In 1984, Wes Craven introduced a new horror franchise that would literally be the stuff of nightmares.

And in doing so, he gave rise to one of the most iconic movie characters of all time.

So in this episode, I want to know who he is, the impact he's had on popular culture, and what makes him so darn scary.

As I ask, who is Freddy Krue?

Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Liam Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places, and the events that make the USA what it is today.

To discuss this, I am joined by a marketing professional, writer and podcaster who has extensively covered 1980s film and pop culture, popular culture.

His papers for the Montreal Montrum Society Journal, and University of Nottingham's A Nightmare on Elm street at 40 Conference this year explored Freddy Krueger's role as the leader of a new pack of 80s slashers or brand boogeymen and their impact on popular culture.

So there really is no one more perfect to have joining me for this discussion.

Welcome to the show.

Noel Mellor.

Thanks very much for having me.

It's great to meet you, Liam.

Oh, really good to have you on the podcast.

We were just saying before recording this that I love a bit of horror and I love Nightmare on Elm street.

So it makes me so happy that we can finally talk about this on the podcast.

Excellent.

So I guess there'll be some people out there listening to this who maybe aren't as familiar with horror or with Freddy Krueger.

So give us a bit of background on the Nightmare on Elm street franchise and what kind of impact, particularly it had at the time it was released.

Yeah, I mean, it's.

To be honest with you, it's kind of interesting that it had any impact at the time, really, just because of the timing of it.

So it came around in.

In 1984.

It landed in 1984, by which point slasher movies were.

Had been around for a while and had been sort of deeply explored in the culture in different ways.

We had three Halloween films at that point, although one of them didn't actually have a slasher in it.

We were on to our fourth Friday the 13th movie.

We'd obviously had Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And I think creatively speaking, it was kind of felt like slasher movies were a bit spent and they'd kind of done as much as they could.

You know, there are even articles about that period.

Peter Hutchins being one person who's written quite a bit about 1984 as being this Point where horror has reached sort of peak tedium and, you know, just constantly the same things being recycled.

He also saw talks about at this point, you know, the, the question of how slasher movies were, were misogynist, like how much that was sort of being discussed at the time.

So 1984 rolls around and there probably isn't an awful lot riding on the first Elm street film.

So as you kind of mentioned, it was, you know, based on an idea by Wes Craven, who had a little bit of heat on him at that time from, you know, some of the cult movies that he'd been putting out.

Last House on the Left, Deadly Blessing, couple of Hills have Eyes movies.

So he had this idea for, you know, what if there was a serial killer who killed you in your dreams.

He approached a number of different people about it, including Disney, famously.

So that could have been.

I've always sort of wondered what that would have been.

But yeah, we will never know.

But producer Bob Shea of New Line Cinema said that he'd get behind it.

But the.

There was sort of a compromise built into the discussion.

Sort of Bob Shea said, look, I'll give you full creative control.

You can make the film that you want to make, but I just want you to build in a sort of sequel hook for me.

I want this to be a franchise.

So, yeah, that was where it kind of came from.

It was obviously a huge success.

It was always intended, as I say, to be a franchise, at least by Bob Shea.

I don't think Craven was hugely comfortable with the idea, but he, he knew that that's what was going to get it made and it was a massive success.

I mean, I, I don't think they knew just how successful it was going to be, to be perfectly honest.

I think that took them by surprise.

But yeah, a massive, a massive success financially, especially for a small studio at the time like New Line Cinema.

It's obviously a lot bigger brand now, but yeah, something that took off very quickly on the back of that culturally.

Obviously, as you say, slashes themselves were maybe sort of coming to a little bit of a natural end because the market had been sort of saturated with franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween.

So I wonder if there was a bit of a kind of Wes Craven effect because Craven himself was very much a genre filmmaker by that point anyway.

And if anyone listening to this has watched Last House on the Left and the Hills have Eyes, I mean, these are, these are not your sort of typical kind of mass market horror fan.

They're gritty, gruesome films.

Absolutely so do you think that that had an impact, sort of Craven bringing his sort of trademark and name to a franchise?

I mean, it's possible.

I think it's very difficult because we tend to look back at the 80s and judge it by our own sort of standards.

And I don't know how much of a household name Wes Craven would have been at that time.

It's very difficult to know because, you know, film was.

And cinema was.

