User Reviews

Freddy's Nightmares: Freddy's Tricks and Treats starts on Halloween as medical school student Marsha (Mariska Hargitay) decides to forget about partying & revise by going to school in the middle of the night & carrying out a dissection on a corpse, as you do. After hearing about local child killer Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) terrifying things start to happen to Marsha, dead bodies seem to come to life & she is tormented by a razor fingered man in horrifying visions & dreams. Marsha has a complete break down & turns herself over to research scientist Zach (Darren Dalton) who uses a device to record dreams (onto VHS tape no less) to try & help her but Freddy has other ideas & won't stop terrorising Marsha...

Episode four from season one this was one of several Freddy's Nightmares episodes directed by Ken Wiederhorn (probably best remembered for directing Retrun of the Living Dead Part II (1988)) & is easily one of the better episodes from this series. Like episode one No Mr. Nice Guy the script actually uses Freddy as a character in the whole story rather than just as a host & it benefits greatly from that, in fact I would say Freddy's Tricks and Treats feels like a short Elm Street film with a Springwood teenager being terrorised by Freddy in her dreams & then trying to figure out a way to stop him. The first half deals with Marsha's decent into madness as she blames herself for her Grandmother's death which Freddy plays on & a late night autopsy (could a student just turn up in the middle of the night & start cutting dead bodies up?) before moving onto Zach & his machine that records dreams onto a VCR! Recording dreams onto a VCR just sounds strange & is hard to take seriously. This moves along at a good pace & has a few reasonable shocks & scares although once again I wish the makers had put more effort into a twist ending as the whole thing is a little predictable & straight forward as it is. Also why did Marsha start having visions of Mark before she even knew anything about Freddy?

There are a quick couple of Friday the 13th & Halloween homage's here in this episode as one character is seen dressed as Jason Voorhees complete with hockey mask & there's even a pumpkin mask on show as well. There's a bit of gore here, the autopsy bits feature a sliced open body & internal organs are removed. This episode looks quite good as well, although the dreams are mostly brightly neon lit they do remind of the films themselves & of course whenever Freddy show's up things pick up. There's a neat special effect in which a bunch of wires wind together & form an arm with Freddy's razor blade glove at the end, more effort seems to have gone into this episode than some of the other's. Star Mariska Hargitay has gone on to win both a Golden Globe & Emmy for her lead role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Freddy's Tricks and Treats is easily one of the best episodes from this rather poor series, a bit of gore helps & the general feel of an actual Elm Street film does too, not brilliant but worth a watch for Freddy fans unlike the majority of Freddy's Nightmares.

Episode 4 has Med student Marsha working in lab on Halloween night. After saying she doesn't believe in Freddy Krueger, he decides to punish her with nightmares about her abusive grandmother. She fights him off with the help of her friend Mark who turns out to be just a part of her imagination. Later, a postgraduate student, Zach, tries to research Marsha's nightmares with his dream recording machine. After attempting to kill Marsha to make her dream more intense, Freddy uses his machine to turn the tides on Zach.

After two episodes of being absent from the plots main stories, Freddy returns in glorious fashion to wreak havoc. This was the first of seven episodes to be directed by Ken Wiederhorn or also directed classics like "Shock Waves" (1977) and "Return of the Living Dead, Part II" (1988). This one is pretty good, the first part deals with Freddy terrorizing a med student with a troubled past, who once hears of him refuses to believe the superstition. A baby Mariska Hargitay (of Law & Order: SVU fame) gives a pretty solid performance as our main lead, probably the best I've seen in this show yet and may ever, it's easy to see why she went on to become what she did. The episode keeps the momentum going decently into the second half as we deal with a dream recording machine that puts dreams on VHS tape. Freddy's final moments with the blood pouring out of the VCR is great. Overall, a fun episode and a enjoyable return for Freddy.