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Freddy Krueger

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Freddy Krueger
Known aliases: Springwood Slasher
Location: Springwood
Known relatives: Amanda Krueger(Mother)
Maggie Burroughs(Daughter)
Year of birth: c. 1940s
Year of death: 1968 (mortal death)
Signature weapon: Claw glove
First appearance: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Portrayed by: Robert Englund

Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is the main antagonist and a killer from the slasher film series A Nightmare on Elm Street. When he was burned to death in 1968 by the citizens of Springwood, he was offered the spot as "Dream Killer" from the demons who live in the depths of hell. He uses this new career of his to his advantage to murder the children of his killers in their dreams.

Contents

Fictional character biography

Life story

Freddy 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-injury; 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. 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. 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 not being signed correctly, all evidence was considered inadmissible, and Krueger was released in 1968. Amanda Krueger, Freddy's mother, who had followed his trial, heard of the release and hanged herself in the tower where she was raped. The neighborhood parents of the children Freddy had murdered found him 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. The 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. The parents often ignored or denied the pleas of their terrified children, who told tales of a mysterious man named Freddy who was terrorizing them in their dreams.

Krueger met three notable female adversaries in the period before Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare:

The only male to ever be a main victim of Krueger and main protagonist of the movie, who at the end defeats Krueger, is Jesse Walsh in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. Here, Freddy's 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.

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 was trapped in Hell. After Maggie defeated Krueger in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, the people of Springwood sought to revitalize their town. Figuring out how Krueger 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 Krueger. 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.

Meanwhile, Krueger 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 Krueger (as planned). As a result, Krueger began to get his equilibrium back. Enough fear fell over Springwood to make Krueger strong enough to haunt the town again. The problem, which Krueger had not counted on, was that Jason would not stop killing. He became irritated when Jason continued to slaughter "his kids" before he could. 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 Krueger's decapitated head, which winks to the audience, followed by Krueger's laughter, indicating his reign of terror may not yet be over.

Comic book sequel

Freddy hasn't been seen since, except in the comic book sequel, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, where Freddy is trapped inside Jason's mind and seeks out the Necronomicon to escape and to become more powerful. Freddy is able to do this, and fights with Jason and Ash Williams (in the process getting his head split open by Jason, releasing the souls of his previous victims) before Caroline uses the Necronomicon to open up a portal leading to the Deadite dimension, and Freddy is sucked into it (though Jason is not, instead being trapped under a frozen lake). Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash 2: Nightmare Warriors is in the making, and currently Freddy has been brought out of Deadite Dimension and into the real world by Director Russell, using technology and the Necronomicon, though he does not seem to have any power. He has, however, awakened Maggie's dark side within her.  

2010 Remake

Official trailer

On January 29, 2008, Variety reported that Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes production company would be rebooting the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with a remake of the original 1984 film. In an interview, producer Brad Fuller initially explained that they are following the same line they did with their Friday the 13th remake, by abandoning the things that made the character less scary—the film's antagonist, Freddy Krueger, will not be "cracking jokes" as had become a staple of his character in later films—and focusing more on trying to craft a "horrifying movie". Fuller expresses how everyone at the studio loved the concept of being killed if you fell asleep. The producer stated that the film would be a remake of the 1984 film, but clarified that they would be borrowing certain character deaths and dream sequences from the entire Nightmare series. In February 2009, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Samuel Bayer was hired to direct the film.[8] According to New Line production chief Toby Emmerich, Michael Bay advocated heavily for Bayer's hiring, as Bay, Bayer, and director David Fincher came up as commercial directors together. It is Bay's opinion that Bayer has the "the ability to capture the kind of seductive and unsettling imagery that would make Nightmare feel like a fresh, visually arresting moviegoing experience". In a June 9, 2009 interview, Craven expressed his displeasure in the remaking of his 1984 film, primarily because the filmmakers chose not to have him as a consultant to the film, unlike with the 2009 remake The Last House on the Left where he "shepherd[ed] it towards production". In contrast, Robert Englund, who portrayed Freddy throughout the film series, feels it is time for A Nightmare on Elm Street to be remade; Englund likes the idea of being able to "exploit the dreamscape" with CGI and other technologies that did not exist when Craven was making the original Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. Fuller and Form likened the new Nightmare film to their 2003 remake of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and retracted an earlier statement when they said they did not plan to "cherry pick" the best elements of the franchise, like they did with the reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise they released in 2009. Instead, the 2010 film will be more of a reimagining. The pair also explained that A Nightmare on Elm Street would have a different tone than the Friday the 13th remake. Form states, "I think a Friday the 13th movie like we made was really fun. You know, sex, drugs and rock and roll, and I think a Nightmare movie is not that." When asked why New Line was rebooting the Nightmare on Elm Street film series, Emmerich explained, "The Nightmare films are profoundly disturbing on a deep, human level because they're about our dreams. It's why we thought that we could reach an especially broad audience with a new film, since the feeling of having your dreams being invaded was something that would translate to any country and any culture."...so basicly they've killed Freddy Krueger.

Freddy's murders

Main article: List of deaths in the Nightmare on Elm Street series

Apart from the 20 or so children that he killed before he was killed by those parents, he killed around 40 after he fused with the dream demons and became able to enter their dreams. Freddy's major kills include:

A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare

Freddy vs. Jason

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

In other media

  • Freddy has appeared in some episodes of Robot Chicken, such as the episode "That Hurts Me", where he appears alongside Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Ghostface, Pinhead, and Leatherface in the Big Brother show, where his sweater is shrunk by Ghostface, and he is later stabbed by Michael, which doesn't damage him but annoys him.
  • Freddy appeared in the movie Stan Helsing as an antagonist. His appearance is changed, as he does not have the red and green sweater, and his face is even more burned than in his series. He does have his clawed glove, equipped with a toothbrush, and still invades people's dreams. He is renamed Fweddy. He is the first to be defeated; Stan uses a whip to take his clawed glove away, leaving him powerless, and he runs off.
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