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On DOES IT FLY?, we explore the science and story logic behind your favorite pop culture topics. Today, we’re asking: if you die in your dreams, will you die in real life, like we see in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies?

“Welcome to prime time…”

Freddy Krueger

“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you…three, four, better lock the door…five, six, grab your crucifix…seven, eight, better stay up late.” For some of us, horribly scarred by R-rated horror movies in heavy rotation on HBO as kids, this little nursery rhyme first heard in A Nightmare on Elm Street was about as well known as the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a simple, memorable admonition to not fall asleep lest serial killer Freddy Krueger visit you in your dreams to make sure you won’t wake up that held considerable power over our imaginations. But it’s also so much more.

A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as its parade of sequels (of…varying quality, but we’ll get to that) taps into a certain primal fear of the unknown. Sleep is one of the little deaths in our life. We surrender ourselves to forces we don’t truly understand, where we then are bombarded with symbolic narratives as our brains keep firing while our bodies rest. The simple question of “if I go to sleep, what if I don’t wake up?” is one that every child has asked their parents. And there’s that long standing urban legend that if you die in your dream, well, your real life body will follow.

Is there any truth to that? If you die in your dreams, will you ACTUALLY die in real life? And what about the actual science of dreams and sleep? And how the heck did Wes Craven and friends weave it all together to create one of the most compelling horror stories of all time?

Check out the latest episode of Does it Fly? to find out! And…let’s hope we don’t put you to sleep. Put some coffee on or something, geez!

https://youtu.be/h0A0QX0nH0c

FURTHER VIEWING

Virtually everything we cover in terms of the dream logic of Freddy Krueger and this franchise can be found in Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street, a true classic of ‘80s horror and one of the most influential films of its kind of all time!

And yes, the rest of the franchise is kind of hit and miss, but they’re all entertaining as hell. If you ONLY watch one of the sequels, check out A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, which is generally beloved and the best of the bunch. But for you Scream fans (another Wes Craven masterpiece), you might also want to give Wes Craven’s New Nightmare a look, as it’s almost the prototype for Scream!

And if all that is old (and ratty) hat to you, maybe it’s time to check out the brilliant Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy documentary.