Freddy is the one of the archetypal horror movie icons of the 80s.
He helped solidify the style and mannerisms of villains and monsters of that era, completing the shift brought about by human monsters like “Leatherface” and Michael Meyers by bringing out their monstrosities into a true monster.
There have been many imitators, but only one Krueger.
And like a comic book villain, he’s had retcons and origins heaped upon him like nobody’s business, and has his own hard bit of discontinuity (because even on a symbolic level, Nightmare II stands out as an odd ball).
So, going with some of the better outings (the original film, Dream Warriors and Freddy vs. Jason) we’ll take a closed look at this genre shifter.
Biology
Ghostbusters Physics strikes once again, and this time in more ways than one.
Remember in Ghostbusters II, the river of negative energy slime that drove the plot?
Freddy is the sort of creature that is not spawned from such ‘physics’, but benefits from them nonetheless. He is dead, but he is also a creature of dreams. People have written about dreams being a world beyond ours since Lovecraft and beyond. We really don’t understand them too well, even to this day. Still, the causing people physical harm by killing them in their dreams is some Matrix level silliness. Sleepwalking? Heart attacks? Sure, but otherwise, nothing.
I suppose that’s where the ghost aspect comes in, as many manipulate the physical realm to operate. The flush of emotional energy from the victim probably fuels the act of killing them in the real world.
But Freddy is something else, too. He is a meme. Unlike lolcats, YTMND and Attack on Titan opening parodies, Freddy is a lot less benign. He requires fear and awareness to act and take lives. The fear is what really keeps him going. It’s his primary food. Some films show him devouring the souls of those he kills as well, but the evidence for this is minimal. It’s the fear that keeps him alive.
The speech he gives in Freddy vs. Jason wonderfully explains it.
A meme that no one pays attention to withers away and dies.
Oddly enough, there is an internet meme which does resemble Freddy to a degree. The monster known only as the Slender Man. A creature which defies conventional explanations, and fills in the same roll that Freddy does in a sense.
Symbolism
Freddy Krueger is a modernized and updated boogeyman.
In life, Freddy Krueger was a murderer of children and (in later films) a pedophile (or at best an ephebophile). The ultimate boogeyman of parental nightmares and a very adult fear. Once he was dead, he became a different type of boogeyman, able to inflict the same sort of fear and death with near impunity. He became a true, literal boogeyman.
At this point I’m going to throw in the idea that the pot marked scars over his face are unfortunately reminiscent of herpes sores and let the creepiness factor raise exponentially.
Freddy also helped usher in the idea within horror films of the adults being either evil or incompetent. Before this, it was extremely rare to see that in authority figures for monster movies.
The big exception being Night of the Living Dead. Whereas before in films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers the entire film could be ended with “Call the FBI!” and that would spell the end of the threat.
Here, the adults are either disbelieving obstacles to the heroes/victims, or in on the conspiracy for one reason or another. In the original film and Freddy vs. Jason, the parents of Springwood believe they are helping their kids and keeping them from the truth. However, it only hinders and harms them in the long run. This is actually one of the bigger themes of the Nightmare series and boils all the way down to Freddy’s creation.
As described in the video link, the parents of Springwood took it onto themselves to ‘deal’ with Freddy Krueger when he was alive (and free). With him dead, they do their best not only to keep him suppressed, which just gets more people killed or harmed in the end. I’m sure there’s commentary on mainstream US sexuality in there somewhere, but having already brought up the pedophile aspect, which just makes me ill to consider, especially after considering the first sequel in the series which turned Freddy into a metaphor for closet homosexuality.
I know I said we’d focus on the other films, but it’s just too bizarre not to mention. It’s high jacked symbolism at its finest (IE: worst).
Alright, side trip done. The act of Freddy’s initial destruction paints the further protective actions of the parents into an even more negative light, not only because they are responsible for making matters worse, but for not learning their lesson the first time. Tripping over the same stone twice, and repeatedly making the problem worse.
His physical form is variable in the realm of dreams and that creativity works to his advantage both as a predator and as an entertainment factor. What often happened in horror movies of the 80s was that the audience would root for the bad guy, and Freddy’s creativity with his kills was part of this trend. The audience wanted to see what bizarre form he’d take next. As a Boogeyman, this makes perfect sense. Every culture’s conception and design of such child-killing night terrors is extremely variable, but it also plays to the personal aspects of fear. He’s not just a nightmare, he is your worst nightmare.
Freddy is a Bogeyman alive or dead. He does not hide in the closet or under the bed, but inside dreams themselves. It makes the act of going to sleep a source of terror. Like the shark in Jaws, or Norma Bates in Psycho, an everyday act is turned into a source of fear. Turning the police and other authority figures into sources to be distrusted or feared doubles down on it.
Throw in a horrifically scarred face, a hat to obscure some of his features until necessary and a sweater design which only reads as ‘creepy’ and otherwise ‘other’, we have a recipe for fear that could feed Freddy for almost 30 years now.
