31 Days Of Horror: Day #9 - WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE

"Miss me?" - Freddy Krueger

Wes Craven's New Nightmare, (1994), Directed by Wes Craven

I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, but I like 1994 Krueger better than 1984 Krueger.  Don't get me wrong, the original A Nightmare On Elm Street is a great film, mostly because it introduced a horror character that had a personality and wasn't just a silent killing machine like our pals Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Leatherface.

There's just something about Wes Craven's 1994 re-visitation that I like better.  Perhaps it's the cool new Freddy outfit, complete with a long trenchcoat, a cool felt green fedora, the razor-sharp new glove and combat boots, or the slick art direction and the clever script.  Quite possibly however, it gives us just a glimpse of what it could have been like had Craven waited 10 years and given us Freddy Krueger in the 90's instead of the 80's.  To be honest, Freddy Krueger re-defined 80's horror, so I think that's where his iconic status should remain, but it sure is cool to just wonder what 90's cinema would have been like had we gotten Mr. Krueger a decade later.

This is what happens to people when they don't watch my directorial debut "976-EVIL"!

You all should know the story by now: all the actors from the original Nightmare play themselves in this film, and suddenly without warning, the characters they play on-screen pass over into reality, resulting in a cool retro horror showdown.

For all the non-horror fans reading this (What? People read this blog?), perhaps you may think that the series of Nightmare films are all the same.  In the early stages, they were good, but after Part 4, it seems like they got progressively worse.  (Don't even get me started on that pile of horse dung that was Freddy's Dead.)....."No screamin' while the bus is in motion!!!" Ugh. Really....Roseanne and Tom Arnold in cameos?  Desperate much??

At the end of that movie, we all knew that Freddy wasn't REALLY dead.  The powers-that-be at New Line were just biding their time to bring him back....and the only person that could really do it right, was Freddy's creator.   

It's my favorite Nightmare film.  From the cool "no opening credits" beginning sequence, the freeway scene with a Krueger clone-mob, and even this cool trailer that doesn't even really show Freddy in it AT ALL. (Suspenseful marketing done well.)  I'll always be grateful to Wes Craven for returning to the franchise and making his iconic character more awesome than he's ever been.  Yes, Mr. Krueger, we have missed you.