It didn't take long for this series to degenerate into the schlock its genre suggests. Part 2 mimics the original without having any clear understanding of why it worked. The original was effective not because it featured a series of teen deaths but because the horror was psychological -- because it played with a fear that appeals as much to our instincts as our intellect. Part 2 is exploitative and incoherent.

The star of the show, for instance, never tries to deal with his problem, namely that Freddy is starting to invade his dreams. Heather Langenkamp's character in the original tried everything -- staying awake, visiting a sleep clinic, getting someone to watch her while she slept, and so on. This guy just keeps going to sleep and bemoaning the results. Then it's back to sleep again. Only once does he ever express any fear of going to sleep, and he never tries to deal with his problem. He's purely a passive character.

The rules of the game are also changed. Before, Freddy could only manipulate the real world through someone's dreams. Now he has a little more freedom. He can make a pet bird go crazy, for instance. In the film's funniest scene, in a forehead-slapping sort of way, one of two pet birds goes whacko, killing the other and escaping its cage. He flies around the room, diving bombing the human family members, and finally, in one abrupt, laughably incongruous move, combusts in a fiery explosion. The camera cuts to the human characters, looking up. Feathers float down from above, but, wonder of all wonders, they're not on fire any more. But wait; it gets worse. The father then turns to his son and accuses him of doing all this. He accuses him of playing with cherry bombs. Huh? If you stuffed a lit cherry bomb in a bird, would that be even close to what it'd do?

The whole movie is full of things like this that don't make sense, although that's the most extreme example. The way the characters interact with each other doesn't make any sense. Successive lines of dialogue don't seem to follow one another naturally. It's like the script was written by a hermit who knew the definitions of English words but none of their connotations or shades of meaning -- and who had never seen two or more individuals interact.

The dreams themselves are shockingly uninspired. Except for a memorable if silly opening scene involving a school bus teetering on a pinnacle of rock, the dreams are pretty much recycled from the first movie. Again, the main character marches outside to the backyard in the middle of the night to investigate a strange noise. Again, the character runs downstairs to Freddy's giant boiler room habitat. Why do they always have to go to the boiler room? If Freddy were actually sincere about killing all these people, he'd go up to them, slice them up, and move on. We don't need them to wander around the boiler room all night, especially when the exact same sequences were already done in the first movie.

But believe it or not, the movie is worse when it's being original. New dream content includes such inanity as people faced dogs. Yes, one of the characters walks by some people faced dogs. They are of no consequence, just there for atmosphere, I guess. Bad atmosphere. When you have a throwaway moment in a movie that's so obviously DUMB, you cut it.

The movie, which ignored the silly ending of the original, turns around and commits the same offense by ending on a ludicrous discontinuity. The third movie in the series thought it fitting not only to ignore this one's ending but, in fact, everything. Although it doesn't do anything to contradict the events of the second movie, it doesn't acknowledge them in any way either. Smart move.

Turkey rating: two turkeys.