If there is a Mount Rushmore of horror franchises, A Nightmare on Elm Street is sure to be on it. While we haven’t had a new movie in the franchise since the 2010 remake of Wes Craven’s original 1984 masterpiece, Warner Bros. has, at long last, remastered the original seven movies and released them on 4K Ultra HD. Freddy Krueger – and his victims for that matter – have never looked better.
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Out now, the A Nightmare on Elm Street: 7-Film Collection brings home the original as well as A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare(1991) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), all in newly remastered versions. In honor of the release, I had the good fortune of speaking with Freddy himself, Robert Englund, as well as Freddy’s Revenge director Jack Sholder and The Final Nightmare director Rachel Talalay all about these new and improved versions.
“All you wanna do is fix everything,” Talalay said. “You realize how much you’ve learned in all that time.” She was the first one to go in and do color work on the 4K upgrade. “I said to them, ‘Can I recut that?’ They then later told me that every single director said, ‘Can I recut that?’”
The answer was no as the cuts of the films themselves will resemble what fans remember. Everything else though? It’s all been upgraded, from the color, to the sound mixing and everything in between, the Elm Street saga has been brought into the 21st century. “I made some changes, in terms of the look, that I’ve been waiting to do for many, many, many decades,” Talalay said.
“I think I’ve directed like 15 features and if I were to list the top three, I’m not sure that Elm Street would be in the top three,” Sholder said. “It was a sequel to somebody else’s movie and I got hired six weeks before we started shooting. I didn’t have a lot of time to have much input in the script. The idea was to just try to make the best possible movie that I could.”
That said, the new 4K version allowed the director to see his film in a new light. “With this new version, I’m really re-evaluating it,” Sholder said. “I looked at it and said, ‘Wow, we really did a good job with this thing.’ It looks and it plays really, really well. I was very, very happy with it now that you can see it the way we intended. You can hear the sound like what we heard in the mixing studio, which you’ll never hear anywhere else in the world. The picture has been enhanced.” He concluded, “It’s actually good, I was astounded.”
The original Nightmare on Elm Street arrived on 4K last year, but now, it’s the entire, original run of the franchise. Englund sees these new 4K editions of his Elm Street movies as a chance for longtime fans to experience them all over again, perhaps in a better way than they ever have. As the actor explained…
“I realized in this last year, year and a half how many fans that I’ve run into at film festivals and comic cons have only seen the movie on VHS. They have these great memories of watching it at home, eating a pizza with mom and dad. Mom and dad let ‘em rent it at the mom and pop video store, or they got it at Blockbuster or somewhere, or they shared it with their dormmates at school. They haven’t seen them on the big screen. Or they didn’t see them on a Blu-ray re-release.”
“I’m here championing, for anyone who has a favorite in the franchise that they’ve only seen on VHS, they’ve just gotta jam it and get the collection because it’s so pristine,” Englund added. They’re brand new.” He went on to describe the restoration of director Renny Harlin’s The Dream Master as “scrumptious.”
“It’s hard not to want to make it better,” Talalay said. “But because you don’t sit around watching your work all the time, you then realize, man, some of this stuff is really good. When you’re looking at it upscaled to 4K, especially the 3-D, which is incredible now, you just look and go, ‘Wow, this is so exciting.’”
“I think the look of the film is great, it really looks beautiful. And the sound, I don’t even think it sounded that good when we were mixing it. We mixed it in mono because New Line didn’t want to spend the money for Stereo,” Sholder revealed. No longer is that the case, as Freddy’s Revenge has been given the Dolby Atmos treatment for the 4K release. “The sound is so much better. It enhances the film so much.”
One thing that both Freddy’s Revenge and Final Nightmare have in common is that, upon release, they weren’t viewed as stronger entries in the franchise. But their reputation has grown over the years and now, viewers old and new alike will get the chance to see them with fresh eyes.
“All I ever say is, who knew that this would have the longevity that it has?” Talalay mused when discussing the legacy of these movies, particularly The Final Nightmare. “Who knew of all the things one did? On the other hand, it really, really speaks to the quality of the films.”
“I’m very excited. I’m so pleased that Warner Bros. took the time, and the money and the effort to really make this film look and sound as good as it possibly could,” Shoulder concluded.
As for the future? Getting a new Elm Street movie, at some point, feels inevitable but it’s not happening right now. Craven’s estate controls the rights and as Talalay said, they’re in “no rush” to do anything with the property. She gets asked all the time by prospective filmmakers how they can remake it. Her advice? “Make your own horror film.”
Englund, meanwhile, has said repeatedly that he’s too old to play Freddy Krueger in live-action again. In animation, however? That’s a different story. “I know there’s this whole world in animation that could take advantage of the Nightmare on Elm Street stories, which I think would be really fun,” he said.
The release of these new 4Ks comes at a unique time for Englund, as the actor will be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, rather appropriately, on October 31. He “made peace with being Freddy Krueger a long time ago,” saying that he appreciated his career before Elm Street came into play and changed it forever. “Every actor loves having a hit. I could not have predicted becoming a genre star, but that’s what happened to my career. Call me a road company Vincent Price, if you will. I’ll take it.”
“I’m just so flattered to get this star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame because I spent years in and around that area as a young starving actor,” Englund said. “It’s sort of like that circle remaining unbroken. I’m just taking it as a great, karmic compliment.”
The first seven A Nightmare On Elm Street movies are now available on 4K Ultra HD or Digital now. For more, get the lowdown on V/H/S/Halloween and the movie’s use of practical effects.
