Day 26 A Nightmare on Elm Street & A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy's Revenge!
Day 26 A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2
One night, Wes Craven found he had trouble sleeping. He heard some odd noises from outside his window so he decided to take a peak down below. What he saw, in the dark. Was a very scary to him at that age homeless man standing in front of his families trash can, just out of sight from the lightpost. Wearing a long dark coat and a beat up hat. What scared him was when the man stopped digging through the trash and look up to him. He got scared and ducked away for a while. Feeling it was safe, Wes looked back outside a good long while later. The man was still out there and still staring up at him through the window.
That served as his basis for creating Freddy Kreuger, and what helped bring us a wonderful series of films, that Hollywood is still trying to beat the tit of to keep milking.
But few can do it as well as the first 6 films. Hell even the ones after weren’t all terribly bad. Just. Mostly.
Mostly.
It’s hard not to include these films. In all honesty when you think about it, they’re the closest in tone to the original and were great enough on their own. But it was the reinvention of Freddy in Dream Warriors that really brought in the crowds and fans.
Even if people may feel part two is a bit off, and also a crown wearing proud film of being titled one of the first gay horror films. Or most gay horror film. It’s a film. With Freddy, and some underlaying themes.
So let’s cut to the chase on one of the film series that shaped my sense of dark humor and I’ve grown up loving ever since.
A Nightmare on Elm Street-Introducing Johnny Depp
Yes this is the one that introduced the world to Johnny Depp, and outdid Kevin Bacons death in Friday the 13th by a country mile.
Also yes spoilers he dies, spectacularly.
Tina is having bad dreams lately. Somehow they aren’t about her mildly abusive alpha male, for some odd reason dresses like a greaser boyfriend who dishes out threats of killing people like it’s candy. But instead are focused on a mystery man with razors for fingers as she puts it. But she’s not the only one, her best friend Nancy is also having similar dreams of the same person. Which strikes the group odd, and becomes the topic of a sleepover. Not the kind involving pillow forts mind you, but the kind where girlfriends tell their boyfriends their parents aren’t home, and the boyfriends come over to spend quality time, holding the girls hands. INTIMATELY!!!
But the only ones who actually do more than hold hands are Tina and her unstable boyfriend. While Nancy and Captain Jack have yet to move past the peck on the cheek stage of hand holding. Which is cute.
What isn’t cute is that Tina is scared she’ll die in her sleep, because the dreams feel so real for her, the same for Nancy. But Unstable boyfriend assures Tina he will protect her(Which he can’t) and give her something(Which he can) to stop her from having any kind of nightmares(Which is impossible). So the two have loud marathon sex, much to the displeasure of Captain Jack, and the awkwardness of Nancy trying to sleep beside her boyfriend without the thought of slapping balls.
So once unstable boyfriend has drained himself and left Tina with what he believes was a satisfying end to her evening. They both pass out, and Tina lands smack dab back into her nightmare world.
Where Mr. Freddy is waiting for her. Only this time it’s not as ‘gentle’ as her past nightmares. Freddy goes out of his way not only to mess with her, but show her how messed up he was inside. He calls out to her and flashes a scarred hand. As she waits to see why, she sees his gloved hand rise up and a single bladed finger flashes down without a care, lopping off several fingers of his. Spurting out green blood.
He doesn’t care about his own body, he’s crazy enough to destroy himself, what could he do to her? She rightfully freaks out and takes off for the safety of her home. Only to find him waiting for her there as well.
Giving us one of the coolest effects and a definitely memorable first kill in the movie. Tina’s boyfriend wakes to her screaming and thrashing in bed. Sitting up, only to get knocked down by her flailing body. Which Is now hovering from the bed and being dragged along the wall to the ceiling. Where we can’t see the fight taking place as she literally is scrambling and fighting back with all she has. We only see the results of her struggle. As her nightgown is cut into four slits, which soon pour blood from them as she’s killed. Bleeding out reaching to her boyfriend. Her body then drops to the mattress below, and she’s gone.
Her unstable boyfriend flees the scene, leaving Johnny and Nancy to discover the absolute bloodbath that is her friends murder scene.
Naturally the police want unstable boyfriend. He’s prime suspect numero uno, and well. He’s also unstable. Despite Nancy swearing he wouldn’t hurt anyone. But like any teenagers life, her parents aren’t hearing it. They go so far as following Nancy on her walk to school and find unstable boyfriend stop her to protest his innocence, and threaten her because. It’s what he does. Nancy’s father, it should be said. Is the chief of police. So he gets to arrest his primary suspect and gripe at his daughter all in one day. A parents dream!
