Tag Archives: Freddy Krueger

Wes Craven featured

Deadly Friend: Krueger and the Near-Demise of Wes Craven

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Wes Craven was never one to rest on his laurels.

A creative force who twice redefined the slasher genre, he would make his name as a horror movie director thanks to a series of low-budget films that would win him a generation of loyal fans. After making waves with grungy efforts The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, he would finally burst onto the mainstream with 1984’s A Nightmare On Elm Street, his most famous character Fred Krueger spawning the kind of franchise that turned faltering production company New Line Cinema into a surging goldmine […]

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Guess Who’s Back: The Greatest Horror Movie Franchise Trailers

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What do you miss most about the good old days of home video?

Cover art is something that stands out – it made that oh so joyous experience of choosing your rental all the more joyous. Choice is the second thing that springs to mind. Sometimes you would arrive home on a Saturday evening and be thoroughly disappointed with a movie that promised so much and delivered so little. But that was part of the fun, particularly when you unearthed the kind of gem that you couldn’t wait to rent again […]

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Video Nasties featured

Scream and Scream Again: A Brief History of Video Nasties.

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The rape of our children’s minds.

I thought that might get your attention, and although that headline may sound like unrestrained hyperbole from a writer of little restraint, it is actually a snippet from a carefully constructed media campaign designed to criminalise independent filmmakers. I’m talking, of course, about the ‘Video Nasty’ scandal of the 1980’s, a political manoeuvre that would scare working class voters into the Draconian arms of Conservative Thatcherism […]

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Elm Street NES Featured

A Nightmare on Elm Street – NES

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At the turn of the 1990’s, Fred Krueger was on the Christmas lists of children across America.

Yes, that’s the same razor-fingered child killer with the burnt face and darkly sexual wit. Sure, he had softened quite considerably since his cinematic debut back in 1984, but his primary purpose – if you exclude selling crappy merchandise by the bucket load – was to stalk children in their dreams and find increasingly elaborate ways to kill them. So, how did we get to this point, I hear you ask? […]

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Never Sleep Again: Elm Street and the Dawn of Krueger

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From the moment Charles Bernstein’s seething synthesizer sinks to the pit of your stomach, you know you’re in for something quite special.

What we see onscreen is different somehow. It is dank and grungy and saturated with a sense of palpable terror. We hear heavy-breathing, more perverse than your standard stalk-and-slash drivel. Instead of following some unseen POV presence, we step into the shoes of a young girl and wander as she does, falling deeper into the bowels of a wretched boiler room as the cackles grow and a teasing shadow haunts the periphery of our imagination […]

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Army of Darkness Featured

VHS Revival’s Bizarre Movie Posters 2

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Promotional posters are an essential part of any successful movie. Not only do they offer the public its first visual insight into an upcoming picture, they help to promote its genre and theme, as well as the marquee attractions whose job it is to convince eager fans to part with their hard-earned cash.

Posters can make or break a movie. From the crudely drawn, minimalist posters of the late 19th century, the art form would grow in both scope and impact […]

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