Freddy Kreuger has been haunting the dreams of teenagers since 1984, but the foul-mouthed serial
killer didn't just appear out of thin air. And movie teens aren't the only nightmare victims.
"Welcome to my nightmare."
Director Wes Craven might have dreamed up Freddy, but it took a whole team of people to bring him
to life. The physical process of transforming actor Robert Englund into Freddy Krueger with
layers of latex, tubes, and the occasional goat bladder took around three-and-a-half
to four hours. Going through that lengthy makeup application process helped Englund
get into the headspace to inhabit Freddy — and he drew inspiration from classic movie monsters.
Englund grew up in Los Angeles, surrounded by the remnants of Old Hollywood. As a child,
he would accompany his parents to major studio previews,
where he would see first-run films that are considered today's classics like "Anatomy of
a Murder" and "The Guns of Navarone." It makes sense that Englund looked to
the past when developing his own soon-to-be classic character: as he told The Guardian —
"My Freddy was inspired by Klaus Kinski's 'Nosferatu,' but also
by all the monsters that Lon Chaney created."
Freddy's signature slouch was born out of necessity,
but it also had a less sinister inspiration: actor James Cagney. Englund continued —
"The way Freddy always stands with his legs far apart was something I stole from James
Cagney — a pose that signifies sheer power. People wonder why Freddy has this strange
posture with his right shoulder slouched, but it was because that claw was so heavy
it weighed me down. But I liked the way it made me look like a cowboy drawing a gun."
As Wes Craven began to conceptualize Freddy's look, he knew one thing about
famous slasher villains: they all seem to have some type of mask. For Michael Myers,
it's a mask of William Shatner's face that's been painted white. In "Friday
the 13th," Jason Voorhees hides behind a hockey mask, and Leatherface from "The
Texas Chain Saw Massacre" wears the face of one of his unlucky victims.
According to Cinefantastique, Craven was taken with the ancient,
mythological concept of the mask. He explained —
"Almost all cultures have it in their most important ceremonies. It kind of
is a combination of removing humanity and yet leaving it there, behind the eyes."
For Craven, who hoped to imbue his nightmare with a little more personality,
the idea of a mask presented a unique problem. As he told Vulture —
"I wanted my villain to have a 'mask,' but be able to talk and taunt and threaten."
To pull it off, Craven settled on scar tissue from burns that creates a type of mask without
obscuring Freddy's ability to emote and express his feelings. Thus, Freddy's iconic look was born.
"The only thing to fear… is fear himself!"
Once Wes Craven had designed Freddy Krueger, he had to dress him — but this also presented
a unique problem. For a shapeshifting nightmare spirit, the filmmaker had to come
up with something so recognizable that viewers would understand instantly they were looking
at Freddy even when he wasn't in his standard form. Craven seemed to instinctively understand
something branding experts harp on about today — that the right color scheme can create a look
so recognizable that audiences automatically associate it with the thing they're meant to.
Speaking to Cinefantastique, Craven said he wanted Freddy's costume to be obvious no matter what form
he shape-shifted into. He was inspired by the DC Comics hero Plastic Man: as the director put it —
"He used to change shape, but you could always tell it was him. [...] So I wanted
Freddy to be a shape-shifter that could be recognized from his colors."
To find the right palette, the filmmaker didn't have to look much further than his
coffee table. Craven read a 1982 issue of Scientific American that reported that,
to the human retina, the most contrasting colors are red and green.
Every good slasher villain has a signature weapon — Leatherface has his chainsaw, Jason wields a
machete, and Michael Myers uses a kitchen knife. Understanding the importance of an eye-catching
weapon, Wes Craven wanted to give Freddy something that tapped into his audience's most primal fears.
It was Craven's cat that got him thinking about built-in weapon hands, as he later explained —
"I wanted Freddy's weapon to be something somebody 1,000 years
ago could have related to. [...] Predators like cave bears and saber-tooth tigers and
all those creatures — if you look at them, they're just knives, hands full of knives."
Craven believed that primal fear still lurks in the human subconscious.
The filmmaker and his team played around with possible knives to use, considering fishing knives
before landing on an odd-looking steak knife that was flipped around and given another sharp edge.
By the end of the production, there were three versions of the glove with different scenes and
uses in mind: the glove with real blades in it, a glove with Mylar-covered blades to reflect light,
and a hard rubber glove for performing stunts. As Robert Englund reflected —
"My running joke was I had to be careful going to the bathroom or I could change my religion."
"Why don't you… reach out and cut someone?"
It's long been said that you should write what you know, and that's a sentiment that
Wes Craven took to heart as he developed his film. Aspects of the dream-stalking
predator were inspired by a freaky encounter that he had as a child through his window.
Fedoras were a popular menswear accessory during Craven's childhood, but one,
in particular, left a mark on his young mind. While young Wesley was sleeping,
he was awoken by a seriously intoxicated man on the street outside his window. Craven recounted —
"He just did a mind-f--- on me. He just basically somehow knew I was up there,
and he looked right into my eyes."
