Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Plex!

This week, Freddy is out for revenge.

Episode 7.1 “Sister’s Keeper”

(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on November 20th, 1988)

Freddy’s Nightmares started with Freddy Krueger killing Deputy Blocker, the man who had led the vigilante mob that set him on fire.  This episode finds Freddy seeking revenge on Blocker’s twin teenager daughters, neurotic Merit (Hili Park) and the supercool, super awesome Lisa (Gry Park).  Merit is convinced hat Freddy is haunting her nightmares and, as a result, she’s a bit of an outcast at school.  Lisa, on the other hand, believes that Freddy is dead and buried.  Lisa is stable and popular at school and even has a jock boyfriend.

Needless to say, Merit is a bit jealous of Lisa.  For me, this was the most realistic part of this episode.  People are always jealous of girls named Lisa, especially when they’ve got it all together as this Lisa does.  (Trust me, I know!)  It’s a heavy burden to bear but it happens.  Lisa, being a saint, tries to help Merit out but Merit is pretty unappreciative.

Lisa even dresses up like Merit and pretends to be Merit so that she can experience what it’s like to be her sister.  Lisa discovers that her boyfriend is just as interesting in sleeping with Merit as in sleeping with her.  Booo!  What a creep!  Even worse, Lisa discovers that Freddy is real and that he’s after both her and Merit.

Like the pilot, this episode tells one story and most of the action centers around Freddy.  Freddy actually takes part in this week’s story and, even by his standards, he’s cruel.  “I’ll make it gentle,” he tells the terrified Merit, a reminder that Freddy was always a far more perverse killer than the seemingly asexual Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers.  This episode was a reminder of just how scary Freddy could be.  Robert Englund didn’t hold up.

Merit and Lisa learn how to dream “in sync” so that they can both face Freddy at the same time.  It’s a cool idea that does absolutely no good.  As Lisa puts it, “It doesn’t work, you can’t make him go away!”  Lisa ends up dead (boo!) while Merit is blamed for her murder.  And so the episode ends.

Wow, that’s not a happy ending.  Not only did Freddy triumph but supercool Lisa was killed, largely due to her sister’s incompetence.  Then again, there really aren’t that many happy endings to be found when it comes to Freddy Krueger.  The ending was depressing but effective and, even more importantly, it was really the only way the story could have ended.

This episode was pretty good.  It’s certainly the best that I’ve seen so far.  Merit and Lisa were real-played by the Park sisters and Robert Englund once again showed just how frightening he could be as Freddy Krueger.  Within the confines imposed by television syndication, this was a genuinely frightening episode.