Why Uncle Wes is Important To Me: Wes Craven and the Boogeyman

Hardcore horror fans know the origin story of A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger very well: Wes Craven has recounted the initial idea in many interviews over the years.

As the story goes, a very young Wes was peering out the window of his house watching the night when he caught the attention of a man in a bowler hat who was shuffling past. The man met Wes’ gaze and leered at him, scarily. Wes closed the curtain immediately and stood in fear next to the window for a few minutes.

He pulled the curtain back again, and to his sheer terror, the man was still staring at him. Wes watched as the man then turned as if he were walking toward Wes’ house, scaring him even more. He ran and told his older brother, who grabbed a baseball bat and waited by the door.

Apparently, the man got quite a kick out of giving the young boy an unforgettable jolt. Wes Craven got something more out of it, though; the seed for arguably the most popular of the modern movie monsters, Freddy Krueger.

Quite a few things differentiate Fred Krueger (gleefully and manically portrayed by Robert Englund) from his other popular counterparts; he doesn’t wear a mask (he doesn’t mind not facially hiding his intentions, chillingly), he clearly enjoys being the hobgoblin, and maybe most importantly, he is articulately lascivious. This is also a clear evolution from the classic Universal Monsters, who, aside from Dracula, didn’t relish their tragic roles as creatures of the night.

While Dracula is maybe his closest affiliate in early horror cinema, Freddy has something that even Drac didn’t have: Krueger could be the monster in your closet, the hand reaching for your foot when you absentmindedly dangle it off the bed, the voice whispering into your ear when you swear you’re alone…in other words, The Boogeyman.

The original intent of the boogeyman (or bogeyman, bogieman) is perhaps even more sinister than Craven intended his nightmare man concoction for the screen to be.

Simply put, the boogeyman was an imaginary creature that was used to literally scare children into behaving and listening to their parents. The boogeyman varied in “appearance” and legend, which changed from house to house depending on the imagination of the questionable parental units abiding. Some kids were told things like, “If you don’t share your toys, the boogeyman will get you,” or the even more unsettling, “Go to sleep, or the boogeyman will get you."

 

“But only in their dreams can men be truly free; ‘twas always thus, and always thus will be.” So speaks the poet John Keating, AKA Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society.

Keating must never have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Wes Craven’s boogeyman was born of that same spirit, and if the intention of his film wasn’t necessarily CONQUERING the boogeyman, it certainly became so for many children of the 1980’s who were able to stand up to Krueger simply by making it through the entire film.

In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy is defeated by the heroine Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) when she finally figures out that Freddy cannot exist where there is no “spirit of fear” (2 Timothy 1:7, KJV). Krueger feeds off the fear of the teenagers of Springwood, and when Nancy turns her back on him, she strips him of his power.

Here is a VERY important development to the future of the horror film. One heavily used horror trope finds females appearing as basically victimized “girls in turmoil”, screaming and waiting to be rescued. Even Laurie Strode of John Carpenter’s masterpiece Halloween, who fights back instinctively against the boogeyman Michael Myers, didn’t become proactive in quite the way Craven’s Nancy Thompson does in Elm Street. Nancy comes up with a plan and tries to, in effect, bait the boogeyman.

In his insightful book Visions of the Night: Dreams, Religion, and Psychology, dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley writes that "Nancy ultimately finds in her dreams the deep resources of personal strength to overcome an evil that the adult social world had failed to defeat."

Nancy finds the strength to accomplish this not just DESPITE the fact that her parents have separated and her mother has become an almost wholly introspective alcoholic, but partially BECAUSE of it. She knows that, even right there on good old Elm Street USA, there are dark depths, and as John Kenneth Muir points out in his excellent book, Horror Films of the 1980’s, “Nancy can recognize the link between worlds for what it is, and look below the surface of reality because she is already trained to do so, through family history.”

So, this is a horror heroine who doesn’t run away screaming, or become inevitable prey to the boogeyman of the night. She fights back, and in turn, conquers even the scariest of boogeymen. Elm Street’s tacked on ending of Freddy’s arm pulling Nancy’s mom through the door as the kids drive to school was added despite Craven’s protests, and is somewhat nullified by Nancy’s reappearance in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, co-written by Craven.

