The origin story appears to be where the studios go when they run out of ideas. Earlier this month, Brad Fuller implied that the next Friday The 13th film would explore Jason’s early days with his mother. Rob Zombie explained away all the mystery of Michael Myers in his Halloween reboot, and let’s not forget every other superhero movie that Marvel is cranking out (thankfully Spider-Man: Homecoming won’t be the third time we see the web-slinger’s origin told on screen.) YouTube site PlayaTV is currently hosting a fan-edited video that explores the life and times of Freddy Krueger, before he first donned his hat, sweater, and glove.
The short uses footage from The Dream Child, Freddy’s Dead, Freddy Vs. Jason, the 2010 remake, and even clips from the Tobe Hooper-directed pilot for Freddy’s Nightmares, which chronicled Freddy’s arrest, trial, and release (thanks to a sleazy lawyer and inept police work), in addition to the boiler room bonfire that the neighborhood threw in celebration.
While not seamless (footage from a 1988 television broadcast is noticeably different than something shot digitally in 2010) the clip does edit all the footage together chronologically to provide a solid narrative and reveal Freddy Krueger’s growth from the “bastard son of a hundred maniacs” to the “Springwood Slasher” and eventually to the man of your dreams.
There’s long been talk of a reboot of the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, and rumors of an origin tale have always made the rounds. Nashville author Blake Best penned a novella about the life and times of Freddy Krueger, Razor’s Edge, that is currently in limbo due to issues wrangling the licensing rights from Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema (a Change.org petition is up and running, of course).
The retelling of Freddy’s origins, however, is problematic. By the 1988’s The Dream Master, the concept of Krueger as a vile child murderer (or arguably a child molester) had pretty much been whitewashed, with Freddy Krueger simply becoming a favorite pop culture villain in the vein of Darth Vader or The Joker, with Robert Englund appearing an talk shows in character and Freddy’s gruesome visage emblazoned on T-shirts and talking dolls. Even Freddy’s horror contemporaries were simply a vengeful man-child and the physical manifestation of pure evil… but nothing as evil as Freddy himself. A film about a wisecracking pervert who murders the kids on Elm Street might be a tough sell these days, or any day for that matter.