Freddy Krueger

Freddy Krueger
A Nightmare on Elm Street character
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger
First appearance	A Nightmare on Elm Street
Last appearance	Freddy vs. Jason
Created by	Wes Craven
Portrayed by	Robert Englund
Information
Gender	Male
Significant other(s)	Loretta Krueger
Children	Maggie Burroughs
Occupation	Serial killer
M.O. (Mode of Operation)	Slashing and stabbing with a bladed glove
Race	Caucasian
IMDb profile

Freddy Krueger is a fictional character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series of films. Created by Wes Craven and portrayed by actor Robert Englund in every film of the series, he is an undead comedic serial killer, who can attack his victims from within their own dreams.Freddy's finger tips are approx 7 inches long. In the original script, Freddy Krueger was a child molester, as to Wes Craven this was the worst thing possible. The decision was made to instead make Krueger a child murderer in order to avoid being accused of exploiting a spate of highly publicized child molestations which occurred in California around the time A Nightmare on Elm Street went into production. However, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child suggests this might still be the case in a headline Alice looks at when researching Freddy.^[1] Freddy is commonly identified by his burned, disfigured face, red and green striped sweater, brown fedora hat, and trademark metal-clawed brown colored leather glove. Wizard magazine rated him the 14th greatest villain of all time,^[2] and he came in 8th on British television channel Sky2's Greatest Villains of All Time and ranked 40th on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list.

Wes Craven claims his inspiration for the basis of 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 beforehand, and died in their sleep. Physically, Craven's inspirations for Freddy included a homeless man who had frightened Craven as a youth and a bully at his school. The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Craven, giving him not only an artistic setting to "jump off" from, but the synthesizer riff from the Elm Street soundtrack.^[3]

Robert Englund has expressed many times that he feels that the deeper meaning behind the character is that he represents neglect, particularly the neglect that children and teens are sometimes subject to when growing up.^[4]

Contents 1 Life story 2 Film series events 3 Death 4 Battle with Jason Voorhees 5 Weaknesses 6 Alternate plot line 6.1 Wes Craven's New Nightmare 6.2 Freddy's Nightmares 7 New Line Cinema vs. Wes Craven 8 Memorabilia 9 References 10 External links

Life story

Krueger's origin evolved slowly over the course of the film series. Each subsequent film revealed new information that intertwined with the backstory established in the original film. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child provided the origin of Krueger’s birth, which began with a tragic incident involving his mother in the early 1940s. During a Christmas holiday, a young nun named Sister Mary Helena (a.k.a. Amanda Krueger) was accidentally trapped inside a ward of the Westin Hills psychiatric hospital. Known as “the tower”, this ward was used to house the very worst of the criminally insane. Amanda was raped and tortured by the 100 patients confined there. She was found days later, close to death and now pregnant. Frederick Charles Krueger was born months later after a breech birth and was given up for adoption.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare revealed that Krueger was placed with an abusive alcoholic named Mr. Underwood (Alice Cooper) who brutalized him physically and emotionally. As a child, Freddy exhibited sociopathic behavior, which included killing small animals. Socially, he was often ridiculed by his peers as "son of a hundred maniacs." In his late teens, Freddy practiced self-mutilation; after learning the "secret of pain", he murdered Underwood.

Later in adulthood, Krueger would go on to marry a woman named Loretta, with whom he would have a daughter, Kathryn. The Krueger family resided in Freddy's childhood home at 1428 Elm Street.^[5] Kathryn was shown to still be a child when children from the neighborhood went missing and were later found dead. Soon after, Loretta learned that in the basement of the house, Freddy had a secret room where he kept devices of torture, newspaper clippings of his crimes, and different versions of his clawed glove. Loretta promised that "she won't tell", but Freddy strangled her in front of Kathryn, "for snooping in daddy's special work". Krueger worked at the local power plant, and it was there where he had taken and murdered 20 missing children; killing them in the plant's boiler room. What motivated him to murder children has not yet been revealed. The police were unable to solve the cases and newspapers dubbed the mysterious killer the "Springwood Slasher".

