Robert Englund is a classically trained stage actor who has been in over 75 feature films. He’s acted in TV shows such as Bones, Hawaii 5-0, and Supernatural. Though he is of British and Scottish descent, he perfected his American accent growing up in Southern California. He’s also known for playing the infamous child-stalking serial killer, Freddy Krueger of the A Nightmare on Elm St. franchise. Englund played sweater-clad Freddy from the first Nightmare (Wes Craven, 1984) until the last film in the franchise. Though the last two films in the franchise were Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and Freddy Vs. Jason (2003), I consider Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) to be just what the title implies.
As a horror geek, I didn’t watch Disney, I watched Freddy. I watched Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Michael, and Chucky on VHS in my childhood bedroom. Night after night, up through high school, I would fall peacefully asleep to the sounds of slutty cheerleaders getting hacked to death. When I think of Robert Englund, I think of Freddy, of being a kid, staying up late. I think of going on a high school date to see Urban Legends (1998), and completely geeking out when I saw Freddy Krueger walk onscreen as a college professor. To me, Robert Englund is the 1980’s, the 1990’s.
Robert Englund is horror.
Freddy Krueger is my favorite serial killer of all time. I’ve seen Scream more times than I can count and Billy Loomis is still my favorite Scream killer (Sorry Stu). Yet, Billy Loomis, the greaser in the white t-shirt only exists because of Freddy Krueger. Scream, made by Wes Craven, the creator of the Nightmare franchise, has several allusions to Krueger throughout the film. The obvious cameo is when Wes Craven appears as Fred the janitor in Freddy’s trademark sweater and fedora. Yet more subtle, is the recreation of the 1984 Johnny Depp from the original Nightmare through Billy Loomis. Like Billy Loomis, Depp’s character, Glenn, has product-filled black hair, a polo shirt, jeans, and dates the Final Girl. Billy Loomis is a reimagining of goodhearted Glenn, even crawling through the window to be with the Final Girl.
So why is this child-murdering Freddy Krueger my favorite killer? He’s fucking brilliant. Freddy is everything I love about horror. He’s smart, hilarious, and incredibly cheesy. As we all know, Freddy Krueger is the child of a nurse, who was raped by over 1,000 insane asylum inmates. He was then raised by an abusive alcoholic who forced him to murder and torture animals. Freddy’s a supernatural being who was burned alive by the town’s parents, forever branded as the Springwood Slasher. While the term child molester was not allowed while Craven held the franchise, Michael Bay’s 2010 remake finally answered the question, was Freddy really guilty of everything the children accused him of?
Yes. If you go back and watch the first few Nightmares, you can see the quick edits they had to do in the dialogue when they refer to Freddy as a child-m… murderer. It’s almost as if the script was changed on set. Wes Craven defended his decision to make Freddy a child molester as he said it was the worst thing he could think of. Yet due to a string of highly publicized child molestation cases in 1980’s California, Craven was forced to drop the molester bit, and just have Freddy kill children.
In 2010, when Freddy could finally come out as a child murderer and molester, he was voted “Best Villain” at the Scream awards (that’s like a slasher Oscar). What people gravely misunderstood about Craven’s story, is that this child molester and murderer was created to be burned alive, chopped to pieces, hit with a truck, stabbed through the heart, and killed in so many other ways. As Craven always said, “horror isn’t about the killers, it’s about survival.” And that’s what Nightmare truly is about—survival. Final Girl Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) made it so long because she faced her fears. She faced Freddy.
Freddy is a gruesome killer due to his lack of empathy and his love of torture. He once killed a heroin addict with heroin, a budding actress with a TV, and countless other children he abused in his boiler room. Freddy brought back repressed memories and used them to gain power. He literally gained power from the pain and suffering of the children he tortured. His sense of irony is one of the most amazing things about him.
Which leads me to his witty one-liners. Freddy Krueger has the best lines of any serial killer I’ve seen onscreen. While his most famous may be, “I’m your boyfriend now” there are a few other gems:
This… is God
You are all my children now
Welcome to prime time, bitch!
Let’s get high
Souls of children give me strength
Miss me?
Your eyes say “no, no” but my mouth says “yes, yes.”
Now remember, don’t, fall, asleep.