By 1991, moviegoers were treated to the fifth sequel to Wes Craven’s landmark slasher flick A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, featuring everyone’s favorite razor-gloved janitor/child molestor/burn victim/dream murderer Freddy Krueger. For those who couldn’t get enough Freddy that year, NIGHTMARES ON ELM STREET: FREDDY KRUGER’S SEVEN SWEETEST DREAMS hit the paperback racks, edited by Martin H. Greenberg.

Brian Hodge’s “Asleep at the Wheel” has a band staying at Nancy Thompson’s old house on Elm Street for artistic inspiration, while William Relling Jr.’s “Le Morte de Freddy” is set in a mental institution and is a direct sequel to ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS. “Dead Highway, Lost Roads” by Philip Nutman follows a vagina-extracting serial killer named the Surgeon General and an innocent woman named Alice (complete with non-subtle WONDERLAND references), and Wayne Allen Sallee’s “Close My Eyes and I’ll Kiss You” follows a Death Row inmate. While none of these four stories are bad per se, they’re either too long, too unfocused or too confusing to be memorable.

But the three other tales fare much better. As the lone female author of the septet, Nancy A. Collins has a young man go on a job interview with Freddy, who’s looking for an apprentice, and the kid is reluctant until he learns the truth about his own family. Families don’t get much more twisted than the ones of the two boys who serve as heroes of “Briefcase Full of Blues” by Tom Elliott, whose story delivers a truly disturbing psychosexual twist I didn’t see coming.

The SWEETEST of all is “Miles to Go Before I Sleep” by Bentley Little, and really, is it any wonder? Freddy’s world seems like fertile ground for a horror author of Little’s caliber and deviant imagination, and his story of a high school janitor who finds some interesting mementos in his office does not disappoint. You could even remove Freddy from the equation entirely, and you’d still be left with a cracklin’ good slice of slice-and-dice fiction; one wishes more of the authors followed suit instead of rehashing the same Kruger backstory we’ve all heard throughout the cinematic franchise. –Rod Lott

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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING DETECTIVE AND 19 OF THE YEAR’S FINEST CRIME AND MYSTERY STORIES edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg
• THE BEST HORROR STORIES OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE edited by Frank D. McSherry, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh
• THE BURNING by Bentley Little
• FOUR DARK NIGHTS by Bentley Little, Douglas Clegg, Christopher Golden and Tom Piccirilli
• GUNSLINGER AND NINE OTHER ACTION-PACKED STORIES OF THE WILD WEST edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Bill Pronzini