Here is a complete episode guide for season two of the television show Freddy's Nightmares. Each episode description starts with Krueger's opening monologue and a * by the title denotes that he actually appeared in the episode.
S2E01 Dream Come True*
(See also: Dreams That Kill)
We interrupt this broadcast for a special message. The opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of yours truly. Oh no no no. Who needs to read a book about dreams when you can experience a nightmare in full living color?
Is there a doctor in the house? Not anymore!
Krueger, oh you beauty. How do I look, oh man of my dreams? Oh you fashion plate. That guy in here doesn’t think so. But he’ll change his mind. If it’s the last thing he does.
And that’s the way it is. I always wanted to be on TV. Maybe now they’ll give me my own show. [to his reflection] Oh, I think I love you.
Psychiatrist Dr. Kefler has just invented “Dream Come True Therapy” and goes on a local Springwood talk show to discuss it. Out of all the small towns in America, the dream doctor chose the perfect place to peddle his unique expertise.
Kefler attempts to cure the nightmares of a Springwood teen. Kefler has never heard of Freddy before, so he’s woefully ill-prepared. Soon, the doctor begins to have nightmares of his own.
This season’s premiere is full of car accidents and violence. Best of all, this episode gives Freddy a good amount of screen time, including an almost kill that pays homage to both Glen’s death in Part One and Joey’s death in Part Four.
The second half follows Gary, a suspicious cameraman working at the TV studio. He keeps catching glimpses of Freddy in the raw feed and since no one is able to explain the mysterious events of the last half hour, he decides to do some investigating.
Soon, his girlfriend Judy goes missing the same morning that he reports on a news story about an unidentified female body found in the dumpster. Could the two events be related? Probably.
The episode really kicks into high gear when Freddy and Gary face off in an abandoned warehouse. Gary is armed with his camera and vast depths of anger. Freddy has his glove. Three guesses who wins.
S2E02 Heartbreak Hotel
Man explodes. Aliens torture woman to death. Bigfoot eats Bambi. I love it. I love this paper. Not afraid to lie. No ethics. Not afraid to step over the line. Wonder how far that reporter’s willing to go. Maybe I’ll just give ’im a little test.
Now there’s a good reason to do your English homework. The use of proper pronouns…or die!
Me? I cherish my memories. Yes, playing with bodies in the winter, torturing small animals in the spring. Scaring old ladies in the fall. Ah yes, I remember it well. Too bad poor Jerry can’t. But don’t worry. What I’m gonna do to him, he’ll never forget.
Memories. Light the corner of my mind. Medulla oblongata.
“Heartbreak Hotel” has a sharp divide between the comedic first half and the murder mystery second half. The former follows a tabloid journalist sent to the Springwood Hotel to cover Elvis sightings. In a twist reminiscent of Twilight Zone’s “Printer’s Devil” and Are You Afraid of the Dark’s “Tale of the Dream Machine”, the journalist finds out that everything he writes inexplicably comes true.
With this power, the reporter accidentally makes a kindly hotel worker give birth to a stillborn devil baby. Rather than feel guilty about the accidental abomination, he decides to use his powers to create the perfect story. In typical be-careful-what-you-wish-for fashion, he goes through a trial-and-error phase, writing stories that lead to unexpected consequences.
Despite an uncharacteristically low body count for a Nightmares episode, the story serves up a gruesome ending that doubles as a lesson in proper grammar. There’s also a quick cameo by Elvis’s corpse.
The second half-hour deals with amnesia. Jerry wakes up in the hospital after a mysterious car accident. His wife and daughter act pretty shady, but they take him home anyway. Soon, Jerry begins to suspect that they’re not really his family. He also keeps having nightmares about being murdered. Are they fake, or is he finally starting to remember his past?
Director William Malone (House on Haunted Hill) slowly churns out the clues until the big reveal. By leaving Jerry at the mercy of his seemingly loving family, Malone taps into the character’s self-doubt and supposed paranoia. Because this is a Freddy’s Nightmares episode, Jerry probably isn’t paranoid.
S2E03 Welcome to Springwood
(See also: Funhouse)
I’m so excited. I just love having new neighbors. And I’m sure they’re just thrilled to find out that I’m the welcoming committee. I guess you could say they’re about to discover that marriage can be a moving experience.
So. Are ya happily married? Look at your spouse. Go ahead. Look. You looked, didn’t ya? Let me ask you something. How well do you really know them? Thinking of movin’? Give Springwood a shot. Come for a night. Stay forever.
Hey baby. I really respect you. I mean it. I’ve been looking high and low for the right woman. And you are just my type. My dream girl. I mean, you get me so hot, but you know what I like the most? It’s that love light in your sockets. I only have eyes for you.
Next time you’re alone in your house, think about who went before you. It might be pretty crowded. The dead had to go someplace. [holding up a paper labeled “R.I.P.”] Ahh. Now this is what I call love letters.
“Welcome to Springwood” begins with a happy couple—Doug and Roxanne—driving toward their new house. The passing landscape looks surprisingly like southern California, but they make it to Springwood anyway. During the car ride, we learn that they never plan to move again, and that Roxanne has decided to go off her meds. This leads to two inevitable outcomes: strange things happen at their new house, and no one will believe Roxanne when she tells them.
The moving van accidentally delivers the wrong boxes, and Roxanne decides to rifle through them anyway. She finds bloody swords and torn dresses. Apparently, they have the boxes of either a mass murderer or a samurai. She tries to tell Doug, but he blames her ravings on the medicine she no longer takes. Soon, she resorts to plan B: drinking wine by herself and sleeping a lot.
The mystery only has two suspects: the husband and the horny moving van guy. Therefore, the big twist isn’t very big, but it does include one final, bloody showdown and some War of the Roses-style marital drama. Plus, it’s always nice to see a woman use a samurai sword.
The second story is connected only through the moving van guy. This one follows Emily, a lonely-in-love archaeologist who finds a series of love letters in her new house. They tell the story of Gregory, his wife, and his mistress. She devours the letters. They’re steamy; they’re juicy, they’re from the turn of the century.
Thanks to the letters and some well-timed dream sequences, Emily begins to picture herself as the mistress. She gets completely caught up in the love triangle, and stops living her life so that she can spend more time with Gregory. Apparently, it takes her a very long time to read the letters.
