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Freddy Friday: That time Freddy’s Nightmares gave us a Halloween special

By Patti Pauley

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Remember that one time Freddy gave us a Freddy’s Nightmares Halloween episode?  No tricks, all treats here as we’re going to talk about this long-lost national Elm Street treasure.

Welcome to Freddy Friday Halloween bitch!

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Pretty much all Fred Heads are aware of the Nightmare on Elm Street primetime series Freddy’s Nightmares where Freddy, in total CryptKeeper fashion, hosted a show focused on Springwood’s resident’s nightmares.

If memory serves you, you may recall that for MOST of the series Freddy isn’t really a part of the stories but merely your horror host introducing the tales of deliciously cheesy terror. However, along with the Tobe Hooper directed pilot episode that dives into Krueger’s backstory, season one, episode four entitled “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats” actually plays out like a true Nightmare on Elm Street installment with Freddy as a main character! And it’s a Halloween episode!

Not sure it doesn’t get any more glorious than that people. Fresh off a personal viewing, let’s trick or treat into Freddy’s Nightmares.

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Premiering on October 29th, 1988, “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats” stars a pre-Law and Order Mariska Hargitay who plays a young medical student named Marsha. Little Miss Marsha is a bookworm who dismisses the spirit of Halloween by opting to study and dissect corpses rather than party-hardy. I mean, that does sound like a pretty awesome and creepy way to spend Halloween night if you’re asking me so WTF here.

Anyway, Marsha, feeling distracted from her studies at a college house Halloween shin-dig, heads to her school to spruce up on some good old-fashioned human dissection. But not before she hears the story of Springwood’s ultimate nightmare Freddy from the school security guard, opening the red and green striped Pandora box and unleashing Freddy and hell on poor Marsha.

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Freddy torments the young med student with visions of the death of her kind-of-a-bitch Grandmother, for which she feels responsible for, driving her into complete madness. Freddy is known to be pretty good at mind-fucking his targets into submission, so yeah she loses her shit and it’s a good time to watch.

A few weeks later after Freddy sending her over the edge, Marsha submits herself to a battery of psyche tests where her dreams are being studied and recorded on VHS by a doctor hell-bent on figuring out the root of all this … Oh yes, a VCR that records nightmares. I feel like this kooky, yet fascinating premise needs a damn movie of its own. And yep, you guessed it, Freddy has a lot of fun screwing around with this little project.

Worth noting is the numerous horror movie homages throughout this glorious Freddy’s Nightmares Halloween episode. A friend of Marsha dons a Jason hockey mask for Halloween night, and there’s a very familiar looking pumpkin mask and scene with said Halloween prop that screams out Season of the Witch with Marsha clawing at her face while wearing it. Also, I admit I may be looking too deep into Easter Eggs here, but Freddy carving BOO onto the forehead of a stiff at the morgue is completely reminiscent of Joey’s comatose state in Dream Warriors.

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Unfortunately, Freddy’s Nightmares still hasn’t been given a proper DVD release and while you can still catch the series every now and again on Chiller and find a few episodes uploaded by users on YouTube and DailyMotion, “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats” isn’t one of them. I’m not sure what the issue is, but can we please make this a thing already?!

Happy Halloween 1428 Elm readers!

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Next: Freddy Krueger now available in Dead by Daylight

If you enjoy reading Patti’s musings on all things horror, you can find more of her work at Bloody Disgusting and Nightmarish Conjurings.

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