Artist: "The Elm Street Group"
Album: "Freddy's Greatest Hits"
Genre: Miscellaneous
Label: RIC Records

Reviewer: -RoG-
Posted: 9/22/2008

Review: "Freddy's Greatest Hits" was a novelty album from 1987 with the clear intent of cashing in on the big Freddy Krueger craze at the time. Believe me, when I saw this album hit store shelves, I simply HAD to have it. It didn't even matter that it wasn't released on CD (a crazy new technology I had just started getting into at the time), all that mattered was that Freddy was on the cover. To give you a little more insight into just how crazy the Freddy fandom was at the time, whenever a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie came out, I would cut the ads for it out of the newspaper and tack it up on my wall. Not just one ad, but literally every ad from every paper until they stopped running them. That is how much I was into Freddy at the time. So it should be no surprise that this album had me hook, line and sinker before I had a chance to listen to it.

So, when I brought the tape cassette home, I eagerly threw it in my old Yorx boombox (with a built-in b&w TV screen, oooo!) and prepared myself to be aurally obliterated by a musical horror masterpiece. Instead, what I was horrified on an entirely different level... this album was absolutely awful.

First off, claiming that these are "Freddy's Greatest Hits" is definitely a misleading title, because the razor-fingered madman is hardly anywhere to be found on these songs other than in the occasional voice-over. Instead, you have an awful dance album (performed by the Elm Street Group - generic pop singers) that will make you want to jab Freddy's razors right into your ears. If you listen to "Do The Freddy" you'll be astounded by how many times they play the exact same Krueger laugh track during the song. Talk about a nightmare. Also, to this day, I have no idea what the song "Wooly Booly" is doing on this album. It's completely out of place.

"Freddy's Greatest Hits" is an utterly cheesy novelty dance party album, and I'd only recommend picking up a copy if you're into collecting old Elm Stret memorabilia. You certainly can't go wrong with that album cover, just understand that the music found within doesn't really have Robert Englund singing... he just laughs a lot and interjects some random one-liners here 'n there. Oddly enough, as bad as some of the music is, I can't help but feel like you still need to have at least song or two from it in your Halloween music playlist, if for no other reason than it will make all your other spooky tunes that much more enjoyable.

Click here to listen to "Do The Freddy" so you can see what you've been missing out on all these years.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)