A Nightmare on Elm Street: Directed by Wes Craven 1984

If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all

We continue our theme of horror movies for the month of October with the first installment in the wildly popular Nightmare on Elm Street series. The 1980's were an absolute boom time for horror flicks, particularly what is often called the slasher genre. After the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th near the end of the 70's/beginning of the 80's, movie studios were putting out films featuring young teens being stalked by homicidal maniacs at a rate higher than the actual body counts of the movies. But while this movie is often unfairly lumped in with it's peers of the slasher heyday, it offers up more than just your typical hack and slash and introduced what is arguably one of the most memorable movie villains of it's generation and that is of course, Freddy Krueger.

Unlike the masked, silent terrors of Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees, Freddy was an actual character in these movies. A dirty child molester with a razor gloved hand who the courts turned loose due to a technicality leaving the parents of Springwood no choice but to take matters into their own hands. They burned him alive to protect their children from what the police and the courts couldn't or wouldn't do, but in the process created something much worse. Now he stalks the children of Elm Street not from the bushes or outside their windows at night but instead as the monster in their dreams, and if he kills you in your dream, you die for real. It was a pretty wicked concept to me when I saw the movie growing up, and it still is today.

The concept of a dream killer, portrayed to perfection by Robert Englund, is really what sets this movie apart from the pack as it allows the film to go places other horror films rarely, if ever, had gone before as the line between what is real, what is a dream, and what the difference is are blurred several times throughout. It also helps that the cast of "teens" in this movie go beyond the typical jock/slut/nerd archetypes and have something more to do than just run around naked. The film revolves around Nancy Thompson (the lovely Heather Langenkamp) and her group of friends including Tina Gray (Wyss), Rod Lane (Garcia) and Glen Lantz (the first feature film appearance of one Johnny Depp). Nancy is having nightmares about the aforementioned badly scarred man with finger knives on his hands and realizes her friends are too and soon enough, Freddy is picking her friends off one by one.

A great example of how the film shifts between the dream world and the real world is in the classroom scene where Nancy drifts off to sleep and is haunted by the corpse of her friend Tina who has just died, and is lured to the boiler room by her pleas for help, or a quick scene where Nancy is taking a bath and drifts off for a few moments and we see the clawed glove of Krueger reaching out for her from below the water.


Moments like this really set this film apart from the pack, and set up some inventive murder set pieces and kills. Freddy always uses the fact that his victims are in a dream world to manipulate the environment, like making the stairs you're running up turn to gunk, or making your friend's death look like it was a suicide. It also actually makes sense for once when you're running away from him in one direction and he appears right in front of you, because it's his dream world and he can do as he damn well pleases. Robert Englund really nails the role and injects a sick sense of humor into the character, and while later on it would turn to parody, in this first installment it wasn't over done yet, but instead added a black comedy dimension to the film. You simply can't imagine anyone else portraying this character, and thankfully, after umpteen sequels, no one else has.



The massive success of this film set up countless sequels and imitators, but the strength of this first installment has never been touched. Wes Craven gives fantastic direction, and while it's not as grisly as his earlier work on The Last House on the Left or The Hills Have Eyes, he crafts a tight and bloody affair, filled with tension. The combination of horror and fantasy elements breathed new life into what was already becoming a well worn genre and it introduced a true icon of horror in the character of Freddy and over 20 years later his popularity shows no signs of letting up. Thanks to the dream concept, there's even a bit of a subjective element to what happens in the film, particularly concerning the ending. It gets in your head and makes you think about the power of what you believe, what you dream, and how the past can come back to haunt you. Freddy is the manifestation of all your worst nightmares, and while you can always choose to take that next summer vacation somewhere other than Camp Crystal Lake, sooner or later, you're going to have to fall asleep. Sweet dreams kiddies.


Previous Movies of the Week:
#1: Gladiator
#2: The Passion of the Christ
#3: Cool Hand Luke
#4: Fight Club
#5: American Beauty
#6: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
#7: Goodfellas
#8: Boogie Nights
#9: American Psycho
#10: Dr. Strangelove
#11: Dog Day Afternoon
#12: Unforgiven
#13: 2001: A Space Odyssey
#14: Do the Right Thing
#15: Reservoir Dogs
#16: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
#17: L.A. Confidential
#18: Big Trouble in Little China
#19: Out of Sight
#20: The Shawshank Redemption
#21: The Waterboy
#22: Field of Dreams
#23: The Godfather
#24: The Godfather Part II
#25: The Godfather Part III
#26: Network
#27: Die Hard
#28: Sin City
#29: Dawn of the Dead
#30: American History X
#31: Swingers
#32: Thelma & Louise
#33: Casablanca
#34: Independence Day
#35: Jaws
#36: Adaptation
#37: The Life Aquatic
#38: Rushmore
#39: The Royal Tenenbaums
#40: The Insider
#41: In the Line of Fire
#42: An American Werewolf in London

This was the first horror movie I saw as a teenager that I thought was actually a GOOD movie, not just something with cheap thrills and blood. It's not unlike The Terminator in that it is a film belonging to a genre that is usually just excitement and action, but it has a deeper themes and if you want, it can really make you think.