Which is another dynamic we get to play with here, which links to what awaits Nancy now.
Once her friend has died, Nancy is trying to continue life as normal. But that’s not entirely possibly given what she’s been through. On top of the fact she now seems to have inherited the severity and sudden terror of her friend’s deadly dreams.
This whole movie is a collection of nightmare fuel visuals. Back then and today. As Nancy is dosing off in her classroom. She’s unaware she fell asleep. Until she hears her dead friend calling out to her. Seeing a bloody clear bodybag being dragged along the floor. Leaving a bloody snail trail. The visions only get weirder and more challenging. And the dialog is as wonderfully memorable.
Like Nancy running into a hallway monitor wearing a green and red stripped sweater demanding to see her hallpass, to which she says “Screw tour pass.”
While running through the school Nancy soon finds herself in. Well the boiler room. Why the school has one we will never know. It likely is just a dream. But there she is, and there he is. Freddy. Chasing after and eventually cornering Nancy. Leaving her nowhere else left to go. Facing the choice of death or, well death. Nancy opts to wake herself from the dream the only way she can figure. She burns her wrist on the steam pipe along the walls beside her. And just moments before freddy can get her, she wakes up in class, screaming. And with a nasty burn on her arm.
The plot, she is thickening!
Nancy Is not thrilled with her new life of drinking coffee, and popping caffeine pills. But it’s a nice Segway for her into college life, where speed and coffee will be her daily study aids. Promise that!
After Nancy decides to further test her father, she goes to visit unstable boyfriend in jail. He tells her in detail everything that happened to Tina the night she died. Exactly what he saw and how she died in her sleep. But was looking right at him before she died. So Nancy is now convinced what awaits her.
Now. Here’s an odd scene to discuss. Because it’s a bit of a bickering fest when you get into it. What was written in script, discussed by the director, and what we were shown. Nancy’s bath scene.
Now, on camera it appears she’s relaxing in a warm bath and eventually, accidentally drifts off. Giving us a creepy moment of Freddy’s glove coming out from the water between her thighs reaching for her face. Then Nancy being dragged down.
People discuss it because they tr to reason how she dozed off. Which is dumb. But brings up what was discussed and written originally. Which was the idea that Nancy was masturbating under the water to aid in her ‘relaxing’ and she ended up dozing off in that state. They even played around with the idea of giving that impression with how she was positioned in the tub, her reaction to her mom interrupting things, then the look on her face before drifting off for a moment. It’s weird but hey. They thought it, and almost included a more detailed play on the scene.
Lesson being don’t ring the devils doorbell in a bathtub or a burned man will get you.
During this evening and her nightmare activity. Nancy is greeted with a vision of unstable boyfriends death. By freddy using the sheets to creat a snake of sorts to coil around him and hang him. Making it look like a suicide. Nancy alerts her father, which he doesn’t buy. Until she forces him to see it and gets the moment most parents dread. Especially her own. Where she gets the power of saying “I told you so”
Which brings about the key story scene we needed to fill in a good deal of blanks. Nancy begins describing to her parents the man in her dreams. Knowing he will kill her eventually in her sleep, and no one believing her. Hearing his description troubles her parents visibly. Enough so they decide to take her to a specialist to monitor her during her sleep.
Which is another fun scene where we date the film by showing a mom smoking in a doctors office. Can’t do that today kiddos!
Needless to say, Nancy has a horrific dream and shocks everyone in the room, as she pulls out of her dream Freddy’s beat up brown fedora. With his name written on the inside lining. Fred Krueger.
Now her nightmare begins in real life, and her sleep. Coming home to discover her home now looking like a fortress with bars on every piece of window. She begins demanding of her mother an explanation. Which she drunkenly decides to offer.
That’s something I kept out because I waited to include it with the story. Though most of you should know by now. Nancy’s mother is a comically hardcore alcoholic. She has vodka bottles all over the house, and is normally so drunk she barely functions let alone seems aware of what’s going on.
And we learn why.
As the mother admits she knows the name Fred Krueger. She tries calming her daughter in telling her he can’t harm her. Taking her daughter on a nice trip down memory lane to their basement and boiler. Where she pulls from the insides, freddy’s glove.
She shares with Nancy how when she was very young, there was a series of child murders in town. Dozens of kids were missing and found dead later. The closest they came to stopping it was happening to find Freddy attempting to kill one of the kids. Only to be discovered and soon arrested. But due to poor police work, him not having his rights read to him, Freddy was set free.
