I’m always a little bit leery of fan films that deal with film franchises that I adore. With that being said, you can imagine my trepidation when I ran across Krueger (A Tale From Elm Street) that deals with one of my all time favorite franchises, A Nightmare On Elm Street. I’m happy to say that writer / director Chris R. Notarile manages to not only capture essence of Freddy Krueger but tells a pretty damn interesting story in the process.

Rather than re-writing the description I simply snagged this from the film’s IMDB page:

Set in the 1970’s, after a rash of horrible killings, the alleged Springwood Slasher is finally arrested and brought to justice. But Lieutenant Donald Thompson wants more than evidence and probable cause to put this child murderer away, he wants a written confession. And in an effort to prove guilt, Thompson sits down in an interrogation room with the man known as Freddy Krueger. Will he get Freddy’s confession or more than he bargained for?

This short tells the story of a very much alive Freddy on his first day after being captured. He’s being questioned by Lieutenant Thompson. This is beginning of the story of how Freddy got out of prison only to be burned alive by the parents of the Springwood kids.

Robert Lombardi does a great job as Freddy Krueger. It’s tough to ever see anyone other than Robert Englund don that red and green sweater, but Lombardi pulls it off. This is pre-burn Freddy here as well so that makes it easier. Lombardi manages to invoke enough Englund where you can still see the character is in there. With an icon like Krueger there needs to be some link to the original which is here for sure.

Shawn Parr as Thompson does well too. He’s got less source material to play off of, but I believed his angst in talking with Krueger and certainly believed just how pissed off he was toward the end of the film. Also, love the nod to Lethal Weapon with the “chair on the throat” interrogation thing. Big fan.

While there is a kill in this film, its an off screen kill which I appreciate. As I’ve said in the past I have a hard time watching children be harmed so I’m glad Notarile made that choice. What I will say is that little Gracie De La Rosa played her part to perfection.

Krueger (A Tale From Elm Street) does an amazing job of tying itself back to the source material. Not only are we dealing with characters that we know from the original film (Krueger, Nancy and her dad) but Notarile gets the “look” of that original film and uses music and sounds effects from the original to perfection. I’m not well versed in the legalities of re-using those materials in fan works, but I was actually surprised to “hear” so much of A Nightmare On Elm Street in this film. Very cool.

While tying your film back to the source material can be a great thing, it can also lead to some bad choices. There were a couple of times here where when I sat back and thought about it, things didn’t make much sense. A couple of times, Freddy talks about dreams. He says, “In your dreams asshole,” and “I’ll be seeing you in your fucking nightmares!“. Thompson at one point says, “I’m going to light you up myself!” While I appreciate the foreshadowing of Freddy’s demise in the original back story, the references to dreams took me out a bit. At this point, the characters don’t know Freddy’s going to die and certainly don’t know that he’s going to be able to come back and haunt children in their dreams.

With that small negative behind us, this is an outstanding film. It’s won’t be much for non NOES fans, but if you’re a fan of that franchise this is a strong recommend. It runs just over 10 minutes and will leave you wanting more (Which thankfully we’ll be given soon… stay tuned for upcoming #ShortMovieMonday entries for more from Notarile and his production company Blinky Productions). You can find Blinky Productions on the web at www.blinky-productions.com as well as on the film’s Facebook fan page. Tell them ScareTissue sent you!

Check out the full film below and let us know what you think!