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Slasher Movies

There are&nbsp;so many memorable&nbsp;figures in the slasher film world: the hockey-mask-wearing Jason Voorhees&nbsp;of the Friday the 13th franchise;&nbsp;the ominous, silent &quot;Shape&quot;&nbsp;Michael Myers from Halloween;&nbsp;the twisted&nbsp;Ghostface killer from&nbsp;Scream;&nbsp;and&nbsp;of course, the horrifically burned Freddy Krueger, the razor-claw-wielding stalker of teenage dreams in the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise.&nbsp;

When <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/never-sleep-again-nightmare-on-elm-street-behind-the-scenes/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">Freddy Kruger was created in&nbsp;1984</a>, audiences were terrified by his very presence. This was a man who was burned alive in our world, only to survive and exact his revenge in the next. While Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Ghostface&nbsp;could stalk any of the unsuspecting teens in their films, they&nbsp;still have the ability to run and hide&nbsp;when trying to evade these killers.&nbsp;Not so much with Freddy Krueger. Instead, Freddy came to them in their nightmares the moment they fell asleep. Shut your eyes, and there was nowhere to hide.&nbsp;

As time went on, Freddy lost his edge (so to speak). The once-wonderful villain&nbsp;became saddled with slapstick-grade quirks and was&nbsp;known to let a few quips fly before cartoonishly&nbsp;slaughtering his victims in the sequels. One girl was turned into a bug before Freddy squished&nbsp;her. Another movie featured&nbsp;Freddy taking control of a TV and smashing someone&#39;s face into it.&nbsp;Granted, the Elm Street series&nbsp;remains one of the most successful horror franchises in history, alongside the hard-to-resurrect&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/how-friday-the-13th-failed/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">Friday the 13th</a> and Halloween, but&nbsp;it&#39;s certainly had its fair share of bumps along the way.&nbsp;

A Nightmare on Elm Street

A list of the Best Nightmare on Elm Street Movies. Are you a fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and&nbsp;are you curious to see which Nightmare on Elm Street movies are ranked the highest?&nbsp;Browse through our list of the best Nightmare on Elm Street movies to see which ones are considered the best by voters just like you. Ranked in order of the most popular Nightmare on Elm Street movie to the least popular, you can see which ones were not considered as good as the others. If you don&rsquo;t agree with the rankings, you can vote for your personal favorite Nightmare on Elm Street movie to get it placed higher on the list. You will also find these films on the list of <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/best-ohio-movies/ranker-film" target="_blank">the best Ohio movies</a>.

Renowned throughout the country, the ever-popular Nightmare on Elm Street movie series&nbsp;continues to awe and scare today, making the movies a long-running favorite scary movie series and even making a <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/never-sleep-again-nightmare-on-elm-street-behind-the-scenes/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">behind-the-scenes Nightmare documentary</a>. However, even among movie series, there are usually a few that are better than the others. It is the same with the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, with some of them more frightful than others. If you are hoping to make a marathon night of Nightmare on Elm Street movies, choose the ones at the top of the list for your marathon and ensure a great, terror-filled evening, just in time for Halloween.

So pull up your favorite chair, get some bowls of your <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/best-halloween-candy?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">favorite Halloween candy</a>&nbsp;and a favorite beverage, and prepare yourself for a night of scares with only the best Nightmare on Elm Street movies to watch. Or, you can watch the entire series and decide for yourself which Nightmare on Elm Street movies are the best, then come back and place your vote and enjoy a fun, dream-filled night of sleep!

Wes Craven&#39;s A Nightmare on Elm Street hit with explosive force when it was released in 1984. The film became a phenomenon, grossing&nbsp;an impressive $25 million domestically, despite spending most of its run in limited release. Five official sequels followed, along with a spinoff, Freddy vs. Jason, that pitted bad guy Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) against Friday the 13th&#39;s Jason Voorhees. There was also a 2010 remake that cast Jackie Earle Haley in the role.&nbsp;

Audiences have always loved a good villain, and they got one here. Perhaps that&#39;s why&nbsp;a number of Freddy Krueger fan theories&nbsp;have popped up over the years. Admirers of the franchise have spent time digging deeper into its hypnotic dream worlds, looking for hidden clues or interesting connections related to the disfigured psycho. Most of the following examples come from the users of Reddit, a place where film buffs gather to discuss their favorite movies in obsessive detail.

