Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Freddy's Nightmares



It has always seemed a little strange to me that the Freddy's Nightmares TV series was never released on DVD, sure it was a cheap and nasty cash in on the popularity of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but I can remember enjoying some of the episodes when I rented them on VHS.

A while back I was reading that 1 volume of the series was released on DVD in the UK but further volumes in the series were cancelled due to extremely poor sales.

Well it took me a little while to find a copy at a price I was willing to pay but I got volume 1 of Freddy's Nightmares in the mail today, the DVD featured three episodes of the show including the pilot No More Mr Nice Guy which told the story of the parents in Springwood and how they killed Freddy in revenge for the murder of their children and despite it's obvious low budget I enjoyed seeing that episode again.

The other two stories on the DVD were It's a Miserable Life which I kind of liked and Killer Instinct which was dull and boring, from what I can recall of the show the episodes varied quite a bit in terms of quality but were always a little better when Freddy took an active part in the plot, something that didn't happen in these episodes.

What truly shocked me about this DVD was the terrible picture quality, in places it was some of the worst image quality I've ever seen on DVD, I saw a bootleg of No More Mr Nice Guy that was of a much higher quality than the official release leaving me to wonder if it was lack of interest in the series that was responsible for the poor sales of the DVD of the terrible quality of it's contents.

I know there are bootleg sets of the entire series available but to be honest I'm shocked that the series didn't get some sort of release to cash in on the Nightmare on Elm Street remake but perhaps Warner Brothers / New Line Cinema felt they couldn't compete with the bootleggers in terms of quality product.