Believe it or not, even though the horror genre ruled in the 1980s, by the mid-80s the genre was already starting to show diminishing returns at the box office. This is one of the reasons that Paramount, for example, attempted to end the “Friday the 13th” series in ‘84 with “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”.
However, little did audiences know that they were about to be introduced to a villain that would not only blow up the box office, but would bring new life to the genre. That creation was Freddy Krueger, a badly burned psycho killer who stalks teens in their nightmares as revenge to their parents who murdered him when he was alive.
Created by writer and director Wes Craven, the original movie spawned a massively successful series that also put a small distribution studio called New Line Cinema on the map. People at the studio accurately and affectionately referred to New Line as “the house that Freddy built.”
Down below, I’m going to give my brief thoughts about the main series and rank them from my least to best favorite films in the series. I am omitting the 2010 remake because… well… I don’t want to talk about that one. Anyway, let’s get started!
It was pretty obvious with the release of this movie that the people behind the scenes had run out of steam and ideas. There’s a couple of cool sequences, but overall, the gothic tone set by director Stephen Hopkins just doesn’t feel like a “Nightmare” film though it was good to see Lisa Wilcox back as Alice from “The Dream Master”.
The story of Freddy invading the dreams of Alice’s unborn baby was just a little too weird for me as well. I give it props for being original in a sense by this point in the series, but it just never really takes off.
Every time I’ve watched this movie, I’ve tried to enjoy it but I think it suffers from being that one thing that is the absolute worst thing a horror film can be: it’s boring.
This is a weird sequel and not one that I’m particularly fond of because it feels so out of place in the series. This was a quick cash grab sequel before the writers established the rules in the next entry that the series would follow.
The story is about a boy being possessed by Freddy so that Freddy can return to the real world, which makes no sense because he has more power in the dream world and is basically mortal in our world. The sequence at the pool party, Englund looked so much shorter than any of the teens and it’s probably the biggest time where Freddy looked his weakest.
It’s not my least favorite film in the series but it comes close. There are some good scenes including one where Freddy is literally cutting himself out of the main character’s body and the movie does have this weird sense of charm for being New Line’s first attempt to carry on the story. Unfortunately, the story had no real solid direction and this entry is often hard for me to rewatch when I revisit the series.
New Line decided to give the series a brief break when they released “Freddy’s Dead” in 1991. The resulting movie is maybe a little bit too silly even for a “Nightmare” movie but you can tell that everyone involved seemed to be having fun. The only other thing that hinders the movie is that the filmmakers attempted a cheesy 3D ending that does not work at all and ends the series on an anticlimactic note.
In the movie, Freddy has killed all of the kids in Springwood and needs to move on to new territory. He uses the last remaining teenager in town, John Doe, in order to get to a woman named Maggie in order to accomplish his mysterious plans.
One thing that I do love about this movie was that there are a few clever kills. One, in particular, involves using a teen as a character in a video game and another sinister moment involves Freddy picking on a partially deaf teen by screwing with his hearing aid.
I must admit that while this is a heavily flawed entry into the series, I have fun watching this movie and if it didn’t have the cheesy 3D ending, it maybe would be even higher on my list.
Riding high off the success of “Dream Warriors”, director Renny Harlin took the reins for the fourth film and delivered a solid sequel with fantastic kills and a good story surrounding our new protagonist, Alice. The movie is only a step down from the third film due to refocusing more on one character instead of giving us a group of teens that will work together to try and take down Freddy.
In the movie, the remaining Dream Warriors discover that Freddy isn’t quite dead yet and that he is regaining his strength after his supposed demise in the third film. Before he can get to Kristen (played by Tuesday Knight this time around), she passes on her ability to pull others into her dreams to Alice Johnson. This means that Freddy can now get to new teenagers through her now that the remaining Elm Street kids are gone.
What Freddy doesn’t expect is that Alice’s dream power is that she can absorb other the other teen’s powers after they die. This leads to an epic showdown between Freddy and Alice that leads to one of my favorite conclusions in any of the “Nightmare” films.
Englund is once again at the top of his game and Lisa Wilcox is great as Alice, a character that has easily become a fan-favorite character over the years.
For me, this was actually my favorite when I was younger, though that shifted as I got older. This was definitely the last film to come out during the series’ prime and at the height of Freddy Krueger’s popularity.
For years, New Line and Paramount wanted to make a “Freddy vs. Jason” movie, but they could never figure out the finances or how to split the profits. Eventually, Paramount sold the rights to the character of Jason Voorhees to New Line and a film could finally be made. Yet, in the early ‘90s, the horror genre wasn’t exactly hot at the box office and several attempts to write a script put the movie into development hell.
Eventually, though, writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift wrote a fun script brought to bloody life by “Bride of Chucky” director Ronny Yu. In the movie, the adults in Springwood have successfully made the teenagers forget Freddy Krueger and, as a result, he has no power over them in their dreams. Searching the depths of Hell, Freddy discovers Jason and revives him so he can head to Springwood and spread fear amongst the teens once again.
Freddy regains his powers, but is pissed when Jason won’t stop killing the teenagers that are supposed to be his victims. He soon realizes that he’s gonna have to take Jason down in order to continue his own path of destruction. The result is a film that has some great action and good dark humor as the movie never aims to take itself seriously. It just wants these two pop culture horror icons to have some fun and they most certainly do.