In 1966, Freddy was arrested for the murders of the missing children. Young Kathryn was put into foster care and was later adopted. Due to the search warrant being signed incorrectly due to a drunk judge, all evidence was considered inadmissible, and Krueger was released in 1968. Amanda Krueger, Freddy's mother, who had followed his trial, heard of his release and hanged herself in the same tower where she was raped. The neighborhood parents of the children Freddy had murdered found Freddy in his boiler room later that night and threw Molotov cocktails in the building, trapping Freddy within. Just moments before his death, Freddy was approached by three dream demons. These demons search the mortal world for the most evil soul and, in turn, give that person the power to turn dreams into reality. Freddy accepted their offer to "be forever" as the flames consumed him. Afterward, Freddy's remains were taken to Penny Brothers Auto Salvage and locked in the trunk of an old red Cadillac. The Thompsons, involved with Krueger's murder, moved into the house at 1428 Elm Street, presumably to help erase his existence. Adopted by the Burroughs family, young Kathryn was taken away from Springwood and her records were sealed.

Film series events

In A Nightmare on Elm Street through A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Krueger was referred to as an urban legend. Presumably because of their complicity in murdering Krueger, coupled with his own terrible crimes, Elm Street parents remained tight-lipped about the events of the decade before, especially now that their children were teenagers. In the closing months of 1981, the children of Springwood, in particular those teens whose parents had formed the mob that killed Krueger, began dying in peculiar ways as they slept.

• Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp): Nancy, whose family moved into Krueger’s old home, was the first of the Elm Street children to learn about his past and the first to vanquish him. Nancy returned in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, only to be killed by Freddy, who had taken the physical form of her father as a disguise.

• Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette/Tuesday Knight): Kristen was a girl with the ability to bring people into her dreams. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, she, along with the last surviving “Elm Street children” battled Freddy in the dream world using self imaginative dream powers. Kristen used her natural gift of pulling others into her dream as a way for the group to battle Freddy at the same time. She was killed by Freddy in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master by being tossed into his boiler and burnt to death.

• Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox): Alice gained Kristen's power and the dream powers of her friends to become the Dream Master. In A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Alice removed the souls Krueger gained over the years and left him powerless. A year later, Alice became pregnant and Krueger started using the dreams of her unborn child to kill again in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. Alice vanquished Freddy a second time with the help of Krueger's mother, Amanda. After Krueger was contained, Alice moved away from Springwood before he escaped and caused the events in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.^[6]

The only male to ever be a main victim of Krueger and main protagonist of the movie, who at the end defeats Krueger, besides Jason Voorhees, was Jesse Walsh in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. Here, Freddy tries to enter the real world through Jesse's body. With the help of his girlfriend, Jesse regains control over himself and banishes Freddy back to the dreamworld, but to only be killed at the end by Freddy.

Death

After a decade of systematically slaughtering all of the children of Springwood in their dreams, the town was shown to be under Freddy’s influence in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. By absorbing the souls of his victims, Freddy was now powerful enough to blur the lines between dreams and reality. The remaining adults were kept in a mass psychosis after their children had been murdered. When there was no one left to kill, Freddy sought to leave Springwood — hoping to continue his murder spree in another town full of more children. Only one person could arrange for this to happen — his daughter, Kathryn Krueger.

Krueger used what was left of his supernatural powers to find his daughter, who was now an adult named "Maggie Burroughs" (Lisa Zane) and was working as a counselor to troubled teenagers in another city. Since her mother's death, Maggie was raised by adoptive parents and had suppressed the disturbing memories of her early childhood. After catching up with Maggie, Krueger attempted to convince her to do his bidding. She proved, though, that a compulsion for murder was not hereditary and instead schemed with Doc (Yaphet Kotto), her coworker (and dream psychiatrist), to help destroy Krueger. After pulling him out of her dream and into reality, Maggie stabbed Krueger in the abdomen with his own glove and then shoved a pipe bomb into Krueger's chest, effectively killing him and releasing the dream demons that had given him his power.