Are these Freddy Krueger fan theories good or silly? That&#39;s for you to decide. Vote up the ones that you think are the coolest.&nbsp;

Horror

In the fall of 1984, Wes Craven gifted us with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Idyllic, all-American neighborhoods and run-of-the-mill teenagers are harshly contrasted by Freddy Krueger, a supernatural entity with the power to enter&nbsp;your dreams.

Freddy was a&nbsp;neighborhood monster who preyed on children.&nbsp;After evading a jail sentence, Freddy&nbsp;was burned up by the parents of Elm Street. Freed of his mortal body and given the ability to enter the minds&nbsp;of unsuspecting sleepers,&nbsp;Freddy targets the offspring of those who sealed his fate by manipulating their dreams. As he <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/behind-the-scenes-elm-street-glen/orrin-grey" target="_blank">slays the sleeping teens in their dreams,</a> they perish in real life.&nbsp;

After eight movies, there have been a lot of terrifying dreams. Here are a few that have kept fans up at night.&nbsp;

The Nightmare on Elm Street&nbsp;legacy began in 1984 when horror master Wes Craven brought the story of a burned-up maniac&nbsp;who slashes&nbsp;teens&nbsp;in their sleep to the big screen. Since then, Freddy Krueger has gone on to&nbsp;become one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.&nbsp;

But&nbsp;it is&nbsp;Freddy Krueger&#39;s&nbsp;sense of humor that sets him apart&nbsp;from other movie monsters. You&rsquo;re certainly not going to hear Jason Vorhees or Leatherface recite silly puns while they slash teens.

It&rsquo;s not often that horror fans get a maniac&nbsp;with personality. And while Krueger&rsquo;s punny repertoire would never slay in a stand-up routine, he certainly kills&nbsp;onscreen.&nbsp;But which of Freddy&#39;s puns&nbsp;are the most devastating?&nbsp;

Vote up your favorite Freddy one-liners. It will be a total scream.&nbsp;

Wes Craven&#39;s original&nbsp;Nightmare on Elm Street&nbsp;is widely considered one of the <a href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-horror-films-ever-made" target="_blank">best horror films</a> of all time. Viewers who saw the film at an impressionable age have claimed that it actually left them&nbsp;with PTSD. &quot;That this film seemed to have a window into my brain and was able to bring my darkest fears to life was simply ruinous,&quot; one <a href="https://culturedvultures.com/nightmare-elm-street-ruined/" target="_blank">viewer writes</a>. The intense fear that many people experience as a result of watching&nbsp;A Nightmare on Elm Street&nbsp;may partly be because the film was (very loosely) inspired by a <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/crime-movies-based-on-true-stories/anncasano" target="_blank">horrifying true story</a>. But much of&nbsp;Nightmare&#39;s effectiveness&nbsp;comes from the film&#39;s expertly-staged and often <a href="https://www.techtimes.com/articles/18285/20141020/15-behind-the-scenes-nightmare-on-elm-street-facts-from-wes-craven-himself.htm" target="_blank">groundbreaking</a> special effects set pieces.

When someone remembers&nbsp;A Nightmare on Elm Street, there are certain scenes that come up again and again. Tina (Amanda Wyss) being dragged up the wall and across the ceiling. The bloody body bag in the school hallway. That familiar glove coming up out of the water as Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) relaxes in the bath.&nbsp;Freddy pressing against the wall above Nancy&#39;s bed. The stairs turning to marshmallow. The list goes on and on. But one of the best Freddy Krueger kills in the entire movie is the death scene of Glen Lantz, played by a young Johnny Depp in his first big screen role.