And horror cinema, genre cinema was largely just stuff that ended up in cinemas that people would go and see.

It wasn't like there were fan forums dedicated to discussing the.

The films of Wes Craven or, you know, podcasts and stuff like that.

So horror culture, you know, there would have been fanzines and there would have been people having discussions about horror movies, but it just wasn't the same.

I think Craven, as I say, did have some heat on the back of those initial.

That initial run of films that he had, but it probably would have been quite limited.

I think what really helped Nightmare on Elm street and really made it took off is something that I talk about quite a lot in the.

In the context of, you know, how the film was marketed is it's the core idea of the film itself.

It's such a strong concept.

And I think, you know, back in the 1980s, when word of mouth was literally word of mouth and not, you know, what.

Whatever people were posting on social media, being able to tell people about a film, hey, I saw this film and this was the.

The basic idea of it was really important.

I think that's what.

That's what really made it took off.

You know, it's.

We all sleep, we all dream.

We've all had that feeling of being unable to wake from a nightmare.

And so, you know, a killer who strikes in your dreams is just such a strong concept that everybody can get behind.

Yeah.

And I think just the whole idea of, you know, it's just a dream, that it was really playing on that to bring out some sort of really innate fear in people.

And, you know, this is an American history podcast, but I don't think that that fear is particularly American or even Western.

I think, you know, it was really tapping into something that.

That felt quite universal.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, you know, Craven has.

Has said that the visuals for Freddy were.

Were built on an experience he had where he saw somebody in shadows who looked that way.

But the idea for the actual film came from a sort of news article that he'd seen.

I think it was a guy in Mexico who was sort of suffering from really bad nightmares and then one night didn't wake, didn't wake up.

And that sort of idea of, you know, not waking up from a dream or not waking up from a nightmare is something completely global.

So, yeah, absolutely.

I thought when I was sort of giving this episode a lot of thought, I was thinking, well, it must have been sort of part the right place, right time for a franchise like Nightmare on Elm Street.

But actually, from what you've said, there was almost a bit sort of fatigue around the slasher genre.

And that was probably reflected in the fact that from what I understand, New Line didn't give Nightmare on Elm Street a huge budget, mainly because they didn't really have much money.

But if they knew it was going to be such a commercial success, you would have thought maybe they would have pumped a bit more into it.

So why did they take this risk?

It's a good question.

I mean, again, I think it comes down to that, that relationship between Shea and Craven.

You know, I think Bob Shea was always a very.

A very smart.

He's a very smart, but very shrewd guy.

So he looks at film, you know, from a.

From a profit perspective, and he obviously saw something that was worth investing in.

Like you say they, you know, New Line at the time didn't have an awful lot of money to.

To play with to put into this.

And I think the vast amount, you know, the majority of the budget, which, you know, again, looking at it from through today's eyes, you might have thought had gone to Johnny Depp, but it really didn't.

The budget was.

Most of it was spent on keeping the makeup on on England's face.

So, yeah, I mean, I think, I guess, you know, Shay just saw the strength of the concept and was willing to back it because he.

I think he'd seen the success of the Friday the 13th films.

These were go.

The Friday the 13th films were going into their fourth film by 84, and the.

The trajectory of profitability for those films was still kind of on the up.

So I think he just wanted a slice of that, frankly, and saw this as an opportunity to do that.

Yeah, and, you know, of course, you know, horror itself is a very commercially driven genre, but there is a link there between, you know, tapping into sort of real fears, because it's.

It's that resonance that makes money.

So.

And I think with a franchise like Nightmare on Elm street, it's all about Freddie, isn't it?

So, you know, let's talk about Freddy Krueger, because what made him different to other horror villains.

That has sort of helped him to endure this, this length of time.

Yeah, I think if we compare him directly to, you know, Jason and Michael Myers and Leatherface who were around at the time, I think the biggest difference is obviously he's kind of already been dealt with.

He's dead.

He's, you know, he's, he's, he's been dealt with.

You know, the parents of Elm street gathered together and stopped this child murderer and killed him.

I think what makes him compelling in that is that death hasn't stopped him.

It's, it's made him more deadly.

It's made him more agile and able to sort of work around killing children an awful lot easier without anyone to bother him.

So, so that's what kind of makes him different to those guys.

I think it goes back to that sort of concept.

I mean, how do you kill something that only exists in dreams?

One of the great problems that slasher movies have is how do you kill a character?

