In the spirit of Halloween tomorrow and following a suggestion received from a BAMF Style reader earlier this year, today’s post explores the costume of a cinematic horror icon who needs little introduction.
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Vitals
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, supernatural serial killer
Suburban Ohio, Spring 1981
Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Release Date: November 9, 1984
Director: Wes Craven
Costume Designer: Dana Lyman
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s iconic slasher film that introduced the world to the terrifying Freddy Krueger, the pizza-faced killer who can target his victims through their dreams—a concept inspired by the mysterious deaths among Hmong refugees who mysteriously died in their sleep following disturbing nightmares.
Craven embodied the terror of a monster who can attack people at their most vulnerable in the form of Freddy Krueger, the undead spirit of a vindictive child murderer. I have to respect Craven’s own vindictiveness, borrowing the name from his childhood bully Fred Krueger and immortalizing it as one of the most grotesque monsters in horror cinema history.
Filmed in L.A. through the early summer of 1984 for less than $2 million, A Nightmare on Elm Street nearly recouped its budget during the opening weekend alone and became a massive success that ultimately grossed more than $57 million worldwide, propelling producer Robert Shaye’s New Line Cinema while also spawning a franchise that would include seven sequels and a remake.
What’d He Wear?
Freddy’s Original Costume
“I dreamed about a guy in a dirty red and green sweater,” high school student Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) reveals to her friend Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) as they compare details of the figure in their nightmares. Wes Craven intentionally chose this color scheme for Freddy Krueger after reading a Scientific American article that described red and green as the most clashing colors to the human retina… perhaps explaining why Christmas can be so stressful.
The colors were adapted to follow a philosophy that Craven reportedly borrowed from DC Comics’ Plastic Man, whose red-and-yellow sweater informed Craven’s initial vision for Freddy. “The character could change shape, but you always knew it was him because the pattern of his clothing would be visible on whatever form he took,” explains Jeff Saporito for The Take. “Krueger is the same way—a shape-shifter recognizable by his color patterns.”
Craven and costume designer Dana Lyman contracted professional knitter Judy Graham to craft Freddy’s now-iconic sweaters throughout the series. On her website, Graham explains that she used wool as it would burn better than acrylic fibers. The first few movies “used a sport-weight red and olive-green from a now out-of-business source,” before switching to brown sheep in the later films.
In the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy’s sweater has a bright-red base with five wide olive-green block stripes around the torso, while the set-in sleeves remain a solid red. For the subsequent sequels, the sleeves would be striped to match the rest of the sweater. This pullover sweater also has a raised and ribbed crew-neck, ribbed cuffs, and a ribbed waist hem.
In the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy’s dark trousers appear to be a charcoal-gray woolen flannel, perhaps with then-fashionable pleats to add the roominess through the thighs. Few details are evident due to his untucked sweater and the darkness shrouding many of his scenes, but we do see the trousers have full-break bottoms finished with turn-ups (cuffs).
Freddy’s trousers in the first film are a neutral dark-gray that reflects the lighting of the scene, whether it’s the blue hues of a night sky or the ochre tones of a fiery school basement.
From the opening credits through his culminating attack on Nancy, we get a few close-ups of Freddy’s dark-brown leather work boots, styled with a plain-toe and derby-style lacing. This would remain the predominant style through the franchise, right up to Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) that used a set of coated leather Honcho boots with three sets of derby-laced eyelets, two sets of speed hooks, and an additional pair of eyelets at the top of the ankle-high shafts. These screen-worn leather boots were auctioned by Julien’s Live in December 2023.
Following Craven’s vision for “a glove with steak knives,” special effects designer Jim Doyle built Freddy’s famously sharp gloves with Case XX P210 tomato knives mounted on copper tubes braced around the four non-thumb fingers, each attached to a brass backplate soldered onto a weathered tan leather work glove.
Doyle’s team initially built a “hero” glove and a “stunt” glove, as described in Vulture‘s 2014 oral history: “If you’re actually gonna cut something, then we use the hero. The rest of the time, we had ‘stunt gloves’. The hero glove was dangerous. Every time someone put it on, they hurt themselves, because if you closed your first, the blades cut your forearm. Oops.”
“The hat was the kind worn by men when I was a kid, and there was a particular man who scared me when I was little,” Wes Craven recounted for The Take. “He was a drunk that came down the sidewalk and woke me up when I was sleeping.”
Like the rest of his costume, Freddy’s hat would look a little different for the sequels, but the original execution was an abused dark-gray felt fedora with a self-edged snap brim and a wide black grosgrain band.
When Nancy retains it from Freddy’s attack on her in the sleep clinic, she reports to her mother that the hat “even has his name written in it… Fred Krueger!”