Let&#39;s set the scene: Nancy&#39;s mother, who has taken to drinking heavily,&nbsp;has just told Nancy&nbsp;about Freddy Krueger&#39;s bloody history and violent death. The doors are locked, the windows barred. Only Nancy seems to be aware of what Krueger has become; what he is now capable of. Her phone rings, and on the other end of the line she hears only the sound of knives dragging along slate. She tears the phone cord from the wall, yet the phone continues to ring. When she answers it, Freddy&#39;s voice says, &quot;I&#39;m your boyfriend now, Nancy.&quot;

Across the street, her boyfriend Glen sleeps obliviously, sprawled in his bed with his headphones on and a small TV in his lap. We hear the announcer&#39;s voice saying that the station is leaving the air, and at that moment Freddy&#39;s glove appears from inside the bed and begins to pull Glen down, sucking him down into a sudden rift within the blankets and mattress. He screams as he disappears - along with the TV and his stereo - into his own bed. He isn&#39;t gone long, though. As the score suddenly picks up, the hole in the middle of Glen&#39;s bed spits forth a literal geyser of blood. Gallons and gallons of it - according to <a href="https://twitter.com/wescraven/status/519179468787961856/photo/1" target="_blank">Craven&#39;s Twitter</a>, he was told that they used over 500 gallons of fake blood throughout the course of the film - until the ceiling is a veritable swimming pool of blood.

It&#39;s a memorable - indeed, perhaps an&nbsp;unforgettable&nbsp;- scene. So, how did they do it? They started by using the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-lists/bedtime-stories-behind-the-10-most-shocking-nightmare-on-elm-street-scenes-151029/" target="_blank">same revolving set</a> they had built for Tina&#39;s death scene earlier in the film. Inspired by the 1951 musical&nbsp;Royal Wedding, in which Fred Astaire dances up a wall and across a ceiling, the set for Tina&#39;s death scene was built on axles so that it could rotate 360 degrees. Jim Doyle, the film&#39;s&nbsp;mechanical special effects designer, built the set, which cost him $35,000 of the $60,000 or so budget he had for working on the film. He was later able to rent it out for use in other films, including&nbsp;Breakin&#39; 2: Electric Boogaloo&nbsp;and the Larry Cohen killer yogurt movie&nbsp;The Stuff.

The first time they used the room in&nbsp;A Nightmare on Elm Street&nbsp;it was to film Freddy dragging Tina up the wall and across the ceiling. Four stagehands would turn the set as the filmed, while Craven and director of photography Jacques Haitkin were strapped to the wall in racing car seats. For Glen&#39;s death scene, the room was simply turned upside-down so that the blood looked like it was spraying up onto the ceiling when, in fact, it was shooting down onto the floor. Unfortunately, 500 gallons is still a lot of blood to pump onto one floor, and so the scene didn&#39;t quite go exactly as planned.

All that fake blood - a mixture of Karo syrup and water - put a lot of weight on the ceiling (which was now the floor) of the room, and when one of the effects team shifted the wrong way, a wave of fake blood came pouring out. &quot;The thing flew completely out of control, and it went over twice,&quot; Doyle recalled of the accident, which led to lots of fake blood getting on everything, including electrical cables. &quot;There was this two-inch tsunami of blood,&quot; Robert Englund, who was on set to watch the filming of the scene, even though Krueger isn&#39;t actually in it, recalled. &quot;The floor of every soundstage I&#39;ve ever been on is covered in electrical cables, so I ran...&quot;

Heather Langenkamp was on set that day, too. &quot;The scary thing was that there was blood everywhere,&quot; she said to Rolling Stone. The blood shorted out the electrical equipment, and the set went dark. &quot;There were these huge sparks,&quot; Wes Craven said, &quot;and suddenly, all the lights went out.&quot;&nbsp;That left Craven and Haitkin stuck in the darkened set, hanging upside-down for as much as half an hour. &quot;But we got the shot, as they say.&quot;

