A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 1

Freddy's Nightmares:
A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Series:
"No More Mr. Nice Guy"

Wow, you know what that title needs? More colons. So yeah, Freddy Krueger's journey begins here, in this prequel to the first movie that ran as the first episode of his (mostly retarded) anthology TV series. It opens at his pretrial hearing, where he stands accused of murdering several children. He gets off on a technically even faster than I get off watching a Katy Perry video though, and, having clearly dodged a bullet through sheer chance and an unbelievable stroke of luck, he decides to lay low, immediately killing a cop. Wait, what? I was about to point out that this is the worst possible thing he could do (investigating the murder of one of their own is just about the only time the pigs actually do their jobs), but the cop in question, and his gruesome slaying, are never mentioned again. His fellow officers must have really hated him, huh? Beyond this Freddy seems poised to pick up his life right where he left off, even resuming his job as an ice cream truck driver, although I can't imagine he'll get very much business now. There's one thing he didn't count on though: a cry for street justice! (Cf. Twisted Sister.) In service of this, a lynch mob tracks Freddy down and sets him on fire, although even as he burns alive he seems remarkably unconcerned about the situation. It's almost as if he knows that this will transform him into an unstoppable dream ghost. Alternate theory: lazy writing and characterization.

From here we're in pretty familiar territory: the ringleader of the vigilante group starts having nightmares, other people who were involved turn up dead, dreams and reality become hella confused, and by the time Freddy is drilling the ringleader's face off that poor bastard has no idea what's going on. There's also a nicely surreal opening bit featuring a news anchor, and while they couldn't get away with any nudity at least they grace us with a wholly gratuitous image of a hottie in her underwear. Pretty subdued compared to later episodes of this show, and reasonably well done, despite some stupid mistakes. (They really should've used a fan to blow that lingering fog off the courtroom set when the narrative switched back to "reality".) It's probably not worth seeking out on its own, but it would make a nice bonus on a future A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) DVD or Blu-ray. You know, if people still bought those.

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