Terrified, the child hid in his room for what seemed like forever. When it felt safe again,
he crept to the window again — only to see the man still standing there before walking
in the direction of his apartment entrance. Although the encounter ended without incidence,
it stuck with Craven — especially the fact that the creepy guy was
wearing a fedora. He decided to give his monster the same hat: as he asserted,
"The idea of an adult who was frightening and
enjoyed terrifying a child was the origin of Freddy."
After his casting as Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund went on to become a beloved character
actor with a penchant for villainy, appearing in more than 75 feature films through the
years. It's hard to believe that if not for a fluke of scheduling, Englund's notoriety
as an internationally recognizable movie monster might not have happened.
A classically trained actor, Englund auditioned for the part of Luke Skywalker in 1976. After
his unsuccessful audition, he came home, drank a six-pack of Heineken, and told his
couch-surfing pal Mark Hamill about the gig. While Hamill's career took off as a result,
Englund was still struggling to get past being typecast as the nerdy character. In 1983,
he landed a more prominent role as the lovable alien resistance fighter Willie on the miniseries
"V," ultimately getting promoted to a regular cast member in its sequels and 1984 series.
Englund was happy enough with the success of the series, telling Vulture —
"I was on the cusp — or thought I was on the cusp — of celebrity, the result of
starring as an adorable curly-haired alien in the miniseries 'V' on NBC."
According to Englund, he went in for "A Nightmare on Elm Street" because it was
the only audition that fit into his schedule during the hiatus. Impressed with Englund's
take on Freddy's darker side, Craven gave him the role — and the rest is history.
"We got special work to do here, you and me."
Internet rumors have long claimed that Freddy was based on a real-world villain, from a 2017
Facebook viral claim that Freddy hailed from 1800s Ohio to a 2020 version declaring the villain comes
from Oklahoma. While these rumors amount to little more than creepypasta, the story itself does draw
some inspiration from a real-life terror. In Vulture's oral history of "A Nightmare on Elm
Street," Wes Craven explained another origin for his deadly nightmare tale: a Los Angeles Times
piece about an immigrant family who lost their son under unusually horrifying circumstances.
The family — which had survived Cambodia's Killing Fields under the Khmer Rouge regime — had
immigrated to the United States to move on with their lives as best they could.
But they found this difficult to do when their young son was plagued by terrifying nightmares,
and he ultimately died in the middle of one. According to Craven, the child was
worried that if he fell asleep, the dream monster would kill him. The director mused —
"Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was
denying. That became the central line of 'Nightmare on Elm Street.'"
According to a 1987 Los Angeles Times item,
the anomaly wasn't a one-off — it happened so frequently that experts gave it the name
"Asian Death Syndrome." The Times claimed that from April 1983 to January 1987,
upwards of 130 refugees fleeing Southeast Asia had died from the mysterious condition.
While we don't normally think of acting as a treacherous career,
on-set accidents can happen — especially when there are special effects involved.
From "Twilight Zone: The Movie" to "The Crow," there's a shocking
number of horrific tragedies that have taken place during film production.
Fortunately for fans of Robert Englund, things didn't turn out nearly as bad as
they could have on the set of "A Nightmare on Elm Street," when one crucial scene didn't
go as expected. In a tale recounted by several members of the cast and crew to Rolling Stone,
Englund surmised the special effects team had been shooting for about four days when
it came time to film Johnny Depp's death scene — and he speculated that they may
or may not have been under the influence of a certain white powder. For the bloody sequence,
they devised a system to shoot out hundreds of gallons of red water all over the room,
but they overlooked the insulation on their electrical components. An effects technician
went the wrong way, creating a "two-inch tsunami" of fake blood all over the electrical equipment.
Sparks flew, the lights went out, and Englund took off with Heather Langenkamp. As the actor joked —
"I wasn't about to f---ing save anybody. I didn't want to get electrocuted."
"Now I'm playin' with power!"
Freddy might be one of our favorite villains of all time, but few people would ever want to meet
him in a dark alley — even if it means getting to see one of his coolest tricks. In one infamous
scene in the original "Nightmare on Elm Street," Tina steps into the alley and runs into Freddy,
who stretches out his arms before chasing her around and then finally killing her.
As far as slasher death scenes go, it's one of the greats — thanks in
large part to some pretty spectacular work on the part of the effects team.
These days, using CGI to create special effects in movies is something of a given. But back in
the golden age of slasher films, filmmakers had to get a little more creative — doubly so in a
film series that deals in the surreal world of nightmares where the laws of physics don't quite
apply. The special effects team ended up attaching fishing poles to Freddy's extra-long arms,
effectively turning him into a giant marionette. To make his knives spark when he touched the wall,
a car battery was connected to his glove. And for the scene's final feat,
the special effects team used a revolving room like the one Fred
Astaire uses to dance across the ceiling in the 1951 musical "Royal Wedding."