This episode, written by future Tales from the Crypt producers Gil Adler and A L Katz, is all about backstabbing and marital problems. It also shows that the housing market in Springwood must have a huge turnover rate.
S2E04 Photo Finish*
(See also: It’s My Party and You’ll Die If I Want You To)
Now that’s razor sharp. Real cut edge. It’s Halloween and I’m gonna treat that nice female photographer to a couple tricks. I love playing head games.
Messed her up bad. Well, all in a day’s work. She wanted a good issue. Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it. Get it good.
It’s Halloween! My night to party. I asked them to hang around. I hear the feds are coming to Springwood. Those out-of-towners. They’ve got such a bad attitude. Wait’ll I show ’em a couple of my tricks and treats.
[No real closing narration, but Freddy does have the last line in the episode]
Case closed. Bye, bye.
Airing on October 29, 1989, “Photo Finish” serves as the Halloween episode, which gives Freddy the excuse to include two “trick or treat” puns in his opening narrations. The first story stars Patty McCormack, the actress who played The Bad Seed when she was eleven. She’s an aging fashion photographer who’s forced to take family photos at the mall.
A new magazine calls, and gives Bad Seed the chance to get her career back. All she has to do is take some Halloween-themed photos that are “shocking” and “cutting edge.” Fortunately, her first two models fall asleep during their shoots. They get attacked by Freddy, which makes for some great photo ops.
Bad Seed feels guilty that her models are being murdered horribly, but she decides to kill just one more. She really wants her career back. Sadly, things don’t turn out so well.
This is one of the very few Nightmares episodes with no connection between the first and second story aside from Freddy himself. The latter half is a straight-up murder mystery. Three FBI agents come to Springwood to investigate a house-full of dead bodies. They’ve never heard of Freddy Krueger and are in way over their heads.
In order to solve the case, one of the detectives attempts to recreate the murder. This isn’t a very good idea. The episode doesn’t quite work as a mystery, because we can assume that Freddy is the killer all along. However, it’s the closest that Nightmares has ever gotten to a CSI-type procedural. Plus, there are two scenes of spurting neck blood.
S2E05 Memory Overload
So you don’t think booze can kill ya, huh? Why, the bottle alone can tear ya apart. But booze ain’t gonna kill the professor. He’s just gonna wish it did.
Here, I’m the head of the class and the professor is the dunce. His punishment: he has to relive that 10,000 times. Or until he dies. Whichever comes first.
Ya say you got credit problems, huh? Need some help? Just call me. I can kill the bill collectors. I can kill the lawyers. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll put you outta your misery.
There’s a lesson here, kiddies. When you hire someone, make sure they’re at least as dumb as you are. In your case, punks, that probably means brain dead. I crack myself up.
“Memory Overload” centers around Charles Winton, a drunk who’s been beaten down by life. He’s a professor at Springwood U, teaching Shakespeare to a classroom full of suspiciously middle-aged students. In the few classroom scenes, we can see that he’s a pretty great teacher, aside from the stumbling and slurring.
The story really starts when Chuck, a former student, barges into Winton’s apartment looking for a place to hide. He’s a soldier who recently went AWOL and he’s worried what his drill sergeant dad will do if he finds him. Chuck is played by Kyle Chandler, who will eventually go on to predicting the future in Early Edition and coaching football in Friday Night Lights.
Like the good professor, Chuck becomes a drunk too, which basically means he grows stubble and carries around a flask. He’s seeing hallucinations of his abusive, barking father. Professor Winton tries to protect Chuck, but he can barely take care of himself. The story ends with a particularly downbeat revelation, leaving Winton in a time-loop of failure and guilt.
The second half ditches the sad-sack tone and aims for comedy. It centers around one of Winton’s students working at a credit rating company. She’s extremely cold-hearted to her customers, refusing to give them any loans. At the same time, she’s manipulating the system to help her new boyfriend raise his credit score. Obviously, she’s about to get her comeuppance. She has a couple dreams where she’s trapped inside her computer. Apparently, the insides of computers are filled with blinking lights, loose wires, and security guards.
The whole story is narrated by her computer in a fake-Joe-Friday style. Coincidentally, the episode aired shortly after the show Growing Pains did a similar gimmick and had Mike’s old tennis shoes narrate an episode. No one died in that one, though.
S2E06 Lucky Stiff
(See also: Easy Come, Easy Go)
Oh, young lovers. Wherever you are. Maybe I should say “wherever you’ll be.” Cuz when I get done with these two lovebirds, there’ll be bits and pieces everywhere.
Oops. Oh my my my my. Caught with my hand in the cookie jar. Nothing satisfies my sweet tooth like a sweet heart. Pump it up.
Hey you. Yeah, I’m talking to you. Get over here. I said get over here. You better, chump. You know what they say, that money is the root of all evil. Oh no wonder I love it so much. [to a stack of money:] I love you. I love you. I love you. Now Greta would do anything. She’d lie. She’d cheat. She’d kill to get her scummy little hands on a stack of bills. Me, I’d uh, I’d do all that for free.
I’m one hell of a matchmaker if I do say so myself. Actually, I was sorta hopin’ Greta would stay single. She’s my kind of girl. [catches a bouquet] Boy, looks like I’m next. Better start lookin’ for a bride. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me…
Greta’s husband Lenny is a loser. He doesn’t have a job, he wastes his wife’s money on lottery tickets, and he looks and sounds just like Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. It’s no surprise that his wife Greta is cheating on him with big, muscly Hank. She keeps trying to break up with Lenny, but he dies of a heart attack before she can.
Now Greta can marry Hank, which they do pretty instantly. Before they can re-settle into blue collar life, Greta finds out that dead Lenny had won the lottery. And the winning ticket was buried with him. Get ready for some grave-robbing and back-stabbing as Greta and Hank both vie for 20 million dollars.
The second half follows Greta who (spoiler alert) survived, as she settles into her 80s mansion. She has servants, a hot tub, and strangely bare walls. Overall, she’s living in luxury. Unfortunately, Hank comes back from the dead. Or does he? Greta’s life careens down the paranoia highway. She finds a severed head in her bath tub and a frozen corpse in her basement.
