As if Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger wasn't scary enough, A Nightmare on Elm Street's Springwood Slasher also loves to take different creepy forms. If there's one thing Stephen King's IT has thoroughly proven, it's that there are few monsters as scary as those that can shape-shift. While a werewolf might rip someone limb from limb, at least the potential victim knows what their pursuer looks like and can try to avoid them. Things get tricky when the monster can present themselves as a friend or loved one.
While Freddy doesn't change form as often as Pennywise, usually preferring to retain his burned-up, red and green sweater-wearing visage, he does occasionally enjoy surprising targets with a new disguise. Just as how anything could conceivably happen in a nightmare, Freddy can transform into all kinds of things, from other people to TV sets or even a car, depending on how one interprets A Nightmare on Elm Street's confusing and bizarre ending.
It's now been eleven years since Freddy Krueger last claimed victims onscreen, which most horror fans would agree is far too long. While the wait to see how A Nightmare on Elm Street reinvents itself continues, it's time to take a look at all of Freddy's various transformations in the movies produced so far.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
The original A Nightmare on Elm Street, made as it was on a low budget, didn't have Freddy take many alternate forms. His most notable came when Nancy fell asleep in school, ran out into the hallway after a vision of her dead friend Tina in a body bag, and walked straight into a hall monitor who asked for her hall pass. Nancy says "Screw your pass," but as she walks away, the monitor is revealed to be Freddy, complete with striped sweater and knife glove. Freddy also seems to be possessing the car that carries Nancy away at the end.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is also light on Freddy transformations but the best is the bus driver in Jesse's opening nightmare (naturally played by Robert Englund sans make-up), who turns into Freddy and drives him into a Hell-ish desert area. It's also notable that since Freddy goes against his usual modus operandi in this sequel, attempting to possess Jesse and enter the real world, Jesse actually turns into Freddy in a gruesome fashion during the third act.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors saw the series' budget increase, leading to more elaborate nightmare sequences and instances of Robert Englund's Freddy transforming. Freddy memorably turns a faucet into finger knives against Kristen and later attacks her as a giant phallic snake. He also becomes a puppet briefly before turning Phillip into a human version, turns into a TV welcoming Jennifer to primetime - after killing Zsa Zsa Gabor as Dick Cavett - possesses his own skeleton to kill Donald Thompson, and then disguises himself as Donald's ghost to sucker in Nancy before killing her. There's also of course Freddy pretending to be an attractive nurse to lure in Joey, then leaving him feeling tongue-tied.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master also saw Freddy appear as a nurse, although this is much more obviously him since the nurse is played by Englund. Other than wearing a doctor's outfit over his normal Freddy look later on in The Dream Master, the killer goes much lighter on alternate forms than he did in Dream Warriors, actually choosing to make his victims transform instead, such as Debbie becoming a cockroach. A creepy version of Kristen appears to Rick after her death, but Freddy doesn't turn into her, she's just part of the nightmare.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Perhaps Freddy's most famous transformation - or depending on one's point of view, infamous - comes in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. When facing off against comic book fan Mark, Freddy becomes Super Freddy, a buffed-up version even more immune to damage than usual. Freddy also turns into a motorcycle before killing Dan, he briefly talks to Alice through Dan's corpse and appears as an incredibly odd-looking Baby Freddy during Alice's opening nightmare. Englund also cameos out of make-up as the asylum inmate who was presumably Freddy's biological father, but it's ambiguous as to whether it's a Freddy transformation or just part of the dream.
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
Freddy doesn't take many alternate forms in Freddy's Dead, but his best is actually just himself as a human, trying to plead with long-lost daughter Katherine to take his side, and that losing her is what caused his demonic revenge. Freddy also takes video game form long enough to kill stoner Spencer and turns into Tracy's abusive father to try and dial up her fear. It actually doesn't work well, as Tracy beats the heck out of him for a bit.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
Wes Craven's New Nightmare made Freddy scary again after how silly he acted in Freddy's Dead so transformations were kept to a minimum. He does at one point appear to Heather as her son Dylan, and also as a particularly bothersome doctor who threatens to "cut the evil out" of Dylan. There's an interesting wrinkle though, as Freddy himself has transformed into a new iteration since this is actually an ancient entity who enjoys taking the Freddy identity and had spent the last decade trapped in the film series. The entity wears a trench coat, has different make-up, and his knife glove is now an organic knife-hand. His true demon form is shown briefly at the end.
Freddy vs. Jason
Freddy vs. Jason was working with easily the biggest budget in either franchise up to that point, so Freddy really got to go wild with his shape-shifting. The coolest is a heretofore unseen Demon Freddy mode, in which Freddy gets so angry at Lori he takes on a blood-red demonic appearance complete with pointed ears. Freddy also turns into Jason's mom Pamela Voorhees to wake him up from his eternal slumber, takes the form of Lori's dad and a drug-peddling caterpillar that then possesses stoner, Freeburg. He also becomes a Crystal Lake camp counselor, Gibb's dead boyfriend Trey, and perhaps most cruelly, Mark's dead brother Bobby, who had died by suicide.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street's 2010 remake borrows from the original in many ways but actually has even less Freddy transformations. Most notable is Freddy (now played by a game Jackie Earle Haley) appearing as his human form several times, including when Nancy pulls him out of the dream world and into reality near the end.