A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) Directed by Wes Craven
Let me start off by saying that this movie is awesome, I love it. I may be giving away my grade but this is one of my top 10 movies of any genre. I love the story, the character of Freddy Krueger and the feel of the film as a whole. In 1984 the slasher genre was getting stale and boring, with multiple Halloween ripoffs coming out nearly every month, the moving going crowd was getting burned out a little. Then this movie came out, and turned the genre on it’s head. Nightmare brought in a different dimension to slasher movies, the paranormal angle took the genre in to a fun new terrifying direction.
During the opening credits we see a man assembling an odd glove to be fashioned with long knives on the fingers. Then we see a young blonde girl named Tina having a nightmare in which she wanders around a boiler room being stalked by a killer with a burnt face. This scene is odd and I never understood why a sheep bleats and runs down a dark empty hallway. She continues to run around the boiler room until she is cornered and slashed. She wakes up in terror to find that her nightgown is slashed from the killer’s glove.
The next day Tina and her friend Nancy talk about the dream, and Nancy recalls a nursery rhyme, that is now known to every single horror fan everywhere. “One two Freddy’s coming for you”, you know the rest. Glen, played by Johnny Depp in his first role, advises his girlfriend Nancy that it is just a dream. Later in the night Nancy and Glen stay with Tina at her house to help her deal with her nightmares. They converse about the dream some more and they realize that Nancy has had the same killer in her dream. Tina’s boyfriend Rod shows up to apologize for fighting earlier. They proceed to bang like super loud, I mean she’s really putting on a show. After the porn levels of screams and groans they finish and start talking about nightmares. Rod reveals that he has dreamed about the killer too, but that it is just a dream so no worries. In another room, Nancy is sleeping in, the crucifix falls off the wall and Nancy hangs it back up. After doing that she falls back asleep, the crucifix falls back down and the killer pushes his way into the wall, which is actually just a latex sheet stretched over a whole in the wall, not terrible Playstation 1 CGI like in the remake…barf. Nancy wakes up and the figure leaves. Tina falls back asleep and slips into another nightmare. In her dream she is awoken by stones hitting her window and a creepy voice calling her name, which causes her to go outside and investigate. There she sees the killer and he begins to stalk her. The killer cuts his fingers off to scare Tina, then pins her to the ground and she rips his face off. Then in the real world she struggles in bed and screams, waking Rod up. Suddenly 4 long cuts appear on her chest and blood gushes out. Rod screams, realizing he can’t really help her, while she is thrown around and dragged up the wall and onto the ceiling. She is slashed and thrown back down on the bed, splashing in a huge puddle of blood and dies. Rod runs out the window in terror and Nancy and Glen bust in to find Tina lifeless. At the police station Nancy is questioned by her dad Lieutenant Don Thompson, played by the badass John Saxon from Enter the Dragon fame. Nancy explains to her dad that Tina dreamed someone was trying to kill her.
The next day Rod grabs Nancy on her way to school and proclaims his innocence before finally getting arrested by Don. For some reason after all this shit Nancy still goes to school, where she falls asleep in class. She has a dream and follows Tina’s bagged body down the hallway. Nancy runs into a hall monitor which has the killer’s voice and tells her not to run, then laughs. Nancy makes it to the boiler room where the killer meets her. We find out there that his name is Freddy. Freddy attempts to kill Nancy until she burns her arm on a hot pipe to wake up. It is interesting to note that the teacher in Nancy’s class is played by Lynn Shaye, from Insidious and The Conjuring. Her brother Bob Shaye was the owner of New Line Cinema at the time. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle, or so I hear. Nancy discovers the burn on her arm is real and now she is afraid to fall asleep. That night Nancy takes a bath and falls asleep in the tub. Freddy’s hand reaches up from the water and reaches towards her but she quickly is startled by her mother talking to her. Her mother warns her that people die all the time from falling asleep in the tub, hmmm ok Mrs. Thompson. Nancy of course falls back asleep and Freddy drags her under the water, but Nancy escapes. Mrs. Thompson rushes in and checks on Nancy, who claims she just slipped. Mrs. Thompson says that hundreds of people die each year drowning in the tub, ok, that’s just absurd! Hearing from Rod that he has dreamed of the same killer, she suspects he is real and can kill people in their dreams. That night Nancy has Glen watch her while she sleeps, she sees Freddy going after Rod, but he attacks her instead. Her alarm goes off and she wakes up. Nancy and Glen go to the police station to check on Rod, but it is too late he is hanged in his cell by his sheet. The police think it is a suicide but we saw Freddy walk in and do this invisibly while Rod slept. After Rod’s funeral, Nancy’s mother Marge insists on taking Nancy to a dream clinic. Do those exist? Hey at least its not another psych ward. While at the clinic, Nancy has another nightmare and wakes up with a huge gash in her arm. During the nightmare Nancy was able to pull Freddy’s hat out of the dream and into reality. I just wish that she was driving while this happened so she could pull Freddy out of her dreams and into her car.
