Although fans of A Nightmare on Elm Street are still holding out hope of Robert Englund somehow making one more appearance as dream demon Freddy Krueger, the often forgotten prequel to Wes Craven’s hugely influential horror movie, which formed part of a mostly disappointing anthology series, is now available to stream for free on Tubi just in time for Halloween.
Although Freddy Krueger’s backstory was originally explained in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and revisited in other movies, most notably in 1991’s Freddy’s Dead – albeit with a few changes – it also became the basis for the first episode of Freddy’s Nightmares, a TV series based on the franchise that ran for 44 episodes across two seasons between 1988 and 1990. Now, those who have never seen the series, or just want to finally revisit it, there couldn’t be a better time.
Freddy’s Nightmares was a mixed-bag anthology series which began strong with a Tobe Hooper-directed episode that featured Freddy introducing a nightmare of his own: his death at the hands of angry parents following his prosecution for charges of child murder. The episode was one of the few times Englund got to play Freddy Krueger in regular human form, and pitched the performance exactly right for the origin story of one of the biggest icons of horror cinema.
Like other popular anthology shows, outside the pilot, the show told multiple unconnected stories, many of which did not actually involve Freddy at all in their narrative. Instead, Freddy became an alternate Crypt Keeper or storyteller, bookending two dark tales per episode, but mostly not participating in the stories themselves. Across the whole series, only eight episodes featured stories about Freddy, as New Line Cinema knew that having a repeating cast of characters would mean dozens of them being killed off through their interactions with Freddy, so an anthology was the only way to go.
‘Freddy’s Nightmares’ Is an Overlooked Entry in the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ Saga
One glance at the reviews for Freddy’s Nightmares (or A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series as it was also known) tells a very clear story of its own: the show was a cashgrab of mediocre dark tales that utilized three minutes of Freddy Krueger per episode to link itself to the character and the franchise.
Every anthology has its good and bad episodes, and unfortunately, the lack of Freddy action – the one thing that all audiences wanted at the time of its release – was the show’s downfall. The series currently holds a lowly 38% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 44% from audiences. In the main, the positives about the series mostly came down to the pilot episode and its place as the previously untold prequel story of Fred Kreuger, the Springfield child murderer who became the ultimate nightmare of the parents of the town. Outside of that, the series at best generates comments calling it “badly written, badly executed trash.”
But Freddy’s Nightmares is now free to stream on Tubi, so who cares if it is trash? It’s free trash, and it is almost Halloween, so the best thing you can do is sit down, throw on Freddy’s Nightmares, and then do the right thing and find the movies and watch them to remind yourself about how it should be done.