The parents fearful for their children’s lives, and fearing him continuing to murder without justice. A group of parents got together and cornered him at the factory he worked in. Dosing the building and room in gasoline and eventually setting fire.
Freddy was a victim of mob justice. Which the parents involved ended up shaken by in what they saw, and what they did. Some trying to act as if things were fine, and others giving in to their guilt. Which lead to the separation of her mother and father. The father being chief of police could not admit he knew what happened. But he also couldn’t handle that his wife had joined on this and helped burn him alive. It drove them apart and her mother became an alcoholic. Her way of coping with things, while the dad chose to turn a blind eye.
But she again tells Nancy how she’s safe because ‘mommy took away his weapon’. But Nancy knows better. She begins to realize he’s killing the children because of what the parents did. Using their dark deed to deliver a curse on the town to take all of the parents of Elm Streets children.
Nancy is a smart cookie.
Which brings us to Johnny Depp. He doesn’t have many scenes in the movie. But He’s always fun to see when he is. Captain Jack is vaguely aware of Nancy’s struggle. He’s more concerned with her not sleeping, and her sudden interest in books about homemade booby traps than anything else. So she enlist him to aid her sleep crusade. Before she had him stay and watch her sleep, promising to wake her if he saw her begin to struggle. But he failed. Now with bars between them he can’t sneak over anymore. Which doesn’t bode well for coming events. Freddy again decides to tease poor Nancy. She knows he’s going to kill her friends, including Captain Jack. She attempts calling him but he’s a typical teenager. Listening to music while watching tv on his bed. Nancy repeatedly tries to talk to him but his mother says no. Then his father hangs up on her because well frankly. Nancy is a troubled girl and their boy doesn’t need to talk to her.
A victory for his parents. A loss for Captain Jack. As he begins to drift off. Freddy pulls him down into his mattress. Dragging his TV, headphones and turntable down with him. Then we get the funniest scene in a horror movie. A literal guizer of blood shoots out from the bed, flooding the ceiling until it forms a pool of blood. Releasing the moment the mom opens the door to check on him. No body has that amount of blood inside it. But Captain Jack was carrying several bodies worth of it inside him. And that was the day, Freddy finally caught Captain Jack.
MONTAGE TIME!!! Nancy is tired of this shit. And just plane tired. The poor girl has not had solid good sleep in ages it feels. But she has plans. BIG plans! She starts with helping put her mom out for the night, and begin setting up traps around the house. Filling light bulbs with gun powder, trip wires tied to sledgehammers. Welcome to the rice fields!!
She sets an alarm for herself and off to sleep land she goes. Her plan? She’s going to bring Freddy into the real world and finish him off. She tells her father this. Tells him to be ready for when she brings him back.
Yes she succeeds, and no her dad isn’t there. So she has a gauntlet to run Freddy through, pissing him off as he’s reminded what pain feels like all over again. Even worse is when she douses him in gasoline and reminds me what it feels like to be set on fire. Which lets be honest setting a man on fire, who already died once by being burned alive. That’s pretty messed up.
Which he lets her know he’s not happy with. Nancy is finally able to retrieve her dad. Only for the pair to walk back into their home and see fiery footsteps around the house leading upstairs to her mothers bedroom. Running in just in time to find Freddy choking her mother and both of them on fire as Freddy and Nancy’s mom sink into the mattress and die. The father is shaken to his core and doesn’t know what to believe. He leaves the room to try and comprehend everything he just saw. While Nancy lingers, back to the bed. Which is when we see Freddy begin to materialize through the bed, smoking and freshly scarred. Telling Nancy how he’s going to tare her apart. But Nancy pulls a power move on him. Reciting something Captain Jack told her about how he controlled his dreams. She tells Freddy she is no longer afraid of him. That any and all power he had over her, that she gave him. She’s taking back. Which scares him and he leaps at her to slash her throat. Only to vanish and not return.
As that happens and the screen fades. We get a new morning. One where, surprisingly. All of her friends are alive. Not only that, but her mom is too, and she’s sober! A personal best for her in the morning. She sends Nancy off to school, feeling spring time fresh and believing all of this was reward for having put Freddy to rest.
Until the convertible she jumps into for school pops its hood up. The hood is red and green stripped like Freddy’s sweater. The mom smiles blissfully while waking to her daughter, as Nancy screams for help and the car takes off down the street.