Marge begins drinking heavily, and puts bars on the house’s windows. When Nancy begs her to tell her who Freddy Krueger is, since the name is written in the hat. Marge tells her that several parents in the neighborhood hunted down Fred Krueger whom as a child murderer, see a murderer and NOT a fucking pedophile! Damn you remake and making Freddy a Peddy! Fred was released on a technicality and the parents hunted him down and burned him to death. They went straight up Death Wish Bronson on Freddy’s ass.
Nancy has now been awake for an entire week and she realizes since she pulled the hat out, she can probably pull Freddy out of her dream, but still not into her car…sad face. Her and Glen plan to take on Freddy as a team. Glen’s parents prevent him from meeting with Nancy, since she is pretty much bat shit crazy at this point. Glen falls asleep in his bed listening to music and watching tv. Suddenly Freddy’s arm grabs Glen and drags him down into it while Glen struggles. Then a huge fountain of blood in amounts more than the human body could ever store erupts out of the bed, while Nancy screams. Nancy gets a phone call with Freddy’s voice on the line that says “I’m your boyfriend now Nancy” and a tongue comes out of the phone and licks her, hilariously corny. Don investigates the scene while Nancy calls him and tells him to break into the house in twenty minutes. She sets up booby traps and tucks her sloshed up mother in to bed for the night. After falling asleep Freddy does not reveal himself until later in her dream, when she tackles him down and pulls him into the real world. Once in the real world Freddy chases Nancy through the house and into all the booby traps she has laid out. The run into the basement and Nancy lights Freddy on fire. When Don arrives they find Freddy has gone up stairs and is on top of Marge with his burning body. Nancy knocks out Freddy with a chair shot that would make Mick Foley proud, and Don smothers the flames with a blanket. Freddy disappears and Marge’s body vanishes into the bed. Nancy turns her back to it and Freddy emerges from the bed. She takes Glens advice from earlier and refuses to acknowledge that Freddy exists, thus taking away any power she has given him. Freddy lunges at her and vanishes.
The next day Nancy walks out the front door with her mother sober and wanting to quit drinking. Glen, Tina, and Rod pull up in Glen’s car and Nancy gets in to go to school. The car comes alive and traps them, Nancy screams to her mom, but the car drives away. Marge looks on and waves, until Freddy’s arm breaks through the tiny window and drags her through it.
There are so many things about this movie that I love. The fact that Freddy preys on children in their dreams is terrifying. Everyone has to sleep and it is helpless to think about being attacked in your dreams by a psycho. The acting isn’t the best. Lets face it Heather Langenkamp (Nancy) is pretty bad in this movie she is wooden and delivers some of her lines kind of oddly. Some of the special effects are dated but seeing practical effects never gets old and you can always appreciate them for the work it took to make scenes on such a low budget. This movie brought Freddy and New Line Cinema into existence. Wes Craven makes a horror masterpiece on a micro budget, his vision on this movie was amazing. The camera work was great and the atmosphere is creepy. New line would go on without Craven for years, making tons of sequels and boatloads of money with Freddy. Freddy is played by Robert Englund for every movie and he begins to add more and more personality to the character, for better or worse I suppose. As much as I love the sequels I can admit that the original is really the only one that has scary scenes until New Nightmare. Even though the sequels aren’t scary they’re all about Freddy killing teenagers, and that is always awesome and entertaining. I could go on for days talking about this movie, I’m sure no one wants to read that so I’ll stop now and give my grade. It is no secret that my grade is an A+. This movie is the epitome of greatness in horror, at least in my opinion. If you haven’t seen it, I pity you, just go and watch it already!
