A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise Retrospective

by: RFR Casket Crew Denise

I saw the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street (NOES) on opening weekend. As much as I wanted to attend the midnight show, I knew I would be dead (no pun intended) on my feet at work that day. Instead, I saw the show Friday night with some good friends. I was really stoked to see the remake because NOES was the first horror movie to scare me as a teenager. In fact, it might be the last show to really scare me. I have seen all the NOES movies numerous times since I’m a fan of Freddy, so when I heard about the remake last year, I was immediately set to see it on opening day. But before I reveal my verdict on the new movie, I thought it might be good to look back at all the NOES to see the evolution of Freddy and the movies over the years.

Freddy slashed his way onto the big screen in the mid-80s. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released on November 9, 1984. It was written and directed by Wes Craven and starred John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Robert England and was the the debut for Johnny Depp.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is my favorite horror movie. Not only did it scare the pee out of me, but it had a very young and sexy Johnny Depp. I’m a huge Johnny Depp fan. He doesn’t know it, but he is my future husband. But let’s get back to the movies. A Nightmare on Elm Street, like all the movies, is set in a fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio. Several teenagers are plagued by their nightmares and stalked by Fred Krueger. If he kills them in their dreams, they die in the real world. Although the teenagers don’t know what is going on, at first, they eventually discover the dark secret their parents are hiding from them.

Much like John Carpenter’s Halloween, NOES was filmed by a relatively unknown director, a non-existence budget and preformed by a relatively unknown cast. It was a box office smash grossing over 25 million dollars.

With the huge success of the first movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was released almost a year later – November 1, 1985. This movie is probably my least favorite of the NOES movies because it doesn’t fit with the rest. I think of it as I do Halloween III: Season of the Witch. New Line seemed unsure how to follow up and rushed NOES 2 into production too early. In the second movie, we are introduced to a new family, the Walshes, who have moved into Nancy’s house five years after the first movie took place. The son, Jesse, moves into Nancy’s room and eventually begins having nightmares of Freddy Krueger. The ever-menacing Krueger uses Jesse’s body as a host to come back to life in the real world and demands that Jesse kill for him.
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NOES 2 generally received negative reviews and comments when it was released in 1985 and would have probably killed the whole Freddy franchise. New Line wasn’t ready to give up on Freddy, so on February 27, 1987, they released A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. This movie did three things for the franchise; 1.) revitalized it 2.) saw the return of Wes Craven 3.) marked the beginning of the end for the menacing Freddy and instead gave us a comedic one. Dream Warriors is my second favorite NOES movie because it is a mixture of horror and action. Plus this one marks the return of Nancy. This time she is the one to help the teenagers fight Freddy. This movie is also the first one to go into depth of who Freddy was. We know from the fist movie that Freddy was a child killer but in Dream Warriors we begin to understand why he was a killer. Dream Warriors is also the first movie where the teenagers discover they have their own dream powers and can fight Freddy in his world. And as I said, it is in number 3 that we start to see Freddy change from a menacing character and one who is a comedian as he delivers really bad puns while stalking his victims.

Once again, New Line had a box office smash with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors on their hands and true to sense, released A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master a little over a year later – August 19, 1988.

Kristen, Joey and Kincaid (the Dream Warriors) are back in this sequel. Just when we thought Freddy was dead, we realize that Kristen is still having dreams about the boiler room and constantly revisits it dragging Joey and Kincaid into her dreams. Joey warns her that she is going to stir him up if she continues to mess around in that place – and in fact that is exactly what happens. With the help of Kincaid’s dog, Jason, Freddy is brought back to life and is freed to kill the Dream Warriors who are the remaining Elm Street children. Before killing Kristen, Freddy tricks her into using her dream powers to pull her new friend Alice into her dream. Kristen passes on her powers but also gives Freddy access to a whole new set of teenagers to “play with”.

Although not as successful as NOES 3, The Dream Master did well enough for New Line to continue the franchise. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was released on August 11, 1989. It takes place almost a year after The Dream Master and Alice and Dan have started dating. There is no sign of Freddy Krueger but Alice begins having dreams of a young boy and a young nun named Amanda Krueger. She has made friends with a whole new group of teenagers which gives Freddy new victims. This film, however, grossed only 22.1 million, making it the second lowest grossing NOES movie.

Not yet willing to end the franchise, New Line launched Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare on September 13, 1991. This was the sixth slasher film and as the title suggests, it was intended to be the last in the series, but once again New Line was surprised by it’s moderate success.

The movie is set in 1999. Ten years have passed since the fifth film. Alice and her son Jacob have moved away from Springwood and Freddy Krueger has succeeded in killing nearly all the children in the town except one. The only surviving child is sent into the real world by Freddy to bring back more victims and more importantly, his own child, Maggie.

New Line and Paramount tried to make a Freddy vs Jason movie in 1987 but the two studios failed to agree on a story or what to do with the two franchises. When Jason Takes Manhattan failed to perform successfully at the box office, Sean Cunningham decided that he wanted to reacquire the rights to Friday the 13th and start working with New Line on Freddy vs. Jason. After Jason Takes Manhattan released in 1989, the rights reverted back to Scuderi, Minasian and Barsamianto, who sold them to New Line. Before Cunningham could start work on Freddy vs. Jason, Wes Craven returned to New Line to make Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. It was released on October 14, 1994. This new movie was never intended to be part of the series continuity since it takes place in the real world and Freddy Krueger is just an iconic movie villain. The plot focuses on Freddy invading the real world and haunting the actors and crew responsible for the Nightmare on Elm Street films. It is also the return of a more menacing Freddy instead of a comical one. And we once again see Heather Langenkamp revising her role as Nancy. This happens to my third favorite NOES movie and even though it was well-received critically, particularly for a slasher film, it failed to make as big an impression at the box office grossing a mere 18 million.

On August 15, 2003, New Line released its long awaited and highly anticipated Freddy vs. Jason movie. Even though it received mixed reviews, it was a box office success grossing over 114 million dollars worldwide. In the film’s story line, Freddy has grown weak, as the citizens of Springwood have suppressed their fear of him. In order to regain his power, Freddy resurrects Jason and manipulates him into traveling to Springwood to cause panic and fear.

All of this is leading us to A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), the remake for a new generation of Freddy fans. This time the story revolves around Nancy, Kris, Quentin, Jesse and Dean who live on Elm Street. At night, they’re all having the same dream–of the same man, wearing a tattered red and green striped sweater, a beaten fedora half-concealing a disfigured face and a gardener’s glove with knives for fingers. And they’re all hearing the same frightening voice. One by one, he terrorizes them within the curved walls of their dreams, where the rules are his, and the only way out is to wake up.

The new movie follows the original story line for the most part but puts a modern spin on the familiar story. I’ve had several people ask me how I like the remake and honestly I haven’t formed a solid opinion. I liked the movie but I was expecting more. Jackie Earle Haley is a menacing and creepy Freddy – far different from Robert Englund’s portrayal and yet both men make the role their own. In the end, I recommend this movie and encourage everyone to see it at least once. My own advice is to see it without expectations.