He can tell when you’re awake and when you’re asleep, and he’ll come back to torment you. In the 1980s, A Nightmare On Elm Street was a hugely popular franchise. Because the flicks were so popular, Freddy Krueger earned his own anthology series called Freddy’s Nightmares. Every week, Freddy bookended a fresh terrifying narrative in the vein of Tales From the Crypt, putting his own spin on the horror host archetype.
Freddy’s Nightmares isn’t often regarded as one of the finest horror television series, especially since shows like “Hannibal,” “Bates Motel,” and “The Exorcist” continue to raise the bar for horror and scares.
However, in a world where we’re coming to grips with the idea that Robert Englund will never reprise the iconic role of Freddy, having this relatively untapped stock of Englund Freddy performances to fall back on can be reassuring. Freddy was in every episode, even though he wasn’t always the focus, at the very least breaching the fourth wall and offering commentary on the story.
In this video, we’ll look at eight of the finest Freddy episodes that have ever graced our screens. Prepare for adolescents, screams, and screaming teens as Freddy Kruger arrives in the little village of Springwood to collect them.
No More Mr. Nice Guy & Sister’s Keeper [Season 1 Episode 1 & 7 ]
The first episode of Freddy’s Nightmare, No More Mr. Nice Guy, explores Freddy’s past and beginnings as a non-human creature that may haunt your nightmares. The episode shows us that Freddie was a serial killer whose victims were all children and while pursuing a pair of twins- Lisa and Merit, he was apprehended and arrested by their father, Tim Blocker, who was also a cop. Turns out, monsters also have rights and because Tim forgot to read him his Miranda Rights during the arrest, the judge allows him to walk free, leaving the entire town scared and upset.
However, a vigilante mob emerges in order to protect all of their children and obtain justice, and they decide to track down Freddy. Meanwhile, Merit, Tim’s daughter, continues to experience Freddy’s nightmares. Freddy on the other hand returns to his lair and vows to take vengeance on the people of the town but before he can do so, the vigilante mob chases him down, and they and Tim Blocker corner Freddy in a boiler room.
This time, determined to not let Freddy get away, he puts aside his morals, and with the help of gasoline, he lights Freddy on fire, killing him. But Freddy is not one to stay dead and he returns in the form that we all know best, a burnt, leathery face and a glove with razor-sharp claws on them. He is ‘forever’.
Merit’s dreams get more intense, and Tim begins to have nightmares about Freddy as well, resulting in a cut on his face. In terror of Freddy, he quits sleeping and feels that Freddy is after him since he burned him alive.
Tim then gets to know that the FBI is coming to Springwood to capture Freddy and gets worried because he’ll get convicted for the murder and they try to hide the body, only to realize that the body isn’t there anymore and instead, they find the body of a dead policeman. Tensions fly high and, in the end, Tim dies of a heart attack sitting in a dentist’s chair after some nerve gas knocks him unconscious and he sees Freddy.
This tale takes up again in episode 7, with Merit and Lisa dealing with their father’s loss. Merit’s nightmares and sightings of Freddy continue, but this time she notices that if Freddy scratches her in her dreams, Lisa will be injured in real life.
Lisa refuses to believe Merit and their hate for each other seems to reach an all-time high where Merit wants Lisa’s life while Lisa wishes she was an only child. This causes Lisa to start having nightmares as well and when she sees Freddy, she finally believes that her sister was right all along.
They make the decision to murder Freddy in their dreams and put an end to the situation once and for all. The school psychologist assists them in determining how twin brains function and suggests that they may be able to dream in sync. With this information, they devise a plan to fall asleep together and go into their dreams to kill Freddy. They try it once and it seems to work which gives them confidence so after a little more planning, they try again.
They set alarm clocks to wake them up every hour and then retire to bed. They plummet to the bottom and end up in the boiler room, where Freddy ambushes and attempts to murder them. They, on the other hand, wish him gone, and he vanishes. Merit wakes up and sees that Lisa isn’t in her bed and goes to find her only to see Lisa unhappy.
Lisa tells her that Freddy can’t die and they can’t kill him and it is right then that Freddy kills Lisa, causing Merit to actually wake up and find Lisa dead. Their mother walks into the room hearing screams and Merit is blamed for the murder of her twin sister as Freddy cackles in his boiler room hell.
Freddy Torments Young Medical Student – Freddy’s Tricks and Treats [Season 1 Episode 4]
Marsha, a young medical student, is plagued by Freddy in the fourth episode of the first season. Marsha is a studious young girl who attempts to study in her room during a Halloween party but is obliged to attend medical school due of the loudness.
