Slogging through the many duds in the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series is all made worthwhile after a viewing of "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare." In it, Freddy spouts such hilariously stupid one-liners, it boggles the mind. His opening line sets the stage. Picture a teenager in a falling house. He looks out the window, and Freddy rides by on a broom. "I'll get you my pretty," he says, "and your little soul, too!"

All this to the tune of "A Night On Bald Mountain." I kid you not.

It seems this teenager is the last in his town, and all the adults there have gone crazy. Freddy lets him live so he can go fetch more teenagers. He gives him amnesia so he won't know not to come back. He laughs evilly, but somehow his laugh isn't creepy and menacing as it once was. Now it's a loud belly laugh, one that might sound almost jolly if it were taken out of context. It's very funny and ripe for ridicule on the part of the viewer.

True to expectations, The Last Teenager goes out and comes back with more. Freddy starts giving them strange dreams. It's a curious characteristic of the series: the nightmares the kids have become more and more elaborate and insidious with each sequel. All that reaches a pinnacle here, with nightmares such as the Road Map That Unfolds And Gets Really Big. None of the deaths are, shall we say, conventional, either. One guy gets killed by skydiving onto a bed of nails. Another one dies by wearing a hearing aid that amplifies sound so much that when Freddy scrapes his knife glove across a blackboard, the guy's head explodes, because that's what happens when you hear really loud noises.

Speaking of that particular victim, the lead-up to his death contains some of the funniest moments in the movie, including one that is right up there with Jaffar's "HA!!" from "Sinbad of the Seven Seas" and the "hiding in plain sight" shot from "She" for the most hilarious bad movie scene I've ever seen. It's difficult for me to describe in print, but let me say it involves Freddy holding his hat and jumping up and down with a big giant open mouthed grin. Another great moment from that sequence: his hearing is amplified so much that he can't stand to hear a dripping faucet -- so he turns the faucet off and is unfazed by the much louder squeaking of the knob.

Funky Freddy, in a brief, inexplicable prelude to the next death, gets down to some psychedelic animated effects. He plays a video game with his next victim. He's the one playing. The victim takes Mario's place. Freddy sure seems to have a grand old time with that joystick, and he really gets into it. "Boing! Boing! Boing!" he says, while making his victim jump several times in succession. "Great graphics!" he exclaims. "I beat my high score!" is his closing comment. Yes, this is supposedly the same character that was actually scary way back in 1984.

So, as the title may suggest, Freddy dies in this movie, but it's not like he hasn't died before. This particular death is at least convincing, but then again, so were several of the others. What bothers me is that it recycles an idea. They do the old "grab onto him and wake up" routine, then do him in. This part of the movie also, by the way, was shown in 3D in the theaters, so keep your eyes peeled for things flying at the camera. The climactic battle takes place in a fenced in area of a cellar. He and the female lead are locked in there, and a couple of co-stars are trying to bust in to help out. Freddy and the teen exchange blows, exchange the knife glove a few times, and soon the buddies from the outside start throwing the girl weapons she can nail Freddy with. During all this, Freddy comments about how much it hurts to be human again, but the thing is, he's not. He can still change his appearance around and crawl on the ceiling and stuff. In one extremely laughable move, one of the co-stars throws in a lit stick of dynamite, which the heroine plugs into Freddy and runs away. Fortunately, just at that moment, one of the other co-stars breaks the door down so she can run for cover -- but what if the door couldn't be knocked down in time? That dynamite would have been a really bad idea. Freddy's last words? Just one: "Kids."

I've quoted several of Freddy's hilarious one-liners above. Here's a bunch more he utters in this movie:

"No screaming while the bus is in motion!"

In the disguise of one of the kids' mothers: "Maybe I clean out your ears for you."

"Lend me your ear!"

"What's with kids today?"

"You better speak up...must be my deaf ear."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but nothing will ever kill me."

"I am forever -- too bad you're not."

Turkey rating: 4 turkeys.