Freddy Krueger

Freddy Krueger
A Nightmare on Elm Street character
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger
First appearance A Nightmare on Elm Street
Created by Wes Craven
Portrayed by Robert Englund (1984–2003, 2018)
Kane Hodder (1993)
Jackie Earle Haley (2010)
Information
Aliases The Springwood Slasher
Classification Mass murderer[1]
Primary location Springwood, Ohio
Signature weapon Clawed glove

Fred "Freddy" Krueger (/ˈkruːɡər/) is a character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He first appeared in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) as a burnt serial killer who uses a gloved hand with razors to kill his victims in their dreams, causing their deaths in the real world as well. In the dream world, he is a powerful force and almost completely invulnerable. However, whenever Freddy is pulled into the real world, he has normal human vulnerabilities.

Krueger was created by Wes Craven and had been consistently portrayed by Robert Englund since his first appearance. In the 2010 franchise reboot, he was portrayed by Jackie Earle Haley. In 2011, Freddy appeared as a playable character in the video game Mortal Kombat.[2] Over the course of the series, Freddy has battled numerous survivors including Nancy Thompson.[3]

In the Nightmares on Elm Street comics, a popular alias is used, known as The Springwood Slasher.[4]

Freddy is a dream-demon who attacks his victims from within their dreams. He is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, red-and-green striped sweater, brown fedora, and trademark metal-clawed brown leather glove only on his right hand. This glove was the product of Krueger's own imagination, the blades having been welded by himself. Robert Englund has said many times that he feels the character represents neglect, particularly that suffered by children. The character also more broadly represents subconscious fears.

Wizard magazine rated Freddy the 14th greatest villain,[5] the British television channel Sky2 listed him 8th,[6] and the American Film Institute ranked him 40th on its "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains" list.[7] In 2010, Freddy won an award for Best Villain (formerly Most Vile Villain) at the Scream Awards.

Appearances

Film

Freddy is introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street as a child killer who is eventually captured, but is let off due to a technicality (the search warrant wasn't signed in the right place). He is hunted down by a mob of angry parents and cornered in a boiler room where he used to take his victims. The mob douses the building with gasoline and sets it on fire, burning Krueger alive. While his body dies, his spirit lives on in the dreams of a group of teenagers living in his old neighborhood, whom he preys on by entering their dreams and killing them. He is apparently destroyed at the end of the film by protagonist Nancy Thompson, but the last scene reveals that he has survived. He goes on to antagonize the teenage protagonists of the next five films in the series. After a hiatus, Krueger was brought back in Wes Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series since the third film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Robert Englund, who portrayed Krueger throughout the film series and its television spin-off, also took the role as a fictional version of himself in New Nightmare; it is implied that Englund was stalked by his character, who is an ancient demonic entity that took on the form of Wes Craven's creation, and has come to life from the film franchise's fictitious world. Englund struggles to keep his sanity intact from Krueger's torments, and goes into hiding with his family. This embodiment of Freddy Krueger also sees Heather Langenkamp as his primary foe as the result of her character Nancy Thompson who was the first to defeat him.

In Dream Warriors, more of Freddy's backstory is revealed by the mysterious nun who repeatedly appears to Dr. Gordon. Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger, was a nurse at the asylum featured in the film. At the time she worked there, a largely abandoned, run-down wing of the asylum was used to lock up entire hordes of the most insane criminals all at once. When Amanda was young, she was accidentally locked into the room with the criminals over a holiday weekend. They managed to keep her hidden for days, raping her repeatedly. When she was finally discovered, she was barely alive and was pregnant with the future Freddy Krueger.

In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th film series in the theatrical release Freddy vs. Jason, a film which officially resurrected both characters from their respective deaths and subsequently sent them to Hell. The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Freddy is actually dead; despite being decapitated, as a head he looks back and winks at the viewers. A sequel featuring Ash Williams from The Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never materialized onscreen. It was later turned into Dynamite Entertainment's comic book series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash.

