4 Reasons Why Freddy Krueger Is Absolute Trash
Born from the mind of Horror Master Wes Craven and cemented into our pop culture brains thanks to the nine films that make up A Nightmare on Elm Street (so far), the slasher villain we’re looking at today is like no other. Truly, he is a real piece of work, and by work, we definitively mean trash. Craven’s dream ghoul is so full of it that he doesn’t even wear a mask like some iconic slashers who have come before. No, he doesn’t think it necessary to hide that face — he knows that grossness can be just as scary as the unseen. He’s pure evil, a monster to man and (especially) child.
He is that total trash guy, Freddy Krueger.
His Backstory Is, Just, So Gross
Krueger’s backstory evolved over the course of the films from simple yet terrible child-killer to so much worse. Here are the breadcrumbs of that backstory, as dropped by the movies:
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A Nightmare on Elm Street: Nancy’s mother, Marge, explains that Freddy Krueger was the Springwood Slasher, a serial killer who took kids to a boiler room and slashed them up. Krueger had killed 20 kids before he was eventually caught but not convicted because the justice system is messed up. A bunch of angry vigilante parents of the Elm Street neighborhood then burned him alive inside that boiler room. Now he's basically a head ghost, empowered by dream demons to kill kids for revenge and also because he’s psychotic and that is what he does.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: We learn and get to see a teensy bit more of the factory where Freddy worked while he was alive. We also learn that he apparently enjoys crashing parties.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: Here we get more into things when a nun — who is also Freddy’s mother, Amanda Krueger — tells the doc at the Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital that she worked at the asylum back in the day. One holiday weekend, she — the nun, who is also Krueger's mama — was accidentally locked in along with the criminally insane patients in an abandoned wing of the hospital. She was raped repeatedly that weekend and, in her words, Freddy was “the bastard born from a 100 maniacs.” Woof. It is one trash backstory.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: We learn nothing pertaining to Freddy’s past, but we do learn that all it takes to beat him is to shove a mirror in his face.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child: Remember how Freddy’s dad is one of 100 maniacs? Freddy somehow was able to figure out which one it was, apparently. Not that it mattered much. He was still just being his trash self in the entire movie.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare: Here we get some new and also wild revelations because that is what happens when you have to write the sixth movie in a franchise featuring one sole slasher guy. We learn that Alice Cooper (called Mr. Underwood) was Freddy’s adoptive and alcoholic father who also abused him until teenage Freddy killed him. He somehow gets off for that crime, too — seriously, the justice system is as much of an antagonist in this bonkers franchise as Krueger — and marries an actual human woman while murdering the children of parents who bullied him when they were all kids. Of course, he eventually murders his wife, too, because trash will be trash.
In Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Freddy goes all meta, and in Freddy vs. Jason, Freddy goes all crossover. In the final film of the franchise to date — A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) — the worst story is told: That Krueger was a groundskeeper at a Preschool who didn’t kill his child victims. Instead, he sexually abused them. It was a choice that instantly made Freddy way more disturbing, and took away the comedy part of the comedy horror.
Sure, there has always been a repulsive underlying feeling about the dream monster who can't seem to keep his tongue in his mouth. Craven said that he originally scripted Krueger as a child molester because it was the worst thing he could think of. To have it outright stated, however, makes Krueger one of the hardest pieces of trash to stomach in slasher history.
No wonder many fans have chosen not to include the remake movie’s backstory as part of his official canon. Why would he need a glove if he didn't initially kill the kids, anyway? Although we guess it must be said: Murdering children is still super gross, you guys.
He Has The Worst Sense Of Humor
What made the Elm Street franchise stand out from other slasher horrors back in the ‘80s was the immediate sense that Craven wanted humor woven into his OTT and macabre story about a child-killer turned dream demon who stalks the kids of a particular neighborhood. Yeah, it’s not the easiest of stories to squeeze out some belly laughs, and one can argue that the writers did a brilliant job in essentially making Krueger unlikable in his un-funniness.
Seriously, let's look at some of Freddy’s most terrible puns and cringing jokes:
“How’s this for a wet dream?” — Freddy in The Dream Master when Joey dreams of a naked woman swimming inside his water bed before Freddy appears and pulls him into the water with this juvenile joke.
“Welcome to prime time, b*tch.” — Freddy in Dream Warriors when he pulls Jennifer into the Psychiatric Hospital’s TV screen.
“I love soul food.” — Freddy in The Dream Master when he eats a meatball pizza, only the meatballs are souls of people screaming while Krueger chows down on them because he just always wants to put young people in his mouth. He's so freaking trashy.
Not even to mention his gross adoration of the B-word:
Oh, and why would he only be sexist if he can also be racist?
Yeah. The guy’s just a tsunami of trash.
Have You Seen Him?
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He looks like an old pizza that got thrown in the trash and melted for a fifth time in the blazing sun that one might find in Hell.
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Also, what’s with the hat? Is he secretly a Dick Tracy nerd? Not with that face, Krueger. And another thing: How lame is that bladed glove? Clearly, he is as juvenile as the kids he dream-stalks.
Craven said his inspiration behind the repulsive serial child killer was an amalgamation of a street bum he once saw wearing a bowler hat with terrible scars on his face, an old high school bully named Freddy, and a janitor who creeped him out as a kid.
On portraying Freddy, the actor Robert Englund said: “My Freddy was inspired by Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu, but also by all the monsters that Lon Chaney created. 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.”
And then there’s that tongue. Have you seen that tongue? Of course you have, but here it is again, anyway.
That … whole thing happens, of course, right after Freddy goes full ‘IT’ and unlocks his jaw to try and put a kid in his mouth, again. Such trash. England offered up this opinion about the character: “I knew Freddy’s claw had to be its own character, an extension of evil, but I also wanted it to be mildly erotic. Some people said Freddy was a pervert and a pedophile. They criticized the way I licked my lips at the teenagers as I haunted them in their dreams. But that was forgetting that Freddy is invading people’s dreams, a very private and intimate thing. If someone gets into your subconscious, it’s like they’re in your underwear drawer. Teenagers always think about sex, so Freddy was a natural extension of that.”
Yes, just like teenagers’ minds, Freddy Krueger is utter filth.
He Thought He Could Easily Take On Jason Voorhees
Yeah, the guy who’s constantly getting beaten at his own game by a string of teenagers thought he could turn Jason into his very own henchman. How utterly pathetic. How very trashy.
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