Giving us one last scare, a funny scare, and a dirty one. In the scene, Freddy’s gloved hand is supposed to come through the window of the door and pull the mom through it back into the house. The only way they could do so? Someone ‘donated’ a blowup doll. They dressed it up as the mom, and yanked it through the door. It looks exactly how it sounds, and not in a ‘It looks okay to us’ way but a ‘Fuck it I’m too drunk to taste this chicken, call it a wrap’ way.
And the movie ends with little girls skipping rope, singing Freddies nursery rhyme.
Which becomes very central to everything as the series goes on.
Now. We can delve into the what were they thinking, just how gay is it, and why is it so damn good, when it breaks every rule it sets up sequel.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy’s Revenge.
Oooh boy oh boy, This movie sadly gets forgotten a lot. Well mostly people know it for what I semi teased about and leave it at that. But it’s a pretty solid sequel to the original. It’s one of the last times we get dark freddy, before part 3 comes along and the series takes off into what it became more healthily known for. Freddy’s humor and dream sequences.
Here we get some pretty messed up visuals!
Like the school buss from hell that we begin with. Which if you look closely at in the beginning, you’ll see the bus driver picking up all the high school kids? Is none other than Robert Englund. It’s on this bus in the beginning we are introduced to our new protagonist, Jesse. The new kid in town and the often teased for being new, and weird.
It’s soon made clear this bus ride isn’t all together normal as it veers off the road and heads out into the open desert. Which makes sense you’d think to worry if your bus did so suddenly. I guess. I mean it was normal for us back then. The 80’s were a different time, I tell ya!
The bus finds itself not only off in some sand filled land that ISN’T their school. But very soon finds itself balanced on a pillar of rocks over an endless pit. The students on board screaming their heads off and bus driver Freddy coming down the rows to collect his souls. But just as his gloved hand raises up to come slashing down on those in the bus including Jesse. The dream ends and we’re greeted to the sweatiest boy to ever swear in their bed.
Thus beginning a theme in this movie. The house seems to constantly be on a steaming hot temperature, and the house they live in happens to be the house Nancy lived in and burned Freddy.
Jesse seems a pretty normal kid, just troubled by these weird dreams he’s had ever since his family moved into this house and his sleep began taking a turn for the worse. But in all these odd dreams, he’s threatened but never actually killed by Freddy. They’re just to get his attention.
While at school we learn he has a bit of a crush, a pretty damn cute redhead that yes, I did have a crush on as well when I was little and saw this. Don’t judge me, even my better half admits she was hot. So I’m off the hook see. See!! We also get introduced to the oddest friendship bully in the film. A fellow jock who likes flipping Jesse shit and teases him constantly. But also presents himself as a good friend for him too. It’s interesting, but also so is the couch and his deep seeded nature to torture his students when they get out of line. Again the 80’s were a different time.
So one day while in his room Jesse is reminded he needs to finish unpacking and he decides fine I’ll do it, but not before a fun wtf am I watching musical number, complete with sunglasses and a toy used as both a microphone and penis. Because if you’re going to embarrass yourself why not go full tilt on it and hold no regrets. Which is exactly what happens as the crush from his school and my dreams comes over to see him and witnesses this odd ritualistic dance. But she’s a cool bean and helps him with unpacking. That is until they stumble upon Nancies diary in his closet.
Upon discovering this they decide to read through passages, including her talking about longing for Captain Jack and wishing they were intimate more often. But more importantly. She begins talking about Freddy, the dreams, her friends deaths, her fear of sleeping. This of course troubles Jesse as he begins to realize who it is he’s seeing in these dreams.
And gets us going toward Freddy’s goal with a nice dream sequence. Roaming the house at night, finding everything around him melting because of the heat. Jesse has a run in with Freddy downstairs. Freddy see’s he’s a bit weak and not nearly as intimidating a figure as Nancy was for him. So he strikes a deal of sorts with Jesse. Though Jesse doesn’t entirely understand what it is. Freddy simply tells him that they’re going to work together. That Jesse has the body, and he’s got the brains, which he takes literally by showing his brains to Jesse. Ultimately the deal Freddy is making with Jesse is. Well. Possession. He’ll let Jesse live, if he can hide inside of him, allowing Freddy to pop out any time he so wishes when Jesse begins to dream. Which had Jesse known what this would mean and do, he would’ve protested a bit more. At least you’d think so.
I mean if someone in my dreams was telling me to kill for them and how it’d be a sweet deal doing so, I would raise some red flags, have some questions and wag a finger or two about it.
