A Nightmare on Elm Street

As long as there have been horror movies, there have been attempts to mix together horror movie characters in crossover films. Who can forget Freddy vs. Jason, the critically reviled  —  but financially successful  —  2003 film that pitted the stars of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises against each other? Not to mention those years where it was rumored that Evil Dead’s Ash might get thrown into the mix for a sequel; no matter how many middling reboots these franchises go through, there will always be someone who pitches a project where Hollywood just slams ’em all up together.

David F. Sandberg says if he could pick any franchise to work on, he’d want to do ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ in a whole new way.

Over the course of the eight Nightmare on Elm Street films, Robert Englund made dream stalker Freddy Krueger from a slasher-film specter into a major cultural icon. His sartorially questionable striped sweater/fedora combo, the pepperoni-like complexion, the razor-blade gloves — it’s all been enshrined in the horror hall of fame for years. He officially laid his signature character to rest with 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, turning the role over to Jackie Earle Haley for the 2010 remake, but a new project indicates that Englund and Freddy can’t get rid of one another that easily.

Freddy’s body count isn’t as high as his colleagues, but that’s okay. Because while others just stab their victims and are done with it, Mr. Krueger transforms his kills into events. Each one is a spectacle worthy of examination. On a recent re-watch of the entire series (including the 2010 remake of the first film), we counted 34 kills across eight movies, not including flashbacks or deaths that were total figments of the imagination conjured up to unsettle victims. And we ranked them all, from the lame and tame kills to the nasty, unforgettable violence that made Freddy a horror icon on the first place.

Even though Freddy Krueger is the main villain in A Nightmare on Elm Street and one of the most iconic horror villains of all time, he’s actually only in the original movie for less than seven minutes. That’s just one of the many facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which dreams a little dream about the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.

It was only five years ago that Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes released their reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street, starring Jackie Earle Haley as iconic boogeyman Freddy Krueger. That reboot didn’t go over so well — Haley was the only highlight in an otherwise drab and underwhelming horror flick. It seems New Line didn’t learn much from that attempt at restarting the franchise, as the studio is currently plotting yet another reboot.

Unleashed in 1984, 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' gave everyone, well, nightmares with its horrific and instantly iconic villain Freddy Krueger -- a psychotic man who is burned to death by the parents of the children he murdered, and has returned to kill their teenagers in kind by terrorizing them in their sleep. The film gave us several sequels and a remake in 2010, but today we take a trip back to