Getting&nbsp;the shot was one thing, keeping it turned out to be another. The same accident that sent the blood-filled room spinning out of control and shorted out the electrical equipment also filled two of the cameras with fake blood. &quot;When we took them back to the camera rental company, they were like, &#39;You got what in these thing?&#39;&quot; Doyle recalled. &quot;But the film was salvagable.&quot; While the film may have been saved from a dousing in fake blood, it was almost lost to the MPAA, who insisted that Craven drastically reduce the length of the scene or else face an X rating. Craven attempted to appeal by pointing out the scene of blood pouring out of the elevator in&nbsp;The Shining&nbsp;- which <a href="https://www.ifc.com/2014/10/15-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-a-nightmare-on-elm-street" target="_blank">partially inspired the scene in&nbsp;A Nightmare on Elm Street</a>&nbsp;- but to no avail. Those extra seconds of the infamous shot had to hit the cutting room floor before the MPAA would give&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I&#39;ve spent a lifetime battling the MPAA,&quot; Craven said. &quot;It&#39;s a horrible system. I hate it.&quot;

The fight of the blood-filled room was almost unnecessary, as the geyser of blood wasn&#39;t actually in the original script. &quot;We worked out several different ways to kill Glen,&quot; Doyle said. One of them involved a frozen clay cast of Depp&#39;s body coming back through the bed, hitting the floor, and simply shattering. An <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjzYCzLxdKc" target="_blank">extended version</a> of the scene was filmed, which shows Glen&#39;s limp body rising up&nbsp;from the bed following the geyser of blood&nbsp;and then collapsing onto the covers.

Behind The Scenes

The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is synonymous with horror. It&rsquo;s basically American mythology at this point. Even if someone doesn&rsquo;t like genre films&nbsp;or hasn&rsquo;t seen a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, they still know who Freddy Krueger is. Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy is a four-hour-long documentary that goes behind the scenes of Nightmare on Elm Street, from Wes Craven&rsquo;s first concept of the film&nbsp;to the merchandising behemoth it became and Krueger&#39;s eventual run in with Jason Voorhees.&nbsp;

This documentary isn&rsquo;t just a couple of tidbits of Nightmare On Elm Street BTS info, but an in-depth look into each film in the franchise from its inception to how it&rsquo;s regarded now. The cast and crew of each film isn&rsquo;t afraid to spill the tea about each production and even series creator Craven has some harsh words for the films that his creation spawned.&nbsp;

Horror Movies and TV

Robert Englund burst into the horror genre as the grotesque yet intriguing villain Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven&#39;s 1984 film <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/behind-the-scenes-elm-street-glen/orrin-grey" target="_blank">A Nightmare on Elm Street</a>. The&nbsp;Freddy Krueger actor had never appeared in a horror movie before, but he quickly cemented his place as one of the genre&#39;s most prolific and beloved stars, starring in nine Elm Street endeavors. Englund has never tried to shed his relationship with Krueger, and loves meeting with fans at comic and horror conventions across the globe.

What&#39;s surprising about Englund&#39;s shift to the horror genre is that he&#39;s a classically trained actor who studied with Lee Strasberg&nbsp;and took drama courses at the <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/famous-royal-academy-of-dramatic-art-alumni-and-students/reference?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">Royal Academy of Dramatic Art</a>. The young Robert Englund was a star of live theater, with fans camping outside his apartment for a quick chance to meet him more than a decade before his Elm Street success.&nbsp;

The glove. The sweater. The burnt face staring out from the TV screen - these are all things that we connect with Freddy Krueger, the menace of Elm Street. After his initial appearance in the film that changed <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/smart-slasher-movies/christopher-shultz" target="_blank">slasher movies</a> forever, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy was commercialized, sanitized, and franchised until he had had to be buried in 1991. Three years later, he was revived by his creator, Wes Craven, in New Nightmare.

