When we think of the maligned art form that is the horror movie, what is the first image that comes to mind? For some it may be Lon Chaney’s shrieking Phantom, or Karloff’s heavy-lidded creature of Frankenstein. Maybe it’s Dracula, in Lugosi or Lee form; or even the young Linda Blair’s grinning, lacerated head clicking back into place post-rotation.

For me, there’s one image in particular that hovers above them all in the shadowy places. A wiry silhouette of a figure topped with a battered hat, beneath which leer the most piercing lecherous eyes. A shamelessly sadistic chuckle rumbles through the air as the figure raises a right hand with a long, lethally sharp blade atop each finger...

Freddy Krueger’s the name. You know his game.

I wonder how aware younger people are of Freddy these days. I suspect he's regarded something of a cult figure, beloved of the Comic Book Guys of this world. I may be wrong in that assumption. But one thing I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, as a child of the eighties, is that back then, when the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise was at full throttle, Freddy was not cult. Freddy was mainstream. You couldn't escape Freddy. He was on T-shirts, magazines, posters, all over TV.

And I was terrified of him long before I saw any of the Nightmare movies.

The one crystal clear image I have in my mind of first being aware of Freddy is being on a bus on a school trip, and passing a shop window which brandished the British video release poster for A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge. That furious scowl, those blades held high; whatever Freddy may have wound up becoming, there's nothing remotely cute or camp about that image. Thoughts stirred in my young mind, more terrifying images - images way worse than the content of (most of) the films turned out to be, images of what those blades could do. That he wore Indiana Jones’ hat and Dennis the Menace’s jumper somehow only made him creepier; he was the literal subversion of my early childhood heroes.

The playground gossiping began. Everyone knew someone who claimed to have seen a Freddy movie. Soon enough, we all knew the rules: that he got us in our dreams (not them - not the characters in the movies - but us!), and that if he killed you in your dream, you died for real.

Freddy really was the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom. Heather Langenkamp says it in New Nightmare: "Every kid knows who Freddy is. He's like Santa Claus, or King Kong."

And so came the day I finally saw A Nightmare on Elm Street. And yes, thankfully I did see the original first, aged ten I think. I saw it in a friend’s bedroom one sunny summer afternoon, on a tiny little TV, the sunlight gushing through the windows and bouncing off the screen, the incessant whirr of the Betamax louder than the movie itself... and still the effect was such that I slept with the lights on that night. Hand on heart, the only time I have slept with the lights on because of a movie.

And the fascinating thing is, it wasn't Freddy himself that freaked me out the most. Yes, of course, he was scary. Yes, of course, it was scary when Tina flew through the air, her stomach spontaneously slashing open. Yes, it was scary when Glen got sucked into the mattress and vomited up onto the ceiling. But the one moment that bothered me most of all was when Nancy sees Tina in a body bag. Tina opens her mouth to speak, makes a little sigh - and a centipede falls from her mouth.

That chilled me to the marrow. And what makes that so fascinating is that, to this day, I'm not entirely sure why. I can't explain what it is about the image that I find so unsettling.

There you have it, right there. That's why I was, and remain, absolutely enthralled by A Nightmare on Elm Street. That's a big part of why I have remained fascinated by the horror genre. Because of fear, and how difficult it is to keep tabs on. And the movie is filled with such moments. The staircase turning to glue around Nancy’s feet as she tries to flee. Freddy declaring of his claw, “This is God.” The lamb in the boiler room, which on the DVD commentary Heather Langenkamp says is the thing she gets the most questions about from fans, despite the fact that she’s not even in that scene.

Freddy is terrifying because he has no qualms about invading the most intimate areas: the fragile subconscious. He strikes when his victims are at their most vulnerable, and unable to defend themselves. Most of all, Freddy is terrifying because he is not subject to the laws of reality; witness Tina running away from him, only to run straight into him. His domain is subject only to nightmare logic: and in nightmares, the only thing sure to happen is the very thing you don’t want to happen. It’s not enough that he has the power to kill you; he wants to toy with you first, bully you, take you apart bit by bit, and will only strike once you’re well and truly pissing yourself. He knows what you’re afraid of, even if you don’t know yourself.

