Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger | |
---|---|
A Nightmare on Elm Street character | |
First appearance | A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) |
Created by | Wes Craven |
Portrayed by |
|
In-universe information | |
Alias | The Springwood Slasher |
Classification | Mass murderer[1] |
Primary location | Springwood, Ohio |
Signature weapon | Bladed glove |
Freddy Krueger (
The character quickly became a pop culture icon[5] going on to appear in toy lines,[6] comic books,[7] books,[8] sneakers,[9] costumes,[10] and video games[11][12] since his debut. In 2003, Krueger appeared alongside fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason. In 2010, a reboot of the original Nightmare on Elm Street film, starring Jackie Earle Haley, was released.
Appearances
Film
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy is introduced as a serial child killer, Fred Krueger, from the fictitious town of Springwood,
In
After a hiatus following the release of The Final Nightmare, Krueger was brought back in Wes Craven's New Nightmare by Wes Craven, who had not worked on the film series since the third film, Dream Warriors. New Nightmare coincides with the approaching anniversary of the release of the first film. Robert Englund, who portrayed Krueger throughout the film series and its television spin-off, also took the role as a fictional version of himself in New Nightmare; it is implied that Englund was stalked by his character, who is an ancient demonic entity that took on the form of Wes Craven's creation and has come to life from the film franchise's fictitious world. Having been in various manifestations throughout the ages as the entity can be captured through storytelling, it is hinted that it was once in the form of the old witch from Brothers Grimm's fairy tale Hansel and Gretel when it was held prisoner in this allegory. Englund describes to his former co-star and friend Heather Langenkamp that this embodiment of Freddy is darker and more evil than as portrayed by him in the films; he struggles to keep his sanity intact from Krueger's torments and goes into hiding with his family. Krueger aims to stop another film of the franchise from being made, eliminating the films' crew members, including Langenkamp's husband, Chase Porter (David Newsom), after stealing a prototype bladed glove from him, and causes nightmares and makes threatening phone calls to producer Robert Shaye. The entity also haunts Wes Craven's dreams, to the point that he sees future events related to Krueger's actions and then writes them down as a movie script. Krueger sees Langenkamp as his primary foe because her character Nancy Thompson was the first to defeat him. Krueger's attempts to cross over to reality cause a series of earthquakes throughout Los Angeles County, including the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Langenkamp, with help from her son Dylan (Miko Hughes), succeeds in defeating the entity and apparently destroys him; however, Krueger's creator reveals that it is again imprisoned in the fictitious world, indicated by the character's later appearances in films and other medias.
In 2003, Freddy battled fellow horror icon Jason Voorhees (Ken Kirzinger) from the Friday the 13th film series in the theatrical release Freddy vs. Jason, a film which officially resurrected both characters from their respective deaths and subsequently sent them to Hell. As the film begins, Krueger is frustrated at his current inability to kill as knowledge of him has been hidden in Springwood, prompting him to manipulate Jason into killing in his place in the hope that the resulting fear will remind others of him so that he can resume his own murder spree. However, Freddy's plan proves too effective when Jason starts killing people before Freddy can do it, culminating in a group of teens learning the truth and drawing Freddy and Jason to Camp Crystal Lake in the hope that they can draw Freddy into the real world so that Jason will kill him and remain "home." The ending of the film is left ambiguous as to whether or not Freddy is actually dead; despite being decapitated, when Jason emerges from the lake carrying his head he looks and winks at the audience. A sequel featuring Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) from the Evil Dead franchise was planned, but never materialized onscreen. It was later turned into Dynamite Entertainment's comic book series Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash.
In the 2010 remake of the original film, Freddy's backstory is that he was a groundskeeper at Springwood Badham Preschool who tortured and sexually abused the teenage protagonists of the film when they were children. When their parents found out, they trapped him in a boiler room at an industrial park and set it on fire with a Molotov cocktail made out of a gasoline canister, killing him. As a spirit, he takes his revenge on the teenagers by haunting their dreams; he is particularly obsessed with Nancy Holbrook (Rooney Mara), who had been his "favorite" when she was a child. Krueger's power comes from his prey's memories and emotions upon remembering the abuse they suffered at his hands. His bladed glove is made out of discarded pieces of his gardening tools. Nancy destroys him at the end of the film by pulling his spirit into the physical world and cutting his throat; the final scene reveals that Freddy's spirit has survived, however.