As she goes in, the security guard tells her the story of the town ghoul, Freddy Krueger but being a modern-day student of science, she doesn’t believe in Freddy and says she’s not afraid of a dead killer. This pisses off Freddy immensely and he decides to torment her until she does believe in him.
The torture begins in the medical school lab when she notices marks on the bodies and even imagines her grandmother as one of them. She scrubs her hands raw without noticing and her boyfriend, Mark comes to help lift her mood but she watches as he is hurt by Freddy as well. Finally, as she runs out of medical school, Mark shows up once again and leads her to the house that she grew up in and tells her to watch and see the truth.
Instead of accepting her cruel grandmother’s beatings and shouts because she kissed Mark, she yells back at her grandma, causing her to suffer a heart attack. Thus, Marsha blames herself for her grandmother’s death and she breaks down on the road outside the house and is found by other trick or treaters, including her friends, Gary and Zach. Gary and Zach seem confused about who Mark is and we realize that maybe Mark was not really this entire time.
Zach, on the other hand, realizes that studying Marsha and her dreams will immensely aid his studies on recording and replaying dreams. Marsha is sedated as Zach and Gary watch her dreams; Zach feels that pushing her to the brink and intensifying her nightmares was the only way for her to confront her worries.
They keep continuing her dream experiments and Zach even takes her to the old boiler room so she can be as close to the experience as possible. As she falls asleep, she explores the boiler room in her dream and finds a little girl who keeps asking for her help but she is unable to before Freddy shows up. The dream gets out of hand and Zach wakes her up.
The next day, we learn that Zach’s experiment has been halted due to the professor’s discovery that he was abusing his subject, Marsha. Marsha, on the other hand, wanted to continue, so they repeated the experiment.
This time, Zach’s eagerness for the project’s success gets the best of him, and he chokes Marsha, who begs him to let go, but he persists in attempting to drive her over the brink and eventually succeeds. Freddy shows up on the screen of his monitor and instead of staying in there, he manages to claw himself out of it and grabs Zach. He kills Zach brutally and Marsha wakes up.
Marsha runs out to rescue Zach, hoping it was all a dream, but he is nowhere to be found. When she turns on the monitor, she sees Freddy kill, Zach, while she flees, physically unhurt but mentally scarred for life. Don’t mock the boogeyman, whether you believe it or not, or he’ll come after you.
The Phantom, leaps from the page to do his bidding – The Art of Death [Season 1 Episode 18]
This episode follows Jack, a confused young guy who has a secret infatuation with a girl at school. As a symbol of his love and care for Joan, Jack keeps a tight eye on her and regularly produces caricatures and drawings of her.
When Joan’s boyfriend finds out about this, he insults and berates Jack. In retribution, Jack sketches an ugly and funny picture of him for the school newspaper. This enrages the boyfriend, even more, causing Jack to invent ‘the Phantom’ as a way to cope. Art is a reflection of life, but can art turn into real life?
All of Jack’s wrath and rage leads him right into Freddy’s trap, and Freddy begins to bring his pictures to life. Freddy’s Phantom returns to life and demands that he sketch Joan’s boyfriend once more, but this time with something terrible happening to him.
He draws him running on a treadmill but he dies of a mysterious freak accident as the treadmill machine rips him in two halves. Jack then wakes up suddenly and realizes that he had been drawing in his sleep and rushes to school with his sketch, only to find out that Joan’s boyfriend had actually died in the exact same way he had drawn it.
On his way back, he runs into Joan, who sees the picture in his hand and thinks he’s a jerk, so he rushes back to his painting table to put it right. The phantom comes back again and forces him to draw Joan and the phantom but the drawings become something he can’t control and once he wakes up, he realizes that he drew the phantom kidnapping Joan and torturing her in a closet because she was claustrophobic. He tries to save her but he fails and gets sucked into his own drawing and he becomes the phantom after killing it. Turns out that jack gets arrested for kidnapping Joan
Joan’s recuperation from the tragedy is the subject of the second part of the episode. She is discharged from the hospital and comes home, but her paranoia and hallucinations resurface. She tries dealing with her claustrophobia which keeps getting worse. Her roommate’s friend, Jamie comes home and tries to force her into telling him the details of her ordeal with the kidnapper which makes her feel worse. He forces himself on her but she manages to fend him off with a bottle and accidentally kills him but things start repeating as if in a loop.
