10 Horror Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

The Elm Street franchise is one which started life full of sinister chills, then ultimately devolved into a slapstick affair before Wes Craven managed to bring some semblance of scares back to the table with supposed series-ender New Nightmare in 1994. Even then, though, there was a crossover with Jason Voorhees and later a damn awful remake.

As to when the property had the perfect chance to call it a day, that's at the end of 1987's A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

This threequel came at a time when the series still had some slither of dread to it, brought back original protagonist Nancy Thompson to sacrifice herself for the greater good, seemingly killed off Freddy Krueger, and established a new group of Springwood youngsters who would make sure that Krueger was permanently kept at bay.

The ending of Nancy paying the ultimate price to save future generations from Freddy should've been a poignant, powerful point to end the Elm Street series on. Instead, a fourth entry in the franchise arrived just one year later; an entry which had Krueger brought back to life by a dog taking a flaming, fiery piss which somehow resurrected the rogue. Added to that, Elm Street 4: Dream Master kills off all of the surviving superpowered kids of the previous picture... before the franchise plummeted to even further lows with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.