played by the Fonz?” to notice either of those two winks to the audience on first viewing.
What made Craven’s surprise appearance in a Krueger outfit extra amusing was that Craven himself was the guy who came up with the iconic villain. Craven wrote and directed the first “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” The next five movies had different directors (with Craven contributing to the third film’s screenplay) before Craven returned to the franchise with 1994’s “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” a non-canonical Freddy Krueger story.
Craven only directing the first “A Nightmare on Elm Street” film adds an extra layer of meta humor not just to the janitor scene but to the movie’s opening. There, Casey (Drew Barrymore) is flirting with her soon-to-be killer over scary movies. Ghostface says he liked “A Nightmare on Elm Street” because it was scary, and Casey responds, “The first one was, the rest sucked.” It’s a fun meta moment of Wes Craven flexing. He wrote and directed the most renowned entry in the “Elm Street” franchise, and he knew it.
To put such a line at the very beginning of his film felt like Craven telling his viewers, “Remember when I created an original horror movie so good it spawned a massive franchise? Want to see me do it again?”
