In the trinity of modern horror films, there's the father (Michael Myers of Halloween), the son (Jason of Friday the 13th fame, a knockoff), and the unholy spirit, Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street films. The spectral man who haunted the nightmares of unsuspecting teenagers with deadly consequences, Freddy (as played by Robert Englund) was a truly frightening bogeyman and icon for the '80s. Unlike the hockey-masked Jason, who dispatched horny teenagers with mechanical and monotonous ease (he never talked, never took off his mask), Freddy was a truly creative and diabolical villain, with a sadistic and blackly funny personality. The hallmarks of the Nightmare on Elm Street series were imaginatively gruesome suspense pieces, set in the overactive imaginations of the teen victims...

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


          During the Christmas holiday in the early 1940s, a young nun named Sister Mary Helena (Amanda Krueger) was accidentally locked in the wing for the criminally insane at "Westin Hills" psychiatric hospital. For days, she was raped and tortured numerous times by the one hundred patients confined there. Days later, she was found, barely clinging to life, and now pregnant. Nine months later, after a breech birth, Frederick Charles Krueger was born. Amanda decided to raise the child herself, while continuing to work as a nun. As Freddy grew up, he began to exhibit disturbed behavior, including killing and maiming small animals. At school, meanwhile, he was savagely taunted by the other children, who would often ridicule him by chanting "son of a hundred maniacs."
          After attacking his mother Amanda, 11-year-old Freddy was removed from her custody and placed with an old, abusive, drunk named Mr. Underwood (portrayed by Alice Cooper in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare) — who severely beat Freddy on a daily basis. As time went by, Freddy began enjoying the beatings and associated pain with pleasure. Into his teens, Freddy developed a taste for self mutilation. After a particularly brutal beating from Mr. Underwood, Freddy exacted revenge by setting the house ablaze while the man slept. As the house went up in flames, Freddy simply walked away, never bothering to see if the man survived. Freddy briefly returned to his mother, but was again removed from her care after he beat and raped her.
          At age seventeen, Freddy took a bagger's job at a local supermarket. In the trash, he found a beat-up old fedora that he began wearing religiously. Meanwhile, a senior at Springwood High, Freddy worked up the nerve to ask the popular Denise Charlotte to the prom. Shocked that he would dare ask her…Denise accepted his invitation, with the intention of standing him up. As Freddy arrived to her house on prom night, Denise refused to come to the door — and instead sat up in her bedroom laughing at his humiliation with her best friend, Cindy. Freddy would not forget this.
          Not a full year after graduating from Springwood High, Freddy returned to the school — this time working as a janitor, while both the faculty and underclassmen often snickered. It was at this time that he met a frumpy, weak-willed and insecure young waitress named Loretta Johnson, whom he started dating, and eventually married. Freddy began leading a double life — playing husband to Loretta, while simultaneously maltreating and raping prostitutes on the side. After Loretta gave birth to their daughter, Katherine, Freddy briefly reformed himself. Taking a job at a local Power Plant, he committed no atrocities at this time.
          While working at the plant, Freddy one day dozed off and was awaken by the sound of three 8-year-old boys who'd wandered in, and began laughing at him. An enraged Freddy screams profanities at, and chases after, them. As they ran away, he managed to get ahold of one by the arm. Freddy then grabbed a broken beer bottle and jabbed it into the child's abdomen — killing him instantly. The other two boys briefly stopped running, and looked on with horror at what happened to their friend. Freddy saw the look of terror in their faces and found he enjoys it. Exhilarated by the fear of the children, Freddy sees this as his calling.
          After discovering that the boy he killed lived on Elm Street, Freddy took a trip to the sunny, suburban neighborhood — with happy families and green lawns — and is disgusted. Wanting to corrupt the serenity, he started stalking the children who live on the street. His next victim is a seven year old girl, whose mother had been late picking her up from school. Freddy approached the girl, telling her that he was her "Uncle Freddy." The naive child trusted his seeming sincerity and went off with him. Days later, the authorities discovered her body in an abandoned field.
          As Freddy's child slaying hobby was beginning to take off, in his basement, he began to construct various torture devices to aid him in his killing — his favorite being a glove with long steel razors on each finger. Completely oblivious to what was going on, Loretta happened onto Freddy's murderous workshop. Freddy arrived home in time to catch his wife's snooping and choked her to death; 5-year-old Katherine witnessed the murder.
          The power plant Freddy worked at was closed down, leaving him jobless. In spite of authorities not piecing together that he was responsible for Loretta's death (or the children he had killed), Freddy was still declared an unfit parent. Katherine was subsequently removed from his custody and put up for adoption. Losing his daughter enraged Freddy, who turned up his child killing antics around Springwood, Elm Street in particular, exponentially…using the boiler room at the now-condemned power plant to torture and slaughter them.
          As the number of kids being murdered increased, the police were unable to solve the cases. The newspapers soon dubbed the mysterious killer the 'Springwood Slasher.' Krueger was discovered when a child he had abducted managed to escape his clutches and alerted the authorities. Police arrived at the boiler room in time to prevent Freddy from killing a 5-year-old boy.
