Weekly poll article for May 15th, 2010. A mixture of freakishly scary and comedic bad puns, Freddy Krueger has sliced his way to the top!

The Nightmare on Elm Street series made its debut through New Line Cinema in 1984 so I didn’t immediately know all about it as I was 2 years old at that time. It wasn’t until “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” that I came to know of the evil that is Freddy Krueger. I saw it a few years after its 1987 release of course; I believe I was about 7 or 8 years old. To this day I can still remember the nightmare it gave me of Freddy’s arms growing out to chase me around the outer circumference of Earth… it was a dream so it’s allowed to be a little weird lol. It seems from the results of this poll that Freddy has touched a few more people as well, and with good reason as this series ushered in an entire genre of horror films.

One of the spookiest things about the Nightmare on Elm Street series is that creepy chant that is sung by little girls playing jump rope about Freddy. The haunting melody of their young voices works its way into your brain and sets an ominous tone. For this reason I made (well ok, my very talented fiancé made it for me with my help in creative direction hehe) a little video of that tune that I thought you all would enjoy… or maybe it might make you sleep with the lights on lol.

Fun Fact: Wes Craven was inspired to write Nightmare on Elm Street by a newspaper article he read about children dying after having fearsome nightmares.

Surprisingly the storyline of the first five movies is interconnected in rather reasonable ways. Writer Wes Craven did a fairly good job on keeping the story fluidly moving through each film. Freddy Krueger is a child killer who is murdered by the townspeople after he is acquitted on a technicality. As with many horror films, his death was only the beginning of his reign of terror. Determined to keep killing, Freddy comes back in the dreams of Nancy Thompson (A Nightmare on Elm Street) and her friends. Nancy finds a way to defeat him and survives the bloodbath of the first film. Nancy’s family promptly moves out of the house they live in on Elm Street and hope to never encounter such evil again.

Afterward, the Walsh’s move into the Thompson’s old home (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge) and Freddy possesses the body of young Jesse Walsh so that he may continue his quest for murder. Lucky for Jesse, he has a girlfriend (Lisa) determined to free him of Freddy’s cursed presence. Lisa saves Jesse and they ride off in a school bus. Freddy’s Revenge is seen as a slight departure from the normal Freddy style and is much darker than the other films.

Nancy Thompson returns to the series (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors) as an intern at Westin Hills Mental Institution where the remaining children of Elm Street have been hospitalized for attempting suicide. Having been through the terror in her earlier years, Nancy knows that the teens are not mentally ill; they are being hunted by Freddy Krueger who has vowed to murder all of them. Nancy helps the teens: Kristen, Joey, Taryn, Kincaid, and Will find their dream powers with the help of their doctor, Dr. Neil Gordan, so that they can fight back against Freddy and kill him. Dr. Gordan is visited throughout the film by the spirit of Amanda Krueger, Freddy’s mother, who helps him in burying the remains of her son on hallowed ground. Perhaps I have a slight bias toward this film because it was the first in the series that I saw, but it is to me one of the best in the series.

The story continues on a fluid path with Kristen Parker (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) unconsciously releasing Freddy. Immediately, Freddy murders both Joey and Kincaid. Kristen manages to transfer her dream powers to a school friend (Alice) and prevents Freddy from killing her. Alice then feeds victims to Krueger inadvertently by pulling others into her dreams with her. Using the power of the Dream Master, Alice confronts Freddy and releases all the souls he has taken which kills him in the process. Alice goes on to have a child named Jacob (A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) of which Freddy uses to resurrect himself so that he may find new victims. Amanda Krueger’s spirit makes a return to the series and convinces Jacob to use the powers given to him by Freddy to subdue him so that she may hopefully defeat him.

As with the second film, the continuity of characters is left behind for the sixth film. Enter John Doe, a teen with amnesia looking for Freddy’s daughter Maggie (Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare). Only with the help of Maggie can John Doe leave Springwood (the town in which the entire series takes place). Freddy is on a warpath to create new Elm Streets so that he may continue to murder children all over the world. Maggie uncovers Freddy’s past and uses new dream techniques to rip him from the dream world.

Set in a fictional reality in which Freddy is trapped in all the movies and literature that have been created about him, (A Nightmare on Elm Street: New Nightmare) Freddy must escape to wreak havoc upon the world once more. In this film, all of the characters get to be themselves instead of a character. For example, the actress that played Nancy is Heather Langenkamp, and in this film she portrays herself rather than Nancy.

The Freddy that is trapped does not see things this way however, and sees Heather as Nancy, the first person to have defeated him and an adversary to be destroyed. Craven tells Heather that the only way to keep him contained is to “play Nancy one last time”. Left with little choice after Krueger kidnaps her son into the dream world; Heather plays the part of Nancy and pursues Freddy in order to save her son.

In my opinion, that is where the series really stopped. The next film to be released (Freddy vs. Jason) was nothing more than a sham movie to make a few bucks off of the popularity of two separate franchises. Krueger impersonates Jason Voorhees’ mother and tells him to cause as much fear as possible in the town of Springwood. Freddy has become weakened by the lack of fear and belief in him within the residents of Springwood and feels the best option to revive that fear is by using Jason as a tool. Once Jason begins his task, he decides that he doesn’t wish to stop his spree of mayhem and Freddy must battle it out with him in order to take control of his territory once more. In the end, it turns into a celebrity death match with no clear winner.

Recently, on April 30th of this year a new film was released and followed the lead of movies such as Batman Begins where the franchise got a reboot of sorts. The story of the new film goes back once more to a Nancy, but this time it’s Nancy Holbrook not Thompson. Freddy stalks Nancy and her friends as they discover that each one of them were both physically and sexually abused as children by Mr. Krueger before he was murdered by their vengeful parents. I won’t say any more than that in case you have ambitions of seeing the newest film in the franchise as I do. I may even decide to write a review on it if there is enough interest for it *wink*. I will say that after so many years with Robert Englund as Freddy, I am weirded out that it won’t be him again. I hope that Jackie Earle Haley does a good job, because I love Englund and in my mind he will be hard to beat.

A few of the things that has made Freddy such an icon are that he always kills with a snappy one liner and makes pun after pun throughout the films. While scary, the films are also quite campy and filled with comedy as well. Effects of the films look pretty cheesy now, but for their time they were actually really creative and fairly well done. Keep in mind that most of the Nightmare movies had low budgets as well. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is actually the highest grossing horror franchise in the US at approximately $522 million, so I am really saddened that they couldn’t have used some of that money to go farther with the effects. Perhaps the newest movie will change the fate of the franchise and turn over a new more serious leaf.

If you feel like reliving the series then I recommend getting the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection. Video quality on this box set is excellent!! This set includes 1-6, New Nightmare, and the dreaded Freddy vs. Jason (we can forgive them for that one because they put so much other good content in lol). According to a user review of the product (sorry I don’t own this yet) the extras found on the bonus disc titled The Nightmare Encyclopedia include: all 7 Movie Previews that were shown in theatres, music videos including DOKKEN’s “Dream Warriors”, an interactive game called The Labyrinth which is very hard, all 7 Screenplays and an interactive Freddy that haunts your PC courtesy of Togglethis.com. The collection is a better deal than trying to purchase all of the DVDs individually I might add.