Another big franchise down, and starting off a new year tackling yet another kinda large one, even though this is the smallest one I’ve had to tackle (thank god). That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the easiest one as I’ve been dreading this day since I launched this site. I figured classifying the kills in the Saw franchise would be hard without putting 90% of the kills as “killed in a trap”, I figured this one would be hard too without just saying “killed in a dream”. Like how the hell do I compare turning someone into a bug and smashing them to death or turning someone into a video game character and smashing them to death with a hammer? This might be hard, y’all. Thankfully, with me getting out of the way the 2 franchises with over 12 movies I get to knock out one with only 9…and one of them I’ve technically already covered so while I’ll be reviewing it all over again in the perspective of being a Nightmare movie instead of a Friday film, at least the kills are already looked at and about 65% of my work is done for that one!
Anyway, I’m not just here to whine about how I’m going to do my job trying to figure this franchise out, I’m also here to talk about one of the most iconic franchises from a true master of horror, Wes Craven. I’ll eventually branch out with other series of articles where I can discuss more than just slashers, but Craven is one of the few directors who created not one but three slasher franchises that I’ll definitely be covering in this series at some point, with this being what he’s most known for.
As a kid, I started out with the “funny” Nightmare films, and didn’t really get a chance to watch the “good” ones until I was a teenager, right around the Scream era. We’ll just say that I saw Freddy’s Dead long before I saw the original (I know, the travesty) and had already watched all of the Friday the 13th films which is probably why to this day I’m a much bigger Jason fan than I am Freddy, even though this particular film is better than anything in that whole franchise (and we can also easily admit, even as Jason fans that this franchise as a whole is better as well).
The original can be attributed to many things. Starting the career of Johnny Depp. Being the first blockbuster role for Heather Langenkamp. Instantly immortalizing Robert Englund. A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in the middle of Friday the 13th‘s slasher dominance at the box office and told them to hold their beer. In a sea of Friday ripoffs (better put as Halloween rippoffs, am I right?) where film makers (whether they were known for horror or not) were cashing in making slashers for $500k, Craven doubled the budget and made a masterpiece taking New Line Cinema from being a tiny distribution company to a major film studio overnight. While the rest of the movies are pretty schlocky and Freddy becomes a cartoon character by the end of the series, this one is actually scary. If this was your favorite 80’s slasher franchise, I don’t think anyone would give you any grief over it.
Anyway, lets carry on.
The Kills
- Tina Gray – Slashed across the chest and thrown all over the room. Imagine how this and Glen’s kill would have looked if the MPAA took over this series like it did the Friday films.
- Rod Lane – Hung with a bed sheet in his jail cell. I guess this is what the film would have looked like if the MPAA took over this series like it did with the Friday films.
- Glen Lantz – Jack Sparrow gets pulled into his bed and blood shoots to the ceiling like this was a damned Evil Dead movie. Considering the Ashy Slashy cameo when Nancy was watching the film, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a second intentional nod. I’m going to count this as being bled out because throwing unknowns in a series where the crazy death scenes are king just feels bad.
- Marge Thompson – She’s burnt to death and then some weird stuff straight into her bed? I mean this isn’t the worst way the heroine’s mother could die, she could get turned into a blowup doll and then sucked through a door. We wouldn’t let that happen to her. Would we? Would we?
Conclusion
Freddy Krueger kills 4 people in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
| Method: | Amount of Kills: |
|---|---|
| Slashing | 1 |
| Hung | 1 |
| Bled out | 1 |
| Burned | 1 |
There you have it, 4 pretty fun kills for the introduction to this franchise. He’s going to have to really pump up those numbers if he has any chance of catching up to Jason or Michael, but Freddy has a lot more in common with Jigsaw in that it’s the quality of his kills, not necessarily the quantity.
Thanks everyone for reading the first article for the new year. I’ll be working through this franchise for the majority of January (It might be done by then, might go till early February, we’ll see). If the hiatus from YouTube and Facebook was noticed I wasn’t overly happy with the quality and length of the videos I was producing and decided to hold off until I could come up with a better format. I’m VERY new at editing and every video I make I feel is better than the last. Right now what I’m considering is condensing all the Kills Analysis into a single video per franchise which will extend them to closer to 30 minute videos as opposed to the 5 minutes they are now. I also promised the Kill Comparison for Michael and Jason on the 13th of January and as of right now that’s still the plan. I’m planning on going much more in depth for those as I feel that’s the whole premise of site so that’s something I’ll be looking at for the YouTube channel as well. See you guys in the sequel.