My senior year at Mater Dei, they finally allowed wearing costumes on Halloween. I spotted the above-pictured Freddy Krueger makeup kit at a costume shop, and since Freddy was enjoying the height of his popularity and I could do a good Freddy voice (my favorite line to pull out was "How sweet — fresh meat!"), it seemed perfect.
Speaking of the above picture, I unfortunately don't have in my possession any photos of me in the actual costume. Until I can get my Mom to dig some out of her archives, the above picture from the box will have to do.
Of course my makeup was applied by a high school senior (myself) rather than a professional makeup artist, so it didn't look as good as the above, but it still looked very cool. Here's the back of the box describing the application process:
The prosthetic itself was a very thin piece of some presumably foam-based material. It was flexible, but not stretchy like foam latex, so you did have to cut out the material on the sides of the eyes as pictured (though oddly not pictured in the drawing), so it wouldn't bunch up on itself (or tear off) if you smiled evilly. The directions mention: "For the most professional look possible, we suggest using acrylic paint on your MAKEUP EFFECT PIECE applied with an airbrush instead of the makeup supplied in this kit." — no doubt they did this for the box photos. I did not. (Hmm, still need to get around to taking an airbrush class.)
One thing you can't tell from these pictures is that the hat that came with the kit was a complete piece of crap made out of foam that they had to fold up to get in the box. I substituted a costume fedora that still looks like crap compared to the real product of a haberdasher (and really looks like crap now — it's gotten quite beat up in boxes over the years, else I'd take a photo), but it looked much better than the foam thingie.
Also in the pictures they hide in shadow the guy's hair (Freddy Krueger with a mullet is pretty incongruous). I added a bald cap to the kit for the proper look. I don't think I did much (if any) making up of the cap, though.
This makeup kit, BTW, was being sold as late as 1997 at Spencer Gifts, according to a knowledgeable visitor to my site.
The Freddy sweater was not an officially-licensed product. In fact, it's comical how unlicensed it was. So as not to be sued by New Line, the company called it a "Horror Shirt":
I especially love how they used masks that were as un-Freddy-like as possible (while still being human monsters). In another apparent CYA maneuver, they made the shirt (yeah, it's a thin polyester shirt, of course, not a nice wool sweater like Freddy's) be red-and-black striped, rather than Freddy's actual red-and-olive-green. (There's now an officially licensed version which is a bit more faithful, but the fake weathering along the bottom edge looks absolutely horrendous.)
The Freddy glove, on the other hand, was an officially-licensed piece of kit, and a very cool one:
The fake brass parts look surprisingly convincing (they're plastic, of course). The steel parts don't look as good, but still get the job done. As manufactured, the blades didn't look as good as pictured here — they were about twice this vertical thickness, and much more rounded on the ends.
Interestingly, though, there were pronounced seams running down the middle of the blades describing a profile more faithful to the movie glove. Therefore, I just cut along those lines to produce a scarier prop:
I did a Google search just now (October 2003), and I see that the glove is still being sold (The Paper Magic Group acquired the merchandising rights for it in the late 90s, according to the same web visitor mentioned above), and the blades are now like this out-of-the-box (though with slightly more rounded tips).
And as of 2006, Rubie's actually has a version of the glove made with real metal, which is surprising and cool. Wholesalesword.com also has a pair of Freddy-type gloves, again made with real metal (and blade edges that are actually sharp, they say!), though it's shiny unweathered metal over pristine black leather gloves. For the best realism, Nightmares Unlimited, a company that runs a haunted attraction in New York, has a whole line of Freddy gloves matching the different versions used in the various films.
Now if only someone would come out with a foam latex Freddy prosthetic!! No, the goofy-looking foam latex mask Fright Catalog sells doesn't count, nor do the unofficial but much more true-to-form series of foam latex masks called "Mimidojka" (and/or "Burns") from Czech mask company Greyland Film, although those are certainly superior to slip latex masks, and do move somewhat with your face. The Scarred prosthetic from MostlyDead.com (formerly HalloweenDirect.com) might work pretty well, though the nose is very un-Freddy-like.
In July 2007, I learned that there was a silicone Freddy mask that was
available for a very short time from SPFXMasks, and looks awesome in this YouTube video by a
mask owner (as well as in this other video by
him), but sadly, SPFXMasks only made a few (some sources say 10; some
less) and then stopped (stories vary as to whether this was because they were
such a pain to make or whether it was due to rights issues), and per a Halloween Mask Association forum post (that
no longer exists on the net) where a guy was selling his used silicone Freddy
mask for $800, no more will ever be made. 
After this, I discovered that the christiancocco account on YouTube has footage of one or more silicone Freddy masks being painted by an Italian artist. The only thing so far to imply they might be selling these is the credit of "Distributor" to Christian at the end of a couple of the videos... Here's hoping.
In October 2008, another YouTube user from Italy, andreartista, posted a video of a silicone Freddy mask he created. I would assume Andrea Leanza is partnered with Christian Cocco, though this is not clear. Reportedly at least one of andrea's masks has been sold on eBay.
As of April 2009, Composite Effects is selling a silicone Freddy-lookalike mask called Extra Toasty! Not the closest facial match since they don't want to get sued, but awesome to finally have a product like this in ongoing production. They even have silicone Toasty Gloves as well!
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Dan Harkless
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