When Hank makes a posthumous call to their tax guy, Greta really knows that something is up. Eventually, she must confront her demons. The story ends with a morbid wedding, the perfect ending for a black widow like Greta.
S2E07 Silence is Golden
(See also: A Family Affair)
Hey kids. You’re listening to the hot sounds of Freddy K on WDED Radio, the station people are just dying to tune in. Yeah, we got your Hendrix. We got your Lennon. We got your Joplin. We got your Elvis. We got your…Donny Osmond? What a neat guy. I’m takin’ the fourth caller to win a free crypt for two in a graveyard near you.
[performs a quick mime routine] A mime is a terrible thing to waste.
Who says crime doesn’t pay? Look where it got me. Wait’ll ya see where it gets that guy.
Now that’s my kind of woman. Kills her parents. Killers her boyfriend. Kills her partner. She kills me. What a babe. Yeah, rich too. You know, Daddy used to always say “Marry money.” Almost makes me wish I was still alive.
“Silence is Golden” taps into a seldom used figure of horror: mimes. Basically, a Howard Stern-type shock jock gets terrorized by a lurking mime that he accidentally punched in the face during a street performance.
Rick Rake, the disc jockey with a heart of molasses, is letting his gruff on-air persona affect his personal life. He has marital problems, anger issues, and (surprise, surprise) nightmares. Soon, the mime begins to tear apart his life, until one final showdown at the radio station.
For similar tales of loud-mouthed DJs getting their comeuppance, check out Night Visions’ “Dead Air” and Tales from the Darkside’s “The Devil’s Advocate”, among many others. This type of story was even spoofed in a segment from The Ben Stiller Show called “Low Budget Tales of Clichéd Horror”.
The second half of the episode reveals that the mime is simply a jewel thief with a daytime job as a street performer. This doesn’t quite explain how the mime was previously able to appear out of nowhere and instantly bury people alive. Nonetheless, he makes a pretty good living stealing pearls and diamonds with his hot girlfriend Andy. He even gets to have sex on top of his stolen jewels.
His perfect life as a cat burglar/mime gets shattered when some of the people he robbed are suddenly found dead. Now he’s suspected of a double murder. He doesn’t have any enemies (aside from the shock jock he recently crippled with some gardening equipment), and his girlfriend would never do anything to hurt him. Who’s trying to frame him? The only way to explain this is through a needlessly complicated set-up, a case of mistaken identity, and a triple cross.
S2E08 Bloodlines
(See also: Do You Know Where Your Kids Are)
Yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda. Warden. Hey Warden. Let me outta here. Come on. You promised me some good time if I behave. Breaking out is hard to do. But not for me.
Yeah. That Woody, he had the right idea about kids. He just didn’t go far enough. Hey kids, I’ve got the perfect form of birth control. One talent lasts a whole lifetime.
Hmm. Let me see. Recipe for a little girl. Sugar. Some spice. Oh yes. And and uh, everything nice. Hmm. This could get interesting.
I guess Jack was right. Maggie’s on a roll. It’s after midnight. Do you know who your children are? Trust me. You haven’t got a clue.
“Bloodlines” is all about family ties. Unfortunately, families in Springwood come complete with escaped convicts, babbling crazy women, and demon children. The first story follows Jack, a young man whose father is in jail for robbing a bank, and whose mother is insane after said father pushed her down the stairs.
Jack finds out that his dad escaped, so he tries to find the stolen money before father gets home. Thanks to a flashback/dream, Jack realizes that the cash has been stashed under the stairs the whole time. I don’t know why it took him ten long years to stumble upon that particular childhood memory.
So he gets the money, mere minutes before his dad comes home with a gun. Thanks to Mom’s craziness, Dad takes the money back and shoots Jack. He drives his son out into the woods and proceeds to bury him. At least, he tries to. The best laid plans don’t usually work out when you’re in Freddy’s Nightmares.
After the commercial break, Jack decides to spend his dad’s stolen bank money on a new infant for himself and his infertile girlfriend Maggie. Apparently, adoptions involve too much paperwork. They treat newborn Patty as their own, until Maggie starts to realize that Patty may be the spawn of the Devil.
Jack’s mom is back to babble some more. She gets along really well with the devil baby. She even teaches Patty how to chop vegetables and laugh maniacally. In case you miss out on any Omen similarities, Maggie has a dream that she’s digging up Patty’s real mom’s grave. It’s marked “Thorn” and there’s a jackal skeleton inside. Soon, Maggie learns that her daughter’s real parents were a nurse at an asylum, and one of the inmates. The nurse eventually killed herself. Interpret that as you wish.
Things really go to Hell when Maggie accidentally kills her crazy mother-in-law, and little Patty decides to punish her for it. This is bad news, especially since Patty can control dogs and make wind with her mind. There’s another Omen reference, and everybody learns not to adopt demon babies.
S2E09 Monkey Dreams
The stakes have been raised. I’m willing to bet Joe can’t get by me without getting lashed. Want a piece of the action?
Wait, kiddies. Our little story here has a happy ending. Joe got a grant to see how fast the worms could eat through his body. I crack myself up.
I don’t need to experiment on no dumb animals. I’ve been having such good results with the people.
[wearing a gorilla mask] Everybody dreams. Everybody dreams. Think about it.
Joey has a gambling problem. He dreams that he’s the world’s greatest poker player, but he’s really not. The episode starts with a bookie threatening to kill him if he doesn’t pay off his debts. He promises that he’ll get the money, as long as he gets a breakthrough at work. His job: trying to decipher an alien code in his computer.
With the help of his doormat sister, Joey thinks that he’s finally onto something. He stumbles upon some “interstellar communication” that just might be from outer space. All he needs is a day to figure out what it means, and then he’ll get grant money from Springwood U so that he can pay off the bookie. As far as get-rich-quick schemes go, this one’s at least unique.
Sadly, no amount of alien language and weird brother/sister chemistry can buy Joey more time. The bookie shows up, and there’s a struggle. People get shot, and there’s a lab monkey involved too.
