Ranking Freddy Krueger's Deaths Worst To Best
This horror icon has gone out plenty of times over the years. But which death was Freddy's best?
Ever since the debut of Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven's 1984 classic horror A Nightmare on Elm Street, the finger-knifed, fedora-wearing foe has experienced his fair share of on-screen demises. Krueger has, so far, 'died' in all of nine of his titles on the big screen, with many of them living on fondly in the memories of horror fans all around the world.
Freddy has free-rein of the fantasy world in our dreams, which can make for quite the thrilling finale set-piece. And while he's usually set something up to kill his victims spectacularly, sometimes it's the killer himself who ends up being offed.
But which of Freddy's defeats was the best and most memorable of all?
9. A Real Embarrassment For A Finale - Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
We really wish Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare didn't exist. By the time the sixth Nightmare rolled around in cinemas in 1991, Freddy's series had completely lost control and was spiralling towards some hellish genre in-between horror and comedy, only if both were written as badly as possible.
Freddy's Dead follows the story of our favourite dream-haunting killer luring the last remaining child of Springwood, Ohio back home so that he can be reunited with his daughter, Dr. Maggie Burroughs. Once they're back in Springwood, the usual exposition and backstory surrounding Freddy is explained to the audience for the billionth time, only this time we're shown flashes of Krueger's past life as a child, teenager and pre-burned adult.
Low budget and severely confused in tone, Freddy, who terrorised thousands of horror fans across the 1980s, is reduced to nothing more than a cheesy pantomime villain throughout the film, regularly being outwitted and beaten up by the film's protagonists.
His eventual demise is mercifully brought about by that age old trick of pulling Freddy into the real world and somehow being able to overpower him from there. The slapstick action once again feels overly cheap, with the film stealing the end move from Dream Warriors when Burroughs buries Freddy's own glove in his chest.
One stupid 'Happy Father's Day' and a quip from Krueger leads to a poorly CGI'd scene of Freddy exploding and finally puts us and our killer out of our collective misery.