In the 2010 remake of the original film, it is suggested that Freddy is a child molester who had sexually abused the teenage protagonists of the film when they were young children. When their parents found out, they trapped him in a building and set it on fire, killing him. As a spirit, he took his revenge on the teenagers by haunting their dreams for selling him out.

Television

Robert Englund continued his role as Krueger on October 9, 1988, in the television anthology series, Freddy's Nightmares. The show was hosted by Freddy, who did not take direct part in most of the episodes, but he did show up occasionally to influence the plot of particular episodes. Further, a consistent theme in each episode was characters having disturbing dreams. The series ran for two seasons, 44 episodes, ending March 10, 1990.[8] Although most of the episodes did not feature Freddy taking a major role in the plot, the pilot episode, "No More, Mr. Nice Guy", depicts the events of his trial, and his subsequent death at the hands of the parents of Elm Street after his acquittal. In "No More, Mr. Nice Guy", though Freddy's case seems open and shut, a mistrial is declared based on the arresting officer, Lt. Tim Blocker, not reading Krueger his Miranda rights, which is different from the original Nightmare that stated he was released because someone forgot to sign a search warrant in the right place. The episode also reveals that Krueger used an ice cream van to lure children close enough so that he could kidnap and kill them. After the town's parents burn Freddy to death he returns to haunt Blocker in his dreams. Freddy gets his revenge when Blocker is put to sleep at the dentist's office, and Freddy shows up and kills him.[9] The episode "Sister's Keeper" was a "sequel" to this episode, even though it was the seventh episode of the series.[10] The episode follows Krueger as he terrorizes the Blocker twins, the identical twin daughters of Lt. Tim Blocker, and frames one sister for the other's murder.[9] Season two's "It's My Party And You'll Die If I Want You To" featured Freddy attacking a high school prom date who stood him up twenty years earlier. He got his revenge with his desire being fulfilled in the process.[11]

The character returned to television in an episode of The Goldbergs titled "Nightmare on Elk Avenue" with Englund reprising his role.[12]

Video games

Freddy's first video game appearance was in the Nintendo Entertainment System's 1989 game A Nightmare on Elm Street.[13] The game was published by LJN Toys and developed by Rare.

A second game for the Commodore 64 and DOS-based computers was also released in 1989 released by Monarch Software and developed by Westwood Associates.

Freddy Krueger appeared as a downloadable playable character for Mortal Kombat (2011), with Robert Englund reprising his role.[14][15] He has become the second non-Mortal Kombat character to appear in the game with the other being Kratos from the God of War series (who was an exclusive character for the PlayStation 3 version, while Freddy was available across all versions of the game). The game depicts Krueger as a malevolent spirit inhibating the Dream Realm who attacks Shao Kahn for "stealing" the souls of his potential victims. During the fight, he is pulled into the game's fictional depiction of the real world. The injured Krueger arms himself with two razor claws to continue to battle Kahn. Upon defeating him, Krueger is sent back to the Dream Realm by Nightwolf, where he continues to haunt the dreams of his human prey.[16] In an interview with PlayStation.Blog, Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon cited the character's violent nature and iconic status as reasoning for the inclusion in the game, "Over the years, we’ve certainly had a number of conversations about guest characters. At one point, we had a conversation about having a group — imagine Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We never got a grip on how we would do it, whether they’d be DLC characters or what. We also wanted to introduce a character who was unexpected. This DLC thing opens the doors to realizing these ideas."[17] Krueger went on to become playable in the mobile edition of the game's sequel, Mortal Kombat X, alongside Jason from Friday the 13th.[18]

In October 2017, Krueger was released as a downloadable playable character in the seventh chapter of the asymmetric survival horror game Dead by Daylight, alongside Quentin Smith.[19] The events of the chapter are set immediately following Nancy Holbrook's escape from Krueger, after which he targets Quentin Smith as revenge for aiding her. Invading Smith's dreams, he forces him to go to the Badham Preschool, where the two are unwittingly taken to the universe of Dead by Daylight by an unseen force.[20]

Six Flags Fright Fest

At Six Flags St Louis' Fright Fest event (then known as Fright Nights), Krueger was the main character for the event's first year in 1988. He reappeared in his own haunted house, Freddy's Nightmare: The Haunted House on Elm Street, for the following two years.