The next story shifts focus to the surviving researchers at Springwood U, particularly Dr. Lynch. Going against his coworker’s warnings, he decides to experiment on lovable lab monkey Winston. His experiments involve inflicting pain on Winston by zapping him repeatedly.
An animal rights guy tries to stop Lynch, but he gets sidetracked by romancing the sexy lab assistant. Dr. Lynch dreams that men in tribal make-up are chasing him through the lab, but that still doesn’t stop his experiments. It seems that all hope is lost for poor Winston, until… Well, nothing. Winston gets tortured to death. He even dreams a little, to show that he’s just like us, only furrier and about to die.
Freddy gives us a somber closing narration. Apparently, he likes monkeys better than humans…or canaries.
S2E10 Do You Know Where Your Kids Are
(See also: Bloodline)
Patty. Patty. Patty Cake. Yeah. Patty Cake, Patty Cake, Baker’s man. Catch me a babysitter fast as I can. So you wanna be a babysitter. Wanna get paid? Rule number one: don’t die on the job.
When will they learn? When will they learn? You never ever send a girl to do a man’s job. Besides, I’ve got evenings free. Check my references, you’ll find that I’m great with kids.
Ah. That’s music to my ears. Looks like Lisa’s got herself a new mailing address. Think maybe she wants outta here. Maybe she’s uh lookin’ for some room service. Know what I mean?
Wally! Eve! Ward! June! I’m home. Oh, nothin’ breaks me up like these holiday reunions. Why thanks. Well, guess I’ll just he headin’ home for the holidays. Ma could probably use some help carvin’ the turkey. That’s uh what we call Pa back home: Turkey. Get it?
The moral of this episode is: Don’t baby-sit. Lisa learns this the hard way. She gets recruited by the Burtons. Their six-year-old Will is cute enough, and he has Texas Chainsaw Massacre memorabilia in his room. It’s the older sister Patty, however, who’s the problem child. She’s locked in the basement, constantly screaming and pounding against the walls.
Lisa has to spend one night with this family, and she only needs to follow one rule: Don’t go in the basement. This doesn’t seem too hard. Lisa’s curious, but she gets over that pretty fast after dangling a chicken wing into the dumbwaiter and almost getting pulled to her death.
Danger appears, though, when Lisa thinks that little Will has gone missing. Naturally, the number one suspect is the screaming devil child in the basement. Lisa breaks the only rule, and tragedy ensues.
The second half deals with Lisa’s mom grieving over the loss of her daughter. She doesn’t realize that Lisa is alive and well, and trapped inside the Burtons’ basement. While Lisa attempts to escape, crazy Patty tries to take over her old life. She moves into Lisa’s old bedroom, calls her mom “Mother”, and tries on her prom dress just for fun.
Throughout the episode, Lisa’s mom loses all sense of reality, until she finally makes the biggest mistake of her life. Everything’s leading toward one final confrontation between Patty and Lisa.
The episode ends on a down note, with no discernable moral in sight. Just the way Freddy likes it.
S2E11 Dreams That Kill*
(See also: Dream Come True)
Thank you. Thank you all very much from the bottom of my heart. You’re too kind. Really. Too too kind. I could grow to love this showbiz stuff. The excitement, the glamour, the chicks. Oh, like they say, fame and fortune is the stuff dreams are made of. Lights. Camera. Freddy.
Well well well. How’s my favorite patient today? It’s time for your physical, Charlie. My instruments are ready. Now you must turn your head…and cough!
Hmm. How’s it going, Charlie? Ready to test the old reflexes? Not bad, huh? Say “Ah.” Looks like them little tonsils are gonna have to come out. Now then, Chuck. Take a deep breath. And hold it.
Ah. Music to my ears. I guess that guy just learned somethin’ they don’t teach in medical school. An apple a day won’t keep Freddy away. Huh uh. Not on your life.
In this sequel to “Dreams Come True,” talk show host Stan Brooks has been killed (presumably by Freddy) and his replacement Charley continues Brooks’ high journalistic standards. One of his first interviews is with rocker/bad influence Monkey Puke Stone. In a profoundly slow-moving fight, Charley accidentally gets knocked out. While dreaming, Freddy warns him to cancel an upcoming episode about dreams.
At first, Charley obeys. He doesn’t want to have another dream where Freddy burns him over a giant grill. Eventually, though, his pushy assistant convinces him to film the episode, even though the interview subject has since been murdered in his sleep. (Will Springwoodians ever learn?) Even though Charley didn’t have a choice, he still gets punished.
The second story begins after Charley gets forced into a Freddy-induced coma. Another hospital patient, Mark, is on the verge of brain death if the doctors don’t do something fast. In a moment of real scientific accuracy, a doctor sneaks into Charley’s room and uses a hypodermic needle to extract some of his brain fluids. He then injects those fluids into Mark’s brain, and Mark instantly heals. I’m glad they had a medical fact-checker on the writing staff.
Mark is really happy that he’s not a vegetable, even though he starts acting more and more like an outspoken TV show host. Now he begins to get threats from Freddy, and the only way to save himself is to take someone else’s brain fluids and re-inject them into his own brain. That turn of events pretty much sums up the episode.
S2E12 It’s My Party and You’ll Die If I Want You To*
(See also: Photo Finish)
The chick shouldn’t mess with the dead. Take it from me. I’m dead. Hey, maybe she could channel me.
Negative energy? I’ve never been negative a day in my life. Trust me.
Let’s hear it for the old Springwood High. Sure has changed since I walked down them hallowed halls. Used to be kids just dropped out. Now they drop dead.
That afternoon my old buddy Howard caught a flight to Hollywood. Sold his screenplay and the rest, as they say, well the rest is history. Fame. Fortune. My life story on the silver screen. Oh, if my friends could see me now. But of course, they’re all dead.
It’s that special time of the year again: the annual Springwood New Age Convention. The Springwood Hotel is filled with wackos and phonies, including Mara, a woman who pretends to talk to the dead. This is a good thing when people pay her to chat with the first mate of the Titanic. It’s a bad thing when she gets possessed by Freddy and forced into a murder spree.
During a grossly overacted faux séance, Mara gets possessed by Freddy and races up to her hotel room. No one gets suspicious when Robert Englund’s voice comes out of a young blonde woman’s mouth. No one, that is, except resident skeptic Harry Lee. What follows is a botched exorcism and one bloody hotel room.