Jamie knocks on the door once again, and she thinks she’s going insane. She attempts unsuccessfully to contact her doctor for assistance. Finally, the doctor arrives to assist her, but she stabs him, mistaking him for Jamie and expecting him to attack her. She is then put in a small space by the doctor and Jamie as revenge for killing them. The episode ends with her roommate finding Joan stuck in the cupboard and we watch as hospital staff come and take away a hysterical Joan.
As a result, Freddie achieves his purpose of frightening the residents of Springwood and operating from the shadows, murdering some and driving others insane.
Two Virginal Teenagers – Safe Sex [Season 1 Episode 22]
Freddy is used in this episode to explore the world of serial murderer fans. Despite all of Jeffrey Dahmer’s true, heinous crimes, you won’t have to seek far on Tumblr to find someone who considers him their partner.
Women were marrying guys in jail like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy in the late 1980s. Falling in love with monsters, whether because they perceived them as misunderstood misfits or simply because they were drawn to someone who might kill them at any moment. This episode is about a guy who falls in love with a girl who only sees Freddy as her one true love.
At the start of the episode, Dana, a high school student, is visiting a therapist for his problems with women. He maintains he isn’t looking for a “girl next door,” but he is charmed by Caitlin, a goth girl who may or may not be into satanism, but is certainly enamored with Freddy Krueger.
He approaches her in the library and asks her out but she rejects him, telling him that she’s in love with Freddy Kreuger and that a guy like him would never understand her but he continues to have dreams about her and tries to win her over. Freddy starts showing up in his dreams of Caitlin and he gets scared.
He tells his therapist about these strange dreams he has about her, and one day after returning home from school, he encounters her in a crazy dream in which she seduces and undresses him.
He says he’s always wondered how she’d look like as a blonde, and then his mother appears to scold him on how she’s bad for him. She murders the mother before murdering him with Freddy’s glove. Turns out that because she murdered him in the dreams, he died in real life. This shocked and scared her because all she had wanted to do, was scare him a little.
Caitlin and Dana’s closest friend Nick meet during Dana’s funeral, and after a short time, he asks her out and continues pursuing her. Nick has no idea that Caitlin was the one who killed his closest buddy, while she, on the other hand, begins to have nightmares about Freddy Krueger reappearing.
The scenes shift rapidly and she straps Nick to a massive torture wheel and starts torturing him, verbally and physically, taking revenge for all the bad things he had said about her. She starts spinning the wheel and Freddy shows up, taking her place.
Freddy continues hurting Nick behind the wheel, and we realize it’s all part of Caitlin’s fantasy. Freddy Krueger was envious of all the attention she was getting from males, first Dana and then Nick, when she awoke. Freddy also leaves her a message in real blood, confirming her fears. Turns out that Nick was also alive and well because he called, asking her out once again but this time Caitlin was very very scared.
Caitlin goes back to her therapist and tries to talk it out with him and the doctor pushes her into believing that it is just a dream and that she just has to see it through for it to all end. That night, she goes back home, determined to finish things off with Freddy, and drifts off to sleep, only to die out of heart failure because Freddy kills her in the dream.
Freddy’s Nightmares – Dream Come True [Season 2 Episode 1 ]
The idea of this episode is rather straightforward: Randy, a young child, has reoccurring dreams about Freddy. A mother begs a psychologist who specializes in dream therapy to come and assist her kid because he refuses to sleep because he is terrified that Freddy would come for him in the age of talk show hosts. The psychologist agrees to come and see him and when he enters the house, he sees Randy come tumbling down the stairs.
He authorizes Dr. Brandon to assist him, but this doctor will not aid him if there are no cameras there, thus his whole session is recorded. Randy brings up Freddy in front of the cameras which leads to an altercation between him and the doctor because the doctor says that he wants to meet Freddy and believes that he isn’t real.
Randy, on the other hand, begins to have nightmares about Freddy after he informs him that he knows he’s trying to get rid of him. Randy consents to the doctor using hypnosis on him in an attempt to erase Freddy from his mind, and they settle down for the session. The session is captured on camera and broadcast on live TV as he gets hypnotized.
All seems to go well but Freddy manages to weasel his way into Randy’s hypnotic trance and scratches him. This seems to scare and worry the doctor as well and a reporter warns him about Freddy and his ability to kill people from beyond the grave.
After acquiring this new knowledge, the doctor chooses to give it another go, but he makes the fatal error of not believing in Freddy Krueger. Randy walks into his room and tells the doctor that he has a split personality disorder and that Freddy is one of his personalities but it turns out that the doctor was dreaming himself. The mother wakes up the doctor to show him that somehow miraculously, Randy is sleeping peacefully.