Halloween Horror Nights

Freddy Krueger appeared alongside Jason Voorhees and Leatherface as minor icons during Halloween Horror Nights 17 and again with Jason during Halloween Horror Nights 25 at Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood. In 2016, Freddy Krueger returned to Halloween Horror Nights, along with Jason, in Hollywood.

Characterization

Wes Craven said his inspiration for the basis of Freddy Krueger's power stemmed from several stories in the Los Angeles Times about a series of mysterious deaths: All the victims had reported recurring nightmares and died in their sleep.[21] Additionally, Craven's original script characterized Freddy as a child molester, which Craven said was the "worst thing" he could think of. The decision was made to instead make him a child murderer in order to avoid being accused of exploiting the spate of highly publicized child molestation cases in California around the time A Nightmare on Elm Street went into production.[22] Craven's inspirations for the character included a bully from his school during his youth, a disfigured homeless man who had frightened him when he was 11, and the 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright. In an interview, he said, "When I looked down there was a man very much like Freddy walking along the sidewalk. He must have sensed that someone was looking at him and stopped and looked right into my face. He scared the living daylights out of me, so I jumped back into the shadows. I waited and waited to hear him walk away. Finally I thought he must have gone, so I stepped back to the window. The guy was not only still looking at me but he thrust his head forward as if to say, 'Yes, I'm still looking at you.' The man walked towards the apartment building's entrance. I ran through the apartment to our front door as he was walking into our building on the lower floor. I heard him starting up the stairs. My brother, who is ten years older than me, got a baseball bat and went out to the corridor but he was gone."[23]

Freddy's back story is revealed gradually throughout the series. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the protagonists learn that Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger, was a nun who worked in Westin Hills mental hospital caring for the inmates. Freddy was conceived when she was accidentally locked inside over the Christmas holiday and gang-raped by a group of the inmates, thus making him "the bastard son of 100 maniacs". Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare depicts Freddy's traumatic childhood; he displayed sociopathic behavior at a young age and was often teased by classmates. He was adopted as a child by an abusive alcoholic named Mr. Underwood, who teaches him how to torture animals and inflict pain on himself. Freddy eventually murders him, with no apparent consequences, and becomes a serial killer.

In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, Freddy is characterized as a symbol of something powerful and ancient, and is given more stature and muscles.[24] Unlike the six movies before it, New Nightmare shows Freddy as closer to what Wes Craven originally intended, toning down his comedic side while strengthening the more menacing aspects of his character.

Throughout the series, Freddy's potential victims often experience dreams of young children, jumping rope and chanting a rhyme to the tune of "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" with the lyrics changed to "One, Two, Freddy's coming for you", often as an omen to Freddy's presence or a precursor to his attacks.

In the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Jackie Earle Haley portrayed Freddy Krueger. In the film, Krueger is depicted as a child abuser who worked as a gardener at a local preschool. Unlike in the original version of events, where he was a known child-killer who evaded conviction on a technicality, in this version of events there was actually ambiguity about Kruger's guilt or innocence apart from the testimony of his victims, until the now-grown survivors find the room where Krueger molested them while searching for evidence.

