only can she lucid dream at the expert level, but she also has the ability to pull things out of dreams. This happens most notably in the finale, when Nancy manages to pull Freddy himself into the real world. Of course the question dangles at the end whether this is just another dream, but still; the problem is, in the novelization of the third film there’s another teen girl, Kirsten, who is specifically described as a “dream warrior” whose power is pulling things out of dreams. An older Nancy at first can’t believe this is possible, then is shocked to see Kirsten actually do it…and the reader is like, “Lady, you just did the exact same friggin’ thing like a hundred pages ago!” 

But man, it’s all so blasé and half-assed. Nothing is described, nothing is explained. About the most Cooper does is inveigh a sense of doom and foreboding in the perspectives of his characters, but motivations and dialog and all that fall flat. Freddy Krueger suffers the most; he appears infrequently at best, and he conveys none of the menace of his film counterpart. For that matter, he comes off like a fool in the novelization of the third film; Freddy gets his ass kicked regularly by the Dream Warriors, so it’s no wonder this section was reportedly changed in the actual movie. Indeed, Freddy is rendered a sort of non-menace in the second and third sections, only killing a few people in the second novelization and taking pretty much the entire narrative to get his act together in the third novelization. Also worth noting is that Freddy turns himself into a woman in the third film – one of the Dream Warriors is a kid named Joey, and in one of Joey’s dreams a hotstuff, barely-clad girl appears and throws herself at him…and, uh, starts to make out with him…only for the girl to suddenly change into Freddy. I’m betting this is another part that didn’t make it into the actual film! 

I haven’t said much about the novelization of the second film, and it’s my understanding Elm Street fans rank that one as one of the worst in the series. It’s easy to see why, as here in the novelization it comes off more like an outline than an actual story: some teen guy moves into Nancy’s old home, “five years” after the first movie, and soon becomes plagued by Freddy. Apparently Freddy wants to possess the kid, or use him to kill for him in the real world, but it’s all so vague. It’s also confusing, because the reader keeps wondering what happened to Nancy in the first film; and when she does appear in the novelization of the third film, Cooper does little to explain the confusing finale of the first movie. (Spoiler alert: but the novelization of the first film ends with Nancy about to be killed by Freddy, who has trapped her in his dream after all…or something.) 

But then, each novelization ends with a “fake out” surprise twist horror ending, which is uninentionally humorous on the printed page. Maybe Freddy suddenly jumping from the shadows before the end credits made teen viewers freak out in 1980s movie houses, but on the printed page – at least in the blasé prose of Jeffrey Cooper – there is little impact. There is also little attempt at capturing the surreal texture of dreams; The Dream Warriors in particular sounds like a promising idea, with a group of Freddy-tormented teens banding together to fight him on his own turf, but again Cooper does nothing to bring the proceedings to life. 

Overall I’d have to say this one is really for the collectors. There was nothing here that made me want to see the actual films, and the novel did not work as its own separate thing, such as a superior novelization might (ie The Rose). But at the very least, The Nightmares On Elm Street Parts 1, 2, 3: The Continuing Story did succeed in one unexpected regard: it put me back on one of my very infrequent horror novel kicks. The last time I was on one was six years ago. Of course this means I’ll soon be reading another William W. Johnstone novel!