Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Director Also Helmed Freddy Krueger's Overlooked Origin Story

Horror fans know the origin story of Freddy Krueger quite well. In the town of Springwood, Ohio, Freddy was a notorious child murderer who stalked and killed kids for years. He was caught by the police, but was released on an unspecified technicality. With Freddy back on the loose, the parents of his victims — as well as other angered parents in the area — formed a posse to track him down and burn him alive. Freddy's ghost, however, escaped into the realm of dreams, where he lived on as a literal nightmare. In Wes Craven's 1984 film "A Nightmare on Elm Street," audiences learned in detail what Freddy's ghost could do inside kids' dreams. When you die in your dream, you die for real. 

Over the course of many "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequels, audiences got to know a little bit more about Freddy's origins. In "A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child" (1989), we learned that Freddy's mother was a nun and that his father was one of a hundred asylum inmates who sexually assaulted her. In "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare" (1991), we learned that he was a bad egg from the start, killing animals for fun and savoring the physical abuse he took from his foster parents. Freddy eventually moved on to killing people. 

Before those films, however, attentive audiences were made savvy to Freddy's trial, escape, and ultimate murder in an episode of the little-talked-about TV series "Freddy's Nightmares." In that show's debut episode, called "No More Mr. Nice Guy" (October 9, 1988), Englund played a pre-death Freddy escaping into the world after he was released on that pesky aforementioned technicality. Tobe Hooper, the director of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Poltergeist," helmed the pilot episode.

"Freddy's Nightmares" was conceived as an anthology series along the lines of "Tales from the Crypt" and "Tales from the Darkside." Freddy (Englund) was to serve as the Cryptkeeper-like host, introducing various tales of horror and mayhem. Freddy himself was only the subject of two episodes of "Freddy's Nightmares," and they serve as canonical extensions of the extant "Nightmare on Elm Street" universe.

In "No More Mr. Nice Guy," it's revealed that a young cop named Tim (Ian Patrick Williams) apprehended Freddy after he attempted to murder his twin daughters. In his rage, however, Tim failed to read Freddy his rights. Although a slideshow of Freddy's many underage victims was presented at trial, and Freddy felt no remorse for his violence, he was still released because of Tim's mistake. At the end of the pilot, the cops and several local parents find Freddy in a boiler room. He announces that he hasn't been caught and mocks the parents. Tim pours gasoline on Freddy, and Freddy sits there laughing. When Tim sets him on fire, Freddy announces that he is free. Later, in "Freddy's Dead," it will be revealed that Freddy had been consorting with eerie supernatural entities called dream demons, and his death was merely the only way for him to pass into the dream realm. 

The episode ends with a bookend sequence where Freddy, now fully scarred up, menacingly intones that "That was then, this is now." And then, after slicing himself open and feeling no pain, he says, "Springwood's nightmares are just beginning." Not a bad way to start a TV series. The episode was co-written by Michael de Luca, who would also go on to write "Freddy's Dead: The f."

Anthology horror shows were big business in the late '80s and throughout the '90s, and it was an exciting time. Because each episode required a whole new cast, every single one of these shows sported a wide variety of notable talent, both established and up-and-coming. HBO's "Tales from the Crypt" fetched the highest-profile actors, but "Freddy's Nightmares" did okay as well. The show's second episode starred a young John Cameron Mitchell. In other episodes, sharp-eyed fans will notice actors like Lori Petty, Mariska Hargitay, Diane Franklin, Bill Moseley, Jeffrey Combs, and even a young Brad Pitt (!). 

Freddy would introduce each episode, but mostly stayed away from the central action, allowing ironic fate to mutilate its characters instead. Freddy, however, did return for the seventh episode of the series, called "Sister's Keeper" (November 19, 1988). That episode was about Tim's twin daughters, Lisa and Merit (Hili Park and Gry Park), finding that Freddy is stalking them in their dreams. The events of "Sister's Keeper" immediately follow the pilot episode, but take place before the first "Nightmare on Elm Street." The story, also penned by de Luca, is merely about how the twins find a way to combat Freddy. 

"Freddy's Nightmares" was a modest success, lasting for 44 episodes over its two seasons. It was canceled in March of 1990, after the release of "Elm Street 5," but before "Freddy's Dead." Sadly, the show was never made widely available on home video, with only five episodes making their way to VHS. No DVDs were ever released in North America, apart from a few special features on "Nightmare" movie box sets. Resourceful internet sleuths, however, may be able to track down the series. And it's certainly worth tracking down.