This overlooked gem in the Nightmare on Elm Street&nbsp;franchise isn&rsquo;t just one of the <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/scariest-horror-movies-ever-made?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">scariest horror movies</a> of the &lsquo;90s, but it&rsquo;s Craven&rsquo;s love letter to horror movies, fairytales, and everyone who continued dreaming of Freddy throughout the 1980s. It&rsquo;s the follow up to Craven&rsquo;s original film that the world needed, and it put a definitive nail in the coffin of Freddy Krueger.&nbsp;

Mysteries

<a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/13-horror-movies-and-the-_true-stories_-they_re-based-on/wavy-gravey?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">Horror movies based on true events</a> are even creepier after you hear the real-life tale, and&nbsp;Nightmare on Elm Street is no exception. The story of the&nbsp;infamous, striped-sweater-wearing maniac was not just the invention of writer/director West Craven; the movie is&nbsp;actually based on real-life events. As is often the case with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/crime-movies-based-on-true-stories/anncasano" target="_blank">violent movies based on true stories</a>, the real inspiration for Freddy Krueger is pretty disturbing.In 1977, well over 100&nbsp;<a href="https://vanwinkles.com/sudden-and-unexplained-the-sleep-deaths-that-inspired-freddy-krueger" target="_blank">Laos refugees inexplicably died in their sleep</a>. The deaths of these perfectly healthy&nbsp;Hmong men have&nbsp;since been attributed to cardiac arrhythmia, but&nbsp;superstitious Lao people&nbsp;blame&nbsp;dab tsuam,&nbsp;an evil spirit&nbsp;that kills you in your sleep, and&nbsp;who appears in the form of&nbsp;a jealous woman.The phenomenon was labeled &quot;Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome&quot; (SUNDS),&nbsp;a term that was coined after healthy men all over the world began mysteriously dying in their sleep. If Freddy gives you nightmares, you don't even want to begin thinking about dab tsuam.&nbsp;

<a href="http://bloody-disgusting.com/exclusives/3594940/wes-cravens-estate-begins-taking-nightmare-elm-street-pitches-exclusive/" target="_blank">In November 2019</a>&nbsp;it was announced&nbsp;that writer and director Wes Craven&#39;s estate had&nbsp;begun actively seeking pitches for a new Elm&nbsp;Street movie. With this <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/horror-news-feb-1-7-2020/erin-maxwell" target="_blank">big horror news</a>,&nbsp;fans immediately began to wonder: Just who will take the reins of this beloved franchise, and what direction will they take? Will they bring back Robert Englund in his career-defining role as Freddy Krueger? Or will a new actor step into the striped sweater and fedora, as Jackie Earle Haley did in the previous Elm Street reboot from 2010? Choosing the right creative forces can make or break a film, and these candidates may just be up to the task.&nbsp;

Say what you will about Jason, Michael, and Hannibal -&nbsp;no slasher villain has ever come close to Freddy Krueger's killing creativity.&nbsp;In fact, it's not even a contest.&nbsp;So let us take a moment to pay tribute to this wanton master of dream mayhem - truly&nbsp;one of our all-time favorite <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/13-horror-movies-and-the-_true-stories_-they_re-based-on/wavy-gravey?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">horror movie</a> maniacs.&nbsp;Nobody kills with the style and humor of Freddy, and no <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/best-horror-movie-franchises/ranker-horror?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">horror franchise</a> has been as much wicked fun as A Nightmare On Elm Street.&nbsp;This list includes some&nbsp;of&nbsp;Freddy Krueger's&nbsp;most memorable kills of all time.&nbsp;But whatever you do, don't fall asleep watching them...

Here's Freddy

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Let's look closely at the all spooky scary franchises, sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, and etc. we're watching in the dark with no lights on.

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Say what you will about Jason, Michael, and Hannibal -&nbsp;no slasher villain has ever come close to Freddy Krueger's killing creativity.&nbsp;In fact, it's ...