A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
1988 American film by Renny Harlin
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is a 1988 American fantasy slasher film directed by Renny Harlin from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland and Scott Pierce. It is the sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and the fourth installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film follows Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) reappearing in the dreams of Kristen Parker, Joey Crusel, and Roland Kincaid, where he uses Kristen's best friend, Alice Johnson, to gain access to new victims in order to continue his killing spree.
Following the release of Dream Warriors, series creator Wes Craven pitched his own idea for a fourth film. However, it was turned down in favor of another sequel. The Dream Master is often popularly referred to as "the MTV Nightmare" of the franchise.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master was released on August 19, 1988. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $49.4 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $6.5 million, which made it the highest-grossing film in the franchise in the United States until the release of Freddy vs. Jason, a crossover with the Friday the 13th franchise, in 2003. It was followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, released in 1989.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” is 1988 American film by Renny Harlin. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nightmare, Street and Dream, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1364051. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988, 1987, 2003 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.