The doctor falls asleep, and later that night, Randy’s mother begins to seduce him in his dream, only for Freddy to turn up and murder Randy’s mother. He notices that Freddy has moved from Randy’s dreams to his own. He leaves the house in a frenzy, determined to tell the world that Freddy exists.
We then realize that the doctor is stuck in his own dream loop as he dreams that Freddy is a doctor in the talk show he was on. He goes there and vandalizes the place with his gun, causing a police officer to shoot at him, which kills him.
The doctor’s reporter and cameraman, Garry, is featured in the second half of the narrative. Garry Heath gets obsessed with obtaining Freddy Krueger’s photographic proof. His girlfriend disappears and he has to go into the crime scene he was in charge of covering, alone, only to learn that the victim was his girlfriend, Judy. A heartbroken Garry tries to gather evidence about her murder to find out who killed her.
He begins to have hallucinations and see things, and he returns to Randy for answers. Randy informs him that Freddy was the one who murdered the doctor and, most likely, Judy. The two of them go to the place where Judy was murdered and shoot some footage to see if Freddy shows up.
Freddy comes out to play, and while they can see him, the camera is unable to capture the image, making Gary appear to be a complete moron. Freddy kills Gary and his body is found by the police, thus ending the case and our dear Freddy manages to go undetected once again.
Freddy Helps – Photo Finish [Season 2 Episode 4]
This frightening episode follows a photographer who accepts Freddy’s aid in order to become successful, only to discover that there is always a cost when you make a deal with the devil. In the first story, a photographer is recruited to photograph the debut issue of an erotic magazine. She shoots a model in a variety of Halloween-themed setups, including one featuring Jack the Ripper.
Freddy assaults the model, but because he is not visible on camera, it appears that she is merely excellent at posing, and Adler continues to take shots without recognizing that she is in danger. The photoshoots continue, and Adler continues to increase the number of horror photoshoots at the editor’s request.
The model is attacked once again and Adler clicks pictures this time around as well and keeps clicking even when the model impales herself with a stake and dies. Adler finally realizes that her model is dead and because the photographer was the only one present, she is concerned that the blame will be laid on her.
Adler chooses to hide the corpse, fearing that it would jeopardize her resurgent career. She examines the images for clues as to how the model died and makes contact with Freddy. He reveals himself to her and tells her that he has been terrorizing her models this whole time. But because her pictures were doing so well, the editor asks her to shoot another set and she gives in despite knowing that Freddy will torture the new model as well.
She sets up one more session and waits for the model to fall asleep before beginning to photograph her. Freddy resurfaces, and Adler sees him for the first time. However, we can see that the model is alive, and it is Adler who is hallucinating. He jams his claws into her eyes, covering her face in blood, causing the model to scream and freak out while the camera keeps clicking. Adler turns in the photos which makes her famous but she pays the price with her eyes.
The second half of the narrative opens with a person dressed in a conventional sheet ghost costume arriving at a house the day before Halloween and murdering all of the family members, including a toddler, with his gun, which is pretty brazen.
The rest of the article focuses on the FBI’s investigation into this and other incidents like it. They appear to believe they are the work of a serial murderer on the loose who is taking advantage of the spooky holiday season. One of the FBI agents starts hallucinating and sees the entire scene of the murder being played out in front of him.
The other two however refuse to believe him. He tells them that the father killed the two children and his wife but he can’t quite figure out who killed him. When he sits on the chair where the father had been slain, he sees the vision of what transpired, and he realizes that the gunman was attempting to kill Freddy each time someone was killed.
He witnesses all three killings and notices that the father was being stalked by Freddy, who was causing him to have hallucinations. After killing his entire family, Kreuger slit his throat. What they don’t realize is that Freddy is a monster and not really an actual person, so they run a background check on him. Before they can solve the case, Freddy starts haunting Dennis, another FBI agent who kills his partner before getting shot himself.
The last remaining spy discovers that Freddy enters people’s thoughts and sleeps in order to kill them, only to die.
The Babysitter – Do You Know Where Your Kids Are? [Season 2 Episode 10]
This episode is based on the urban legend about a babysitter receiving a call from someplace in the home informing her that something is wrong with the kids, only for them to vanish. The episode opens with Lisa taking over Heidi’s job to babysit the kids in the Burton house as a favor to a friend. What she doesn’t know is that a deep, dark secret lurks in the house.
Lisa arrives on schedule, and the Burtons’ parents run off without telling her anything, and she gradually finds that the Burtons keep their adoptive daughter trapped in their basement. Patty Burton has been locked in the basement ever since she killed Jack Burton’s first wife in a psychopathic episode and they get things down to her in a specialized elevator so that there’s no way of her coming up.
