One thing about the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies is that all dreams depicted have high interpretive value. The kids in the highly popular third entry “A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” are empowered when they sleep, even as Freddy stalks them. For instance, Will Stanton, bound by a wheelchair in his waking hours, gains wizard-like faculties when he sleeps, making him a tougher target for Freddy to kill. Dreams can also reflect their victims’ fears and hang-ups; a model falls asleep at the dinner table and Freddy force-feeds her before throttling her in the fifth entry, “The Dream Child.”

In “New Nightmare” (which Robert Englund ranks as his favorite of the film series), Englund’s dream is more than an overt reference to the shocking ending of “The Fly.” While some time is dedicated to Englund’s unease about Freddy (Craven makes it a point to show a bleak painting of Englund’s, covered in anguished screaming mouths), the unfilmed sequence underlines the actor’s career anxieties. Typecasting can shackle a performer to a genre or niche for life — just ask Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi.

Those lamenting the spider scene that never happened can still take comfort in “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” for creepy-crawly-related thrills. Rejoice and recoil at the incredible practical effects on display as gym rat and entomophobe Debbie Stevens (Brooke Theiss) gets the Freddy treatment. While lifting weights, her limbs deteriorate and shed to reveal cockroach arms, prompting her to flee right into what turns out to be a giant roach motel, which Kruger squishes with glee. 

In a franchise filled with a thousand ways to die, hers is one of the gnarliest and for a simple reason — bugs are universally gross.