Or how do you kill your main villain every time and then bring him back?

Freddy kind of doesn't have that problem because he can't really die.

It's such an intangible thing for this guy to exist in dreams.

But also, how do you stop something?

And this is a big part of the franchise.

It really kicks in in the third film as well, is, is how do you stop something as inevitable as sleep?

You, you know, as the rhyme goes, Freddy's coming for you.

And it might not be tonight if you drink enough Diet Coke and coffee, but it'll be tomorrow night.

And, and, and I think what makes Freddy so much fun and so sort of dangerous is he knows that he, he knows he's already won.

It's all right.

You might, you might be able to dodge the, the dream tonight, but I'll get you tomorrow.

So, and I, I, I think that's why, like, Freddy is such a compelling character, because he has more depth than the likes of, like, Freddie or Michael Myers, because, you know, he's a funny guy.

And actually, you know, and maybe part of that is due to Robert England, you know, the actor who played him.

But I feel like when you're watching Freddie, it's so easy to forget that he's a, he's a bad guy.

Like, he's, he was killed for a reason.

Yeah, but he's got quite a charm about him, isn't he?

Yeah, that's it.

And I think, you know, it is easy to forget that.

And it's, it's what makes him fun and it's what makes him dangerous.

At the same time, you know, that the idea.

He knows that you'll have to sleep sometime.

He knows you can't stop him because he's already dead.

But I think that sort of allows him to be an extra level of malevolent almost.

It allows him to, you know, he.

I think I've heard people say this before, but he sort of chooses to play with his food a little bit.

Unlike, you know, so unlike Jason and Michael, when they kill, they do it silently and coldly, and they're hidden behind a mask and everything's very quick and violent.

And Freddy's not going to do that.

He's gonna.

You know, he's.

He's.

When.

When he kills, even in the first film, he's doing it with a smile, and very often he's doing it with a laugh.

And.

And then as the films go on, he gets more creative and starts to make the kills a lot more personal and a lot more tied into the individual fears and.

And problems of the.

Of the children he's going after.

And.

And, yes, that makes him more terrifying, but to us, the audience, who end up sort of almost being on his side in many regards, it just means we can have more fun with the kills as well.

And that's what slasher movies are all about.

Exactly.

And I think that it kind of mitigates this problem in slasher films of having entertaining enough kills that it keeps you as a.

As a viewer hooked, but without kind of crossing that line into just pure, like, farce.

Nightmare on Elm street doesn't really have that problem because everything takes place in a dream.

So there are no limits to what could be plausible in that.

In that world.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, it allows Freddie a sort of.

Again, it's that word agility or sort of malleability that he can sort of play around in culture a little bit.

It's.

It, you know, it makes sense that he can.

We can see him in our world.

It makes sense that he's, you know, in the toy aisles or wherever he can be anywhere.

Again, unlike.

Unlike a lot of his peers, I've.

Always argued the fact that the best horrors are those that leave the most to the imagination of the viewer.

And the great thing about this concept is, okay, maybe.

Maybe it doesn't quite do that in the films, but it's sort of sowing those seeds with viewers of don't fall asleep because your worst fears, your worst anxieties will be exploited by Freddie in your dreams.

And it's Sort of.

I think it's really preying on that fear.

Not so much when you're watching the film, but.

But once you leave.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that's, you know, the strength of any good slasher movie or horror movie generally is the relationship that it has with the audience and, you know, obviously the way it can tap into your individual fears.

But the, the thing that makes, the thing that makes A Nightmare on Elm street such a fascinating case study for me, looking at it from the sort of brand perspective and the marketing perspective and stuff like that is, you know, when I'm talking to students about, about how brands behave, I talk a lot about, you know, brands need to listen to their audiences and reflect back what, what, what the audience expects of them.

And that's what really gave A Nightmare on Elm street its strength was New Line Cinema leaned into what people liked for the sequels.

They, they knew what it was that people enjoyed about the first film.

They did it a little bit more.

You know, New Line did what all good marketers do.

It listens to.

It listened to the audience, and it, it delivered what they expect.

So as audiences wanted Freddy to become more of an anti hero, they, they gave him space to do that.

There's more, you know, more quips.

The kills get more personalized, as I say.

And, and they did that because that's, they knew that that's what people were responding to.

And I think that ultimately becomes the strength of the series.