This episode continues to lower Springwood Hotel’s safety record. There are some very graphic on-screen murders, including a throat slash and a death-by-pyramid. Finding three dead bodies in one hotel room has to lower the hotel’s ratings by at least a star-and-a-half.
The second story follows a fresh batch of murder victims gathered in the same hotel room. (The busboy explains this to us while delivering room service.) This time, the guests are Springwood High Alumni. About a half-dozen ex-students are gathered for their twenty-year reunion. Freddy Krueger was also a member of their graduating class, which explains the low turn-out.
Like the previous story, this one is chock-full of on-screen deaths, including one while Freddy dances with a student council member. One of the dream sequences even lets Freddy channel Carrie White and kill everybody in one fell swoop.
Because this episode was so Freddy-centric, it answers a few questions about his past: His best friend in high school was Howard Nehamkin. Howard eventually sold the screenplay for the original Nightmare on Elm Street. They graduated with the class of 1970. Freddy was stood up for prom.
S2E13 What You Don’t Know Can Kill You
You are now deeply under my control. Oh, I’m lovin’ this. When you wake, you will love Freddy. You will desire Freddy. You will want Freddy. You’ll even go to the grave for Freddy.
When I count to three, you will wake up completely refreshed. You won’t remember a single thing except that you want to turn to this channel, this night, every week so that I can mess with ya some more. One. Two. Three.
[His heart monitor flat lines] Ha! Fooled ya! My heart stopped years ago. I just like playing alive, playing alive. The guy in the hospital is playing barely alive. And when I get through with him, he’s gonna be playing dead.
Plastic surgery. Should I get some? Naw. Why mess with perfection?
Dr. Crowley is a Springwood psychiatrist who uses hypnosis to convince his patients to sleep with him. As the episode begins, his coworker walks in on a therapy/love-making session. If his coworker tattles, Crowley is out of a job. He can either take the punishment like a man, or he can hypnotize another patient to kill everyone who knows his secret. This is Freddy’s Nightmares, so the doctor chooses Option B.
Aside from the usual hazy morals of a Nightmares episode, this story has the added benefit of teaching viewers about dyslexia, smoking addictions, and psychiatry in general. There’s even a Freud joke about castration. Coincidentally, the Twilight Zone episode “Memories” debuted a year before, also about psychiatry and hypnotism.
The second half hour deals with Derby, one of Crowley’s non-murdered patients. Derby is on the run from the police because of crimes he was hypnotized into committing. He’s trapped inside the hospital where his girlfriend works. The only way he can escape is if his plastic surgeon girlfriend gives him a new face. You may ask yourself how she can redo his entire face without having anyone know about it. You may ask yourself who’s going to pay for all this surgery. The episode does not answer these questions.
Instead, it follows Derby (now played by a new actor) as he tries to restart his life. The only problem is his new face looks too much like that of Vinnie Santorro, a mafia snitch. The mob has put a hit out on Vinnie, which means that Derby is suddenly in danger too.
After a few Godfather-inspired dreams (sans horse head), Vinnie and Derby meet face-to-reconstructed-face. Together, they have to dodge the world’s most inept hit man. Bullets fly, and Derby learns his lesson: never kill somebody in a hypnotic trance and then change your face to look like a gangster.
S2E14 Easy Come, Easy Go
(See also: “Lucky Stiff”)
That Greta is one cold dish. A real man-eater, but don’t worry, guys. I got a way to turn up her body heat.
Welcome to the lifestyles of the dead and infamous. I’m your host, Fredrick Krueger, and we’ll be right back with more champagne wishes and cadaver dreams. Here’s to dead friends!
That Great. She’s some kinda dame. She’s killed so many guys by now, I’m getting kinda jealous. But ya know, there’s on thing I got she don’t have. My good looks.
Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks.
Greta is a millionaire trapped in a loveless marriage based on blackmail. She already has two dead husbands under her belt, so it’s only a matter of time before she ups that figure to three. As she’s plotting to murder her latest spouse, the twin brother of husband #2 shows up. His name is Wes, and he’s identical to her old husband, aside from a fake porn star mustache.
Even though Greta has a couple dead bodies stashed in her basement freezer, she invites Wes into her home. Before the second commercial break, they’re sleeping together. Pretty soon, Greta convinces Wes to kill her current husband, whom she loving dubs “that little gnome.” At the same time, the gnome sits in his room, cocking his gun and talking to himself in a scene reminiscent of Bill Murray from Caddyshack.
Not surprisingly, the episode ends with a couple murders (though only one was intentional), and life goes back to normal in Springwood.
The second half also follows Greta. Now she’s attempting to take suitcases full of money and flee to Rio. Needless to say, murderers and suitcases of money are soon parted. Her long-lost sister shows up, bringing along another one of Greta’s exes. Greta never got the opportunity to kill this guy, but she did half-blind him on her car’s stick-shift. By accident.
Sonny, the ex, brings an eye patch and a lot of resentment with him. He’s suspicious of Greta. There’s just something shady about frozen corpses and suitcases full of money. This all leads to a final confrontation between Greta, her sister, and the eye patch guy.
S2E15 Prime Cut
(See also: Dust to Dust)
A-hunting we will go. A-hunting we will go. Johnny, Jake, and Todd. I could kill ’em all and still stay under my limit. Good thing, too. I could lose my hunting license.
Cannibalism in America is a serious problem. A lot of people are eating human flesh and they don’t know where it’s been. I want you to join my campaign to have all human meat government-inspected. Okay? Hey, don’t thank me. I’m just a public service kind of guy.
Poor Johnny. Poor Tracker. Now that they picked Todd and Jake clean, they got no more food. Or do they? I mean, they got each other.
Hi. Here to show you the latest from Freddy’s Farms. Yee-haw. Yessiree. Just pop it in the oven and in thirty minutes, he’s ready. Bet you can’t eat just one.
Johnny and his business buddies go on a camping trip with a sexy woman who may or may not be a vampire. Here are the clues: she uses super-high sun block, she sucks up blood, she hates crosses, she enjoys the sound of bats, and her husband died because of a stake through the heart. Call me crazy, but if she’s not a vampire, then I don’t know what she is.