But we don’t have time for that! What we DO have time for is a bizarre kill. Jesse is afraid to sleep and rightfully so! He does all he can to stay awake and finds himself one night roaming the streets. Which introduces us to a leather bar in town. This town has it all! Jesse orders himself a beer and tries to relax with the many daddies in leather, bears and various patrons. But low and behold his coach finds him and is having none of this. How dare Jesse come down to his leather bar and ruin his night of wearing leather pants and a mesh top.
So Jesse is evicted from the club, without his beer, and becomes the product of pleasure for the couch. NO he does not rape him. But the couch does what he enjoys. Torturing the boy by having him run endless laps in the gymnasium to tire himself out. After feeling he got the message about not going into leather bars and ordering beers. He tells him to take a shower. Well this is when Jesse begins to dose off and realize this deal with Freddy sucks in the bad way! Freddy comes ripping and taring through Jesse and the couch finds themselves restrained with jump ropes tied to shower heads. His clothes ripped off from him and towels whipping him. Up until Freddy decides this whole thing is too weird and kills him.
Leaving a traumatized Jesse standing there, with a gloved hand.
The funniest part of all of this though. Isn’t the shower murder and undertones. But the fact that Jesse is escorted back home. Naked. He was traumatized by what happened and wondered around the streets butt naked, police picked him up and brought him home. So the very first thing to come out of his parents? “What are you on? What drugs are you doing?” Which Jesse gives the most realistic “Are you shitting me?” look and it’s just hilarious. Nevermind I saw a man murdered in front of me and I think I did it because I’m going crazy. Let’s talk about smoking the reefer, and doing the crack!
But Jesse is in luck. Relaxation is headed his way. We can only hope. Even if the school is beginning to find him more and more a weirdo, his gym teacher murdered, and him losing his mind. Jesse decides to go see his crush and hang out at a party of hers. She does her best to be a friend. But also to keep her hormones at bay. Sadly and fortunately she can’t and the two begin making out. Which surprise of surprises. Helps Jesse. She’s getting tender attention from the guy she likes, and Jesse is surprised he’s into women. I couldn’t help that one. But as the two are going at it and his crush undoes her top to let him kiss down the holy valley. His tongue transforms and extends into a near foot long freddy tongue. Scaring him and sending him off running away, leaving his crush bewildered and questioning if it was something she did.
Does Jesse go home and lock his door? No. Does he run off to tell his parents he’s not a junky and needs help? No. He instead runs and seeks help from his bully/friend. Who points out how weird it is that Jesse leaves a party where he’s making out with a hit girl, to come spend the night with him in his room. But he’s cool with it and says Jesse can crash there. Jesse begs him to watch him because, he could change at any minute. Begging him not to let him fall asleep. But his bully friend shrugs it off and says sure, okay boomer.
Which he shouldn’t had. As Jesse does off and soon Grady his frienemy does as well. Jesse wakes up in horror and we see a full and literal transformation of Jesse into Freddy as Freddy rips and claws his way through Jesse for us all to see. Leaving a heap of bloody flesh on the ground and a rightfully crapping his pants Grady.
Freddy sadly kills him and transforms back into Jesse after. Leaving him screaming over the murder of his friend, as Freddy’s image in the mirror laughs mockingly.
This is where the movie veers off into crazy town, and decides rules don’t exist in this dojo.
Jesse returns to the crush he made out with and ran out on, further confusing her. But he tries as best he can to tell her about what is going on, the gym teacher’s death, his friend. How he feels he’s losing more and more control. The crush, being diligent in her efforts in the past to help him and spend time with Jesse, had been researching pretty heavily about Freddy, dreams, and where he worked. She begins putting one and two together and realizes, as she tries telling Jesse. That his fear is what’s fueling Freddy. That Freddy is using the fact he’s so terrified and won’t stand up for himself as his strength and the more scared he becomes, the stronger Freddy will be. Which Freddy hearing all of this decides she’s right, and he should show Jesse this. Jesse begins to transform into Freddy without the ripping and taring this time.
But he won’t attack Lisa. Because part of Jesse is still inside there. Instead Freddy, pissed at this revelation steps outside to the party still going on. He causes the pool water to begin boiling, flames to shoot out from the nearby grill, and manages magically to turn the fence around the property into a conductor and scorching any of the party goers who try to escape. So Freddy begins slashing people left and right. It’s a free range slaughter and no one is going home.