But, you know, maybe further down the line when people have decided they don't want Freddie to be that anymore, it sort of becomes its, it sort of becomes its, its downfall because you kind of can't go back from where Freddie ends up.

You can't suddenly say, okay, now he's going to be mean again.

That's it.

And I wonder if, you know, like with any franchise, I guess it does get to a point of exhaustion where, you know, you, you sort of lose sight a little bit of that initial character.

Because I think you're right, you know, characterizing Freddie as an anti hero is, is sort of spot on and, and exemplified in, in films like Freddy vs.

Jason.

Because in that film, that's, I, I.

Tell me if you disagree, but I, I think that's part of the Nightmare on Elm street canon more than the Friday the 13th canon.

And you're rooting for Freddy in that film.

Yeah.

So he becomes, he becomes the hero trying to defeat.

Yeah.

And it's funny because, you know, that film was, that film was kind of inevitable.

It was, it was teased at the end of I can't remember which Elm street, sorry, which Friday the 13th film it was now.

But there's a tease at the end of it where you see Jason's mask sort of pulled under the ground by Freddy's glove.

And that was actually years before this film got made, Freddy versus Jason got made.

So, you know, it was always coming, it was always inevitable.

And I think, although it was an insane concept to see on film at that time, you know, two of these titans of a genre from, from different areas sort of coming together in a film, you know, by today's standards, that kind of thing would be expected.

I think at the time, comic book readers of the, of the 1980s and 1990s would would have recognized that kind of thing, that inevitability.

I think team ups and crossovers, that kind of thing were everywhere in 1980s, 1990s comics.

So, you know, you'd have Terminator versus Alien and Alien versus Predator and Predator versus Ash and all that kind of thing as well as.

So, you know, Batman versus Spider Man.

All that kind of, you know, that kind of thing was normal in, in.

In comic books.

But seeing it on film was quite a big thing at the time.

And I think what's probably more surprising is we've not seen it more since then.

I think there was a vet, There were vague plans to do a Freddy vs.

Jason vs.

Ash from the Equal Dead, a sort of sequel that would bring him in as well.

Yeah.

And then ultimately they just did that as a comic book.

But I think there were plans to sort of do that as a, As a film as well.

But yeah, I mean, you know, by today's standards, you know, looking at what Marvel's done and looking what.

At what Universal's tried to do and other sort of, it feels inevitable that if, if Freddy and Jason and his peers were, were more prominent in the culture at the moment, I think there would almost certainly be a universe of those films.

I mean, there may still well be.

That may still happen.

But the other thing is, I think Freddy's.

Freddy's existence outside of reality as well kind of allows for it and it sort of allows him to almost be the one who, who does the movement from, you know, be the hero almost move from.

From universe to universe.

He.

He exists in a non reality, so it makes sense for him to do that.

And I think it throws up some, some nice concepts as well.

I mean, you know, does Michael Myers dream?

Does Leatherface dream?

And if so, what does that look like?

And, and what happens if Freddy enters those nightmares and takes on those characters in their own spaces and stuff like that.

It's goes back to that thing of, you know, the dream reality having this sort of limitless potential.

So you would have thought that something like that would have happened by now.

I know, I know there's legal reasons.

Why it probably hasn't, but, I mean, that's a great concept.

And if that now happens, I'll be invoicing new life.

If anyone's listening.

That was my idea.

But you're right, though.

Like, Freddy actually has the freedom to crop up in pretty much any franchise or film that producers care to.

To use him in.

And I think it.

It makes it so easy for the character of Freddy Krueger to sort of saturate popular culture.

But also with that comes a risk that he's used so much and commercialized to such an extent that he no longer is scary.

And that's counterintuitive because then the appeal of Freddy Krueger goes.

Right.

Yeah, it's for.

I think a lot of people blame the films for that and for sort of, you know, Freddy becoming less scary.

And I know Wes Craven has been very open about, you know, he didn't like the direction that the films went, and Freddy became sillier and stuff like that.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

I.

I think people focus on the films a little bit too much there.

He does become more of an antihero as the films go on.

But I think the sort of saturation, if you like, of Freddie sort of happens outside the films.

And I think what was happening outside the films was kind of more responsible for that, that saturation, really.

I mean, shortly after the second film, New Line Cinema, was starting to noticeably realize that there was a lot of money in merchandising and licensing that was being just left on the table.