This episode has two different types of scenes: either the men hang out in the same patch of woods pondering their guide’s vampirism, or Johnny has nightmares of her in a Dracula cape, moving around like an interpretive dancer. I’m probably too young to make this reference, but if the future-ghost of Pat Benetar decides to haunt me, I imagine she’d look and move exactly like this lady.
Toward the end of the first half hour, Johnny has to decide between being hot vampire lady’s eternal lover…or dying. Call me crazy again (because I like when people talk to their computer screens), but this seems like the world’s biggest no-brainer. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to choose because the entire episode so far is revealed to be a dream. The whole time, Johnny and not-Pat-Benetar are actually plane crash survivors pulling an Alive and slowly cannibalizing their fellow passengers. Why Johnny’s subconscious went straight to vampires, I have no idea.
The second half expands on this cop-out ending for another twenty two minutes. Johnny’s high-maintenance wife Mary Beth shows up. She’s the kind of person in stories like these that you instantly hate. When she accidentally falls off a cliff, you cheer. The cheering is short-lived, however, because she survives.
Now Johnny is surrounded by two beautiful women and a dwindling supply of edible corpses. This leads to the age-old dilemma: Whom should he eat, the sexy non-vampire or the shrill housewife? While this is going on, a known serial killer named Butcher Moran is slowly heading towards them. For the wide-open wilderness, people keep running into each other.
This episode was directed by David Calloway, who apparently grew up to be a producer for The OC. I tried to find some parallels between this episode and the sudsy drama, but The OC seldom addressed cannibalism in such a frank manner.
S2E16 Interior Loft
What’s wrong with that guy? I guess he doesn’t wanna be a sex symbol. Maybe that’s what happens when you study too hard. Well, if he won’t give her what she wants, maybe I will. I’m the kind of guy that, uh, her dreams are made of, you know? Tall and dark. Burnt to a crisp.
Who says there’s never a cop around when you need one? Ya have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. You have a right to die!
What’s taking so long? Where’s that script? Oh, let’s see, huh. Interior Loft Day. David meets doctor. Oh, very dramatic. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Sorry, uh, good work. Really. My people will call your people. Uh, it’s really a very good script. Specially when I add a few twists of my own, know what I mean? We’ll do lunch.
Pretty juicy stuff, huh? I guess it just goes to show, you don’t have to be crazy to be a good writer. But it sure helps.
David and Kim are having marital problems. He doesn’t want to have sex with her, so she spends all her time writing a trashy romance novel to vent out her sexual frustrations. Pretty soon, she gets bored with describing “glistening breasts” and decides to try some phone sex. David realizes that his wife has an amazing voice. He proposes that she record a 900 number message so that they could make a few bucks.
Within days, all the heavy breathers of Springwood are calling to hear her voice, including someone who uses Kim as an excuse to strangle random women. The body count stacks up, and Kim gets more and more threatening phone calls. A police officer tries to protect her, but he’s looking a little shady himself.
Kim finds herself trapped in her bedroom, and the calls are coming from inside the house! There’s no escape, unless someone decides to rescue her at the last minute.
The second story continues Kim’s struggles to get her life back to normal. Not only is she heavily medicated and seeing a shrink, but her romance novel has devolved into a violent thriller full of murder, rape, and all around violence.
Kim blames David for almost getting murdered, and now she doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore. David assumes that Kim is sleeping with her psychiatrist and that she’s plotting to kill her husband. He’s half-right. As always, another happy Springwood marriage comes to an end. All because of the dangers of 900 numbers.
S2E17 Interior Loft Later
Bonjoir. We’re here for the graduation ceremonies of the famous Freddy Krueger School of Art. Yes. World renown for producing suffering artists. We exclusively use the Van G— the Van G— that guy’s method. Congratulations, class. Go forth and suffer.
Hey you. Come into my boudoir. I wanna show you some etchings. Probably a real good investment too. I mean after all, I am dead.
Deal? That guy cut a bad deal. Hasn’t he ever heard that old saying? Women. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live…with ’em.
Some people’ll say anything to get what they want from a chick. This guy said he was a friend of mine. Liar liar pants on fire. Hey babe.
Alex is a starving artist who specializes in making life-sized plaster mannequins. No one really likes his work, and Springwood isn’t exactly an artistic mecca. He’s on the verge of killing himself when fate strikes: he accidentally kills one of his models and uses the body to pretend that he’d died. In the grand tradition of artists accidentally killing people and then reaping the financial benefits, his supposed death makes all his plaster mannequins worth millions.
Pretty soon Alex convinces his hot wife that they should pull a Polanski and flee to France. Meanwhile, he gets increasingly suspicious of his wife. He sleeps all the time in his little artist’s bathtub and spends most of his waking hours yelling at her. Being a successful artist comes at a price, and pretty soon Alex has to pay. The story ends with a shout-out to the Sword of Damocles legend, and a lesbian twist for good measure.
In the second story, two young girls rent out Alex’s old apartment. They’re in need of a third roommate and thankfully Art shows up. Art is a performance artist and a pathological liar. He convinces the hippy girl that he’s on the run from tuna fishermen after trying to save dolphins. The next day, he convinces the rocker girl that he’s on the run from mob guys who got mad at him at a Bon Jovi concert. They both have sex with him.
Both girls are profoundly gullible, but it’s only a matter of time before they realize they’re being lied to just so he can get inside their respective pants. When they confront him about it, there’s no lesbian action, but there is a double homicide. Only in Springwood.
S2E18 Funhouse
(See also: Welcome to Springwood)
[holding up a crystal to his eye] My, my. Jillian got a real distorted view of the world. She’s about to wind up in a prism of her own making.
A four-letter word for torture. Got it. L-O-V-E. Love.
Good old Turk. Thinks he’s one hell of a moving man. Wait’ll he sees what happens when I deliver the goods.
[dressed as a woman] Hey, babe. I think we should talk. I mean, here you are. You’re new in town. Here I am, a native. I could show you around. I love love games.
