The Many Gloves of Freddy Krueger
Every town has an Elm Street.
It’s been almost forty years now since the premiere of the iconic Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, yet it still has a cosy place in the hearts of horror fans across the world. The films are nothing if not memorable, and that’s due in large part to their unforgettable villain.
Freddy Krueger the dream-stalking serial killer is utterly unforgettable in his dirty striped red sweater, with his flayed face leering out at terrified teens. But by far his most recognizable asset is his metallic and leather glove, bristling with razor sharp blades, which he uses to eviscerate his victims.
The Original Freddy Krueger Glove
The glove has gone through many iterations, but it’s never strayed far from it’s first form. The grasping claws and weathered frame, which we see Freddy constructing in the first scene of the 1984 classic, remain almost unchanged throughout the many sequels and remakes that follow. It’s always worn on the killer’s right hand, and it appears to change it’s form according to its user’s will.
The mind behind the slasher franchise, Wes Craven, wanted to tap into the primal fears that live within us all. In a 2014 interview, he described how he wanted Freddy’s glove to be animalistic, like the killing hand of an ancient cave bear.
“One of the deepest fears of any critter, and certainly human beings, is that of being opened up,” He explained. “The skin is so, so thin.”
The knives attached to the glove were tomato knives, which were chosen for their long, thin appearance. They were so sharp that Robert Englund, the actor for Freddy Krueger, accidentally cut himself the first time he put on the prop.
This original design was so popular with fans that it inspired not only a fever for the franchise, but an actual heist. On the set of the first sequel, fans posing as workmen tried to infiltrate the set. Robert Englund claims to have taken the glove himself before they could succeed, but this is contested by a fan called Mike Becker, who claims he succeeded in stealing the glove before Englund could stop him. The actual whereabouts are still contested to this day.
Freddy Krueger - The Sequels
The original film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, was such a smash hit that sequels were quickly rushed into production. By 1991, five sequels had been created, each one adding to the complex mythos behind the dream killer, Freddy Krueger.
With each film, the design of the glove changed just slightly, in an attempt to improve upon the already iconic prop. Each sequel lengthened the blades slightly, causing the glove to become even more claw-like.
The glove also got more weathered with each film. While the blades in each installment remained polished and razor sharp, the glove seemed to deteriorate over time, eventually becoming tattered and full of holes.
Freddy also gained the ability to transform the blades into spoons or even into needles filled with alarming liquids. Like its user, it became clear that the glove was made partially of imagination and of fear itself.
In Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, we got a peek into the mind of this vicious killer in the form of a flashback. In it, we saw Freddy Krueger’s basement, which was filled with alternative gloves to his four-bladed monstrosity.
Nightmare on Elm Street - The Remakes
The two remakes- Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), both remade the glove entirely.
New Nightmare made the most drastic change. Rather than a removable glove, Freddy’s killing hand was a mass of sinew and bone, augmented by long metal spikes. A fifth spike was also added to the thumb.
The 2010 remake did away with this change and instead featured a more complex version of the original glove. The solid metal plate was replaced with long rivets that mimicked finger bones.
The Future of the Killing Glove
The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is still going strong, even with the doomed sequel, Freddy vs Jason 2, being recently abandoned.
Regardless of whether we’ll ever see a new Freddy Krueger film again or not, the series will remain a staple of the slasher genre for decades more to come, due in large part to a single prop- the razor sharp claw of Freddy Krueger.
