The real reason behind Freddy Krueger’s knitted jumper
The slasher villains of 1980s horror were an eclectic bunch, with filmmakers across Hollywood eager to ‘one-up’ their fellow directors with increasingly more curious antagonists. When one filmmaker thought about a villain being a killer doll in the form of a small ginger-haired munchkin, the next thought of a killer Santa enthusiast. But all of this begs the question: who came up with the terrifying dream lord Freddy Krueger?
Sporting sharp knives for fingers, a brown fedora and a curious knitted jumper, the character was created by the director of Krueger’s debut appearance, A Nightmare on Elm Street, a classic slasher hit that is considered to be one of the best horror movies of all time. Craven created his iconic villain, influenced by several stories emerging from Los Angeles at the time, telling of mysterious deaths in which victims died in their sleep.
However, more than Freddy’s fingers and burned appearance, the most striking question about his character is his curious striped red and green jumper.
Whilst Krueger clearly has no taste in fashion, dig deeper, and you’ll discover that the colours of the villain’s jumper are very intentional, with Craven reportedly reading a magazine that told him that the colour combination of red and green are the most difficult to view side-by-side. As a result, the colours were chosen in order to add even more unease to the horrific-looking character.
Whilst this is indeed true, Craven also asserts: “I wanted Freddy to be able to shape change because I was aware in mythology that that was an important thing…so I wanted him to have something instantly recognizable, so I gave him a sweater with stripes”.
In addition to this, Craven also addressed the colours of the curiously Christmas jumper, he adds that he “made them that sort of shade of green and red that I had found in a book of colours that are hard on the eye, so that is one of the hardest combinations of colours for the eye to process, those two shades”.
Wes Craven’s fleshy supernatural slasher is a creative masterpiece of the subgenre, creating one of cinema’s most subversive and iconic villains.
Starring a young Johnny Depp, whose career would soon kick off, Craven’s film follows the evil spirit of Krueger, a deceased child murderer who seeks revenge from the grave on the children of those who sent him to his death. A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the slasher genre’s best and most fascinating creations, featuring revolutionary, grungy special effects and a truly unique sinister entity straight from the camp underworld.