Again, Bob Shea is not a guy who likes to leave money on the table.

So they started with photo shoots of Freddie sort of in different poses and stuff like that that they could sell as posters.

And then there were T shirts.

And I think the marketing manager for New Line at the time said that they started to treat Freddie like a rock star and market him like he was a rock band.

So you get posters, you get, you know, pin badges, obviously, there's hats, jumpers, plastic toy gloves, model kits, board games.

You know, the merchandise really ramps up there.

So if you think about it, that's the stuff that's.

That's the stuff that's going out there into the world.

And landing in people's homes and making Freddie a sort of a household name.

He then starts spilling out of the films onto TV because you've got the.

There's the Freddie telephone hotline where you can sort of phone up Freddie and have him sort of abuse you for 30 seconds for a small fortune, you know.

So that's being advertised on TV.

Then in 1988, the Freddy's Nightmare TV, Freddy's Nightmares TV series comes along.

So by this point, and quite literally with the TV series, Freddie is invited into people's homes.

He's, you know, he's breaking the fourth wall.

He's speaking directly to them, he's conversing with the audience directly.

And, you know, because of the nature of the show, it's.

It's all about people who get their comeuppance and stuff like that.

Because of the nature of the show, it's almost like Freddy is making the viewers complicit in the killing.

So, you know, Freddie joining the audience and being such a prominent part of the culture is less about the films for me.

It's more about the supporting materials around the films that sort of really do that.

I mean, you.

It doesn't take long at that point for Freddie to just become that household name.

He's, you know, he's been name dropped in game shows and in sitcoms.

He's.

Even Ronald Reagan is referring to sort of historical democratic policy as being a Nightmare on Elm street and stuff like that.

So it's in the culture at that point.

And, and yes, the films have a big hand in that.

But you, you can't help thinking that maybe, you know, the board games and stuff like that that were just knocking around people's houses just make him seem a little bit less of a worry.

Historically, though, it's a real testament to just how powerful a good horror concept can be.

And indeed, you know, credit is due here to Robert Englunds because, yeah, you know, were it not for his particular characterization of Freddie and how he brought him to life, maybe he wouldn't have resonated as.

As much as he did.

And I mean, I feel like now people talk about Freddy Krueger in the same way that they talk about real, live historical figures.

He's just become part of the national psyche, hasn't he?

Absolutely.

I'm surprised, I'm surprised Trump didn't wheel him out as an example of a great guy judging the way, the way things were going at one point.

He is, he's, you know, it's, it's very it's kind of difficult to say what his.

Is.

His current sort of status is because, you know, he hasn't been around much since 2010.

The.

The remake.

The 2010 remake wasn't received very well, but it was a hit.

So, you know, I think it made $115 million globally.

So it.

It suggests that the.

There is still a market for Freddy and.

And people still know who he is and are still interested to see what he does.

I think maybe a better barometer of his sort of cultural status is the 2018 episode of the Goldbergs, which was called Mr.

Knifey Hands, and it had Robert Englund back in the makeup for what he claims is.

Is the very last time.

And, you know, that that show was very well reviewed, if anybody can remember, you know, being online in 2018 around that time, it was everywhere.

It was popping up on socials a lot, and it was, you know, it was a ratings hit.

So it's obvious that Freddy Krueger is.

Is still a known quantity and something that people will probably want to see again.

But it kind of goes back again to that.

It goes back again to the Robert Englund question.

You know, he's 77 years old now.

It's clear that it's not going to be him.

What do you do from there?

I mean, it's.

It's what we're saying about the strength of crew, the strength of Freddy Krueger as a brand is also his weakness.

You know, he was a product of his time, and he played right into.

He came along when home video was.

Was.

Was emerging and becoming just.

Just a part of our culture.

So he benefited from that as well, or they benefited from that new line, was able to listen to audiences and allow Freddie to be what he wanted to be.

But I don't know how you do that again.

It's a difficult, difficult thing to recreate.

You know, you mentioned the episode of the Goldbergs.

Maybe we're not celebrating Robert Englund as much as we should here, because Freddy Krueger, sure, he's.

He's become just an iconic character, but clearly when they tried to reincarnate Freddie with a different actor in Jackie O'Haley, something didn't quite hit.

And you could argue there was many reasons, you know, that anyone who's seen that 2010 remake would probably agree it was a much darker film than the.

