Before New Line Cinema took a bet on a Hobbit, it was nicknamed “The House that Freddy Built.” The studio made its name through the ‘80s and ‘90s with the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, producing seven films in 10 years, and giving Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger a good stab at being THE slasher of the era.

Finally, that original run has made it to 4K, with a box set capturing the whole fascinating journey. On screen, it runs from Wes Craven's original dark, subconscious-baiting vision to his meta-New Nightmare, which fully opened a post-modern door for slashers. Behind the scenes, the Nightmare franchise is notable for the weight of talent involved in New Line's hectic production sprint, making it one of the most fascinating horror series around.

Is it a dream or a nightmare for horror fans? Despite a few cold sweats, it's overwhelmingly the former.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was a revelation. Craven's Nightmare brought the supernatural roaring into the slasher genre when he introduced a deadly menace into the dreams of a street full of young victims. More than forty years on, Krueger is effective as a snarling, scarred figure barely seen in the light, with a large side order of representing teenagers' repressed feelings, backed by an eerie industrial-nursery rhyme score. It works particularly well when Freddy's torments break through into the waking world, where the children, led by franchise Final Girl Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), are revealed to be pawns in Freddy's revenge against their parents.

Shock highlights include a victim dragged across the ceiling, Nancy visited in the bath, and Johnny Depp in his movie debut sucked into a bedroom bloodbath. Moments like those would form the basis of the series to follow, as higher budgets conjured up increasingly fanciful deaths and more than one mythology formed around Krueger. First, though, there was an early misstep.

Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge is a weird fusion of a haunted-house story and a murder mystery. It spins Freddy into a Mestophelean figure who possesses new 1428 Elm Street resident, Jesse. While the idea has promise, it doesn't quite know how to continue the coming-of-age drama of the first film. Its inexplicable homoerotic nightmare scenes set a particularly uneven tone. Jesse and his girlfriend's discovery of Nancy's old diary sheds light on Krueger's past, and the parents who took things into their own hands when the justice system let them down, but it squanders the ambiguity of this new murder spree on Elm Street.

But Freddy's Revenge walks so the third part can run. Dream Warriors is where the series comes alive as it develops sustainable opposition to Freddy. Debutante Patricia Arquette plays Kristen, one of several children held in an institution after their night terrors manifest. The last of the Elm Street kids, they're rich pickings for the recovered dream demon, until they realise the ability of Kristen (Arquette) to pull others into her dreams gives them the power to fight back. Nancy's return as a counsellor helps round this out as the joint highlight of this set.

Chuck Russell (Eraser, The Mask) directs Dream Warriors with style and some impressively grisly nightmare deaths. The Freddy TV joke may be eye-catching, but the puppet dream death—with veins for strings—remains a classic. Most importantly, the third film returns to the strong idea of the first: kids working together to defeat the Dream Master.

Talking of which… The fourth film brings back the surviving members of the third film (sadly, without Arquette reprising her role). It's easy to see why it's the best box office performer of this set. Despite misgivings, New Line head Robert Shaye hired young director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger) to direct a script co-written by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, A Knight's Tale). The result is a colourful, inventive mix of anxiety and imagination, drawing on Kafka as much as Hellraiser, which further helped refine the series' concept and sense of the absurd. Sure, Freddy could die in every film—in Part 4, he's savagely ripped apart from the souls he's taken—but as Harlin put it, he's the “James Bond” everyone came to see—both a horror threat, a constant misogynist, and the contrarily, the increasingly quipping character the audience roots for.

The fifth chapter, The Dream Child, completes the middle trilogy while picking up some strands from the third part to deliver a new gothic emphasis. Alice Johnson (Lisa Wilcox) takes the lead from Kristen, and her pregnancy draws a link with Freddy's irresistibly preposterous birth. The twisted revenge that started the character is shoved out the way by the gloriously over-the-top idea that Freddy's the son of a hundred maniacs (his nun mother, Amanda, was accidentally trapped in a church asylum.

Deliriously MTV stuff it may be, but British director Stephen Hopkins' film doesn't reach the heights of the previous instalment. New Line decided to end the franchise with the sixth film, and Freddy's Dead is the pinnacle of the neon-soaked Nightmare era. It jumps into a cartoony, dystopian future where Freddy hunts the final child of Elm Street (Final Boy John Doe—Shon Greenblatt). Directed by the series' long-running producer Rachel Talalay, it's a bit incoherent as it blends real-world psychosis with Freddy's dreamscape. But the fun highlight is an extended 3D segment at the climax, during which Freddy's family manages to separate the slasher from dream demons. Fortunately, this set includes branded retro 3D specs so a viewer can enjoy the washed-out but suitably overblown ending.

Of course, there's always room for one more visit to 1428 Elm Street. Freddy's Dead may have ended the continuity until 2003's Freddy vs. Jason (very good, if not part of this set), but this Nightmare collection ends on a high note, as it takes a final unexpected stab at changing movie horror.

It's easy to see where the meta origins of Scream in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (although Friday the 13th had experimented with the post-modern as early as 1986). In the ‘real world,' the Nightmare franchise is huge and particularly popular with children (“Every child knows who Freddy is; he's like Santa Claus”), when original Nancy actress Heather Langenkamp starts to dream of a darker, more evil version of Freddy. Could it be that New Line's decision to end the franchise means the dream demon is no longer contained? It may be a big in-joke, but New Nightmare is a strong format-testing close to the sequence, all the way to its obligatory dream dungeon ending.

Although the sound and 4K restorations vary a little across the films, it's fantastic to have them finally collected in UHD. It's a treat to watch the extraordinary journey Nightmare takes as Freddy travels from menacing Bogeyman to an antiheroic face of slashers to a meta avenging demon.

As half the fun is digging into the series' extraordinary production history, some fans will find the lack of new features on this set disappointing, but this is undoubtedly the ultimate way to make repeat trips to 1428 Elm Street.

4K Ultra HD Special Features

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Audio commentary #1 – featuring Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and Jacques Haitki
Audio commentary #2 – featuring the above and Robert Shaye, Amanda Wyss, Ronee Blakley, and a host of key crew and production staff
Focus points – a compilation of alternative takes and short BTS clips
Alternate Endings – three alternative endings
The House that Freddy Built: retrospective featurette on the history of the franchise and the studio that produced it
Never Sleep Again: The Making of A Nightmare on Elm Street
Night Terrors: Featurette on the world of dreams and the inspiration behind Freddy Krueger