This was the first movie I ever saw that scared the fucking piss out of me and stayed with me for a long time. I saw it when I was about 7, and it kept me up all night. The next day at school, it was rainy and dreary, and I kept looking towards the door because I thought Freddy Kruegger was watching me from the hallway (I kept thinking of the dead Tina scene in the school). It kept me unsettled at all times for the better part of a week.

I hadn't seen the movie in years, but rented it for the first time in a long while about 4 months ago. There are some genuinely frightening parts, but the acting was so atrocious that I could barely pay attention to the plot. I'm a big fan of Wes Craven, but this one just hasn't held up for me. But I think I have a solution for that.

I think this movie should be viewed as a double feature along with New Nightmare. If anything, the cheesiness of the 80's production will be more forgivable, and it dives farther into the themes that the original brings up that Mercury mentioned (dreams vs. reality, etc.). New Nightmare is so ingenious, and so well done, that it really is the logical second half to the original and I contend it should be viewed that way. It makes you look at the first Nightmare in a totally different light and makes that movie even scarier than it already is.

I remember seeing this for the first time when I was 6 years old and my aunt was babysitting me and my sister. I had trouble going to sleep for about 2 weeks after watching this.

yup, these movies legitimately terrified me when I was a kid. I don't think I'd even watch it now if I came across it on cable...and I'm only half joking.

great write up merc... i haven't seen any of these in a while (although i have seen all of them). I also geta huge kick out of the love between wes craven and sam raimi in these movies and the evil deads

Part 2 is my favorite. Gayest movie this side of Commando.

Good call bond, I had almost forgotten about that.



Gotta say, I totally agree with you on New Nightmare, it's fantastic, but I think this one has held up decently well. Like I said in the write up, Freddy and thus the series stock plummeted big time with every single sequel but I think he can still be pretty menacing in this first installment when they still left some mystery to the character.

I also neglected to mention that Heather Langenkamp was my first movie person crush. I did and still find her to be very attractive. The Nightmare series was extremely vital to me becoming the horror fan that I am today.

didn't see any of the others... i loved this one; one aspect that made the film revolutionary was the smart girl heroine...not your typical dumb whorish teen, but an intelligent, clever, brave young woman, who manages to outwit the villain on several occasions.

fun stuff, good story, great villain

I never thought of it like that. Nice call, Theresa.

I thought I touched on that in my write up but I guess not. There's really a lot I could say about this movie and I didn't want it to go on forever. And yeah, even though it follows the slasher convention of the final girl she certainly does more than run from Freddy and scream. Like I said, I Heather Langenkamp.

Great write up, Mercury. Definitely a horror classic, no question about it. I'm also a fan of the series as a whole with part 3, Dream Warriors, being my favorite.

What's interesting about the fact that those responding in this thread consider the concept of a "dream killer" to be particularly scary is that Wes Craven had a bitch of a time selling his script because no one thought that it would be scary.

I think the scene with the chick being thrown around the room by what would appear (to the male character in the room with her) as some sort of spirit is a timeless piece of horro special effects.

haha, yea that movie is fucking horrible. actually, it's not, and for the same reason nail gun massacre is also not.

Dream Warriors is a solid installment in the series for sure. Welcome to prime time, bitch!

Freddy's Revenge definitely has a lot of homoerotic undertones, but I think that's one of the only things it has going for it. At least that part is interesting.

A great introduction to Johnny Depp the movie star

Spoiler: show

The way he dies in the movie still freaks me the fuck out. No warming whatsoever - just sucked into his bed and spit/sprayed the fuck out.

*shudders*

I was going to use that scene as one of the pictures but thought it was too spoiler-y.

While that would have made an awesome pic for the write-up, I think you're right. Even if people can guess what happens, they need to see it without warning for the full effect.

The whole series had some of the best poster art of the 80s. Seeing the covers of the old vhs versions is a big reason I sought out this kind of stuff as a kid. Too bad they used shitty generic cover art for the dvds.

The dvd art on the covers within the box set contains the original posters, though the images are smaller.