Forums Horror Movie Talk
Freddy's Glove: Out With The Old And In With The New? A Visual Comparison From March 2010

Frederick Charles Krueger of course is the man who made and uses the razor-fingered glove. A blue-collar worker with limited resources, and a lot a creativity. I don't need to go into detail to explain this, just watch the damn movies. I think Krueger is a smart guy and chooses substance over style, because he makes a style of his own. Who else do you know that's able to rock those stripes like he does? Nobody. And anyone who supposedly does is only able to do so because they're emulating Freddy. So when making his own personal weapon, he decides to stick with a clasc used in nature nce the beginning of complex lifeforms. The claw is so mple, and brutally effective; hence it's longevity. Wes Craven was inspired for that to be his weapon of choice after watching has cat dig into the de of his couch. And Wes Craven himself is Freddy just as much as Robert Englund is. Mind, I am in no way trying to put down Jackie Earl Haley. I can't wait to see how he's handled the character.

Let's compare the old glove with the new. Here are some pics for you to compare them yourself. First up, the clasc. This one is specifically modeled after the glove you see in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors; available for purchase at the one and only NightmareGloves.com

Up next we have new glove that we are to see in the upcoming remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, slated for release on April 30th. I found this image on google, so please don't sue.



And now to make my comparison. Please take into account that I've not phycally handled either of these gloves (though I'd LOVE to) and am bang this purely by visual criteria.

The first an most noticeable change is that in place of a full backplate, the fingers are now secured onto the rest of the glove by four individual finger bars, which connect to a smaller backplate at the wrist. I'm assuming this is to be for multiple purposes. Flexibility, reduced weight (remember, these gloves are heavy), and aesthetics.

Both gloves were degned to look like they were made in a boiler room. But I will say they both are flawed in their realism. The clasc glove nails it with the backplate; One piece to hold everything together, and it covers and protects the entire back of the hand. It took me a while to find a clear enough view, but there IS a wrist strap vible in The Dream Master, and I'm going to run with the idea that while the gloves were different between productions, in the linear story, it was the same glove through different stages of wear and tear (let's not get nitpicky about the zes of the holes in the palm de, or even the shapes of the blades. Obviously whoever made the different gloves wasn't as anally attentive to detail as I am when it comes to movies). They've gotten the wear and tear to the metal bits right as time and the story progressed, but unless the pieces of brass and copper to support the blades were cut perfectly into ze and shape, the glove is not going to look as polished and smooth as it does even in the first three films. So I do give props to the new glove for being a bit meser or "grittier" in appearance. However, if we're going for something more realistic, why go for the skeletal finger bars with a smaller backplate to support them? It seems like a waste of time and effort to me. While I don't doubt the creativity of both Freddy and the people who degned the glove in real life, we're dealing with someone who is more practical in what they do (while in a mortal state of being). In a nutshell, one piece of metal has been replaced with five. Let's not forget the four additional rivets. Ade from shaving off a tiny bit of weight, what is the point? If it's because it looks more skeletal and scary, it works, but is not a valid enough reason. Remember, practicality and effectiveness of the weapon are what matter and not what it looks like. Bedes, how much attention to detail would you have to the weapon of someone coming after you with it? Maybe it's only me who thinks this, but if I were to encounter somebody with a real bladed glove, my reaction would be to scream something along the lines of, "HOLY SHIT, THEY'VE GOT A WEAPON AND ARE APPROACHING ME; I DON'T WANT THIS PERSON NEAR ME BECAUSE THEY LOOK LIKE THEY COULD/INTEND TO HARM ME WITH THE AFOREMENTIONED WEAPON" and do my damnedest to get away from them rather than take the time to examine the aforementioned weapon to see how scary it looks.The potential argument of increased flexibility is invalid. You don't need to wear either glove to see that when you spread your fingers apart it that your palm does not widen. So there is no need for this modification unless you want to knock a few grams off of the weight. I don't know if that much would allow one to not need a wrist strap so that the glove doesn't fall off while either swinging one's arm around or having it relaxed and down by one's de.

One other minute detail that I have to rule in favor of the new glove is the blade placement. The traditional glove if I've seen and remember correctly were all about the same length placed at about the same area on each finger. This made the blade alignment match each finger, some blades reaching out further depending on the length of each finger. This makes the resulting cuts from a slashing motion to have varying depths and lengths. The new glove however uses blades of alternating length to make the tips line up with each other, which makes for even cuts, and more damage to the victim. They look to be welded onto about the same spot on each finger, showing clearly the different blade lengths. This makes me wonder where did Freddy acquire them, as well as how much did he really work on this glove? From released footage from the remake, it shows a small montage of the construction of the glove (much like in the original film). This shows the highlights of how he made he glove, but there is a lot of detail not covered in the few seconds we get to see. It is after all, a movie and not every nit-picky detail is necessary about the construction of the antagonist's weapon. I'm not sure if Freddy cares that much about the details of the weapon as long as it does what it was built to do. So I wonder if he'd actually make the blades line up so much. Would he have actually contemplate anything I've said when he started to construct the glove? The question that has been running through my head, is what would a razor-fingered glove actually look like if it were made by one man in a boiler room? I'm not sure if either of them hit the bullseye on the realism target. I think if they had stuck with the original backplate, but made it as rough around the edges as the new glove, we'd have a bullseye. The blade length and placement could go either way, depending on if Freddy just wanted it to cut without caring about the minute details, or if he was OCD about how he wanted to cut. That's up to the writers for the character.

So what are your thoughts?

my thoughts are as follows: I have trouble reading your articles because you inst on compiling like 3 paragraphs into 1. lol

I can't even do it, I lose my place lol

There are gnals that indicate separation points between paragraphs, I wish you were a little more familiar with them lol

don't mean to sound like a douche, but it's tough when you're trying to read what amounts to a run-on paragraph lol

^....ROFL!