There’s a lot of renewing interest in the A Nightmare on Elm Street spinoff series ‘Freddy’s Nightmares’, perhaps in part due to Terror Vision’s excellent vinyl release of the original score. With Freddy’s Nightmares available for streaming (It was exclusively on Screambox but now it is on Tubi), now is a perfect time to visit some of the show’s essential episodes, and some of my personal favorites. I love this series – though there are a few slogs here and there, the episodes that shine really make this Freddy fan happy.

Premiering in October of 1988, Freddy’s Nightmares entered syndication and ended with the finale of its second season in October 1989. It still aired for a while in the 90’s – Freddy’s Nightmares was actually my introduction to Freddy as I remember being a kid and my mom flipping through the channels and landing on an image of this terrifying monster in his green and red striped sweater and fedora, shrouded by misty green fog. My mom told me “That’s Freddy Krueger!” and that stuck with me, as I was pretty scared by it. It even got to the point that in the early 90’s whenever I thought of the name Fred, I just assumed they were talking about Freddy Krueger. So naturally, when the song ‘I’m Too Sexy’ by Right Said Fred came out, I always thought it was Freddy singing that. I mean of course, he would right? He had plenty of other musical ventures. Anyway, in the mid-2000’s, it found a new home on cable network Chiller, which became home to several other horror shows of the era such as Friday The 13th: The Series, and even ran Twin Peaks. I think that is where I, like many others, was re-introduced to the show and eventually made its way to Robert Rodriguez’s channel, El Rey.

The series features many notable horror directors helming episodes including Tobe Hooper, Mick Garris, John Lafia, Ken Weiderhorn, and Tom DeSimone. It had plenty of notable character actor appearances as well from people such as Jeffrey Combs, Dick Miller, and then-unknown Brad Pitt. This show has such a fun vibe to it – from the colorful foggy sets that give off an aesthetic of watching people put on a performance at a Halloween party, to the deliciously comic guitar-wailing in the score, I love it all. I’ve always thought Freddy was the most “80’s” of the slashers – especially Dream Master onwards, he was the quintessential MTV movie monster. The series is definitely more of that vibe with the wisecracks and colorful sets, but sometimes that’s OKAY. We want a little fun in our slashers and Freddy always delivered in a perfectly cozy way. That being said, there are hints of the scary Freddy from Wes’s original Nightmare.

The Freddy-centric episodes are my favorites, but even some of the episodes where he isn’t the forefront of the story can be really fun and goofy, as the focus on weird things happening in Springwood in a surreal, almost Twin Peaks esque way. What’s interesting about Freddy’s Nightmares is that each episode is essentially a two-parter with separate stories, but with connecting elements. So after the first part of an episode ends, you might see one character from that story crossover into the next part. If you’re a first-time watcher, this can be a little confusing, as on my first watch I remember thinking “wait a minute – is this the same episode?” So I recommend keeping that in mind if this is your first foray.