Craven himself has suggested that horror movies can have a positive effect on people, that making it through your first scary horror films can represent a squashing of childhood fears and thereby make kids feel empowered. In the case of Nancy, not only do kids get a hero who isn’t afraid to confront her fears, she does so despite the failings of the adults around her.

A Nightmare on Elm Street also represents another personal nostalgia for me, and perhaps yet another reason for my own gravitation to the franchise; I first watched it with my mother and a group of friends. We screamed and laughed and my mother had to have someone walk upstairs and wait outside the bathroom for her, but we made it through that terrifying film and thereby defeated that beastly boogeyman Krueger.

Sure, he reared his ugly head again when I was a teen watching Freddy’s Revenge, which I rented despite my own misgivings about the fearsome face of Fred staring back at me from the big box VHS cover art, but by now I knew the ultimate truth about Freddy and Elm Street…it was only a movie. Having grasped that concept through daring myself to watch, the horror film became essentially what a roller coaster ride might be to some; just a really fun, adrenaline powered ride through the creative concepts and sometimes astonishing cinematography and special effects of a film’s creators. Legendary author H.P. Lovecraft pointed out that “we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point.”

Cue Robert Englund, manically laughing as he peels back a layer of his own skull to reveal that “You’ve got the body, and I’ve got the brains.”

Children should be taught to deal with their fears, that much is undeniable. It’s an integral part of childhood, the way in which kids are made aware of how to cope with their natural apprehensions. There are the negative ways of using their fears against them (“If you’re bad, the police will come and lock you in jail”), or in effect making children scared by their own lack of fulfilling an adult’s expectations in things as non-threatening as sports or schoolwork.

Some parents even unknowingly try to bully their children into not being scared of curious things, such as humiliating them for being scared of something the adult finds non-threatening. Similarly, comparing children to other children their age or younger in a negative fashion (“Billy is only 8 and he isn’t scared of the swimming pool like you are”) can be just as damaging to a child’s psyche and self-esteem.

None of this is to suggest that every little kid should watch A Nightmare on Elm Street or any other horror film. There are movies that are not made for children of a young age, or kids who just can’t handle that form of entertainment. Toddlers should literally NEVER be exposed to a horror movie. In these cases, horror films can even be detrimental, which is why an adult should be familiar with the material they are going to screen with their kids. Plus, knowing what’s coming next is potentially a good way of letting the child know when they should cover their eyes.

The most important part of it is letting them in on the creative aspect. Showing them, “This is just a movie. That’s makeup done by an artist. That was made by this group of talented effects people.” In effect, pulling back the curtain to show kids the creative side of making a film.

It has been pointed out by numerous horror experts, particularly David J. Skal, that horror movies tend to reflect the times in which they are released, rather than vice versa. This seems to hold true in particular to horror vehicles during wartime. There seems to be some connection between people needing the catharsis of experiencing a thrill ride that has no implication on their own lives, but echoing the tragic reflection of the real life horrors of war. In the “atomic” fifties, the monsters of yesteryear were replaced in cinema by the looming threat of the atom bomb, with film after film showing the effects of atomic energy on the world, turning ants and spiders into gigantic monsters hell-bent on destruction.

Some psychologists have even suggested that there’s a lure in horror films because they reinforce morality; the old-fashioned moral codes and karmic aspects of horror thrive as much in modern horror as in the Grimm fairytales of old.

Rob Zombie, director of a handful of what some might think of as more extreme horror movies, is of the opinion that it’s irresponsible not to show the carnage that a horrible act can attain. He may have a point. The Bible describes in some detail the abuse and subsequent dismemberment of a concubine. She is, after a night of abuse, cut into 12 pieces which are distributed into “all the coasts of Israel” (Judges 19:22-29, KJV). There is no way to sugar coat that horrific event, and the Bible does not attempt to. Was it a reaction to the morality of the times? Judges 19:2, KJV: “But his concubine played the harlot against him…” Undoubtedly so, since many Christians in modern times have struggled with the interpretation of that particular scripture. The morality of the Old Testament plays out most famously in horror stories such as Tales From the Crypt, in which those outwardly seeking to perform evil receive their comeuppance…and it usually ain’t pretty.