The movie is a fun mashup that has both dumb kids for Jason to dispatch and a smart main cast that teams up to try and figure out Freddy’s plan and how to stop him. I will say that the story is more of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” film with a heavy focus on Freddy that also guest stars Jason Voorhees.
This movie is a blast from start to finish and that’s all it has to be. I really enjoy this entertaining match-up that finally got to see the light of day after years of development.
Writer and director Wes Craven returned to ring in the 10th anniversary of the series with a new take on the material. The story suggests that a great and ancient evil had been trapped in the character of Freddy when the series was popular and while New Line was making new films.
Now that the films are over, this entity is keeping Freddy’s form and trying to break into a real world where people like Craven, Heather Lagenkamp, and Robert Englund play fictionalized versions of themselves with Freddy trying to take out Lagenkamp due to her playing Freddy’s original nemesis, Nancy Thompson.
This is once again Craven being an original horror creator and finding something new to say with the then long-running series. The meta storyline was also his first attempt to make a comment on a genre that he helped define in the ‘80s, something that he would continue to do in ‘96 when he released “Scream” and kick started a whole new horror explosion.
This is a heavily underrated entry in the series that came and went from the box office. Thankfully, I am glad to see that it has gained more fans over the years. It’s a solid entry not only in the series, but also in Craven’s own filmography.
The first movie is dark and gritty and while Freddy does have some sarcastic wit as he terrorizes his victims, the horror is pretty straightforward. Robert Englund is so great as he introduces us to Freddy, a character that doesn’t just silently stalk and take out his prey like other horror movie villains of the day.
Today, everyone in the world knows who he is, but in ‘84, this was one of the most original creations to hit the horror scene. In the movie, Nancy Thompson and her friends are being terrorized by an evil entity in their sleep. Nancy soon discovers that it’s the evil spirity of Freddy Krueger, a man who was burned to death by Nancy and her friends’ parents.
The only thing that Nancy and her friends can do is stay awake because if they fall asleep and Freddy kills them in their nightmares, they die for real. Knowing she can’t fight against sleep forever, Nancy decides to take matters into her own hands and bring the fight to Freddy.
There’s not really much more that I can say about this original masterpiece. If by chance you’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor and check it out and if you have, you may be due for a rewatch for this creepy Halloween season.
With a story from Craven and Bruce Wagner and written by director Chuck Russell and writer Frank Darabont, this series finally found the right amount of both horror and dark humor that would carry on for the rest of the series. Craven and Wagner established that the kids would have to work together to stop an increasingly stronger Freddy while Russell and Darabont added the extra humor.
In the movie, a group of teens are in a mental institution after having faced off with Freddy in their nightmares, but the adults just think that they’re crazy. That is until survivor Nancy Thompson arrives as a new staff member. She knows that they’re telling the truth and has to band them together along with Kristen Parker, a smart teen who has the ability to pull people into her dreams.
Soon, the kids realize that they all have their own dream powers, but the question is if it’s enough to take on Freddy, a character who has grown stronger due to having absorbed the souls of those he has killed. What follows is an absolute banger of a horror film with several unique kills and witty one-liners from Krueger
This is easily my favorite entry in the series thanks to Langenkamp’s return, solid direction and special-effects, a cast of characters that I actually care about, and a very game Englund that took Freddy to the next level and solidified his status as a pop culture horror icon and the king of 1980s horror films.
Okay, so I’ll talk about the remake for a second. After “Freddy vs. Jason” came out in 2003, the series went dormant for a few years. During the 2000s, it was popular to remake or reboot horror film series so it was really no shock that they remade “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in 2010. This time, Jackie Earle Haley took on the role of Freddy and to his credit, he did give his version of Freddy his own spin but I just wish he’d been in a better movie.
In reality, it’s not the worst remake out there but I wish New Line Cinema had the balls at the time to move forward with the remake’s original twist. Originally, the script was going to reveal that Freddy Krueger was innocent and wrongly accused and murdered by the parents of Springwood and that he was genuinely a vengeful spirit seeking revenge. However, at the last minute, the studio had the filmmakers renege on the twist.
While the remake was definitely not a box office failure (it made $117 million on a $35 million budget), the reception by the fanbase and the critics caused New Line Cinema to pause the series once again. After “The Conjuring” was released in 2013, New Line suddenly had a new and successful horror universe and Freddy wasn’t really needed.
It also didn't help that legal issues over the rights have been an issue as well. The Wes Craven estate retrieved the rights to the franchise in 2019, so it's not exactly sure what New Line could do with the franchise unless they made a deal with the estate. So, for now, the series remains in limbo.
Over the years, Robert Englund stated that he’d be willing to don the make-up one more time, but even more recently, Englund has started to tell fans that he’s just too old to play the part again. This means that if the series does come back, someone else will have to fill Freddy’s clawed glove and that’s still a tall order for any actor as this role is still synonymous with Englund.
To be honest, I’m not really interested in New Line revisiting this series as I still think the original series we got is a blast to this day! On the other hand, I know that a studio can never let a good IP rest for long, so all I’ll say is that I hope they get someone who can do something original with the idea while keeping the spirit of the original series alive.
In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me. It’s primetime, bitch, and I have some “Nightmare” movies I need to revisit once again!
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