When Freddy returns to Elm Street for revenge in the sequels, beginning with the cleverly titled A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), his costume has evolved to its most recognizable incarnation of a generally identical sweater but with the sleeves striped to match the body. His darker trousers are plain black, though similarly cut with a full fit, turn-ups (cuffs), and side pockets that gape open during his struggle with Lisa Webber (Kim Myers). The hat is now an even rattier fedora made of brown felt with the band missing.
Odds and Ends
Of course, Freddy doesn’t wear a watch but if you’re compelled to strap on an Elm Street-style timepiece when channeling the late Mr. Krueger, you could track down a vintage ’80s Lorus digital watch like the gold-finished W207-5010 Alarm Chronograph that Nancy sets to wake her up after ten minutes asleep. Like her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp), Nancy wears a colorfully striped nylon watch strap—hers in green, white, lavender, and periwinkle, though I like to think a Freddy-informed watchstrap would be striped in red and green like his sweater.
Nancy checks her Lorus digital watch while awaiting Freddy.
After Tina’s death, Nancy begins envisioning herself being haunted during class and has a scare after running into a figure stalking the corridors of her high school in a red-and-green striped sweater… only for it to be a surly hall monitor (Leslie Hoffman).
“Hey, Nancy! No running in the hallway…”
Of the many films in the franchise, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street to the extent that Drew Barrymore’s ill-fated Casey agrees with her killer in Scream (1996) that “the first one was [scary], but the rest sucked.” Though I long assumed this was Craven’s own in-joke since he had only directed the first and seventh installments before directing Scream, it was actually written into Kevin Williamson’s script for Scream before Craven was attached to the project. Craven made a brief one-shot cameo in Scream as a high school janitor with an eerie resemblance to Freddy.
Although the sequels reinforced the image of Freddy’s sweater having stripes around the sleeves, Wes Craven returned to his original execution of the character when paying tribute to him a dozen years later as the Woodsboro High School janitor in Scream.
The Car
Freddy Krueger’s supernatural state of being means he doesn’t need a car to get from A or B—or from dream to nightmare—but he does get some automotive representation during A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s final scene. For a 2014 oral history of the movie that Vulture compiled ahead of its 30th anniversary, Wes Craven recalled that New Line producer Robert Shaye’s involvement resulted in this particular ending:
Bob wanted a hook for a sequel. I felt that the film should end when Nancy turns her back on Freddy and his violence — that’s the one thing that kills him. Bob wanted to have Freddy pick up the kids in a car and drive off, which reversed everything I was trying to say — it suddenly presented Freddy as triumphant. I came up with a compromise, which was to have the kids get in the convertible, and when the roof comes down, we’d have Freddy’s red and green stripes on it. Do I regret changing the ending? I do, because it’s the one part of the film that isn’t me.
The car in question is Glen’s bright red 1958 Cadillac Series 62 convertible, which would have been powered by Cadillac’s 6.0-liter OHV V8 engine, generating 310 horsepower and mated to GM’s four-speed Hydra-matic automatic transmission. ’58 was the final year for the original Series 62, built on a 129.5-inch wheelbase with the two-door convertible measuring nearly 222 inches long and 80 inches wide as luxury automakers like Cadillac continued their expanded opulence through the decade that culminated with 1959 being dubbed “the year of the fin”.
How to Get the Look
Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in promotional photos for one of the sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Note that the costume has evolved from the first film to now feature a brown fedora, a sweater with striped sleeves, black trousers, and brown work boots.
“It’s easy to forget, because Freddy Krueger turned into a lovable Halloween costume, but A Nightmare on Elm Street is a dark, nasty, brutal film,” Rob Zombie shared in Vulture‘s 2014 oral history of the movie. Keep that in mind if you’ll be donning a ratty fedora, pizza-faced makeup, and a striped sweater tomorrow night!
- Red-and-olive horizontal block-striped wool crew-neck sweater with plain red set-in sleeves
- Charcoal-gray wool pleated trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
- Dark-brown coated leather plain-toe derby-laced work boots
- Dark-gray felt fedora with black grosgrain band
- Tan leather work glove with brass backplate and copper-tubed fingers with bladed extensions
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie!
Sources:
- The Art of Costume —“Designing Fear: Freddy Krueger”
- Knitting Tips by Judy — “Nightmare on Elm Street” by Judy Graham
- The Take — “What inspired ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ and Freddy Krueger?” by Jeff Saporito
- Vulture — “Freddy Lives: An Oral History of A Nightmare on Elm Street” by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum
The Quote
Come to Freddy…
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