Freddy, le cauchemar de vos nuits

I'm not surprised that there was a television series of Freddy Kruegar. After all, out of him, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, Kruegar was the only one with any personality. Hence, why he had his own series. There was some potential but the low budget, the lack of talented actors (except for Robert Englund) and poor storytelling all ensured that the results would be disappointing. The sets in the episodes look so bland and non- descript, they don't resemble anything from real life. Robert Englund is billed first and that was the correct decision as he is the one who sells the series. Each episode begins with Freddy introducing the story from his boiler room and makes an occasional appearance during the episode. For obvious reasons, Freddy's evil behaviour is toned down for television audiences. I don't really like the episodes that I have seen. The only one I can think of that was remotely watchable, was the opening one when Freddy tells his own story about how he ended up the way he did. The show does have a dark and macabre sense of humour which is made bearable by Robert Englund. He is great to watch but the rest is poor.

This series was started after the awful Nightmare on Elm Street 4. Freddy's original character was by now completely obscured by feeble wisecracks and, of course, the money-minded dross industry who realized they had a cash cow on their hands. Actually, some of the episodes in this series are better than some of the later Freddy films. 'End of the World' is an interesting and thought-provoking tale about the nuclear threat. There are also other strong episodes involving crystals which can turn daydreams into nightmarish reality, machines capable of watching dreams and the like. The pilot episode re-writes the Freddy myth but is still entertaining and well-made.

However, there are also a lot of episodes which are no more than an excuse for a series of rather unimaginative surreal images and occasional unfunny 'jokes' from Freddy. These come across as very tedious. 'Saturday Night Special', for example, is just complete trash.

But if you can get hold of the better episodes then do so, as they make good viewing.

i know technically this isn't the greatest TV show ever,i mean it was shot on video and its limitations show in both the audio and visual aspect of it.the acting can at time be also a little crumby.but,i love this show so much.it scared the hell out of me when it first aired in 1988.of course it would i was 5 years old.but i recently purchased the DVD of the first 3 episodes,which unfortunately i hear is now deleted.and i also heard warner's aren't going to release any more due to the first DVD's bad sales.also the TV show didn't have the same feel as the movies,in fact i thought it had a more sinister tone.even though the colour palette is similar to nightmare on elm street 4(both that film and the TV show were made the same year),this has more of a serious tone whereas the fims were progressively getting more and more sardonic and jokey.not a bad thing,i like freddy as the clown wise cracker.but i think that was the strenght of this TV show,you didn't have freddy popping up every minutes cracking a joke before and after he kills somebody.in fact this has more of a dream feel to it,reinforced by the soft focus of the lense.im not sure if its deliberate on the part of the shows creators or just to the limitations of being shot on video. i love this show,and taken not as a companion piece to the movies can be very enjoyable.much better than anything on TV today.

Of course, the fact that it is different than that series is both good and bad. This one is more of the "Tales from the Darkside" type of storytelling to it, and it actually had something to do with the movie. The Friday series had nothing to do with the movie, but had a nice running story. Freddy starred in this one, but a lot of the times he was more the host of the show rather than an actual participant. However, he did appear as the star of some of the episodes...think "Tales from the Crypt", but with the crypt keeper occasionally doing some of the dirty work himself. The stories varied in type and such as I remember one about survivors of a plane crash or something becoming cannibals and I also remember one involving Freddy and a cop, kind of a look back on how Freddy became Freddy. In the end a bit of an unnecessary show, there were already plenty of shows like this at the time that were superior in storytelling, the only thing new this one brought to the table was having the famous Freddy Krueger as a host.

Its not as good as the movies but its watchable. I enjoyed Sisters Keeper the best as it was a good story and it has a truely disturbing end! If there's nothing on TV to watch then go rent this its not as awful as it sounds.