Wes Craven directed his boogeyman in one more movie, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. In that extremely interesting, cerebral and self-aware horror film, Freddy is regarded as a demonic portal; a beast existing now in the real world because of attempts to quell horror stories. It was an attack on horror censorship, and also a response to Craven’s critics who surmised that his films did more to hurt the world than to help it.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert wrote of New Nightmare: “"I haven't been exactly a fan of the Nightmare series, but I found this movie, with its unsettling questions about the effect of horror on those who create it, strangely intriguing."

Interestingly, the climax of the movie is a play on the “Hansel and Gretel” fairytale, and Freddy is disposed of by Heather Langenkamp and her very young son, Dylan (Miko Hughes). 

 

In fact, in a reactionary turn of events, it is Dylan who comes to his mother’s aid and helps to send the big, bad boogeyman searing into the netherworld where he belongs.

Godspeed Uncle Wes, and thanks for giving horror a reasonable and wise voice, and for helping to give some of us the tools to, in essence, defeat the boogeyman.

Five Reasons Why the New 'Nightmare On Elm Street' Reboot Needs Robert Englund

"Uh...wanna cut the cake, Dad?"

THE INTERNET IS ABUZZ with the news that Hollywood is rebooting the legendary New Line Cinema horror series A Nightmare On Elm Street once again, only five years after a very good actor (Jackie Earle Haley) gave his best effort to a...let's just say, "inconsistently" scripted remake. It wasn't for trying; Haley did everything he could with the role, but whether the public wasn't ready for a new Freddy or whether the filmmakers just weren't up to the challenge is up for debate.

Very little has come out regarding any details for the newest attempt at remaking Elm Street, but several things occurred to me as soon as I read the news, and they all led me to settle in on one kind of "well, duh" notion: Robert Englund should play Freddy AT LEAST once more.

Now, I'm not in the corner who thinks they absolutely CAN'T make an effective film without Englund. Surely, a good horror movie is only as good as it's script and respective director, and there is always a chance that the new ANOES flick could be decent (or even better). Wes Craven's core idea is still solid and there is plenty of room for improvement over the 2010 remake, of course. I feel like the likelihood of making a spectacular new Elm Street is fairly slim, but even a mild improvement over the earlier reboot might feel like a success.

What I am saying is that having Englund back for one more go round sure would help.

Hear me out:

1) THE DREADED ORIGIN STORYIn order to "reboot" or "re-imagine" or whatever other word they try to toss about to keep us from saying "remake", they are going to have to start at the beginning...again. Remember when you watched the Spider-Man trilogy, and then a few years later you were sitting through Pete's origin story AGAIN for the Amazing Spider-Man reboot? Well, another Freddy origin story would mean the THIRD time for Freddy (FOUR if you count the kind of flashback-y rebirth thing in Elm Street 5: The Dream Child). Englund as Fred makes it possible to give a reason WHY he's back without recounting the entire tale YET AGAIN.

2) HIS AGE COULD HELP CREATE A FRESH SCRIPT
 Now, the one thing you hear ALL THE TIME when people clamor for Englund's return as Freddy is that he's "too old". Here is where a bit of Elm Street history rushes to the rescue: Wes Craven initially envisioned Krueger as an old man (doubtless because of the dude who "inspired" the creation of Freddy in the first place, a nameless old man who scared Uncle Wes as a lad). If the notion of a kind of Dark Knight Returns-ish Freddy story doesn't appeal to you, then I don't know what to say. It sure does to me. At this point, that could be such a dark, creepy and intriguing story to tell, and we've seen Robert in plenty of films lately that prove his energy is still there.

3) ENGLUND IS PART OF FREDDY'S "MAKEUP"
 One of the biggest reasons why Freddy is such a popular character is something that the reboot completely glossed over, and that is the fact that Freddy's "mask" still fully reflects Robert Englund underneath. Yes, we have the latex and the makeup, but you still "see" Englund; the lascivious personality, the feeling that Freddy relishes "the scare" and "the chase" as a boogeyman, the expressive eyes...that's all Englund. Hell, even that voice. Leatherface, Jason, Michael...they can look different and still be the same dude. Heck, even their masks change from film to film. Freddy is Freddy, even with various incarnations of his makeup resembling pepperoni pizza more and more as the series went on. That's not to suggest that NO ONE else could ever play Freddy, but wouldn't it be more fun if Englund could be a bridge to a reboot rather than trying to pretend he never existed in an all new universe?