          Krueger was arrested and put on trial but, because someone did not sign a warrant in the right place, was not convicted and subsequently freed on a technicality. The night of his release, the enraged parents of Elm Street tracked him to his lair at the power plant and set fire to it, burning him alive inside. His remains were hidden in a local junkyard. In death, Freddy was approached by three hellish "dream demons," who allowed him to continue his killings post mortem through dreams. Krueger took on a form that resembled his last moments being burned alive: charred and disfigured flesh, a red and green sweater, a fedora, and his clawed glove.
          Ten years passed and all was quiet. The Elm Street parents remained tightlipped about the events of the decade before, and all of their children were now teenagers. In the closing months of 1984, the children of Springwood (specifically those teens whose parents had formed the mob that killed Freddy) began systematically dying again — this time in peculiar ways, as they slept. The parents often ignored and/or denied the pleas of their mortified kids, who regaled tales of a mysterious burned man named Fred, who was terrorizing them in their dreams.
          As long as a victim was dreaming, Freddy could inhabit and control their dreams, twisting them to his own ends. Any physical harm done to a person in this dream world would carry over into the real world, allowing him to easily commit multiple murders. Krueger often toyed with his victims by changing his form and surroundings, usually resembling the factory where he was burned. His powers increased as more and more kids believed he existed and exhibited fear. At the height of his powers, he could cause severe damage in the real world.
          In a person's own dream, Krueger could also use their deepest fears and personality against them. A few victims managed to use their own imagination to consciously manipulate their dreams against him (a technique known as lucid dreaming), but this had little effect on Krueger, who was completely in control of their dreams already. Another of Krueger's powers involved absorbing the souls of his victims into his own body after they had been killed, which served to make him all the more indestructible. Occasionally, Krueger would be outwitted by his prey and temporarily sent back to Hell after losing a confrontation, but he was always able to return sooner or later.
          After a decade of systematically slaughtering all of the children of Springwood in their dreams, the town was left barren. All that remained were adults, many of whom slipped into psychosis after their children had been murdered. When there was no one left to kill, Freddy sought to leave Springwood — hoping to continue his murderous agenda in another town full of more children. Only one person could arrange for this to happen: his long lost daughter, Katherine.
          Krueger used what was left of his supernatural resources to track down his daughter, who was now an adult named Maggie Burroughs, and was working as a counselor to troubled teens in another city and state. Since her mother's death, Maggie was raised by adoptive parents and had suppressed the horrible memories of her early childhood. After catching up with Maggie, Freddy attempted to sway her to help him do his bidding — she proved, though, that a thirst for murder wasn't hereditary and instead schemed with a dream psychiatrist to help put an end to Freddy once and for all. After pulling him out of her dream, and into reality, Maggie managed to shove a pipe bomb into Freddy's mouth, thus killing him, and releasing the dream demons that had given him his power. It was all over…or so it seemed.
          In the aftermath of Maggie sending Krueger back to hell unarmed and now completely powerless — Springwood sought to revitalize itself. Figuring out how Freddy operated, the authorities and town officials covered up any and all traces of his prior existence…which included blacking out obituaries and quarantining anyone who had ever dreamt about, or had any knowledge of, Freddy. As a result, Springwood began to come back from its Roswell state, and subsequently repopulated with no ill effects.
          Freddy, meanwhile, remained in limbo — completely unable to escape the boundaries of Hell, thanks to no one in Springwood having any knowledge, and thus fear of him. If he could get people to fear him again, he could gain enough power to return. From this, Freddy hatched a plan to resurrect undead killing zombie Jason Voorhees. In the guise of Voorhees' mother, Pamela, Freddy manipulated him into rising up from the dead once more and to go to Elm Street to kill the teenagers to fool the residents of Springwood into thinking that he (Krueger) was back.
          Voorhees committed a few murders, which (as planned) were then blamed on Krueger. As a result, Freddy began to get his equilibrium back. A small group of youths and a sheriff's deputy discovered, though, that it was not Krueger who had committed the murders, but it was already too late. Enough fear fell over Springwood to make Krueger strong enough to haunt the town again. The problem, which Freddy hadn't counted on, was that Jason wouldn't stop killing. This led to Freddy becoming irate when "his kids" kept on getting rubbed out by his rival. Thus, a bloody fight ensued between the two murderous icons that raged between the Freddy's dream world to the waking word, at Jason's haunt Camp Crystal Lake. The finality of this fight was deliberately left ambiguous by the writers of Freddy vs Jason. It ended with Jason walking out of the waters holding Krueger's decapitated head, which winked to the audience before the credits rolled…seemingly indicating that things weren't over.


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