Understandably, it is central to the story in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street.It's the home of our heroine ,Nancy.
It's where the past comes home to roost (roast?heheh)
But why would they continue to use it in each of the sequels?Bad writing?Lack of imagination?Horror movie trope(it appeared in the previous movies, so it HAS to be in every one)?
Krueger had no personal connection to that building prior to the first movie.His home was in the boiler room. That was where he used to take his kids.Why wouldn't he want to continue to chase his new victims around the steampipes and dark and dirty metal corridors of his past.
Part 2 could have taken place anywhere on Elm Street.Anywhere in Springwood for that matter.But I do think ,for at least the first sequel, there was a purpose of having the story take place at 1428.
I always like to believe that Nancy's defeat of Freddy in part one trapped Kruegers spirit inside the ,for lack of a better word, soul of the house. When Nancy brings Freddy out from the Nightmare he is not at his full strength despite his recent three soul kills,and who knows what effect the transition from dream to "reality" would have on him.Might in this form he be experiencing real physical pain as when he was alive.Pain that weakens him even more.
And when Nancy turns her back on him and defeats Freddy by taking away the power she gave him, he fades away and disappears into the floor.(and into Nancy as well).You can here him falling back into the void while fading away.
So when a new family moves into 1428, Freddy has influence over the house and the people inside because his spirit is now part of the house itself. The house is heavy with him in the halls.Even the temperature inside the place is corrupted by his presence. And Jesse is his door out.
But then ,why appear in Dream Warriors? Now, I love the decrepit rotten haunted house look of 1428 in the sequels.But it doesn't make sense for Kristin to be dreaming of the house at all.
Unless ,perhaps ,Krueger is still tethered to the house and the connection influences the Nighmares that he presents to his victims.A lot of the sequences in Dream Warriors show the kids walking and running through broken down furniture littered hallways and not Krueger's traditional boiler room setting.
But again, after all these years? Why would Kruger use 1428 as a Nightmare element? I would think there would be more fear to generate from placing his victims in the terrifying unexpected unfamiliar shadows of a boiler room.Or turning someplace they know and love against them.Not some strange broken down house.Granted, it is spooky.
The use of the house does serve as a connection to Nancy and her past.Her seeing the paper mache house for the first time after just days before hearing the old haunting nursery rhyme must have really started to connect the dots that something terrible was going on.And that something might have to do with Freddy Krueger
For all we know, she has not had a Nightmare since surviving the first.Freddy has stayed far away from her, or has not had access to her because of a broken connection or the use of Hypnocil.So the fact that a total stranger has made a replica of her childhood home would be disconcerting.Despite her Freddy free nights,I imagine that Nancy never once went to sleep without thinking about the man of her dreams,and wondering if tonight would be the night he returned.
In an early draft of Wes Craven's Dream Warriors I seem to recall there was an attempt to make 1428 directly connected to Freddy Krueger.Something about the address being a halfway house that he was born in.I recall hearing some other tale that at one point it was going to be discovered that Krueger lived in that house when he was murdering the local children and after his death Marge and Donald moved in to coverup his mysterious disappearance.
It's possible that Kristin had seen the house at some point.She does live in Springwood.She could have heard stories of the two families who had troubles there while growing up:The girl who went mad when she watched her boyfriend get butchered across the street the same night her mother burned herself to death in the bed upstairs.The boy who went mad and killed a teacher and bunch of kids. So it could be childhood fear that is part of her subconscious ...and we all know how Freddy likes to play with the hidden horrors. But as she says to Nancy, the former resident of 1428, "It's just a house I dream about" . So it appears that Kristin doesn't have a personal connection or remembrance to the house.She doesn't even know who Nancy is in relation to that house.I'm guessing here , but Kristin was probably about 8 or 9 years old when the events of the first Nightmare occurred.Way to young to hear about the house and it's events.She also never heard about Freddy.
On the flip side, Kristin's Mother seems to know something about the former Thompson house( and potentially it's connection to the Krueger history as she was there that fateful night with the Thompson's when they burned Freddy alive).She is adamant that her daughter get away from that house.Does she think it's cursed? Or is she more concerned that nothing good can come from her daughter digging up these old memories?It's probably more of a concern about the neighbors talking about her crazy daughter at it again,talking about Freddy.
How did Mrs Parker happen to be in the area in the first place? Kristin most likely sought out the house after the events of Dream Warriors and before the events of Dream Master, in effort to connect to Nancy and learn more about the history of Freddy.So she learned where the house from her dreams actually resided. But why would her Mother just happen to be driving by? Is the Parker residence located nearby? And Mother just happened to catch the daughter on her way home from a round of tennis? I'd say it's unlikely that 1428 Elm Street and the Parker's place are near each other.If close,Kristin would then have had some awareness of it considering it's history,especially if it was even slightly run down as in her dreams. She was even compelled to make a paper-mache version of the house that she never saw before but in her dreams.The house,and the Nightmare, left that much of an impression on her.
By this point in the houses real life, it could be boarded up and abandoned and not looking too far off from it's dream variation.Two traumas associated with murders and death would be enough to scare off any potential new buyer.With no one to care for it,it's appearance would be left to rot. And whose to say that the influence of Kruegers spirit trapped within it's walls didn't speed up that process.
In Dream Child the house appears once again, albeit briefly.It is seen in a drawing by Mark.And once again, these new characters are further removed from the Houses history. Alice never dreamed of the house.Though she visited it with Kristin in real life before she died.Mark may have seen a picture and learnt about the house from Alice telling her about Freddy's history and what had happened to her,her brother, and her friends over the last two years and how it's all connected to a terrible past of the town of Springwood.This in turn could have subconsciously influenced Marks dream.And then Freddy invited Mark over to his house to read comics.
But why the house again? Is Freddy still trapped there thanks to his original defeat?He has worlds of horrifying places to send his victims into upon their entering the Nightmare,why still return to 1428?
And once again in Freddy's Dead, the house appears. Krueger even hides it behind a false facade for some reason?The kids who find themselves entering Springwood would have zero knowledge of the house,it's history.So why would Freddy draw them over it's threshold in disquise?
The appearance of 1428 in Wes Craven's New Nightmare does, however, make complete sense.It's saved for the perfect moment where "Heather" accepts her role as "Nancy" in the final confrontation.Kudos for the art director getting the right color of the blue front door to match the door in the first film and not the red of the sequels. I do wish they had kept the interior the same once she entered the house.And we saw her walk up the steps to her former characters bedroom to find her old bed that she uses to go after Freddy.
In New Nightmare when Nancy entered the house ...and it wasn't the movie home...I was crushed. Though they at least got the blue front door correct. It would have been amazing for her to climb the steps and enter her own childhood bedroom, following Dylan's crumbs.That must have not been in the budget, since they would have to recreate every part of the interior seen on camera,as well as decorate the house and especially her bedroom to match since the original 1428 house has never had an interior that matched the movie.That's a lot of money for what would essentially be a few minutes at most on screen.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting, in Part 3 when Kristin is talking to the little girl in the basement ,the girl says " Freddy's home"......suggesting that this is his place now.
But in part four when Kristin finds the little girl outside chalk drawing on the sidewalk the girl says "Nobody lives here" Sure, she could have meant "Nobody LIVES here" as in we are all dead, everyone who comes here dies.
As for the decay factor. If I were to stick with my theory that Krueger's spirit was trapped inside the soul of the house after Nancy's defeat of him in the original. The corrosive corruptible essence of Freddy's evil could likely speed up the process.