The original Nightmare on Elm Street movie is now over thirty-five years old and while the state of the franchise is currently somewhat dormant, the fact remains that the villain of the series, Freddy Krueger, remains as one of the most iconic figures in the horror movie genre. Perhaps he is not quite a iconic as Dracula but if you were to survey a thousand random people with an image of the fiend with his bladed gauntlet, I daresay a large percentage would be able to identify him. Last year I commented on how the third film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, was the movie that pushed Freddy into the mainstream with his crude yet snarky sense of humor. With that said, not every production featuring Freddy Krueger remains fondly remembered by the public. At one time there was actually a television series based on the character. It was cheesy and full of schlock but these days it seems to be a largely forgotten show. Tonight on The Witching Hour we look at Freddy’s Nightmares.
Despite being built by our hero in the fedora hat, most of the episodes were not really about Freddy. Most of the time he served as the host and narrator for the story each week – similar to how the Cryptkeeper was used in Tales of the Crypt. Out of a total of 44 produced episodes, Freddy was the bad guy in maybe seven or eight times. Freddy’s Nightmares was an anthology show with a different plot and set of characters each week though someone would typically meet a gruesome fate.
One of the scenes from the show that sticks with me after all of this time takes place I’m a story about a young man who works the overnight shift alone in his father’s drive-thru burger joint. In a bizarre moment Freddy rises out of the deep fryer to greet the audience and fill them in about this particular story. I even took a screen capture of this moment but I must ask you to forgive the low image quality – it was a low quality rip from a VHS tape.
The writing was not particularly great and there was next to zero character development. The production values were noticeably low and the acting was as hammy as you could get. Even so, there was kind of a charm about the series that fans of schlock may enjoy and it is certainly not the worst horror show I have ever seen. Unfortunately, the series is not so easy to find. There was a DVD release but that is pretty rare. The Blu-ray movie collection does include a couple of episodes as a bonus. To the best of my knowledge, the show has never been available on Google Play, iTunes or Vudu. Not even Hulu shows it meaning it ia not easy to watch the show legally.
