HackArtober #4 (Scanned, With Bonus Rambling Essay)

I don't really like Freddy Krueger much, to be honest. I know that puts me at the kid's table at the Horror Fan Ice Cream Social next year, but he's never done much for me. I'm just saying.  Visually, he's kind of goofy-looking with the shiny rubber pizza-pie face, and the hat and sweater are like the thrift store crap they don't bring into the store if it falls outside the donation boxes. I assume they showed Freddy in a sequel  flashback  all normal and Englund-looking and wearing that dumbass outfit, I can't picture that looking anything but dopey in that get-up. Who even dresses like that to murder kids? Even nuns know to wear all-black when you go creepy-crawling at night, I mean, Jesus, honestly, everyone knows that. But Freddy, no, he had to be designed cheap and funky to cover up most of his eggplant parmigiana injuries (with the red sauce momma makes) to keep the makeup SFX costs down. I get that. Budget and all, sure. But I would've bought him a new shirt or something for the sequels. Ditch the dumb hat, maybe. Then again, what do I know? 

Exactly. 

Here's another thing about that Freddy guy. He just tries too fucking hard. He's got concept imposter syndrome or something. Possibly the most overcompensating horror icon in the pantheon (we'll leave Shocker out of this). He's a ghost and a nightmare landlord and a child killer and he's burned up and ugly and he wears funny clothes and cracks wise and pulls sex pest stalker pranks and can levitate your girlfriend and make a spinning blood pinata and he stretches his arms wide (okay, I still really dig stretches his arms wide, it's better than all of Tim Burton's stripey stuff) AND he has a goofy claw glove toy AND he turns to pixie dust when you turn your back on him. Okay, that last one doesn't count as a positive. Anyway, I dunno. He's just silly-looking, to me, he's too powerful and he gets a bonus dice roll for dream logic so nothing hurts him or really matters and his killer moveset is contrived and all over the place. 

(I'm being crabby, I know. I'm not saying I'm right. He's still better than 99% of all clown slashers. And the Leprechaun guy. He's a utter zero in my book, that Leprechaun. A scrub. Useless. Stop it with him, please.)

I also think the claw glove was pretty unwieldy and a super-contrived schtick (Wes Craven got docked bonus pay if he didn't put in a requisite number of contrivances in each movie, but he supposedly made all the contrivance money back on Shocker, so, good for him, it probably earned out more than Shocker did in theaters). Too much glove exposure makes you just notice all the things Freddy can't be shown doing while it's on, and it's always on, isn't it? No pinball.  Fucking up the Sunday Times doing the crossword. Can't  bowl. When Freddy was making his stabby glove his mom was probably harping on him and asking him how was he going to open the car door or drive or carry in groceries with that ridiculously contrived contraption on his hand. Knocking shit over with that goddamned glove. 

Before anyone flips out because his mom was a nun or whatever, I dropped out by the third one, which I waited to see on cable. That was enough Freddy for me. I saw New Nightmare, which was a great concept with a lot of potential, but I thought it was stale, dull and didn't really run with anything. So I don't remember Freddy's actual filmic history besides the fact that he's a child murderer who became a beloved stand-up comic serial killer with a swiss army fondue set on his hand. And he kills Dick Cavett and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Jesus wept.

But I do remember the Freddy Krueger doll they made for kids. For kids! Wow wow wow! Insane shit right there out in the open and a sign of future crass corporate/audience ickiness to come. Back then I was braced for the John Wayne Gacy fashion clown doll and Barbie and Ken's new smart and attractive friend, Ted, who drives a van with no passenger side door lock. No, no, I wasn't, obviously. I exaggerated for purposes of (unfunny) comedy. 

But the crass cynicism of turning a child murdering killer ghost with a AD&D Anarchist's Cookbook Murder Glove into a kid-friendly huggable bed-pal was pretty wild. And that they sold a lot of wisecracking child-killer dolls, and somehow there wasn't a moral outcry like they had over D&D, or the lyrics to a Mentors song quoted in a congressional hearing (still a big !!! to this day). They also made toy murder gloves! Holy shit. I was  just irked-off that there was no Tall Man doll for me to hug and play with and talk to and love. "Pull the string to hear five different death alien undertaker sayings!" (Boy/You play a good game boy, but the game is finished, now you die./No, It's Not/The funeral is about to begin, SIR/You think when you die, you go to heaven. You come to us. 

Oh, if only. If only.

The first time I saw Nightmare On Elm Street it scared the shit out of me, revisiting it years later I was surprised that I was kind of bored and impatient with it. It's a film that really smacks you upside the head when it comes out with a bang and some new moves and sets certain templates for other films to copy (the stretchy face in the wall bit got super old super fast). There are some really inventive visuals and set pieces. But Freddy's just irritating, and the meddling kids don't really meddle, they fall asleep, and obviously they never have a chance in hell from the start. He's practically got superhero powers, and I really dislike that kind of power imbalance in horror, where there's just nothing that can be done unless some deux ex machina spell or grimoire or priest ghost makes the bad thing go away (for a while). The movie has a lot of dead spots and spins its wheels, and the tricks don't hold the power they had first time around. And then Freddy is a game show host by the third one or whatever, with the most contrived kills at the time. T.V. Set Freddie? A kid in a glue trap? That's pre-code horror comics, and not the really good ones (or even the really good bad ones).

I'm getting tired, so I'm not going to edit this post. I don't even know where all this was going other than, I don't eally like Freddy Krueger or those films. So what. Big deal. Right?

New HackArtober drawing is done for tomorrow. I think the next two are scribbled out, actually. I'll try to get some regular posts and catch-up stuff here asap. Finished a benefit illustration, the car situation is ongoing, shuffling doctor and therapy appointments around because of the car situation, drawing a lot of Pirate Cat cards, packing up HOF book and merch packages and pushing the ever-late (but looking extra-nicely when finally done, I must say) commissions forward. And, of course, there's always the stuff no one talks about. But we won't talk about that.

Hope you're having a fun Shocktoberfest so far. My favorite month of the year, even without the horror. The beautiful horror.