The Big Picture
Though it found its origins in the 1960s, with the likes of Psycho and Peeping Tom, it was the mid to late 1970s that really kickstarted the slasher craze, thanks to classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Black Christmas, and of course, Halloween. John Carpenter’s 1978 film turned horror upside down, creating many of the slasher tropes we know today. Halloween also created many clones. That first Friday the 13th is nothing more than a Halloween ripoff, and when Jason Voorhees came into the picture for the sequels, the white-masked killer who didn’t speak and couldn’t die was interchangeable with Carpenter’s Michael Myers. Jason and Michael ruled the 80s, with other characters like Leatherface coming along for the ride as well. In the 90s, Wes Craven brought the slasher craze back with Scream’s Ghostface, which gave way to I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, and more. Missing from this list is another Crave creation named Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). The villain of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was the king of 80s horror, but while he is an icon who shares similarities with his counterparts, Krueger and his films are not slashers.
What Are the Ingredients for a Slasher Movie?
The slasher template follows a certain set of rules. Ask Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) in Scream and he could tell you all about it. For starters, it all revolves around the villain. Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are perfect examples. They are living (mostly) human beings in the real world out on a killing spree. Their weapons cannot be guns but have to be some sort of blade, or a method of death used by bare hands. Michael and Ghostface have always preferred a simple knife, while Jason likes his machete, and Leatherface, of course, has his trusty chainsaw. If they get bored of that, they can use their bare hands, but when a gun comes into play, you have yourself a thriller and not a horror movie. Yes, Ghostface has used guns, but outside of the one scene in Scream 6, Ghostface never used a gun until the mask came off, and the killer’s identity was revealed.
A slasher killer almost always has some sort of motive. Few of them kill just because. Jason Voorhees is out to avenge his mother’s death, Leatherface has a family to feed, and Ghostface’s reasons change with every person behind the mask. In The Prowler, our killer is heartbroken over the woman who left him, and in The Burning, the villain is out to get revenge on those who burned him alive. There are a few rule breakers, like Black Christmas’ Billy, who we never learn the motive for, but even Michael Myers in that first Halloween movie is stalking babysitters to recreate killing his sister when he was a child. A slasher always needs its victims too, whether they are chosen at random, such as Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her friends in Halloween, or for movies like Prom Night, Terror Train, and countless others, the killer is out for revenge. These victims are the biggest tropes of all. They’re almost always young and horny, concerned only with sex and drugs, except for the shy and virginal final girl, who will rise up to defeat the killer in the end.
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Is a Horror Movie That Goes Beyond Slasher Tropes
A lot of that perfectly describes A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger definitely uses knives — his hands are made of them for crying out loud! He has a motive as well: Freddy seeks revenge on those who burned him to death by going after the parents’ children in their dreams. A Nightmare on Elm Street for sure has a final girl, and one of the best ones too. Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) has a group of horny friends, but she’s the serious one and the only one capable of being brave enough to destroy Freddy.
If that’s not a slasher, what is? While A Nightmare on Elm Street does make use of those tropes, it uses the slasher subgenre as a jumping-off point. It’s a wink to the familiar, but quickly becomes its own beast with its own set of rules. Freddy Krueger is no Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. At one point he was a mortal child-killing man, but he really did die, and he wasn’t resurrected like those masked quiet guys were time and again. Freddy doesn’t exist in the real world but as an entity in his victim’s dreams. He doesn’t get bogged down in slasher rules, but as a supernatural being, he can do whatever he can conjure up. Sure, he can slice you up with his knife fingers, but he can pull you down into your bed, turn those fingers into syringes, meld himself into a TV and smash you headfirst into the screen, or turn into a giant worm that will attempt to swallow you whole. Slasher movies are all about rules, but with Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and even more so, with the bonkers sequels, Freddy is near demon-like. He has more in common with something out of Insidious or The Babadook than a slow-moving dude in a jumpsuit.
The Difference Between Slashers and Supernatural Killers
The fact that Freddy Kruger is supernatural and not a real person with a real form doesn’t mean that’s the only thing that holds A Nightmare on Elm Street back from being a slasher, but a slasher almost always must occur in a world that could actually happen. Hellraiser is an ’80s classic, but would you consider that film and Pinhead to be a slasher? What about Chucky and the Child’s Play movies? Before Scream in the 1990s, there was 1992’s Candyman, but does having a hook for a hand make the killer and his franchise a slasher? The answer is no because they exist beyond the realm of normal humanity. Few look at those examples as slashers, so why should A Nightmare on Elm Street be any different? Freddy is just like them. It’s his surroundings of character tropes and final girls, and the decade he came from, that makes him feel like a slasher.
Now, to be fair, Halloween and Friday the 13th went supernatural. In the 90s, Michael Myers’ plot got so wacky that in 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, the Boogeyman became almost entity-like as a force controlled by a cult. Before that was the zaniness of Jason Voorhees’ backstory in 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, with the hockey-masked killer being shown to be some worm demon who can jump bodies and only be killed with a certain knife. Those films were an answer to A Nightmare on Elm Street though. They had stayed in their lane, doing the usual slasher thing over and over and over again, but when audiences grew bored of slashers, Michael and Jason started going supernatural to keep up with the popularity of Freddy Krueger.
To further prove the point, just look at the films influenced by these horror classics. Psycho gave way to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Halloween borrowed from Black Christmas. Friday the 13th was born of Halloween, which led to too many slashers with a guy in a mask to keep up with. Freddy Krueger was not an answer to them. Wes Craven created him after reading a frightening real-life story about men dying during their nightmares. A Nightmare on Elm Street is its own original force that leeched onto the slasher craze with certain tropes, but without ever getting stuck in their mud. Look at what A Nightmare on Elm Street influenced. It led to films like Shocker, Brainscan, It Follows, and Smile. Would you call any of those slashers?
A Nightmare on Elm Street is available to rent in the U.S. on Amazon Prime Video.
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