A Nightmare on My Street - growing up with Freddy Krueger

I was always a Freddy Krueger kid. He was my guy, more so than that dude in the hockey mask, who I liked just fine.

In 1988, AKA the year I got into horror, I was Team Freddy, and my horror buddy was Team Jason, so of course, we used to argue about who was cooler or who would win in a fight (turns out I lost that argument 15 years later). It was the same with bands. You’d have your favourite and someone else would have another. My brother’s favourite band in 1988 was Bon Jovi, and mine was Guns’N’Roses. Commence heated arguments about who was a better singer - John Bon or Axl?

But back to the horror heroes. To me, it was really only Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees in contention. At that stage, Leatherface had only recranked his chainsaw once since 1974, and Pinhead had only recently arrived on the scene. Michael Myers returned with Halloween 4 (after controversially sitting out Halloween 3), but he didn’t quite cut it as far as we were concerned. Jason had gnarlier kills and way more sex than Halloween, and Freddy was a wisecracking anti-hero, despite his horrendous child-killing backstory.

In my mind, Freddy was the clear winner in the imaginary battle for horror hero supremacy. I was much more drawn to the fantastical nature of the Nightmare films than the more primal hack’n’slash of the Friday the 13th series (not a slight against them), though I always enjoyed them as well. The twisted dream logic and cruel sense of humour Freddy employed appealed to a kid who grew up reading fantasy and horror novels.

To put it into a more basic analogy, Freddy flicks were like getting buzzed on some good weed in your best friend's sleepout, whereas F13th films were shotgunning beers with your buds at some outdoor party. Both fun, but that good weed would conjure all sorts of fanciful thoughts and conversations as opposed to the cheap thrills of sinking brews, and as a budding writer looking to expand my mind man! Freddy (and weed) won out. I should point out (just in case my mother reads this) that I wasn’t smoking bongs and chugging cans at the age of 11 - that all came in three years later, which still seems pretty young now that I’m looking back at it and my kids are approaching that age.

In those hallowed pre-Internet days, the only way you could find out any info on the latest Nightmare or Friday film was in the bloodstained pages of Fangoria magazine, still in its relative infancy, having been around for 9 years - although in today’s media and print wasteland, that sounds like a whole lifetime. So once a month, we would make the hour-long journey to the big smoke aka Otautahi - Christchurch, with either of our parents on some sort of family outing, just so we could hit up the local comic shop, imaginatively titled COMICS, to get the latest fix of horror news and gory pics from abroad.

We would also hit up the nearby video store so we could steal the VHS covers off the shelves and then put our dubbed VHS tapes of said films inside once we got home - little shits that we were! At this time, I also had a life-size poster of Freddy on the back of my bedroom door, which meant that I would scare the living shit out of myself every time I went to my room and closed the door.

However, as I mentioned, we were sadly too young to see Freddy or Jason hack their way across the silver screen, so it was Pan & Scan VHS viewings on boxy CRT TVs for years, until the eventual arrival of DVD in the late 1990s. Given the sub-90-minute runtimes of the Elm Street films, you could easily fit two films on a 90-minute VHS tape, so I had Nightmare 1 and 2 on one tape, 3 and 4 on another tape and so on.

The other extremely nerdy thing we would do is go to our high school office during lunch break and photocopy the VHS covers and Fangoria articles, which we would then cut up and tape the correct film logos on the spines, and then a picture of Freddy on the rectangular label in the middle of the tape. That’s how we nerds got shit done back then!

My rankings of the films at the time were as follows: Nightmare 3 / Nightmare 1 / Nightmare 4 / New Nightmare / Nightmare 5 / Nightmare 2 / Freddy’s Dead. I’ve always maintained that Nightmare 1 is the scariest. The whole conceit of being killed in your dreams is a terrifying one, and Craven treats it with deadly seriousness, crafting a mood of creeping dread that he punctuates with gnarly set pieces like Tina and Glen’s exceedingly gory deaths. Johnny Depp’s blood geyser remains imprinted in my 11-year-old brain as the goriest thing I had ever seen at that point, despite there being enough blood for 100 people.

The kids here feel doomed, and Nancy’s desperation at trying to convince her friends and parents of what’s happening is a fresh conceit that gets repeated ad infinitum (and wears a bit thin) over the rest of the series. Freddy is a truly menacing spectre here, an all-pervasive demon with only a hint of the wisecracking buffoon he would become later. The small group of friends he terrorises makes it feel much more personal and affecting. But still, the overwrought performance of Ronee Blakely as Marge Thompson, Nancy’s bottle-stashing mother and the truly goofy booby-trap ending do slightly hold the film back from what would otherwise be a near-perfect horror film.


Freddy’s Revenge has been re-evaluated as a queer-coded cult classic. Indeed, watching it now, the subtext is quite literally text, with Mark Patton’s (an in-the-closet actor at the time of filming) Jesse constantly retreating from girlfriend Lisa to seek comfort in the arms of his friend Ron, plus his visit to the leather bar and subsequent late-night detention at the hands of his football coach. The film is slickly made and a ton of fun; the queer themes really add to the vibe, but as a Freddy movie, it’s lacking somewhat. The dream world aspect is downplayed in favour of a body-horror plot where Freddy wants to be reborn through Jesse. Freddy’s Revenge has definitely moved up in my rankings since the ‘80s, where it always felt like a bit of a dud compared to the OG and Dream Warriors.

Dream Warriors is, in my opinion, the crown jewel of the franchise. The film expands on the dream world aspect and gives the teens much more agency when they realise they can fight back in their dreams, transforming into their alter-egos to take on Freddy. Wes Craven co-wrote the original script before director Chuck Russell and screenwriter Frank Darabont came onboard to make the film. They rewrote the script, but retained many of Craven’s original ideas.

I’ve read the Dream Warriors novelisation, which was based on Craven’s script, and the whole story with Nancy returning to help troubled teens in a psychiatric hospital (apparently the last of the Elm Street children) targeted by Freddy is all his. Freddy’s methods for killing the teens are grand and weird, but still really upsetting, thanks to an extremely likable cast, led by a young Patricia Arquette.

What really makes it stand out in the franchise is that the adult characters genuinely try to help the kids, with Craig Wasson and Heather Langenkamp’s characters fighting both hospital bureaucracy and Freddy himself to keep the kids alive. Another wise choice was to bring back the great John Saxon as Nancy’s Dad, here as a booze addled security guard who eventually agrees to help Wasson find Freddy’s remains. Add in Dokken’s cheesy but iconic Dream Warriors song, and you have a genuinely great ‘80s horror film.

The version of Dream Warriors in this book is based on Wes Craven's early script & differs from the film somewhat.

Renny Harlin’s Nightmare 4 has often been called the MTV Freddy, and that’s a fair call. Harlin directs it like a music video, with lots of swooping camera moves, odd angles and garish lighting—but it works, bringing a huge amount of energy to the film. The film's shortcomings stem from a lack of genuine scares and Freddy being elevated to a goofy ringmaster. But Lisa Wilcox is great as the shy Alice who becomes the strong Dream Master by the end, and the soundtrack is chock full of ‘80s bangers like Fat Boys Ready For Freddy, Sinead O’Connor’s (Put Your) Hands on Me, and Dramarama’s proto pop-pink banger Anything Anything.

Nightmare 5: The Dream Child is commendable for trying to return the franchise to its darker roots, with a more gothic sensibility, but it can’t fully commit and is a slightly awkward mix of tones as it tries to keep some of Nightmare 4’s teen hijinks and goofy kills while exploring the darker origins of Freddy and his backstory.’ Freddy got a new look too, with a more simplified and droopy version of the burnface, which I was definitely not a fan of back in 1989.

The only Freddy movies I managed to see in the cinema during their release years were Freddy’s Dead in 1991 and New Nightmare in 1995, and I have yet to see a F13 movie theatrically. By the time Freddy’s Dead came around, the lustre had worn off the ‘80s slasher boom. Both Nightmare 5 and Jason Takes Manhattan were seen as disappointing, even though Manhattan fucking rules and is way more fun than people give it credit for - y’all are still salty about NYC only coming into play in the last 15 mins, which I get, but the boat ride there is still a shit ton of fun. But I digress.

Even as a 14-year-old who still pretty much liked most horror films, I thought Freddy’s Dead stunk. I groaned my way through scenes of Freddy dressed up as the wicked witch of the west and playing Nintendo with a Game-obsessed victim. By the time Yaphet Kotto handed Lisa Zane a pair of 3D glasses to signify that the audience should put their own glasses on for the exceedingly subpar 3D finale, I was pretty much done with Freddy— he could bloody well stay dead as far as I was concerned.

Cut to four years later - February 1995. I’ve just turned 18, finished school, left home, moved to the big bad city, and started studying for a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Canterbury. That first month is notable for the fact that both Pulp Fiction and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare were released in New Zealand cinemas. If memory serves correctly, I went to see Pulp Fiction during a gap between lectures during my first week at University, which was revelatory to me—you mean I have gaps in my day when I can go off and do whatever the hell I want? Amazing!

Now, IMDB reckons that New Nightmare was released in New Zealand in October 1994, but I know for a fact that’s bullshit, because I won tickets to a preview screening of it from the University student radio station RDU, which I believe was not long after Pulp Fiction came out. I could write a whole other ramble about all the cool shit I won off RDU over the years. Seriously, most weeks I would climb the stairs to the tiny radio station to pick up movie tickets, CDs, concert tickets, and T-shirts. I really enjoyed the film at the time, a dark and intense meta take on the legacy of Freddy, and it was a vast improvement on Freddy’s Dead, but it did feel like the franchise was well and truly done at this point.

By the time Freddy Vs Jason came around in 2003, I found that I just didn’t care any more. Wes Craven wasn’t creatively involved, and the previous two lacklustre Jason films (Jason Goes To Hell and Jason X) hadn’t done enough to make me care who was going to win the long-promised battle royale. So I skipped it in theatres and didn't see it until it was out on DVD, and even then, it was in 2007 or something. And it was fun. Trashy but fun. At least Freddy got his good burn makeup back, and Jason’s hacking through the cornfield rave was a highlight. But the less said about Kelly Rowland’s unfortunate slur, the better.

I should mention the 2010 remake, AKA The Abomination. Again, I didn’t bother seeing this at the cinema, due to an utter lack of interest, but caught up with it on DVD, although I wish I hadn’t. While I respect the decision to try and make Freddy dark and scary again, the whole thing falls flat due to a lack of any inspiration or ingenuity on the filmmakers' part. The producers were Platinum Dunes, whose whole raison d’être was to remake all their favourite ‘80s horror films into wannabe edgy mid-2000s slop—although I did enjoy Marcus Nispel’s mean-spirited Texas Chainsaw remake and his fun Friday the 13th. The Dunes guys even admitted that director Samuel Bayer (director of Nirvana’s iconic Smells Like Teen Spirit video) repeatedly turned down their offer to direct the film and allegedly only agreed after Michael Bay twisted his arm.

Jackie Earle Hayley did his best, and the more realistic burn makeup tried to freshen up the look, but that's about all the positive things I can say about it. Whole scenes are just regurgitated verbatim from the OG to zero effect. Take the classic scene where Freddy emerges from the wall above a sleeping Nancy. In the pre-CGI age, they achieved this effect by having an actor (apparently it wasn’t Robert Englund) pushing their way through a large piece of spandex. It’s so effective and creepy because it’s real and tangible. Not so in the 2010 version, where it's clearly some shoddy CGI—and I’m not anti-CGI by any means. I am against subpar CGI and also against the practice of using CGI as a default in instances where practical effects would work much better. See the 2011 The Thing prequel for a painful example of this, where Studio ADI’s stunning practical FX were all slathered over with less impressive CGI because the studio thought that audiences wanted to see CGI, having become so accustomed to it! I only watched the 2010 Nightmare once with no intention to ever revisit it, but now that I’m writing about it, I do feel a certain nagging curiosity. Could it really be as bad as I remembered? Most likely.

In an alternate universe, Robert Englund won an Oscar for playing Freddy Krueger

In a recent newsletter, I wrote about attending my first all-night movie marathon to see the first seven Nightmare films: The marathon was held at my favourite Wellington cinema, The Roxy, and I was lucky enough to spin some ‘80s horror movie soundtracks before the screening. I tried to play as many of the songs from the films as I could, including Dokken’s Dream Warriors (of course), Tuesday Knight (Kristen from Nightmare 4)’s Nightmare and Sinead’s I Want Your (Hands On Me). The upstairs lobby at the Roxy was looking sweet with its projection mapping on the walls, announcing each film, and the Freddy’s Nightmares TV show on the screen.

The Roxy also had bottomless filter coffee on tap, which I took advantage of. I was nervous going in, thinking I might fall asleep in the second or third film and start snoring loudly in the cinema, but I managed to make it all the way through, mostly. I started nodding during Dream Warriors and probably slept the most during The Dream Child, which meant I was wide awake for the truly shitty Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. But at least we ended on a high with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. But the sleep deprivation and the nodding were perfect for watching this series in full—the whole night took on a surreal, dreamlike state that was only sullied by Freddy’s Dead, which no amount of inebriation or altered mind state can improve.

While I was writing this ramble, an announcement was made that the first seven films had finally been remastered and were due to be released in a large 4K set. The previous Blu-ray collection was characterised by some fairly lacklustre scans of the original films, almost as if Warner Bros had just carried over the DVD versions, so a 4K set has been long anticipated. I suspect we may have seen these versions at the all-nighter, as they looked pretty fantastic and far better than I had ever seen them before. Even the lacklustre artwork and lazy re-titling of the franchise as Freddy won’t prevent me from getting my hands on this set.

The original poster art by Matthew Peak is far better than any of the subsequent re-release artwork.

Will there be another Freddy movie? Undoubtedly. Mike Flanagan expressed interest in giving us his take, which I would be seated for, day one. Freddy, like Jason, has faced rights issues, but I believe they're less complex and litigious than the Friday the 13th legal battles, which led to the creation of the lame-sounding Jason Universe (seriously, we don't need a universe - just give us one good film!!), a lacklustre ‘official’ new look for Jason, the Crystal Lake TV series and the new short film Sweet Vengeance which is really just an ad for cider (WTF? Jason is a corporate shill now?). In 2019, the US rights to the Nightmare franchise reverted to the Wes Craven estate, while New Line still holds the international rights. Therefore, collaboration between the new entities would be necessary to produce a new film.

But the eternal question is, who would play Freddy? The internet’s pick has seemingly been Kevin Bacon for many years, which I can see, but who knows if he’d be interested. Would Mike Flanagan plug in one of his regular players, like Henry Thomas (who has experience playing really bad dads in Gerald’s Game) or cast his wife Kate Siegel as Nancy’s mother? Either way, with the aforementioned revival of Jason and the Texas Chainsaw franchise in a bidding war (going to A24 by the looks of it), we likely haven’t seen the last of our favourite dream demon.