Television
Englund continued to portray Krueger in the 1988 television anthology series, Freddy's Nightmares. The show was hosted by Freddy, who did not take direct part in most of the episodes, but he did show up occasionally to influence the plot of particular episodes. Further, a consistent theme in each episode was characters having disturbing dreams. The series ran for
Creation and development
Wes Craven said his inspiration for the basis of Freddy Krueger's power stemmed from several stories in the
When I looked down there was a man very much like Freddy walking along the sidewalk. He must have sensed that someone was looking at him and stopped and looked right into my face. He scared the living daylights out of me, so I jumped back into the shadows. I waited and waited to hear him walk away. Finally I thought he must have gone, so I stepped back to the window. The guy was not only still looking at me but he thrust his head forward as if to say, 'Yes, I'm still looking at you.' The man walked towards the apartment building's entrance. I ran through the apartment to our front door as he was walking into our building on the lower floor. I heard him starting up the stairs. My brother, who is ten years older than me, got a baseball bat and went out to the corridor but he was gone.[22]
Portrayals and design
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2019) |
According to Robert Englund, Freddy's look was based on Klaus Kinski's portrayal of Count Dracula in Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) and some of the works of Lon Chaney, while he based Freddy's poise and gait on the "Cagney stance" originated by actor James Cagney. Freddy's characteristic of keeping his gloved arm lower than the other was incidental due to the knives being heavy to wear for Englund and forcing him to carry himself as such while playing the role.[23]
Freddy's physical appearance has stayed largely consistent throughout the film series, although small changes were made in subsequent films. He wears a striped red-and-green sweater (solid red sleeves in the original film), a dark brown
The fedora was Wes's idea. But he'd been talked into maybe trying some other hats. And they had this box of hats, and we're sitting on the floor—kind of uncomfortably, both of these grown men on this futon—and [they're] telling me to put on all of these different hats. I'm sitting there in makeup going, "Guys, please, the fedora is right." And they kept putting on like,
paperboy hats, and baseball hats, and God, one looked like a pimp hat. It was like, "What are you thinking, you guys?" I think I said something to Wes like, "Look, the fedora was your idea." And I stood and showed my shadow on the wall with the [fedora] hat, and how strong that silhouette was. And then I took the hat off and showed the baldness, revealing the baldness, and how he could save that for the right time in the movie. And I kind of got my way.[24]
Freddy's skin is scarred and burned as a result of being burned alive by the parents of Springwood, and he has no hair at all on his head as it presumably all burned off. In the original film, only Freddy's face was burned, while the scars have spread to the rest of his body from the second film onwards. His blood is occasionally a dark, oily color, or greenish in hue when he is in the Dreamworld. In the original film, Freddy remains in the shadows and under lower light much longer than he does in the later pictures. In the second film, there are some scenes where Freddy is shown without his bladed glove, and instead with the blades protruding from the tips of his fingers. As the films began to emphasize the comedic, wise-cracking aspect of the character, he began to don various costumes and take on other forms, such as dressing as a
In New Nightmare, Freddy's appearance is updated considerably, giving him a green fedora that matches his sweater stripes, skin-tight
Bladed glove
Wes Craven stated that part of the inspiration for Freddy's infamous bladed glove was from his cat, as he watched it claw the side of his couch one night.[25]
In an interview he said, "Part of it was an objective goal to make the character memorable, since it seems that every character that has been successful has had some kind of unique weapon, whether it be a
When Jim Doyle, the creator of Freddy's claw, asked Craven what he wanted, Craven responded, "It's kind of like really long fingernails, I want the glove to look like something that someone could make who has the skills of a boilermaker."[25] Doyle explained, "Then we hunted around for knives. We picked out this bizarre-looking steak knife, we thought that this looked really cool, we thought it would look even cooler if we turned it over and used it upside down. We had to remove the back edge and put another edge on it, because we were actually using the knife upside down." Later Doyle had three duplicates of the glove made, two of which were used as stunt gloves in long shots.[25]
For New Nightmare, Lou Carlucci, the effects coordinator, remodeled Freddy's glove for a more "organic look". He says, "I did the original glove on the first Nightmare and we deliberately made that rough and primitive looking, like something that would be constructed in somebody's home workshop. Since this is supposed to be a new look for Freddy, Craven and everybody involved decided that the glove should be different. This hand has more muscle and bone texture to it, the blades are shinier and in one case, are retractable. Everything about this glove has a much cleaner look to it, it's more a natural part of his hand than a glove." The new glove has five claws.[citation needed]
In the 2010 remake, the glove is redesigned as a metal gauntlet with four finger bars, but it is patterned after its original design. Owing to this iteration of the character's origin as a groundskeeper, from the outset it was a gardener's glove modified as an instrument of torture, and in film its blades was based on a garden fork.