Battle with Jason Voorhees

In the hybrid sequel, Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy is trapped in Hell. After Maggie defeated Freddy in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, the people of Springwood sought to revitalize their town. Figuring out how Freddy operated, the authorities and town officials covered up any and all traces of his prior existence, which included blacking out obituaries and quarantining anyone who had ever dreamt about, or had any knowledge of Freddy. Other countermeasures included giving Hypnocil, a drug that prevents people from dreaming, to the children moved to Westin Hills. As a result, Springwood returned to obscurity and subsequently repopulated with no ill effects, hence the children endured.

Meanwhile, Freddy was unable to escape the boundaries of Hell, thanks to the complete ignorance of his existence to the people of Springwood, and the use of Hypnocil to prevent those in Westin Hills from dreaming. Due to the fact that no one so much as knew of him, much less feared him, Freddy was unable to gain enough power to escape. Thus, Freddy hatched a plan to resurrect the undead, immortal killing machine Jason Voorhees. First, at the conclusion of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, Freddy pulled Jason's abandoned mask into the ground. Then, in the disguise of Voorhees' mother, Pamela, Freddy manipulated Jason into rising from the dead once more and going to Elm Street to kill more teenagers. Jason committed a few murders, which were then blamed on Freddy (as planned). As a result, Freddy began to get his equilibrium back. Enough fear fell over Springwood to make Freddy strong enough to haunt the town again. The problem, which Freddy had not counted on, was that Jason would not stop killing. He became irritated when Jason continued to slaughter "his kids" before he could. Plus after confronting the son of a hundred maniacs, Jason finds out he was used. Thus, a bloody fight ensued between the two murderous icons that raged from the dream world to the waking world at Jason's old haunt, Camp Crystal Lake. The film ends with Jason walking out of Crystal Lake holding Freddy's decapitated head, which winks to the audience, followed by Freddy's laughter, indicating his reign of terror may not yet be over.^[7]

Weaknesses

Despite his near omnipotent powers in the dream world, Krueger has several known weaknesses.

The first is that if he is brought into the real world, Krueger loses his invulnerability and can be wounded, as well as having his reality warping powers stripped from him. To bring him into the real world, a person must physically grab Freddy in their dreams and then be woken up---a difficult task, as the effects of Krueger being inside a person's dreams causes a much deeper sleep than normal. Even moreso, is the fact that Krueger is extremely dangerous and that those who seeks to exploit this weakness must not only grab hold of Krueger, but also avoid being killed while holding him as they wake up.

The second weakness is fire. Krueger was engulfed in flames and burned to death thus he cannot tolerate it. This is ironic, considering that his lair is filled with fire. The use of fire to confront Krueger can slow him down and disorient the villain, often allowing his victims a chance to escape.

Thirdly, is that Krueger's ability to warp reality itself in the confines of a person's dreams can be countered by the power of lucid dreamers, those who can control their dreams. Two instances of this are in Dream Master, when Alice was able to fight and defeat Krueger, secondly in Freddy Vs Jason, when Freddy was unable to kill Jason in his dream, possibly due to Jason's knowledge of his own immortality.

Another weakness is bravery, since fear of him is what gives him strength. By confronting Krueger and indicating that you are no longer afraid of him, Krueger can be forced out of a person's dreams temporarily. This is how Krueger was defeated in the first film.

It is also suggested throughout the various films that Freddy is vulnerable to Holy Water, due to the obvious religious connotations as well as the use of a crucifix to purge Krueger of any and all souls he has consumed in order to increase his powers.

The television series Freddy's Nightmares and the film Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare also state Freddy is unable to spread his influence outside of Springwood. However, Freddy has managed to move beyond Springwood when he sought out his daughter (who he claims could free him of the town's borders due to being of his bloodline) in Freddy's Dead and when he made his way to Camp Crystal Lake inside the dreams of Jason during Freddy vs. Jason, which indicates that he can be in the dreams of those who are outside of Springwood if they are put to sleep while in Springwood's borders. This was the case with Jason, whom the teens of the film injected high levels of tranquilizer into, in hopes they could move him to Crystal Lake and give him the "home field advantage" in an attempt to use Jason to destroy Freddy. Yet, Freddy then entered his dreams while he was tranquilized. The two were still in conflict within Jason's dreams while Jason's body was being transported back to Camp Crystal lake, and Freddy appeared to lose none of his power during the transportation.

