20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
4. Freddy Was Imagined As A Silent Killer
What makes Freddy different from a lot of his slasher villain counterparts is that he actually speaks and has a personality. Compare that to Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, who are always silent and usually moving in the shadows. Originally, though, Freddy was a lot more like them.
As Wes Craven pointed out, Freddy was originally conceived as another silent slasher villain, with the only major difference being that he didn’t wear a mask. His “mask” in this case was really just his burnt face. He barely speaks in the original movie, though, and in fact he only has seven minutes of screen time.
The sequels began to develop Freddy as more of a personality, and that started right away with Nightmare 2 where Freddy is speaking quite a bit from the opening scenes. The later movies also gradually developed his personality and sense of humor to the point where he’s flat out cracking jokes and being darkly hilarious.
It’s easy to rewatch the original and view Freddy as he is in the sequels, but actually during the first outing, he has much more in common with Jason and Michael Myers than he does with the Freddy of the rest of the franchise.