A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: FREDDY VS. FREDDY

 

 

A Nightmare On Elm Street is the brainchild of horror filmmaking legend Wes Craven who directed the 1984 first film. The film, of course, is about a disfigured supernatural-esque killer named Freddy Krueger--played by, of course, Robert Englund--who was burned alive after being accused of killing several children and being released on a technicality. Years later he attacks the teenaged children of those that burned him in their dreams. Wearing his trademarked fedora hat and red-and-green striped sweater, Freddy’s weapon-of-choice is a “special” glove with knives embedded in its fingers. After that film became a huge success at the all-important box office, there were over half-a-dozen equally-successful sequels which culminated in the film Freddy vs. Jason that pits Freddy against Jason Vorhees who was, of course, the killer in the Friday The 13^th horror film franchise. In 2010, Michael Bay (of Transformers fame) produced a remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street with Jackie Earle Haley (of the original Bad News Bears fame) in the role of Freddy. There are, as one might imagine, changes between the old Freddy and the new Freddy. Whereas the original Freddy was a child killer, the new Freddy is a child molester who gets burned alive by the parents of the children he molested. (Wes Craven reportedly initially wanted to make Freddy into a child molester, but he had a change of heart I guess because he might’ve thought that would’ve made Freddy appear less, for lack of a better word, likeable.) And, unlike the old Freddy, the children the new Freddy attacks in their dreams are the children he molested when they were younger. And, while the older Freddy’s face looked more cartoony, the new Freddy was made to look more like an actual burn victim. And perhaps the biggest change of all was that the new Freddy wasn’t as, shall we say, humorous as the old Freddy. That’s actually what separated Freddy Krueger from the other “slasher” flick killers such as the aforementioned Jason Vorhees and Halloween’s Michael Myers who were pretty much bulked-up hooded silent killers. And that’s why I--and undoubtedly many other diehard horror flick fans--will always regard Robert Englund as THE Freddy Krueger (although Jackie Earle Haley’s take on the character is pretty interesting). A sidenote: Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time Jackie Earl Haley portrayed a child molester on-film. Before A Nightmare On Elm Street, he won accolades for playing one in the film Little Children (where Kate Winslet appeared starkers on-film for the umpteenth time!). I wonder, is he being typecast? Just asking! Also, Wes Craven reportedly expressed "reservations" about doing a remake of one of his most iconic movies while Robert Englund was reportedly all for them doing a remake. Make of THAT what you will!