4) HE'S TODAY'S VERSION OF BORIS
 Which directly leads to another point. If Universal could have continued to make Frankenstein films with Boris Karloff, would they have tried to replace him? Of course not. They were still trying to get Boris to be the monster as late as 1948, when the core Universal Monsters had their last go around in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Look, obviously this is a different time, but Englund is probably the closest thing we have to Karloff in terms of being a celebrated horror actor who embodies an iconic character. Karloff portrayed the Monster with his own expressions and facial aspects shining through as well, and the Frankenstein Monster and Freddy Krueger are probably the TWO most recognizable and enduring makeup jobs ever portrayed in horror franchises. Whether you like him or not (I admit I don't understand how you couldn't), don't take Robert Englund for granted, folks...living legends who can still get the job done are VERY few and far between in today's cinematic horror landscape.

5) IT'S WHAT WE WANT!
 We (a lot of us...a WHOLE lot of us) want to see Englund as Freddy again. Even the box office would be best served by putting the legend back in the part. This is partially because there was a bad taste left in our mouths with the way Englund was kind of just shown the door when so many people wanted AT LEAST a Freddy vs. Jason sequel. We need CLOSURE. Yep, I said it. We need Robert Englund one more time.

Sure, like I said before, they could make a good and interesting Elm Street movie without him. It could happen, for sure. An all new Freddy could be intriguing, there's absolutely no denying that. But it sure would be fun to take my teens to see the real Freddy in the theaters. And it would be EXTRA amazing if it were a dark and creepy reboot with an amazing Robert Englund playing an older, more cynical boogeyman, sneaking around in the shadows with that lithe, spooky body language that he portrays so well.

Come on, New Line, give us one more big Freddy swing for the fences in Springwood. Because yes, every town has an Elm Street, but they're so much more enjoyable when Robert Englund is hanging out there.

Five Scary Songs That You Don't Hear All the Time

Who hasn't had the desire to curl up on a rainy night and let the ambiance of creepy music fill the room? Here are five (perhaps somewhat lesser known) great songs for just such an occasion, or really for any night at all where you want to submerge yourself in the darkness and let the music of the night wash over you. Or, you know, just 'cause they're cool songs.

NOTE: These are all best played through headphones for full feartastic effect.

FORMER LEE WARMER - Alice Cooper
Coop is no stranger to a great scary song. In fact, he has tons of them in his repertoire; it's what he's known for. From the Vincent Price spoken word prologue of Black Widow to the angsty, crazy eyed relentlessness of The Ballad of Dwight Frye to the off-kilter carnival music box notes of the bizarre Years Ago, he's always been a master at crafting a song to make the hairs of your arm stand up and scream. Former Lee Warmer is an amazing example, with its bizarre lyric about a particularly unnerving family member and a deceptively lovely refrain. It sure is pretty...except the whole thing has an underlying motive that becomes fairly apparent once he croons out the words, "When I hear him play in his twisted key / That's the way he calls to me..."

Bob Ezrin and Dick Wagner helped our hero Alice with the song composition, which features some sweeping melodies and nifty chord changes. Incidentally, it's off an album (Dada) that Coop himself says is probably his most terrifying...because he doesn't remember recording it. Give a listen here:

SWAMP WITCH - Jim Stafford
Before good ol' Jim Stafford was being handed gold records for his soundtrack work on Clint Eastwood and Disney flicks, he penned this amazing ode to "Backwater Hattie", an old witch who lived "back in the swamp where the strange green reptiles crawl". From the outset of the haunting opening chord, strummed plaintively with an eerie effect, there's little doubt what Jimmy was going for...he was writing a campfire folktale set to one of the spookiest melodies this side of Alice himself.
Stafford had his first hit with Swamp Witch in 1973, somehow charting in the top 40 despite the fact that it legitimately sounds like it was recorded in the black bayou. To be honest, this is one of those things that sent goose pimples up my arms as a young lad, and now even a picture of the 45 record my mother used to have (maybe still does) is a bit foreboding, I won't lie.

BRRRR. Kids, ask your parents what this is.

