Freddy Krueger

October 12th, 2008

Photo taken from yourmoviestuff.com

Fred Krueger is one of the most notorious horror movie characters ever created. Movie writer and director Wes Craven was inspired to create this character by a series of deaths in Los Angeles. These people kept having recurring nightmares and then eventually died in their sleep. Other inspirations for the character were a homeless man that scared Craven as a youth, and a bully at his school.

Fred Krueger was the villain and cornerstone for the Nightmare on Elm Street horror series. This has become instituted in American folklore, and is one of the most successful horror movie series of all time with a total of seven films. We learn about the back story and life of Freddy in each film. It started out in the 1940s when Sister Mary Helena was trapped inside the psychiatric ward of Westin Hills. She was tortured and raped by 100 patients who lived there.

Following this, Sister Mary Helena had a son, Freddy Krueger. He was put up for adoption, and taken in by an alcoholic named Mr. Underwood. He was very abusive and when Freddy became a teenager he killed Underwood. Later on as an adult now, he married a woman named Loretta and they had a daughter named Kathryn. They also lived in the house of his childhood which was 1428 Elm Street. Children in the town then started to go missing. Loretta goes and finds a secret room of Freddy’s in the basement, where he has pictures of children and variations of his killing glove.

Freddy then kills Loretta as his daughter Kathryn watched. He worked in the towns power plant, and would take children to the boiler room there and kill them. After all was said and done, about 20 children had fell by his blade. Newspapers in the town of Springwood, Ohio would then go on to give him the nickname “The Springwood Slasher.” In 1966, Krueger was arrested for the murders of the missing children.

However, the search warrant was signed incorrectly, and Freddy was released in 1968. After his mother heard of the news she then hung herself in the same tower where she was raped. Later that night, the parents of the murdered children decided to take matters into their own hands. They trapped Freddy in the boiler room, and set it on fire. Right before his death however, the three dream demons came to him. They come searching for the most evil of people, and in turn give them the power to turn dreams into reality. Freddy accepts the offer. His remains are put in the old junkyard, Kathryn is adopted by a family and moved out of Springwood, and the Thompsons move into 1428 Elm Street.

All of these events lead up to the first movie. However, all of this information is slowly revealed throughout each consecutive movie. Freddy now had the ability to attack anyone in their dreams. Anything that happened in the dream, would in turn have the same affect in real life. He became an unstoppable force, able to possess and control nearly any object, basically becoming invincible. His few weaknesses were fire, bravery since fear gives him power, and finally if brought into the real world he would become mortal.

Works Cited/ Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Kreuger