A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors plays host to arguably Freddy Krueger’s most iconic line, and it turns out Robert Englund improvised it. In the first two A Nightmare on Elm Street films, Freddy doesn’t speak that often, and when he does, it’s usually brief and to the point. Contrary to what some may think though, Freddy’s humor didn’t entirely come out of nowhere. While he’s mostly scary in the first two Nightmares, he still does wacky things like send his tongue through a phone at Nancy, or whip a victim’s butt with a towel.
Beginning with Dream Warriors though, Freddy really started to let his comedic side out, kicking off a fun tradition of one-liners before a kill or attack scene. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 has several really memorable ones, including “what’s wrong Joey, feeling tongue tied” or “sorry kid, I don’t believe in fairy tales.” To be fair, Will kind of earned that last one, after hilariously boasting to Freddy about being the “wizard master.”
When it comes to Freddy’s most well-known line from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and possibly the entire franchise, there’s one obvious choice. The famous line comes right before Freddy kills Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow), a teen who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star.
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Freddy’s Most Iconic Line Was Improvised
To set the scene, Jennifer’s is the second death to occur in Dream Warriors, and sees her up late watching TV due to not wanting to fall asleep. Her friend Phillip had just “sleepwalked” to his death after all. Jennifer wants nothing more than to be on TV, but soon she’ll be in it, thanks to Freddy. Jennifer watches Dick Cavett interview Zsa Zsa Gabor on a late night talk show, before things go crazy, and Jennifer makes the terrible mistake of walking too close to the TV. This leads Freddy to possess it, lift her up into the air, then have his head emerge from the top.
Freddy’s pre-mortem one-liner as scripted before killing Jennifer was simply “This is it Jennifer, your big break in TV!,” which by itself isn’t a bad line. Actor Robert Englund said the line as scripted for the first two takes, then decided to improvise the now immortal “Welcome to primetime, bitch!” on the third take, done from a different camera angle. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 director Chuck Russell loved Englund’s ad-lib, but didn’t want to lose the original line either, leading to Englund saying both before killing Jennifer in the final cut of Dream Warriors. Englund improvised quite a few of Freddy’s one-liners over the years, but he never quite managed to top this one.
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