List of A Nightmare On Elm Street Characters - A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - Alice Johnson

Alice Johnson

• Portrayed by Lisa Wilcox
• Appeared in: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4; A Nightmare on Elm Street 5; Nightmares on Elm Street; The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams ("Dead Highway, Lost Roads"); Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors

Alice Johnson is a teenager and friend of Kristen Parker. With Kristen Parker being the last Elm Street child, he requires her to bring him more children, eventually tormenting her enough to force her to summon Alice. Kristen is killed by Krueger but not before passing onto her the ability to summon others into her dreams, inadvertently also passing it onto Krueger. After this incident, Krueger begins summoning Alice's friends to him in their dreams to kill them. However, when they die at Krueger's hand, their 'dream powers' and personality traits are absorbed into Alice, making her stronger, revealing her as the Dream Master, Krueger's opposite. Alice confronts Freddy using her new abilities but finds him still too powerful for her to defeat. She then recites an old rhyme taught to her by her mother about "The Dream Master" which allows her to gain control of her dream and, using a piece of broken glass, forces Krueger to see himself. Alice opens the positive dream gate, allowing all of Krueger's captured souls to escape, destroying him in the process.

In The Dream Child, Alice, has begun dating Dan Jordan and unknowingly becomes pregnant with his child. Freddy returns using her unborn son Jacob's dreams and uses them to murder people including Jacob's father Dan, feeding the souls of his victim to Jacob in an attempt to make him more like himself. Alice manages to again defeat Freddy with the help of the spirit of Amanda Krueger and Jacob. Alice later gives birth to Jacob and moves away from Springwood. In the original script for Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Alice was to be killed off by Freddy Krueger early in the film. However, the actual film makes no mention of Alice or Jacob, and leaves their fates unknown.

In Nightmares on Elm Street, a six-issue miniseries published by Innovation Comics, Alice returns to Springwood following the death of her father and is forced to face Freddy after he again tries to use a pre-pubescent Jacob to kill. In the anthology The Nightmares on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger's Seven Sweetest Dreams,(1991) Alice appears in Philip Nutman's story "Dead Highway, Lost Roads." After having been involved in a major accident, Alice becomes ensnared in the dreamworld by Freddy Krueger. She is trapped in a macabre "Alice in Wonderland" setting. With the aid of serial killer Karl Stolenberg and anthropomorphic armadillo Joe Bob, Jacob eventually finds Alice. A deranged Karl attacks Alice, but is returned to his senses by Jacob through physical force. Alice and Karl cooperate to defeat Freddy, though Karl perishes in the battle. With Freddy defeated, Alice and Jacob return to the waking world. She also appears in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: Nightmare Warriors, where a vision of Freddy causes her to meet with other Freddy and Jason survivors. She reveals that her dream powers have caused a terminal illness, and later sacrifices herself to pass her powers onto her son. The aforementioned comic series is not the only literature that has killed off Alice. Due to Alice having been killed by Freddy Krueger, her son Jacob is the main protagonist in Natasha Rhodes' novel A Nightmare on Elm Street: Perchance to Dream.

In his book Horror Films of the 1980s, John Kenneth Muir noted the following:

"Alice's blossoming is coupled with the mirror (an important symbol in the film). When she is weak and diffident, the mirror i loaded with photographs that obscure her reflection. The message is that she doesn't want to see herself; she'd rather hide from what she considers ugly. But as Alice's strength grows, she takes down the photos and countenances her own image. What she finds there is gorgeous and strong."

Muir believes that Alice's transformation "is the perfect counterpoint to Freddy's storyline." Whereas Freddy's reflection encompasses evil, Alice's "reflection is what makes her powerful." According to Muir, the character of Alice Johnson, goes against the "final girl" stereotype in that she is a "greasy-haired ugly duckling her inner strength and beauty through self-actualization.." Furthermore, he adds that "from Nancy to Alice, the women on Elm Street are tough, resourceful, powerful role models for teenagers, ones who--mirror--reality in their efforts to navigate high school, and indeed life."

As Muir summarizes:

" afraid of what her child will be; she wants to protect it; and she has to fend off Dan's parents, who want to adopt the child... with all of these competing emotions and stresses, not to mention Freddy...."

In an interview, Lisa Wilcox noted her similarities to Alice Johnson:

"I immediately fell in love with the story of Alice," explained Wilcox. "She's a daydreamer who was kind of pathetic at the beginning of Part Four, and I think we all can relate to that feeling in some ways. Actually, I was totally a wallflower in high school so there was a lot of myself in the character of Alice. There's a lot of Lisa on that screen...As an actress, though, what made Alice remarkable is that audiences watch Alice become stronger and stronger as the movie plays along, and you can't help but be a part of her journey because she's so relatable."