A couple of guys behind Tales from the Crypt were responsible for this episode, so you can expect a nifty little morality play with a nasty twist ending. Unfortunately, the Crypt guys use the same twist ending for each half hour, which kind of dilutes the impact. Still, it involves a modern day version of a medieval torture device, which is always a plus in my book.
“Funhouse” starts with a couple—Jillian and Robert—moving into a supposedly haunted house. They seem happy, but the wife is kind of a ho. She actually cheated on her first husband with Robert, who just happened to be the husband’s best friend. I’ll bet you ten bucks that the jilted lover reappears.
Anyway, the moving van guy helps them carry in all their boxes. After telling Jillian the story of the house (which coincidentally includes a jilted lover slashing the throat of his wife), the moving guy proceeds to flirt with her. Normally, a story like that wouldn’t lead to making out, but cue the saxophones anyway. I only mention this because, aside from an inexplicably bleeding painting, no one mentions the ghosts ever again.
From there on out, we get a parade of Scooby Doo gimmicks: trap doors, paintings with eyes that move, Old Man Winslow trying to get the deed to the hotel. (Just kidding on the last one.) Plus, some decidedly un-Scooby Doo things like kinky sex and handcuffs. I won’t tell you who the killer is, but I’ll give you a hint: Bad Ronald. Besides, one of the three leads is an ex-lover who vowed revenge and sends Jillian angry presents. Ya think it might be him?
The second half hour is all about the moving guy from the very beginning. His name’s Turk, like the Rosie O’Donnell gorilla from Tarzan, and he is a ladies’ man. Needless to say, there’s a lot more saxophones in the background music. This time he’s shacking up with Evelyn, a hot blonde married to an old man in a wheelchair. As a side note, the old man collects antique pistols. You know this won’t end well.
In this half, the show ditches the handcuffs in favor of role-playing games using said guns. They also may-or-may-not involve rubber masks and murder. Not surprisingly, Turk learns in the bloodiest way possible that he should just keep it in his pants.
S2E19 A Family Affair
(See also: Silence is Golden)
[This episode was particularly hard for me to understand Freddy’s narration. But who am I to tell everyone’s favorite burn victim to enunciate?]
Naughty naughty. It’s not nice for a married man to fool around on their wives. Paul better cut it off right now. Or I will!
Ah, don’t worry about that kid. He’s gonna be alright. You know, my old lady died when I was a kid too. And I turned out just fine!
Krueger gets the rebound. Spins to the hoop… Jason used to be a hell of a basketball player. Let’s see if he’s still got the touch. [reveals that his basketball is a severed head] Two points!
Drugs. Now there’s a real nightmare.
This episode opens with a rich, happy family. The son is a high school basketball star and the dad is a lawyer. They’re Cosby-black. (The dad, Paul, even wears bad sweaters!) Unfortunately, Paul is cheating on his Phylicia Rashad look-alike with a crazy ex-client. He tries to break up with her, and she vows to get back at him.
Their son always wears his letterman’s jersey and constantly talks about his basketball scholarship. Television rules proclaim that he has to break his knee within the next half hour. (Which he does, twice, in a dream sequence.) He’s played by a young Morris Chestnut, who is about a year away from getting gunned down in Boyz n the Hood.
Of course, a whole bunch of Fatal Attractions shenanigans ensue, resulting in two pretty spectacular on-screen deaths, and a third dead body hidden under a blanket. When you watch the episode, tell me if that is not the ugliest blanket you have ever seen.
So after the first dead body is revealed, the Cosby Show comparisons disappear. Eventually, the crazy woman gets dispatched in a surprising, nasty way. It involves the little wooden nubbin sticking from a coat rack.
Two years and one commercial break later, Paul is recovering from a heart attack and waiting for his pissed off son to come home. After the events of the last half hour, it’s obvious why the son is pissed off.
When Morris Chestnut does return, he looks pretty clean-cut and normal, but Paul recognizes track marks on his arms. His son has become a druggie. So instead of confronting him about it, Paul goes back to his table and falls asleep. Meanwhile, his son is back in his old room, doing exactly what any self-respecting drug addict would do: he pulls out his drug needle and a glamour shot of his mom, and he falls asleep too.
Downstairs, Paul has another heart attack and gets sent to some limbo place where he’s greeted by the crazy lady who got her head impaled on the coat rack nubbin. She says that she’s taking him to hell ASAP, but he convinces her to play a card game for his soul. She agrees, even though she won’t get anything out of the deal if she wins.
I won’t give away the ending, but considering the no drugs message, you can probably guess who ends up dying. At the very end, Freddy makes an uncharacteristically somber closing statement. There’s something quaint about fictional serial killers trying to teach us morals.
S2E20 Dust to Dust
(see also: Prime Cut)
You are what you eat, Dave, so get this recipe right! Well, you take your eggs—ah-one, ah-two, ah-three. Ya get some flour, Mmmm. A little sugar. Don’t forget the butter. And you got your chopped meat. Where’s the chopped meat? [wheels out a living guy strapped to a gurney] I said CHOPPED meat, guys. Oh. Don’t worry, I can take care of that. Wait’ll ya see how I serve up this guy.
[drinking] Johnny on the spot. Those poor babes. Talk about takin’ a powder. And by the way, in case you’re wonderin’, I ate Spartacus.
Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch. Nobody’s ever happy. So what if her fiancé was turned into powder? So what if she had to eat him? I coulda made her powder her nose, or snort him. A high-colonic enema would’ve been fun. I may be cruel, but I’m fair. But this is all about to change. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Tonight’s own plate special. Mary Beth delicately seasoned with Ginger and Oliver Oil. Where? At Freddy’s, where they only meet to eat each other. Hurry. It’s going fast.
This one is a comedy about cannibals. I think that sentence will tell you whether you’re the target audience for this episode.
It starts in a trailer outside Springwood, during a Cannibals Anonymous meeting. The group slogan is “I promise to never again raise my fork against my fellow man.” After the meeting, there’s an almost-sex scene between two of the cannibals, Johnny and Marybeth. I liked this scene because of the inappropriate tribal music in the background.