Freddy's glove appeared in the 1987 horror-comedy
At the end of the film Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, the mask of the title character, Jason Voorhees, played by Kane Hodder, is dragged under the earth by Freddy's gloved hand. Freddy's gloved hand, in the ending, was played by Hodder.[28]
In popular culture
Amusement parks
At
Miscellaneous
Freddy Krueger made different appearances in
In 1992, Freddy Krueger made an unlicensed appearance in appearance in a Belarusian children's film titled "Кешка и Фреди", or "Keshka i Fredi", directed by Boris Berzner.[31] The film focused on the Belarusian youth, Keshka, who is described as being a "...Tom Sawyer successor", and a "...a pioneer at heart...",[32] who decides to skip out on his school's English lessons to attend a showing of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master at a cultural center. Falling asleep in the middle of watching the movie, Keshka wakes up in the cultural center alone, being haunted by strange images and sounds from all over.[33] Wandering around the cultural center, Keshka arrives in the basement of the cultural center, where he meets Freddy Krueger when he cuts his way through a film poster to approach the boy. Asking him if he speaks English, Keshka can not answer Freddy correctly, onto which Freddy replies that he will "teach him English", before chasing the boy throughout the cultural center, threatening to kill him. Eventually backed into a corner by Freddy, Keshka recites the "законы пионеров советского союза" or the "Laws of the Pioneers of the Soviet Union", like a psalm, while performing a pioneer salute in lieu of a cross.[34] De-powered, Krueger falls limp, as Keshka takes a pair of pliers and snaps off each of his glove's blades, before filing each one down to a fine stump. Waking up shortly after, Keshka meets up with his friends, holding Krueger's hat in his hands, as he decides to devote more time to his studies in English.[34]
Freddy's first video game appearance was in the 1989
In October 2017, the Jackie Earle Haley incarnation of Krueger was released as a downloadable
The character returned to television in an episode of The Goldbergs titled "Mister Knifey-Hands" with Englund reprising his role in a cameo.[44] Freddy Krueger appears as an OASIS avatar in Ready Player One.[45] He is among the avatars seen on the PVP location Planet Doom where he is shot by Aech.[citation needed]
The frog species Lepidobatrachus laevis had been given multiple nicknames, one of which is the "Freddy Krueger frog" for its aggressive nature.[46]
In 2023,
References
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- ^ "A look at horror movie icons in video games". October 21, 2021.
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- ^ "It's My Party and You'll Die if I Want You To". Freddy's Nightmares. Season 2. Episode 12. December 23, 1989.
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- ^ a b c Nightmare Companion Archived 2009-01-31 at the Wayback Machine Freddy's claw
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- ^ "Kane Hodder". HorrorConventions.co.uk. Archived from the original on May 8, 2016. Retrieved May 19, 2016.
- That Hurts Me". Robot Chicken. Season 1. Episode 19. Adult Swim.
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- ^ ISBN 9785045227186.
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- ^ Boon, Ed [@noobde] (April 19, 2017). "Yes indeed! We've been fortunate enough to work with @RobertBEnglund on MK9 (Freddy Krueger) and Injustice2 (Scarecrow)" (Tweet). Archived from the original on May 10, 2017. Retrieved May 10, 2017 – via Twitter.
- ^ "ROBERT ENGLUND SAYS HE'S TOO OLD TO PLAY FREDDY KRUEGER AGAIN". ScreenCrush. October 23, 2017. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
- ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Mortal Kombat: Freddy Krueger DLC Trailer". YouTube. July 21, 2011. Retrieved August 29, 2011.
- PlayStation Blog. July 22, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2017.
- ^ Gelmini, David (December 10, 2016). "Grab Your Clawed Gloves! Freddy Krueger Joins Mortal Kombat X". Dread Central. Retrieved May 10, 2017.
- ^ "Chapter 7 - A Nightmare on Elm Street". Dead by Daylight. Archived from the original on October 27, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
- ^ "Dead by Daylight: Manual". Dead by Daylight. Archived from the original on September 28, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
- ^ Snierson, Dan (September 23, 2018). "Robert Englund to revive Freddy Krueger on 'The Goldbergs'". Entertainment Weekly. New York City. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
- Univision Interactive Media, Inc.Retrieved July 25, 2017.
- ^ "Budgett's Frog". August 4, 2023.
- PMID 37927422.
External links
- Quotations related to Freddy Krueger at Wikiquote
- Media related to Freddy Krueger at Wikimedia Commons