A Tale of Two Freddies Costume

After I saw Bohemian Rhapsody last year I was really taken aback by Rami's performance and by Freddie Mercury in general, and that made me start thinking about incorporating him into a future costume somehow. I usually go DIY and very out-of-the-box so I wasn't going to just do the standard Freddie Live Aid getup (as cool as it is), so I started thinking of ways to mash it up a bit and really add some original flare to it. When Rocketman came out in May I was considering doing half Freddie and half Elton, which would have been a lot of fun, but somehow my brain shifted to the idea of a Freddie + Freddy Krueger combo since they're the most famous Fredd(ie)/(y)s of all time, and I just kind of ran with it. Once I had the idea I did a quick search online and noticed that others had incorporated the two together in bits and pieces but nobody had really split them down the middle, so that's when I made the decision to go for broke and give that a shot.

With the idea in hand, I then proceeded to do do some research for the accessories and supplies needed. For the Mercury side I needed the mustache, the arm band, the tank, the belt the microphone and some hair gel, which ended up being from several different vendors. On the Krueger end I bought a sweater, a fedora, the claw, three latex burn kits, liquid latex, spirit gum, fake blood, transparent elastic thread, colored makeup and some fabric velcro from various places. I used two different shoes that I had already owned and for the pants I found a vendor online that actually sells this split colored pair, which worked out great for what I was doing.

The bulk of the work here involved getting the hat to stay up, getting the sweater attached to the tank top/neck and of course, adding the makeup on Krueger's side, all of which my wife helped tremendously and I can't thank her enough. I made sure to buy a hat that was easily cuttable and we used thin, transparent elastic to subtly loop it through the top of the hat, under my chin and then back through the brim. We cut the sweater in half and attached it to the tank top with velcro (front + back) and to my neck with liquid latex, and made sure to get as perfect of a split down the middle as possible. The makeup took the most time because it involved cutting three different latex burns and fitting them like puzzle pieces for my face and then sticking them on with liquid latex and spirit gum. We filled in the burns with some additional colored makeup and some fake blood to give it the full, Krueger look here, and also attached half the mustache with liquid latex on the Mercury side.

All the work that we put into this ended up paying off because I had a real blast wearing it! I did a test run on the Saturday before Halloween and got some really good reactions to it, so I didn’t change much of anything for the 31st. I won Best Overall Costume at my office and then walked in the NYC Parade (an annual tradition of mine), where I got a ton of photo requests and many conversations with people who asked how I had thought of such a thing. A few people even told me that it was the coolest costume that they had ever seen and that really made my night! I attended the parade afterparty as well and drew similar reactions there - including one from one of the bouncers who stopped what he was doing to take a picture with me - and it capped a really fun and momentous day.

Overall, an awesome Halloween experience!