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 Plex!

This week, there’s a new threat in town!

Episode 1.11 “Do Dreams Bleed?”

(Dir by Dwight H. Little, originally aired on January 8th, 1989)

There’s a new serial killer in Springwood!

We don’t really learn much about the Chopper, other than he attacks people with an axe.  When the episode begins, high school football star John Warring (Damon Martin) is dealing with dual trauma of having not only found the Chopper’s latest victim but also being the number one suspect.  His grades start to slip.  (As was so often the case on this show, his parents are conveniently out-of-town.)  He fears that he’s going to lose his girlfriend, Roni (Sarah Buxton).  Not even John’s coach, Coach Gacey (Jeff McCarthy), is much help.  That’s probably because Coach Gacey actually is the Chopper, not that anyone figures that out.  Driven mad by his dreams, John finds himself being taken away to an asylum.

(Really?  Coach Gacey?  He should have been the number one suspect based on his name alone.)

The second half of the episode follows Ronni as she now starts to have nightmares.  She wants to believe that John is innocent but her dreams indicate that she has her doubts.  Eventually, John escapes from prison and is able to save Ronni from Coach Gacey.  However, when the police arrive, they just assume that Coach Gacey was trying to save Ronni and that John is the Chopper.  Ronni is so shaken by the entire experience that she no longer knows what’s true and what’s not.

Wow, that’s dark!

This was actually a pretty good episode.  For once the two stories had coherent plots, with Ronni’s story logically building off of John’s.  The dream sequences were effectively creepy, director Dwight Little kept the action moving at a good pace, and even the dark ending felt earned as opposed to forced on the narrative.  I would have liked to have heard Freddy’s thoughts on Springwood having a new serial killer (instead, during the host segments, Freddy just did his usual bad jokes) but otherwise, this was a surprisingly good episode.