The previous franchise.

But when Robert England then reprises his role in a TV episode of the Goldbergs, it's a huge hit.

So is it actually.

Is it Robert Englund?

I Think it's.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I don't think it could be understated how much he brought to that character.

You know, he.

He is that character.

Jack Shoulder, the director of Elm Street 2, Freddy's Revenge, at the time of making that film, said, you know, to New Line Cinema, it's pretty obvious that Freddie is the franchise here.

Bob Shea was.

You know, it's not the first time that they tried to replace Freddie.

In 2010, they tried to do it in when they were making Freddy's Revenge.

Bob Shea basically said, well, why do I need to pay this guy, Robert Englund, so much money when I can just stick somebody else in the makeup?

And they did screen tests, and the.

The guy who replaced Freddy was.

Was very.

He was doing it in a very sort of.

He did it like a sort of Jason performance.

Very sort of, you know, not very loose and performative, a lot more sort of.

And so, yeah, they tried to replace Robert Englund, then it didn't work.

They then decided to pay him what he was worth, and he's been there ever since.

Jack Shoulder thinks Freddie was the franchise.

I'd go one step further.

I think Robert Englund is the franchise.

He certainly has been up until this point.

He's still out there keeping the brand alive.

He is very happy to turn up at conventions all the time and, you know, pretend to cut people's throat open for a.

In a selfie.

And he's appearing everywhere, and people always ask him about, and he never seems tired of talking about it.

But, yeah, I mean, like I say, he's 77 years old.

He won't be back, but it's gonna take someone very special and very specific to replace him.

I.

It won't surprise you to know I don't like the 2010 remake.

I don't know many Nightmare on Elm street fans that do, but I don't blame Jackie Earl Haley for that, to be honest with you.

I think he's possibly the least guilty party there.

I think the remake was an attempt to, once again, sort of listen to audiences and go, all right, what do you need Freddie to be now?

And the general sense was, well, we don't like Freddy because he's not scary anymore.

And I think they kind of made him too scary.

They sort of leaned into a forgotten part of his character that was maybe a bit too real.

And I think, tonally, that's where they went wrong.

I think.

I mean, visually, they find they wanted to make A Nightmare on Elm street in the same sort of aesthetic of of 2010, sort of platinum Dunes movies and stuff like that.

That makes sense, I guess.

But what we know from looking at the remake and what we know from looking at the Goldberg's episode is people want Freddy to be scary in the way that, you know, in a boogeyman kind of way.

We want to be scared of Freddy, but we also want to like him.

And the 2010 remake made some choices that made him very explicitly dislikable.

So we didn't want to see him again.

We don't want to see that guy anymore because that's a thing that we're not comfortable with.

And do you think that that's the key to a horror villain that does endure in wider popular culture?

Because I immediately think of comparisons to Tobin Bell and Jigsaw.

Yeah, you know, he's also quite a tragic character and very dislikeable and quite scary, but he also has a vulnerability there and he has, he has a, a depth to his character that creates an appeal that maybe, you know, these other villains like Michael Myers and Jason lack.

And that's perhaps why characters like Jigsaw and particularly Freddy Krueger are able to break out of their franchise and become figures across pop culture.

I think.

So, you know, you got, you know, if you think about the best, the best Batman villains and the best Spider man villains, they all have a reason for being who they are.

And that's kind of what we want to see.

With Freddie.

It was, you know, it wasn't.

They obviously the sort of initial idea that Freddie would be a child molester was something that was owned, that only ever really existed in an early draft of, of Wes Craven scripts.

There were some quite high profile cases in LA at the time around sort of schools where accusations of things were going on.

And so the decision was taken very early on.

Okay, we're not going down that route.

So this idea that Freddie was a child molester, it's never really existed in the films, so we never needed to address it.

We could have fun with Freddie and not feel the guilt of supporting someone who, who's a childbirth.

I think that the, the decision that the 2010 film took, in a way, it, for a while in that film, it's sort of suggesting that maybe the parents got it wrong and they killed someone who was innocent.

I quite like that as an idea.

I quite like the idea that maybe the parents, you know, maybe that's.

Again, I'm giving away my best ideas here.

Maybe, but maybe if, you know, in the era of social media where it's very easy for, for people to get canceled in the real world.

The idea that somebody could be accused of something and then these parents could do something horrible and that would motivate him to come back and kill their children.