Even funnier still, is the moment a party goer decides to try reasoning with Freddy, Which works out as well as you’d think it would. But All good things must eventually come to an end. Lisa’s parents show up and her dad aims a shotgun at Freddy, giving him pause for a moment. But Lisa steps in front of her dad and stops him. Freddy watching all of this with Jesse still inside somewhere turns and walks off. Suddenly vanishing into flames as he approached the fence.
There are a few problems with this. Mainly that we were told, and it was set up before hand that Freddy’s powers come from the dreamworld. But somehow, now as a physical manifestation and fully possessing Jesse, Freddy is back with supernatural powers? It doesn’t make much sense. And sort of tosses out, or at the least muddles the movie rules setup for the character. But lets get on to the final act. Lisa VS Freddy in an epic rap battle of history.
So Lisa decides the one place Freddy would go, would of course be the building he worked at and the boiler room within. They begin chasing after one another and all the while Lisa argues and fights with Freddy to give her back her man! But Jesse is too weak and Freddy has grown stronger. She decides to throw everything into this she can. If he won’t fight Freddy, she’ll give him something to fight for. She confesses her love to Jesse, that she doesn’t just like him. She ‘like’ likes him and wants to hold hands, and stuff. Then she kisses Freddy/Jesse, and this gives Jesse incentive! There’s love and booty to be had!
So he’s able to overcome Freddy and fight his way free of a charred Freddy body. A first for Jesse where instead of a man taring him up. He gets to be the one doing the ripping and taring inside someone. Again I apologize.
Much like the first film we can’t have a fully happy ending. So a mutual friend of the couple has to happily tell us how it’s all over and Freddy’s gloved hand reaches through her chest scaring everyone on the bus.
This movie deserves a good deal more love and respect to be honest. There are a lot of memorable and odd scenes in it to be sure. Not just the dream sequences, and no not the ‘is this gay or is it just weird’ scenes. But subtle things through Jesse’s possession. Like him going to his sisters bedroom as she sleeps and wearing Freddy’s glove, tucking her in telling her to go back to sleep. A homage to Freddy’s earlier days killing children. A cereal box with creepy man fingers that also mimic Freddy’s glove, The increasing heat and tension inside the house, the haunting of Freddy. It’s really great stuff. Just again. Most people check the movie out to see ‘the most gay horror movie to ever be’, and it’s kind of sad.
There’s things in it as well I never noticed, but thanks to being older, the internet and the power of HD I know get. Like the change in Freddy’s glove. If you look closely, the index finger of the glove? The blade was broken and welded back into place, so the blade overlaps. There’s also a bit of wire used to hold one of the finger gauntlets to the glove. These are things I learned as well when I MADE my own Freddy glove and it’s really interesting the different changes in the glove. Apparently the blade broke during filming so they had to weld it to continue. They didn’t really have ANY gloves to be tossing around. In fact the glove from the first film was stolen from the set after filming. So they had to redo the glove and that’s why it looks how it does in this.
We also learned that they were making the sequel without Robert Englund as Freddy. See back then monster men in horror films were, and still to a point are replaceable. They didn’t think it mattered who Freddy was. Just that he had a deep threatening voice, burned features and a glove. But when the first film became the huge hit that it was, a demand for Englund to play him could not be ignored. So it’s a fun thing to see in the movie, where you spot the shots they used a different actor, and the ones they used Robert in.
These films have their ups and downs, but the first two remain the truer of the franchise as it continued the idea of Freddy being a true nightmare figure and not someone to mess around with. The films were scary and had little in the way of humor. But then came Dream Warriors to forever change the course of the Nightmare films. It had a Freddy who setup elaborate dream traps, always had a fun one liner to toss out. A FINAL showdown with Nancy and her father. It was just an all round fun film. It was the product of Freddy’s popularity. Each film after that delved further and further into it and became a bit more comical.
Then New Line tried remaking the series and going back to the horror side of it. What we got was an actor who hated the movies, thought they were boring and the character lame, A glove no one liked the look of, and they made Freddy into a child molester instead of child killer. Because why not? It was just sad.
But Here we have the apex Freddy. He’s mad and looking to punish the parents who killed him. Cursing their children and killing them off without mercy and enjoying it. Then we have him return looking for a way back into our world to continue tormenting and killing only to be pushed back into hell. We built on the character from the original. We see much more of him than we did previously, and we even get some more twisted images. I mean hell, why not have dogs with barking human faces right? What movie DOESN’T need that.
You honestly should check out the entire series, which most likely a good number of you had. If not though, it is a requirement. I love these movies and even if I hated the remake, it still meant Freddy was with us, and that’s good enough for me.