About Nightmare on Elm Street Collection
"Don’t fall asleep" -- words to live by for Elm Street teens. Not a problem for fans wide awake with fear (and glee) as they experience these first 8 Nightmare movies released from 1984 to 2003. Each features Robert Englund's masterfully macabre incarnation of slouch-hatted, razor-fingered Freddy Krueger, who mixes wicked wit with even wickeder mayhem as he haunts teens when they’re asleep and most vulnerable. A newspaper article about children who died after having fearsome nightmares provided the real-life springboard for filmmaker Wes Craven’s breakthrough series. Perhaps that underlying reality helps make these shockers so unnerving. Or maybe it’s just that we all like a good scare…and that this series consistently, imaginatively delivers some of the best.
Disc 1 – A Nightmare on Elm Street - Includes: Commentary by Director Wes Craven, Co-Stars Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon and Cinematographer Jacques Haitkin Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 2 – A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge - Includes: Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 3– A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors - Includes: Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 4– A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master - Includes: Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 5– A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child - Includes: Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 6– Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare - Includes: Original 3-D End Sequence Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 7 – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare - Includes: Commentary by Wes Craven Cast/Crew Biographies Jump to a Nightmare
Disc 8 – Freddy Vs. Jason - Includes: Commentary by Director Ronny Yu, Robert Englund (Freddy) and Ken Kirzinger (Jason) Jump to a Death
More for Nightmare on Elm Street Collection
In the trinity of modern horror films, there's the father (Michael Myers of Halloween), the son (Jason of Friday the13th fame, a knockoff), and the unholy spirit, Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street films. The spectral man who haunted the nightmares of unsuspecting teenagers with deadly consequences, Freddy (as played by Robert Englund) was a truly frightening bogeyman and icon for the '80s. Unlike the hockey-masked Jason, who dispatched horny teenagers with mechanical and monotonous ease (he never talked, never took off his mask), Freddy was a truly creative and diabolical villain, with a sadistic and blackly funny personality. The hallmarks of the Nightmare on Elm Street series were imaginatively gruesome suspense pieces, set in the overactive imaginations of the teen victims. The first film of the series, Wes Craven's truly intelligent and scary film, was so hugely successful it begat not one, not two, but six more sequels, each pretty much diluting the originality and horror of its predecesor. (Horror fans will fondly remember Drew Barrymore's assertion in Scream that the first Nightmare film was great but all the rest sucked.) Still, there's fun to be had in the remaining films in the series, seeing as a number of aspiring filmmakers cut their teeth on the continuing saga of Freddy. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and Chuck Russell (The Mask) worked on the third installment, Dream Warriors (starring a young Patricia Arquette), and Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) came to prominence with the ingeniously macabre fourth film, The Dream Master, coscripted by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential). Craven and original star Heather Langenkamp did return for the last film, New Nightmare, which presaged the tongue-in-cheek postmodernism of the Scream films and resharpened Freddy's ability to scare. --Mark Englehart