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The Nightmares on Elm Street
Jeffrey Cooper
Joseph Locke
ed. Martin H Greenberg
The blurb on the backs:
Freddy Krueger, terrifying killer who slashed children to death with razor-sharp finger knives, was dead - burnt alive by outraged parents from Elm Street.
...seven, eight, better stay up late
To sleep…
opening lines:
Tina woke up screaming, the covers clutched tightly in her trembling hands.
Kristen's dream began with a particular kind of dread - thick and heavy and oppressive - that she hadn't felt in a long time. Almost two years, to be exact.
She was a priestess of sorts
The pantheon of horror was set in stone a long time ago and, hugely successful movies and books over the last three decades notwithstanding, there hasn't been much change at the top of the tree: Dr Frankenstein (and his monster), Camilla, Dracula, Jekyll & Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dr Moreau, King Kong, Ambrosio the religious fanatic, the kids in The Turn of the Screw, the ghosts of MR James - these are difficult acts to follow. The waterfront (if I may mix my metaphors) is pretty much covered. Still, there have been a few intrusions into the lower end of this establishment: Norman Bates, George Romero's zombies and - above all others - Freddy Krueger.
In the original conception of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Krueger was genuinely brilliant. And scary. If you go to sleep, you may never wake up because Freddy will be after you: all your nightmares incarnated in the shape of a razor-nailed psychopath who may or may not be a returning psycho in the manner of Michael Myers. That first movie was absolutely superb: 'I'm into survival now,' declared one of the kids and - in the context of Reagan's Amerika - you couldn't help but feel there was a very interesting subtext going on here. A Shock-Headed Peter for the nuclear age.
As the movies went on, however, Krueger (played throughout by the very fine Robert Englund) became more and more of a parody. He developed a tendency to deliver one-liners that seemed more appropriate for Roger Moore's version of James Bond, and the spin-off merchandising soon reduced him to the level of a voodoo gonk. Partly, one assumes, this must have been the consequence of Wes Craven losing control of (or interest in) his creation; certainly the 1994 film Wes Craven's New Nightmare was a masterly reclaiming of the series, playing with layers of meaning and reality in a way that prefigured and overshadowed the much more successful Scream.
The first film and Wes Craven's New Nightmare are hugely recommended as movies, but I'm afraid episodes 4 and 5 leave a great deal to be desired. And - of course - all of them make for rubbish novels. But they do come with 8 and 16 pages of photos respectively:
 The third volume here is an indication of how the franchise diluted the concept: it's a collection of short stories by Brian Hodge, Tom Elliott, Bentley Little, William Relling Jr, Philip Nutman, Wayne Allen Sallee and Nancy A Collins, all of which feature Freddy in original scenarios. And I don't rate it. ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 1/5 HIPNESS QUOTIENT: 2/5
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