Their whoopee-making session gets interrupted by some random guy who runs into their trailer and dies. Obviously, he was not a well man. So our cannibals—Johnny and Marybeth and their other friend Ginger—do what any sane people would do when a sick man dies in their living room: they eat him. It turns out the man was an astronaut infected by “an unknown crystalline space dust.” By eating him, they’ve also eaten the space dust, so they get put in body bags (even though they’re still alive) and taken to a high-tech underground facility to await tests.
Now I know what you’re thinking: you’ve seen this story a million times. Tale as old as time, right? Just wait till the infected victims spout off movie quotes, dance, and evaporate into a cloud of blue dust and bad special effects. I bet you didn’t see that coming.
While the first half focuses on the three cannibals, the second half introduces the scientists, who backstab, threaten, and make out with each other in a weird pattern.
The scientist subplots don’t really make a lot of sense, but they include probably the strangest, most scientifically inaccurate threat I’ve ever heard: “There will be a molecular rearrangement of your frontal mandible.” I assume the doctor meant that she’d punch him in the jaw.
This episode is full of the strange and inexplicable: people eating an astronaut out of “self-defense.” Air ducts that are “designed to prevent living things from going in or out.” A space dust that affects people in wildly different ways, sometimes resulting in goose-stepping. A scientist falling madly in love with one of the cannibals after talking to her twice in the span of fifteen minutes. It’s all very nonsensical and goofy. If you like nonsensical and goofy, you should check this out. Otherwise, why did you read an entire article about cannibals who eat an astronaut out of self-defense?
S2E21 Prisoner of Love
Have I got a recipe for you! All you need is one of these! [a skillet] Perfect for two women in stir about to take their final walk. About to be stir-fried!
Ode to Violet: The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout. One little worm who isn’t so shy climbs in your ear and out your eye. Your blood will turn to pussy green and spread it on like shaving cream. You spread it on some moldy bread. That’s what you eat when you are dead. By F. Krueger.
Forgive me father for I have sinned.
[Priest: Yes my son?]
I killed eleven kids. I murdered forty-three adults. I wasted seven cats, forty-three dogs, and a canary.
[Priest: Is that all, my son?]
Let’s see now, is that all? Um, no. I also wasted a priest.
[Priest: What was that last one, my son?]
I said I killed a priest!
You know, I really thought Brenda was gonna make it the three months till the construction crew came. That’s the trouble with government. You can get buried with paperwork.
The penultimate episode of Freddy’s Nightmares is about women on death row. Violet Rodriguez has two days left before the electric chair, while her cell block neighbor, Brenda Vincent, has five. They’re from rival gangs and Violet killed Brenda’s cousin. Who knew Springwood was so riddled with crime?
We know right away that Violet and Brenda aren’t exactly BFFs. Brenda even screams at Violet, “When I get you, you’re gonna die real painful!” I liked that line.
Enter Father Jarvis (a Friday the 13th shout-out, maybe?), who takes about fifteen minutes to break his vow of chastity and fall madly in love with convicted murderer Violet. She did have nice legs though. They bond over Bible passages. At one point, Violet says in an extremely seductive voice that “The Bible says it’s more blessed to give than to receive.” From her tone of voice, she was probably talking about BJs.
Jarvis, understandably, tries to push away his attraction. He slaps himself a lot and has some sex nightmares. He visits her the next day, of course, and the sultry convicted murderer proceeds to tickle him until he has sex with her. That’s just how they do it on death row.
After their cell block tango, Jarvis vows to help her fake her own death in the electric chair. She’ll pretend to be dead, they’ll bury her, and then he’ll dig her up once no one’s looking. It’s a fool-proof plan, even though I don’t quite understand the logic. The only problem is that Brenda overhears them and decides to meddle.
The second half involves Jarvis kidnapping Brenda after her botched electrocution in order to get his revenge. I don’t quite understand why he didn’t just let her get electrocuted. It seems like saving someone’s life only to kill her in a less governmentally sanctioned way is a little much. Regardless, there’s plenty of backstabbing, triple crossing, and talking corpses to make for a pretty satisfactory second half.
This episode had a distinct Tales from the Crypt vibe, though that could probably be from the themes of revenge and the talking dead people. It’s hard to screw up a tale of backstabbing set in a women’s prison. Sure, it’s not in the same zip code as Plausibility Town, but I found that charming. Wouldn’t Violet have been embalmed? How could Jarvis sneak a used coffin into the “abandoned wing” of the Springwood Jail? Answer: it doesn’t matter.
S2E22 Life Sentence
Just got back from four of my favorite banks. Made a withdrawal. First, I went to the blood bank. Then I went to the organ bank. Then I went to the eyeball bank. And finally, I went for the sperm bank. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. [smells his hand]
Poor Andy. He got Bruno for a cell mate. But that ain’t nothin’. Meet Gus here. Gus got me for a cell mate. Gus, fetch the soap.
Yeah, right. Vote for Warden Hendler for a kinder, gentler Springwood. Over my dead body. And his.
There’s something for ya, huh? A politician finally tells the truth. They elected him sheriff of Springwood anyway. My kind of town.
The series finale, folks. It’s another prison story, only this one has less sex and corpses. The first half centers around Dr. Alamo, a prison psychiatrist played by Sherry Palmer from 24. Before she married the president and went all crazy on Jack Bauer, she applied for a job at Springwood Prison to get back at the man who gunned down her father during a bank heist. That man (named Andy, but let’s call him Rat Man) is about to get released and she wants to stop him at all costs.
Her plan involves accidentally letting another prisoner escape. This prisoner is Rat Man’s partner in crime, the guy that Rat Man double-crossed. Rat Man fears for his life. He knows that if he gets released, his old partner will find him. Not surprisingly, there’s a twist ending, and everybody gets screwed over.
The second half involves the corrupt warden of Springwood Prison trying to run for sheriff. Now, everyone knows that the Springwood police could probably use a regime change, considering its teenage mortality rate. Warden Hendler, however, is probably not the man for the job. He’s trailing in the polls, and as a last ditch effort, he uses a new psychological drug on Rat Man to try and find where he stashed all his bank money.
The words “Freddy’s Nightmares” and “new psychological drug” don’t go together all that well, and pretty soon Rat Man is on his deathbed. The money is found and Warden Hendler wins, but the prison doctor (played by the science teacher from Gremlins) won’t let him get away with it. Political sabotage ensues.