Appearance

Freddy Krueger sweatshirt from The Dream Master, fourth film in the series

Freddy Krueger's physical appearance has remained largely consistent throughout the film series, although minor changes were made in subsequent films. He wears a striped red-and-green sweater (solid red sleeves in the original film), a dark brown fedora, his bladed glove, loose black trousers (brown in the original film), and worn work boots, in keeping with his blue collar background. His skin is scarred and burned as a result of being burned alive by the parents of Springwood, and he has no hair at all on his head as it presumably all burned off. In the original film, only Freddy's face was burned, while the scars have spread to the rest of his body from the second film onwards. His blood is occasionally a dark, oily color, or greenish in hue when he is in the Dreamworld. In the original film, Freddy remains in the shadows and under lower light much longer than he does in the later pictures. In the second film, there are some scenes where Freddy is shown without his bladed glove, and instead with the blades protruding from the tips of his fingers. As the films began to emphasize the comedic, wise-cracking aspect of the character, he began to don various costumes and take on other forms, such as dressing as a waiter or wearing a Superman inspired version of his sweater with a cape (The Dream Child), appearing as a video game sprite (Freddy's Dead), a giant snake-like creature (Dream Warriors), and a hookah smoking caterpillar (Freddy vs. Jason).

In New Nightmare, Freddy's appearance is updated considerably, giving him a green fedora that matched his sweater stripes, skin-tight leather pants, knee-high black boots, a turtleneck version of his trademark sweater, a black trench coat, and a fifth claw on his glove, which also has a far more organic appearance, resembling the exposed muscle tissue of an actual hand. Freddy also has fewer burns on his face, though these are more severe, with his muscle tissue exposed in numerous places. Compared to his other incarnations, this Freddy's injuries are more like those of an actual burn victim. For the 2010 remake, Freddy is returned to his iconic attire, but the burns on his face are intensified with further bleaching of the skin and exposed facial tissue on the left cheek, more reminiscent of actual third degree burns than in the original series.

Bladed Glove

Freddy Krueger "Dream Master" claw used in the 4th installment of A Nightmare on Elm Street

Wes Craven stated that part of the inspiration for Freddy's infamous bladed glove was from his cat, as he watched it claw the side of his couch one night.[25]

In an interview he said, "Part of it was an objective goal to make the character memorable, since it seems that every character that has been successful has had some kind of unique weapon, whether it be a chain saw or a machete, etc. I was also looking for a primal fear which is embedded in the subconscious of people of all cultures. One of those is the fear of teeth being broken, which I used in my first film. Another is the claw of an animal, like a saber-toothed tiger reaching with its tremendous hooks. I transposed this into a human hand. The original script had the blades being fishing knives."[26]

When Jim Doyle, the creator of Freddy's claw, asked Craven what he wanted, Craven responded, "It's kind of like really long fingernails, I want the glove to look like something that someone could make who has the skills of a boilermaker."[25] Doyle explained, "Then we hunted around for knives. We picked out this bizarre-looking steak knife, we thought that this looked really cool, we thought it would look even cooler if we turned it over and used it upside down. We had to remove the back edge and put another edge on it, because we were actually using the knife upside down." Later Doyle had three duplicates of the glove made, two of which were used as stunt gloves in long shots.[25]

For New Nightmare, Lou Carlucci, the effects coordinator, remodeled Freddy's glove for a more "organic look". He says, "I did the original glove on the first Nightmare and we deliberately made that rough and primitive looking, like something that would be constructed in somebody's home workshop. Since this is supposed to be a new look for Freddy, Craven and everybody involved decided that the glove should be different. This hand has more muscle and bone texture to it, the blades are shinier and in one case, are retractable. Everything about this glove has a much cleaner look to it, it's more a natural part of his hand than a glove." The new glove has five claws.

In the 2010 remake, the glove is redesigned as a metal gauntlet with four finger bars, but it is patterned after its original design.

