It’s Freddy Krueger Day!
Or so said Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles in 1991, who aligned with New Line Cinema to make September 13th officially “Freddy Krueger Day” while celebrating Mr. Krueger’s life and death, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 1991.
Okay, so the timeline might be a little rough there, as Bradley did not actually declare this at the funeral, but either way…Freddy Krueger did have his own local holiday because studio executives convinced the mayor of Los Angeles to acknowledge Freddy Krueger’s death day.
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The funeral and holiday were just the kind of absurdity that surrounded Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. A film that jumps so high over the shark it got caught in a tornado of Wizard of Oz references and logging over four hours in length before the hardcore editing began. It’s preoccupation with backstory, ‘90s pop culture, and a late-to-the-party third dimension (oh, I’m sorry, Freddy-vision) creates a harebrained spectacle capped with thick visual FX that fans either love or hate.
That’s not a 50/50 split – 9 out of 10 Freddy fans agree – Freddy’s Dead is definitely near the bottom of the “best of” lists circumventing the interwebs. But see, I like Freddy’s Dead. In the same way I find bad ADR endearing, the honest desperation to “reinvent Freddy” for his last stand is comically charming. There were no boundaries and no rules, and where some might see a lack of respect to the character, I see a bold and entertaining nosedive to not only kill Krueger, but kill the franchise itself.
I’m sure that wasn’t intended. Rachel Talalay had been given the keys to the proverbial dream kingdom for her very first feature film ever. Her involvement in the franchise cannot be overlooked, starting as an assistant production manager on the original Nightmare and other production roles in every film subsequent. She came to Bob Shaye with a swath of ideas to invigorate the Freddy franchise for a ‘90s audience.
See, New Line Cinema was riding high into the ‘90s. On top of their meal-ticket monster, Freddy Krueger, New Line had just released the highest grossing independent film of all time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had planned expansions into more niche markets, and got a 52% stake in television production company RHI entertainment. Robert Shaye took on the role of chairman and CEO, a more backseat position to Michael Lynne’s COO and presidency.
It was clearly time to make some changes to legitimize and capitalize on the new decade, and that meant Krueger would be casualty numero uno. In Never Sleep Again (2010), Shaye recalls, “it was time to move on and we had other projects we wanted to focus on.” I can’t help but imagine Shaye and Lynne, sitting in a room with Talalay listening to her “fresh takes” born from comic books, Twin Peaks, and John Waters movies, and telepathically nodding to each other that they’ve found the one…the one who will destroy Freddy once and for all.
And when approached from this “last stand, no holds barred” angle, the story begins to beg the question: “maybe it didn’t go far enough!?” I mean, this is 1991! Why not put Freddy on the Hubble Telescope and have him use space power to reach every dreamer in the world? It’ll be like Riddler in Batman Forever, reaching everyone via Satellite and gaining more and more power.
See? See how much more ridiculous it could have been!?
No, the truth is: Freddy’s Dead was never about making a horror film. Talalay and co-writer Michael De Luca, whose previous experience was in TV series Freddy’s Nightmares, crafted a dark comedy that laid to rest the mysterious origins of Freddy’s power before putting him down for good.
I mean, what do you do when your horror villain is so beloved that he’s been marketed to kids as lunchboxes, action figures, board games, rap songs, and on and on and on? Talalay embraced Freddy’s move into the pop culture by bringing pop culture to Springwood!
She called in all her favors, which included Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold – the hottest TV stars of the day. Alice Cooper, who had previously lent his talents to rival franchise Friday the 13th with the badass rocker “Behind the Mask.” Johnny Depp, who was actively enjoying a primetime slot on 21 Jump Street and happy to return to the franchise that built his career for a wink. Iggy Pop, with whom Talalay had worked on John Water’s Cry Baby, composed an original song for the end credits. Talalay used Bart Simpson as character reference for Freddy – which is one of the most “OMG bring on the ‘90s!” analogies I may have ever heard about the making of.
But that was kind of the point. Rewatching Freddy’s Dead is like watching a time capsule: from the Goo Goo Dolls to the Nintendo Power Glove, it’s hard to imagine why they didn’t just kill Freddy with a WWE Wrestling Buddy while “Losing my Religion” plays.
I find this all incredibly ironic as it was also an artistic choice of Talalay’s to introduce grittier teens for Freddy to dispatch. Urban youth whose childhood horrors were darker than previous installments, like being beaten by parents and implied molestation, included with the revealing backstory of Freddy’s own demented childhood. This simultaneous invocation is one of the tonal issues of Freddy’s Dead.
In a single sequence, hearing-impared Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) is confronted with his abusive mother, whose beatings led to his ear issues, and then hilariously dispatched when Freddy scrapes his claws across a chalkboard. Spencer (Breckin Meyer), a drug-addled teen who makes pipe bombs in his spare time, finds himself trapped in a video game during one of the more insane sequences, the laws of physics no longer applying as he bounces the hallway like a Scooby-Doo chase montage.
The tonal spectrum, dealing with neurodivergent teens and adults with a history of trauma who are killed in overly campy ways just dripping in cheese, is something I will never quite understand. Most of what was left on the cutting room floor was backstories of the warded kids, so it was clearly important to Talalay. She was fully aware of both her visions – both serious and comedic – and it’s not like it’s a genre that hadn’t been done before. But instead of coming together as “dark comedy” or “horror comedy,” it kind of lives at the point in the prism where all the colors separate and there’s no coming back together.
But this establishes the very concept worth celebrating in Freddy’s Dead. When you’ve signed a contract that says “this is the last ride,” why not throw the kitchen sink at it? Screw tone and genre, just toss all your ideas off a cliff and watch as Freddy rises on his broomstick and quips about your little soul.
Declaring “Freddy Krueger Day” in 1991 was heavily criticized by the general public, who accused the mayor of glorifying a mass murderer (as though he’d just given Richard Ramirez his own special day). Much like the characters in Nightmare, they couldn’t tell fantasy from reality, but all press is good press and Freddy’s Dead opened #1 at the box office, earning $12.9 million its opening weekend – the highest of a Nightmare film to date. It remained at #1 for two weeks before falling sharply to 7th and quickly fading off the charts and onto Blockbuster shelves and VHS.
Freddy’s Dead is a film with nothing to lose. And when you kick up your heels and give up your expectations, the delivery here is far from suckage. With over 300 practical visual FX and John Carl Buechler at the helm, the film is a last vestige of ‘80s slasher bravado with a flair of ‘90s consumerism. So stop clutching your pearls and give up your sacred cows about how it disrespects the franchise, Freddy’s Dead is a sacrificial lamb worth enjoying for what it is.
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