By the fifth "Nightmare On Elm Street" film, the series' downward spiral was progressing to the point where the movies were actually entertaining again, this time not for chills but for unintentional laughs. Although these moments of humor are few and far between, they're frequent enough to keep bad movie lovers from being overly oppressed by the gruesome killings. The first is the worst, a needlessly vile death in which a teenager's motorcycle turns into a koosh ball of slimy tentacles that burrow under his skin and turn him into a skeleton-shaped wad of dirt. But the impact of the gruesomeness is lessened somewhat by the Flintstone sound effects. Yes, the sounds that accompany his skidding around the road sound like they came straight out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Another grisly death is caused by forced overeating, to the point where the victim's cheeks get bloated so much, they get prosthetics on them. Freddy cuts her gut open, and the next thing you know, she's holding an open package of raw hamburger on her belly. This is the goriest of the "Nightmare" movies, which just goes to show what cinematic element *doesn't* make for good horror.

The plot involves a pregnant teenager who tries to save all her friends, and finally her unborn baby, from Freddy's nightmares. How does Freddy return? Because if you'll recall, he was killed off (again) at the end of the fourth movie. Here's how he comes back. The main character, Alice, dreams she is pregnant. Doctors rush her to a grungy operating room. Suddenly, Alice is no longer on the table but rather is standing behind the doctors, looking at the table. The girl they are operating on is now somebody else. She gives birth to a baby E.T. with slime on it, and it runs away. Then it grows up and becomes Freddy Krueger, complete with the burns and blades he had before. In his best overdramatic voice, he announces, "IT'S A BOOYYYYYYY!!!!" And that's how Freddy comes back from the dead.

So he terrorizes Alice, and apparently Alice keeps inadvertently summoning other people into her dreams. Uh huh. When the third movie in the series started dabbling with that plot element, it was a little unbelieveable, but it made for a mildly interesting twist, so it was acceptable. Then the fourth movie gave everyone that power, and now the fifth has it happening by accident. There's such a thing as going too far. In fact, this movie is so lazy about its plotting, the requirement about being asleep before Freddy can kill doesn't seem to matter anymore -- for no explained reason.

One of my favorite scenes involved Freddy hunting down a comic book artist. The kid gets sucked into a drawing, and Alice tries to catch up to him to save him. He sees him in the drawing -- so what does she do? She draws a stick figure of herself, writes "ALICE" in block letters just above it, and presto, she's in the drawing. She did this as casually and nonchalantly as if she does this everyday. I don't care if it was a dream or not, this move shouldn't have been second nature to her. It takes some actual thinking and learning to figure out the rules of physics in an alien world.

At any rate, Alice is too slow. Freddy confronts the comic book guy, who spins around and turns into a comic book superhero. He fires all kinds of shots into Freddy, and the music that accompanies all this sounds all happy and triumphant -- very out of place. I laughed. Then Freddy slices him into little tiny strips of paper.

Later it becomes apparent that Freddy is trying to seduce Alice's unborn baby, who is about ten years old inside the dream world. But Amanda Krueger, aka Freddy's mother, aka the Deus Ex Machina, tells the boy, Jacob, to give back the power that Freddy gave him. So he does. Naturally, this power comes in the form of a skewering slimy tentacle that shoots out of Jacob and spears Freddy. Then there's shaking and screaming and goo, and Freddy dies again.

Turkey rating: three turkeys; two for the squeamish.