Alternate plot line

The summary above corresponds to what New Line Cinema considers the canonical account, based on the films ^[8]. But other elements of the franchise, such as comics, novels, and other licensed materials, present variant accounts, and the films themselves are sometimes inconsistent in what they present or imply about Freddy's past. A Nightmare prequel is rumored which might offer a new view of the storyline.^[9]

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Elm Street creator Wes Craven returned to the franchise in 1994 with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, giving audiences a new version of Freddy Krueger. New Nightmare, which celebrated the first film’s tenth anniversary, showed a darker and more sinister Freddy than presented in previous films. The story, which takes place outside the film continuity in a fictional “real world”, has Freddy haunting and killing the cast/crew members of the original film. Craven described this “new” Freddy as an abstract, ancient evil that had been captured in the story. Now that the films had ended with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the evil, in the guise of Freddy, escaped to begin its reign of terror in the real world.

As the film plays out, Freddy targets Heather Langenkamp and her fictional son Dylan; killing Langenkamp is his only means of becoming fully released from fiction. While Freddy is preoccupied with killing Langenkamp and her son, Craven writes a new script titled “New Nightmare” in order to trap the evil again. By film’s end, Langenkamp manages to defeat the Krueger entity, and saves her son in the process. Craven, in closing, completed his script (which paralleled the film’s events) stating, “Freddy is back where he belongs.”

The “look” of Freddy in this film is more in line with what Craven had imagined for the character, allowing the clowning Freddy portrayed in the earlier films to be cast away.^[10] In the film's credits, Krueger is credited as "Himself".

Freddy's Nightmares

The 1988 Freddy's Nightmares episode "No More Mr. Nice Guy" presented a less gruesome interpretation of Krueger’s death. Due to budget constraints, many of the series' original actors did not appear. Most episodes of Freddy's Nightmares do not interfere with the established timeline,^[11] though a few episodes do present dates that conflict with the film series' timeline of events. It spawned 44 episodes in 2 seasons before the series was canceled.

New Line Cinema vs. Wes Craven

As the Nightmare on Elm Street series progressed, Craven's original vision of Krueger as a true personification of evil was altered several times. Due to the enormous popularity of the films, the succeeding writers/directors chose to develop Freddy into a sardonic, wisecracking and flamboyant demon. Initially, Craven did not intend any sequels and even wanted the original to be a standalone film. When the original became a hit, New Line insisted on following it up, in spite of both Craven and original Nightmare heroine Langenkamp declining involvement. The second entry, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge was released to box office success — topping the profits of the original.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors continued the series' financial success. Craven wanted Dream Warriors to be the end of the series, but the studio refused. Craven and New Line's relationship ended for a number of years as a result of their conflicting visions for the Nightmare enterprise. Later, in Craven's Scream a character would say that "the first movie was great but the rest sucked" — a jab at the other films (although Craven denies writing this line).^[12]

Memorabilia

The Nightmare on Elm Street series spawned a huge merchandise collecting cult. More than 20 years after the first film was released, the merchandising is still ongoing, with online auction sites still listing hundreds of pieces of A Nightmare on Elm Street memorabilia every day and new products rolling off the assembly line and in toy stores around the world.

An online collection of Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger memorabilia has been established, which showcases many of the pieces of Nightmare On Elm Street memorabilia that have been produced since the first film was released.^[13]

References

External links

• Official Site
• The Nightmare on Elm Street Companion

A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise Films A Nightmare on Elm Street • Freddy's Revenge • Dream Warriors • The Dream Master  The Dream Child • Freddy's Dead • Wes Craven's New Nightmare • Freddy vs. Jason Characters Freddy Krueger • Nancy Thompson • Characters Related topics Comic Books • Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash • Freddy's Nightmares (Eps)