It's a crying shame that Freddy hasn't been truly scary in a long time. While A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is tremendously entertaining, it also set the series off on a downward spiral. From then on, the focus shifted to goofy gags and one-liners, rather than true chills. Sad to say, a lot of the blame for that has to be put on Robert Englund. Having in many respects created the character, he should have done more to keep the evilness at the forefront, rather than lapsing into slapstick. Look at how the truly abysmal Freddy's Dead turns the once-terrifying gauntlet of death into a fucking Nintendo Powerglove... dear me, how did things go so far off track? As the picture at the bottom of this page will tell you, I've been lucky enough to meet Robert at a convention, and he's a wonderful man for those kind of shows - truly in his element meeting and greeting, playing to the crowd. Maybe the problem with the movies was a series of less conscientious writers and directors who either didn’t know how to rein that madcap energy in, or didn’t really give a shit. (A bit like how Robin Williams' performances vary wildly in quality, in accordance with how well directed he is. Dead Poet's Society, Insomnia - good. Mrs Doubtfire – somewhat less so.)

In this regard, I have to say - Freddy's Revenge is underrated. Yes, I said it. Sure, it breaks all the rules established by the original – but that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t ever be able to predict what Freddy will do next, and doing things so differently ensures that things stay fresh, as opposed to the stale predictability of parts 4, 5 and 6. Freddy’s Revenge may be a bit silly at times, and has a repulsively sentimental denouement, but at least it keeps Freddy scary. The make-up effects and lighting are possibly the best of the series, and it’s one of Englund’s best and darkest performances.

As Crawford warns Clarice before she meets Dr Lector for the first time, “Never forget what he is.” Yet in the later movies, how soon we forget with Freddy; so busy are we laughing along with his quips, it slips our mind that this guy is a murdering kiddie fiddler. It is curious that the words ‘child molester’ are never actually used at any point in any of the movies; about the nearest they ever get is when Ronee Blakely calls him a “filthy child murderer.” I doubt it’s accidental that this facet of Freddy was mostly downplayed as the series progressed/dumbed-down; God forbid the multiplex teens might have their delicate sensibilities challenged, lest it not sit well with their nachos. Bravo, then, to Freddy Vs Jason for clearly indicating Freddy’s paedophilia as he stalks the very young girl in the boiler room and languorously licks her photograph for his scrapbook. Although of course by that point New Nightmare had already done a good job of making the character scary again.

Still, I’d be lying if I pretended not to have any affection for some of Freddy’s campier moments. Dokken’s Dream Warriors video, the Fat Boys collaboration Are You Ready For Freddy, and the Freddy Vs Jason weigh-in press conference never fail to crack a smile in my jaded cheeks. A huge part of what continues to make Freddy such a great pop culture icon is how luridly inappropriate it is for him to be accepted as such; that so many kids in the eighties/early nineties had their bedroom walls plastered not only with pictures of Madonna and Michael Jackson, but also Freddy. (Hmm, Freddy and Jacko… insert child molester gag here.) He was quotable and imitable in a way that his mute and expressionless competitors Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees were not. New Nightmare effectively illustrated the bizarre nature of the Freddy media phenomenon, but also served as a blunt reminder of what Freddy really is: fear incarnate, the embodiment of everything that comes to get us in bed at night. All our paranoia and insecurities made flesh, deep fried, and dished up hot and angry.

One last anecdote in closing. I too had Freddy on my wall in the early nineties; a Freddy’s Dead poster (a film I would not see for another decade, by which time I was frightened only by how bad it was), which shows Freddy leaning forward, thrusting his bladed hand out into the foreground. The night that I put the poster up above my bed, I woke suddenly in the wee small hours, rolled onto my back, and opened my eyes – just as the poster slipped from the wall, and Freddy’s glove came hurtling down directly toward my face…

Needless to say, I shoved the poster under my bed that night, and have long since lost it. But Freddy is still known to creep up on me from time to time, in the dead of night.