Lisa’s role was to watch after Will Burton, the Burtons’ little boy, but she begins to hallucinate and becomes trapped in dream cycles. Will vanishes from his bed, and she discovers him sitting on the basement steps. Enough is enough, and she contacts Heidi and begs her to come over right now.
She meets Heidi and goes up to check on Will one last time only to see that he isn’t there anymore. He had actually gone to the washroom but in her paranoia-induced state, she assumes the worst. She also realizes that the person that she had seen was in fact not Heidi at all and gets even more scared.
She runs down to the basement to find Will, but as soon as she opens the locks, she is sucked in, and instead of Lisa, Patty Burton emerges, trapping Lisa. Patty, wearing Lisa’s clothes, gets into an accident, and Lisa is declared missing.
Meanwhile, Lisa’s mother becomes increasingly frantic to locate her daughter, but when Patty appears on her doorstep, she enters into a trance and delusional condition, accepting Patty as her own kid and seeing visions of Lisa coming to murder Patty.
Lisa keeps screaming to get the attention of the Burton’s but to no avail but she manages to cut through the basement wall and emerge in the garden of the Burton house. Scared and angry, she makes it home only for her to be stopped at the doorway by her mother holding a gun.
Mrs. Wax shoots her own daughter with the gun she was carrying because she can’t figure out who the real Lisa is because Patty looks alarmingly close to Lisa and also seems to have her mother under a spell. She gets arrested for the murder while Patty goes free.
Patty returns home, locks her parents in the basement, and stalks her younger brother into a room as a final act of vengeance. This episode is one of the few ones that don’t have two stories and a 45-minute watch of this sort is definitely refreshing. In the end, Patty wins.
Freddy was noticeably absent from the events of this episode, but dream cycles and hallucinations appear to be exactly up his alley, and he was present for his fourth-wall-breaking comments.
The mistress, Claire – A Family Affair [Season 2 Episode 19]
The final episode we’ll discuss is about a man’s complicated relationship with his mistress. Freddy learns that this married man is cheating on his wife and decides to show him that this is terribly wrong. A solid episode in a series like this should be full of unexpected twists and turns, and this episode is no exception.
Paul, a lawyer, is having an affair with a lady who is mentally ill. He realizes his mistake and resolves to correct it so that he may live in peace with his wife and children. Claire, the mistress, is not amused by the news and threatens to divulge the affair.
She tries all kinds of tricks such as leaving a message on the answering machine and following Paul’s young son back home from school in her car. Claire is absolutely consumed by the love affair and wanted Paul to make good on his promises of divorcing his wife and marrying her.
Paul had one problem: he loved his son greatly, even if he didn’t love his wife, and when his son opted to go to college right here in Springwood, he decided to stay married to his wife and end the affair. However, with Claire’s increasing antics, Paul decided to take matters into his own hands and he puts a hit out on her. He keeps having terrible dreams about Claire running over his son with her car and harming his family and his dream soon turns into reality.
Claire turns out to be insane, stabbing Paul’s wife to death while screaming, “If I can’t have him, no one can.” Paul comes in the nick of time to see his wife die at the hands of Claire and in a fit of rage, he kills her as well, jamming her head into a coat hanger. This incident leaves him scarred for life, sending him into recovery but in the end, it is Paul’s adolescent son, Jason, who bears the brunt of his father’s misdeeds.
Jason, a brilliant young man with a promising future thanks to his sports scholarship, goes off the rails and walks away from home, only to become involved with the wrong crowd and turn to drugs to cope with the loss of his mother. However, he returns home two years later at the same time Paul gets out of recovery but all is never well on Elm Street.
Paul, it turns out, has a slew of medical concerns as a result of the incident, including chest pains and the inability to walk. Happy that his son has returned, Paul is determined to make things right with him and spend time but that wasn’t meant to be and he dies of a sudden heart attack sitting in his chair.
But surprise surprise, he sees Claire walk up to him as she informs him that she is the soul who was designated to bring him over into the afterlife so that they could spend an eternity together.
An upheaval Paul challenges Claire to a card game, promising that if he wins, he will be able to spend a week with his kid, but if he loses, he will be forced to leave with Claire. He cheated his way into winning the card game and as a result, while Claire kept up her end of the bargain and granted him a week extra, she took his son Jason as collateral because she had to take someone.
Freddy’s Nightmare is a fantastically entertaining series that is ideal for binge-watching (as I did) or watching while eating dinner. If you’re a Freddy fan and don’t mind the quality of the VHS tapes, this one is definitely for you!