Even when it's not Halloween, it's not wrong to want to dust off some horror classics in order to get into that spooky season mood. One of the best franchises in the genre is Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street saga. There's something about Freddy Krueger that's downright haunting, even as the sequels get sillier and sillier.
Let's roll things back to the start and examine some of the behind-the-scenes stuff you might have missed from the Elm Street franchise.
In Wes Craven's New Nightmare (yes, that's actually the title of the movie), there's a scene where Freddy hits some metal. Listen closely and you'll be able to detect the theme from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
This scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street shows a classic 'dogs playing pool' picture on the wall. It's titled 'Jack the Ripper', though, and the pool table felt has been changed to blood red.
In a nightmare scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, a sand castle gets destroyed by Freddy Krueger. During the destruction, for just a single frame, the sand castle morphs into the Elm Street house from the original.
Just as A Nightmare on Elm Street is reaching its climax, Nancy tells her dad over the phone to break into the house in exactly 20 minutes. Set a stopwatch and you'll find that the movie ends in exactly 20 minutes.
Directors Wes Craven and Sam Raimi have been referencing each other's movies for years. Raimi referenced Craven's The Hills Have Eyes in The Evil Dead, and Craven repaid the favor by showing The Hills Have Eyes on a TV set in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
How do you know that a person is possessed by Freddy Krueger during their waking hours? In A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, this was accomplished by subtly showing a hat and distinctive red and green sweater in Jesse's closet.
One strange idea that was ultimately shelved was the idea of a twist for the 2010 remake: essentially rehashing the plot of The Goonies, but with the dark detail of the kids being stalked and abused by Freddy Krueger.
It's understandable if the events in the various movies in the franchise start to blend together after awhile. But fans might notice something very distinctive about A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. It's the only film in the series that doesn't start with a dream sequence.
2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street serves as a remake of the original film, and is full of little callbacks. One of them shows Kris wearing a distinctive jersey with the number 10 on the front. This is, of course, a reference to Glen, who wore the same shirt in the original.
Building on the success of the franchise, Wes Craven greenlit Freddy's Nightmares in 1988. As an anthology TV series, most of the stories were standalone, but one episode ('No More Mr. Nice Guy') directly dealt with Freddy Krueger's origin story.
The central idea of A Nightmare on Elm Street, concerning a monster who attacks people in their dreams, causing them to die in real life, was inspired by the brutal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Wes Craven read articles about Cambodian refugees who had terrible nightmares and refused to sleep, eventually leading to their deaths.
Nowadays they'd just use CGI, but the original A Nightmare on Elm Street used a neat trick to show blood spilling upwards from the bed to the ceiling: they simply built an upside-down set, poured fake blood from the top, and flipped the perspective.
If you ever needed a reminder that movie monsters are just a collection of props and makeups, check out the fight scene between Freddy and Taryn in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. You can clearly see one of Freddy's blades pop off of his gloves.
In a detail that brings into question whether Robert Englund, the actor and Freddy Krueger, the monster portrayed by Robert Englund, exist in the same universe, there's a vial of blood in the background of a A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 scene marked 'Robert Englund.'
In Wes Craven's New Nightmare, there's a scene showing earthquake footage on TV. This footage wasn't faked — it was lifted from real-life news reports about the devastating Northridge Earthquake that hit Southern California around the same time.
In Freddy vs. Jason, a scene in a psych ward is shown from the perspective of a TV broadcast. The station's call sign is KRGR. That would certainly seem to be a shoutout to Freddy's last name.
Who's the bus driver in the opening scene of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2? He looks familiar, right? Well, he ought to look familiar, since the man playing him is Robert Englund — the same actor who plays Freddy Krueger himself.
In A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, one of the characters works at this place: the Crave Inn. The Crave Inn. The director of the series is Wes Craven. I think I'm starting to get it.
It's hard to see Freddy as innocent, but for a time there was momentum for a potential prequel showing that Freddy wasn't a bloodthirsty monster, but an innocent psychiatrist. This would seem to stretch the bounds of credulity in the franchise.
"Freddy Krueger" seems like a run-of-the-mill name for a supernatural monster. Director Wes Craven lifted the name directly from his childhood bully, who was named Fred Kruger. We're assuming the real Fred Kruger wasn't able to attack people in their dreams.