Freddy's glove appeared in the 1987 horror-comedy Evil Dead II above the door on the inside of a toolshed. This was Sam Raimi's response to Wes Craven showing footage of The Evil Dead in A Nightmare on Elm Street, which in turn was a response to Sam Raimi putting a poster of Craven's 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes in The Evil Dead. The glove also appears in the 1998 horror-comedy Bride of Chucky in an evidence locker room that also contains the remains of the film's villain Chucky, the chainsaw of Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the masks of Michael Myers from Halloween and Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th.

At the end of the film Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, the mask of the title character, Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder, is dragged under the earth by Freddy's gloved hand, thus setting up Freddy vs. Jason. Freddy's gloved hand, in the ending, was played by Hodder.[27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stuart Fischoff; Alexandra Dimopoulos; FranÇois Nguyen; Leslie Hurry; Rachel Gordon (2003). "The psychological appeal of your favorite movie monsters (abstract)". ISCPubs. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved August 23, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Freddy Krueger joins Mortal Kombat". GameSpot.
  3. ↑ Muir, John (2004). Wes Craven: The Art of Horror. McFarland. ISBN 0786419237.
  4. ↑ Jasper, Gavin (October 31, 2015). "Nightmare on Elm Street Comics: A Nightmarish History Lesson". Den of Geek!. Retrieved October 2, 2016.
  5. ↑ Wizard #177
  6. ↑ "What the hell is/Freddy Krueger". Whatthehellis.com. Retrieved 2011-08-29.
  7. ↑ "100 Greatest Heroes and Villains - AFI". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 2011-08-29.
  8. ↑ "Freddy's Nightmares DVD". TV Addicts. Archived from the original on 2007-10-20. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
  9. 1 2 ""No More Mr. Nice Guy" summary". I-Mockery.com. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
  10. ↑ "Freddy's Nightmares episode guide". TV.com. Retrieved 2008-02-03.
  11. ↑ "It's My Party and You'll Die if I Want You To". Freddy's Nightmares. Season 2. Episode 12. 1989-12-23.
  12. ↑ "Robert Englund to revive Freddy Krueger on 'The Goldbergs'". EW.com. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
  13. ↑ "A Nightmare on Elm Street for the Nintendo Entertainment System - Freddy's NES Nightmare". Classicgames.about.com. 2010-11-01. Retrieved 2011-08-29.
  14. ↑ "Ed Boon on Twitter". Twitter. 2017-04-19. Archived from the original on 2017-05-10. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  15. ↑ "ROBERT ENGLUND SAYS HE'S TOO OLD TO PLAY FREDDY KRUEGER AGAIN". ScreenCrush. 2017-10-23. Retrieved 2017-11-29.
  16. ↑ "Mortal Kombat: Freddy Krueger DLC Trailer". YouTube. 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2011-08-29.
  17. ↑ "Krueger in Mortal Kombat, Secret Origins of DLC Characters". PlayStation Blog. 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  18. ↑ "Grab Your Clawed Gloves! Freddy Krueger Joins Mortal Kombat X". Dread Central. 2016-12-10. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  19. ↑ "Chapter 7 - A Nightmare on Elm Street". Dead by Daylight. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  20. ↑ "Dead by Daylight: Manual". Dead by Daylight. Archived from the original on 2017-09-28. Retrieved 2017-11-21.
  21. ↑ Rockoff, Adam (April 2002). Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978 to 1986. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-1227-5.
  22. ↑ Robb, Brian (2000-10-31). Screams and Nightmares: The Films of Wes Craven. Overlook TP. ISBN 1-58567-090-1.
  23. ↑ Wes Craven. A Nightmare on Elm Street DVD audio commentary.
  24. ↑ New Nightmare commentary with Wes Craven
  25. 1 2 3 Nightmare Companion Archived 2009-01-31 at the Wayback Machine. Freddy's claw
  26. ↑ Nightmare on Elm Street companion Archived 2009-10-06 at the Wayback Machine. Wes Craven interview
  27. ↑ "Kane Hodder". HorrorConventions.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2016-05-08. Retrieved 2016-05-19.
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