Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, Springwood Confidential struggles to keep a host.

Episode 2.11 “Dreams That Kill”

(Dir by Tom DeSimone, originally aired on December 17th, 1989)

In this follow-up to Dream Come True, Dick Gautier plays Charlies Nickels, the new host of Springwood Confidential.  When he announced that his next show will be a discussion about whether or not a nightmare can kill you, he soon finds that his dreams are being haunted by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund, hamming it up and apparently enjoying the opportunity to do more than just host for once).  Freddy is worried that the show will cause people to stop sleeping.  I’m not really sure that I follow Freddy’s logic — sleep is unavoidable, no matter how much you want to stay up for days at a time — but whatever.  Eventually, Freddy torments Charlie to the point that Charlie ends up in a coma, where Freddy can torture him 24/7.

At the hospital, a doctor (Nicholas Cascone) removes some of Charlie’s brain fluid and injects it into a comatose teenager named Mark Lindstrom (Christian Borcher).  Mark comes out of his coma but now he has Charlie’s personality and he desperately wants to be the next host of Springwood Confidential.  Mark gets the job but soon, he’s having nightmares involving Freddy.

“This is supposed to be Charlie Nickels’s dream!” Freddy says, spying Mark.  “Two for the price of one!”

As you probably already guessed, this episode ends with a vengeful Mark injecting his brain fluid into the doctor.  So now, it’s three for the price of one….

I kind of liked the idea of Freddy being passed from one victim to another.  And Robert Englund was entertaining as Freddy.  That said, this episode basically felt like the same story told twice.  Freddy haunted Charlie.  Freddy haunts Mark in the exact same way.  It was better than anything the first season had to offer but this episode still ultimately felt a bit redundant.