Stafford went on to have even more chart success, hitting #3 in winter of '74 with Spiders and Snakes. For me, his immortal contribution to horror and pop culture is in the form of this truly swamp dripping little ditty about a collective sleepy little Okeechobee town who believes they've been cursed by a witch. Let Old Hattie send you to bed with this sweet little melody in your soul here:

THE LEGEND OF WOOLEY SWAMP - The Charlie Daniels Band
So, this is a bit of a cheat based solely on our criteria of being somewhat lesser known. Then again, when people think of horror songs associated with the Eddie Van Halen of the fiddle, Mr. Charlie Daniels, the one most would think of first is The Devil Went Down to Georgia. But this song here, a modest country hit and bigger pop hit in the summer of 1980, gets the job done plenty well, thank you very much. When I played Stafford's Swamp Witch for my buddy Gil in the early nineties, he responded by showing me a couple country creepers that reminded him of Stafford's little glade driven gem. One was David Allan Coe's The Ride, about a feller who hitches a ride in a Cadillac driven by the apparent ghost of Hank Williams, and the other was Daniels' tale of a miserly old coot named Lucius Clay who hides his riches in "13 rusty Mason jars" somewhere near his house in the backwoods area of Wooley Swamp.

Now, there's no way that our talented pal Charlie and his gang weren't influenced by Stafford's marshland masterwork. It's just way too similar in terms of tone and setup to be coincidental. When the music drops off into an eerie quiet, punctuated by Charlie's best ghost story rasp, it feels like a definite bookend to the tale of Old Hattie. The Legend of Wooley Swamp is a MUCH more directly darker song lyrically, with a group of boys from Carver's Creek congregatin' near Clay's house in Booger Woods (yes, really) in order to feed the old man to the alligators and steal his buried cashola. Needless to say, it doesn't work out to well for the youngins, and now the ghost of Lucius is enough to keep others at bay; at least, if YOU ever go out to Wooley Swamp, well, "Ya better not go at night". Reckon the chronicles of Clay and the Cable Boys right here:

NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE - Roky Erickson and the Aliens
Hey, have you ever seen the documentary You're Gonna Miss Me about this really troubled musician who borders on genius and has to deal with his demons? No, not Daniel Johnston...the other guy.
You haven't?? Then do so immediately! But until then, to hold you over, let's talk a little about Roky's ode to, well, vampires, in the form of this super creepy, guitar wailing, vocal shriekin' evil ballad in E minor. Now, this aint Roky's only trip to Scary Town, Population: Roky. Oh, no. On the insidiously titled album The Evil One (Plus One) that boasts this eerie creeper, songs like Two Headed Dog, I Think of Demons, The Wind and More and Don't Shake Me Lucifer are all legitimate hair raisers in their own right, made all the more ominous when armed with the feeling that Roky was actually tapping into something. But there's something about Night of the Vampire that makes it really stand out, and it's an easy call...Erickson's otherworldy vocal delivery. He sings some of the strangest lines ever written for rock with such a "matter of fact" straightforward assurance that it makes you wonder a little if he truly knows of which he speaks.

Give a listen to his foreboding (but exhilarating) monument to menace here:

THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED - Alice Cooper
Two Alice songs. Yup...deal with it. Besides the fact that I'm a bit symmetrically OCD (self-diagnosed), I get bugged when I hear people say things like, "Alice Cooper USED to be awesome." Sure, Alice fans know the truth. And yes, there's very little use in defending Alice's Desmond Child excursion of the eighties. But here's the deal...Alice has had some great moments in his "modern" era. This super uncomplicated, amazingly crafted 2003 paragon to the paranormal proves it. Over a bare bones musical track, Alice alternates between whispering and warbling out the spooky (but sweet) paean to a departed loved one who still appears to live in his house with him. It's a quiet, almost playfully mournful track (how can that even be a thing?) but the result is very, very...heavy.

Wielding lyrics like, "Then I feel your lips touch mine just like we used to do / I'm so happy all alone being here with you", Alice achieves a feat of small profundity (how can THAT even be a thing?) by creating a depth that wavers between macabre and empathy. It's quite effective, and just one more way that Alice validates the notion that he's keeping Halloween alive, honey...365.

Alice's anthemic apparition aria available here: