Nightmare on Elm Street 1-6 (1984-1991)

[Flack]

As part of a summer project I watched the original run (the first six) of Nightmare on Elm Street movies last week. I have not watched Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Freddy vs. Jason, or the remake yet, but plan to soon.

Watching the movies back-to-back in this fashion makes it evident how fast and loose the filmmakers were with the rules within their own universe -- and specifically, how Freddy Krueger operated. In the first film, Freddy kills people in their dreams, which causes them to die in real life. In the second film, Freddy begins appearing in the real world, at one point murdering eight kids at a pool party. In the third movie Freddy is back to killing people in their dreams, but making the deaths look like suicides in the real world. In the fifth film, a loophole allows Freddy to kill people while they are awake.

Who Freddy is targeting also changes. In the first film, Freddy is after a group of teenagers living on Elm Street whose parents helped murder Fred Krueger. In the second film, Freddy's target is Jesse, a boy who moved into Nancy's (from the first film) house on Elm Street, and Jesse's friends -- which basically expands Freddy's target audience (no pun intended) to any teenager living on Elm Street. In the third film he goes after the "Dream Warriors," a group of kids who, it turns out, are the last remaining Elm Street children. One of those teens is Kristen, who possesses the supernatural ability to pull other people into her dreams. In the fourth film Kristen is killed, but not before transferring this ability to her best friend, Alice. In that film Freddy leverages Alice's new power to pull in new teens -- who have nothing to do with Fred Krueger's demise or Elm Street -- to murder. In the fifth film, Alice's unborn baby begins dreaming, allowing Freddy to terrorize and murder Alice's friends in the real world while they are awake. In the last film, a bunch of juvenile delinquents are murdered as Freddy uses and ultimately attempts to recruit his daughter, a character not mentioned in the past five films, to join him.

Every film ends with the demise of Freddy. In the first film, Nancy pulls Freddy out of the dream world and into reality and then makes him disappear by releasing her fear of him. In the second film, Freddy is driven out of Jesse's body because his girlfriend loves him so much, which is super weak. In the third film, Freddy's bones are recovered from a shallow grave, covered in holy water, and laid to rest. In the fourth film, the souls trapped in Freddy's body rip him apart after Freddy looks into a mirror, which is dumb because Freddy has been seen in mirrors in every movie up to that point. In the fifth film, Alice's unborn son teams up with Freddy Krueger's dead mother to destroy him. In the sixth and final film, Freddy's daughter Maggie pulls Freddy into the real world and kills him, which is exactly what they did in the first film except that time it didn't work and this time we're supposed to believe it did.

There is no real explanation as to how Freddy came back in the beginning of the second film, or really in the third. In the beginning of the fourth film, a dog (in a dream sequence) pisses fire onto Freddy's grave, which somehow resurrects him. In the fifth film, Alice has a dream about Freddy's mother giving birth, after which the disfigured fetus runs to find Freddy's previous grave and melds with him somehow. I don't think Freddy's return was explained in the last film, either. Suffice it to say the writers care very little about putting any effort into coming up with logical explanations for Freddy's return.

The other thing that was quite noticeable was how much Freddy changed over time. In the first film, Freddy was a straight-up horror villain, screaming things like "I'll cut you in two!" and "I'll kill you slowly!" He's still pretty scary in part two, but begins uttering a few one-liners, which would become his trademark. In the third film, every character gets their own personalized death, and each one scene with a witty zinger from Krueger. Those death sequences keep getting sillier and more over the top as the series progresses, including one on a beach Pinback might appreciate. By the end of the series, Freddy is killing people inside Nintendo games and while riding a skateboard. Poor Freddy.



I would be remiss if I didn't mention something from the sixth film, which opens with a title card telling us over a ten year period Freddy killed every child and teenager in Springwood, which later we learn is approximately 7,500 people. That's 2 1/2 times the number of people who died on 9/11, and eight times as many people who died at Jonestown. It is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in a horror movie, and I have seen a lot of ridiculous horror movies.

I will always appreciate the first film and love the third one (it was one of the first horror movies I saw in a theater with my friends), but as a whole... this series isn't very good.

[Jizaboz]

There are certain things I've always liked about each movie, but yes after 3 the movies were more comedy than horror for me.

Also, unlike the Friday the 13th series.. Freddy's Nightmares TV series actually starred Robert England and some of those shows were really fucked up for network TV! Me and my GF have been watching them on Tubi. I only remember 1-2 of the episodes I saw as a kid.