That's an interesting idea.

Unfortunately, I remember it very vividly watching the film for, for the first time, the remake, and just, they don't do that.

They sort of go, oh, no, he was a child molester.

And then you suddenly, well, I can't, I don't, well, I don't like him then, you know, so you're right.

It takes the fun out of Freddy.

It does, it does.

That's it.

And, and that's what the Goldberg's episode didn't do.

You know, they got the old Freddy back because that's what people wanted.

I can't imagine there was ever a discussion on the table that they would get Jackie Earl Haley.

So, you know, they brought him back and they made it fun.

And it was about, you know, it was about the boogeyman, not the, you know, the evil child molester.

Yeah.

And so what does the franchise do from here?

And what, what happens to Freddy Krueger?

I mean, it's this conundrum with anyone who's sort of rise to fame, fictional or not, is built on, on fear that when, when that starts to go a bit, do they, do they just die off?

You know, is there, is Freddy just going to be one of those characters from late 20th century American pop culture that we remember in history?

Or can he, can he come back?

It's really difficult to say because on the one hand, you know, you sort of look at the, you look at the bankability of it and you look, you look at the strength of the idea and you go, you know, he can't be gone.

Like, you know, if somebody owns.

Well, we know that the rights to the franchise have passed back over to Wes Craven's estate.

And apparently conversations have been happening for a very long time with HBO and Blumhouse and other sort of people about what to do with it.

So I think it's inevitable that he comes back.

I, I really, really do.

Just because Hollywood, again, like Bob Shade, they don't leave money on the table.

So he will be back.

As I say, England is 77 years old.

It's not going to be him.

So what comes next is going to be interesting.

I'm a, I'm a movie guy more than I am a TV series guy.

So unusually for me, I, I, I would say I think maybe a TV series might be a better option.

I think a movie now, a horror movie now would have a lot of pressure on it.

And because it would, people would be expecting it to be a franchise and put one foot wrong like they did with the, the remake, and that all goes out the window and suddenly the, the franchise is dead for another 10 years.

A TV series.

And I know that there's been discussions of maybe HBO doing something, a TV series might allow us to get to know Freddy again and get to, you know, have the space to allow him to become part of the fabric of culture in a different way.

You know, people are comfortable with episodic tv again, being quite a high profile thing.

And I feel like.

And again, this is not normally the kind of thing I'd say.

I'd be like, please don't make a series, make a movie.

But I just feel like in this case, a, a TV series might be that soft introduction, soft reintroduction to the character that we need.

Who they get to play.

It is, is, is gonna be a real tough one.

But I think whatever they do, it has to be fun because that sort of, that mean version of Freddy, I don't know that anybody's rooting to see that again.

Yeah, I agree completely with you and I.

Anyone that, that thinks that they should go back to, to a movie, I would urge to watch the, the TV series of Scream that they did around about sort of what, five, five to 10 years ago now, which was actually a really solid adaptation of the franchise.

And I think they could do something very similar with not Run Elm street.

But.

But yeah, well, I've been, I've been told as well this, the Exorcist TV series apparently is great.

You know, there is precedent for this stuff.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't say the Nightmare on Elm Street TV series is a great example of translating, translating movies to the screen, but it is possible and yeah, I'd like to see it.

Yeah.

And I think there's something to be said for just being able to like, watch something scary on your sofa, you know, at night.

Maybe that's, you know, that's, that's the way now that people want to, want to watch scary stuff, which is maybe why there's a bit of a transition to series over films, but.

Right.

That about wraps up the conversation for this episode.

No, thank you so much for joining me for this.

Thank you.

No idea how long I've been sort of hoping to do an episode on Freddy Krueger, and I'm gonna search endlessly for excuses to get you back on.

So we can chat more about this.

Yeah, we're gonna leave some useful links in the show notes as well.

So if you are listening to this and want to find out more, you can check out all of that.

But no, if anyone wants to connect with you directly, where can they do that?

Yeah, so I'm a little bit off social media these days, but if you had to noemeller.com there will be all my old sort of 80s pop culture podcasts and links to everything that I'm up to there.

And if anybody wants to get in touch with me, then there's, there's links on there as well.

So yeah.

Noelmellor.com awesome.

And you can find me on X just about hanging in there, but I'm now on blue sky on LinkedIn.

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Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.