Freddy’s Nightmares was something that really thrived from being impossible to find. Whenever something from the past isn’t readily available, you can easily imagine it being some hidden gem. God knows there will always be people praising mediocrity from their childhood. Unfortunately for Freddy’s Nightmares’ legacy, every episode is now currently available on Tubi.
Prior to watching most of this episode, I’d seen Freddy’s Nightmares once, the pilot that Tobe Hooper directed. Low budget doesn’t even begin to describe it. At one point Freddy Krueger kills a cop and that’s depicted by showing a paper plate dropping to the ground as a crew member squirts a bottle of prop blood on it. Even as someone who’s watched a lot of Tales from the Darkside I thought “are you fucking kidding me?”
Somehow with that previous history I recently thought “I should see more of Freddy’s Nightmares.” I failed to remember this show being hour long episodes. What a poor decision, “Let’s do something Rod Serling failed to pull off.” At least with season 4 of The Twilight Zone you got stuff like Mute with Oscar Beregi. I think Freddy’s Nightmares had enough of a budget to hire a notable character actor once, Dick Miller. I wonder how that went. “You guys are so goddamn cheap you make Roger Corman look like 3rd act Scrooge.”
Since every episode of Freddy’s Nightmares is presumably the same, I went with the Halloween episode. In this one a med student is studying and dissecting corpses on Halloween night. She doesn’t party because she had a grandma who made her feel bad for liking boys. In one of the flashbacks her grandmother catches her making out with a boy and while this girl screams at her grandma for being a cockblocking zealot, granny has a heart attack and dies. Fucking hilarious. One of my favorite tropes are characters killing their elders just by telling them off. I recently watched Now, Voyager and Bette Davis does a similar thing to her overbearing mother, Gladys Cooper. Props to Gladys Cooper, she nailed being a cunt. As I felt joy watching her character die from a heart attack, I thought “boy I didn’t even hate Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest this much.” Maybe that’s because Joan Crawford was just trying to teach her daughter manners. If you’ve ever listened to the commentary track on the Hollywood Royalty Edition of Mommie Dearest, John Waters makes that argument. It’s a contrarian case you just have to respect. Yeah, that fucking drunk had the wherewithal to run a charm school. Bruce Vilanch on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast said one night in the midst of a drunken spell, Joan Crawford leaned over the railing on her staircase and pissed on David Niven while he was making a phone call. He left shortly after. Guess he wasn’t as adventurous as Danny Thomas under a glass coffee table.
It’s too easy to ramble yourself into oblivion when you’re talking about something as bad as Freddy’s Nightmares. Why am I here? Maybe to possibly trick someone who likes Freddy’s Nightmares into working themselves up to something worthy of discussion like Oscar Beregi, Now, Voyager and Hollywood Babylon gossip heard on Gilbert Gottfried’s podcast. I’m like David Lochary tricking people into the Cavalcade of Perversion but instead of robbing people I’m talking about Gladys Cooper’s talent, a woman I first mistook for Eva Moore from The Old Dark House, the “NO BEDS, THEY CAN’T HAVE ANY BEDS!” lady. I guess Mrs. Vale’s cunty demeanor reminded me of Eva Moore cornering Gloria Stuart and reducing her to tears while talking about how sinful she must be. Fuck Freddy’s Nightmares, watch The Old Dark House. Not that piece of shit William Castle directed with Tom Poston, the good one directed by James Whale with Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff as the alcoholic mute Morgan.
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