A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Finally, we will be finishing off this year’s “Halloween Month” with one of the greatest slasher franchises of all time, the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise.

A small horror film that brought a long running franchise, “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” released in 1984, gave us a memorable villain that really heightens the scary thrills with so much gory special effects. The movie gives little that is completely new, but what is in the movie and the story is new enough to give us enjoyment.

Nancy, Glen, Tina and Rod are four high school friends living on a nice suburban street (similar to “Halloween”). They slowly find out that they all have the same nightmare, where a scary man with burned skin and steel gloved hand, later told that he is Freddy Kruger, played by the great Robert Englund, tries to murder them. Nancy, played by Heather Lagenkamp, gets the frightening thought that if Freddy succeeds in killing them when they’re asleep; they also die in real life. After Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Rod (Nicki Corri) make love, Tina falls asleep and becomes Freddy’s first victim, stabbed to death in a bloodbath. The innocent Rod is the main suspect in Tina’s murder.

Nancy and Glen, played by Johnny Depp, her uncertain boyfriend and neighbor, find out that they have to stay awake in order to stay alive, and they start taking pills to stay awake. In his jail cell, Rod does fall asleep and is hanged by Freddy with a bed sheet. Nancy’s father Don (John Saxon) is the local police lieutenant and does not believe her thought about Freddy killing people in their sleep, but her alcoholic mother Marge (Ronee Blakley) eventually tells her dark secret from the past involving Freddy. Nancy and Glen then try to prepare for the final fight to end the nightmares.

Following the same path as “Halloween” and “Friday the 13^th,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was the third independent slasher movie that gave everyone countless sequels. Costing $1.8 million and earning back more than $26 million, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” helped make New Line Cinema as a production studio and gave director Wes Craven his first huge mainstream hit.

I think Ace Black is right when he said in his review, “It likely does not need to said that the acting is stiff and just one level above an amateur high school production, the dialogue (also by Craven) is juvenile and contrived, and the characters are stereotypically boring and many exist primarily for the purpose of being dispatched by Freddy.”

Ace Black goes on to say, “All this is a given, yet A Nightmare On Elm Street endears itself by playfully having fun with the theme of nightmares disrupting real life, the past intruding onto the present, the sins of the parents haunting their children, and teens learning that fears can be confronted. The admittedly thin and ultimately inexplicable psychological context nevertheless adds a welcome shine to what would otherwise be a rehashing of any Halloween or Friday The 13th flick.”

Despite so many of stock joking jumping-from-the-shadows horror cliché, Craven also gives “A Nightmare on Elm Street” with a lot of style and entertaining special effects, including a murder on the ceiling, a bed sheet coming to life, the glove coming out of the bathtub, and a sticky staircase. Ace Black said, “The bells and whistles enhance the nightmarish qualities of the film and add to the is-it-real-or-is-it-a-dream tension.” Fun fact: Charles Fleischer, who would go on to voice Roger Rabbit, plays a doctor in this movie.

Johnny Depp made his unfavorable debut in “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” and in a weak performance he mostly tries not to fall asleep, does it every time, and inevitable pays the deathly price, causing him to be sucked into a bed and erupting all of his blood that is more about surreal surprise than horror. Ace Black said, “John Saxon does his reputation no favours by displaying the emotions and intelligence of a plank. Heather Lagenkamp as the teenager suffering the most at the hands of Freddy is merely adequate, and despite the film's success her career quickly sank into the abyss of intermittent guest appearances on nondescript television shows.”

Ace Black goes on to say, “Robert Englund gave Freddy enough of a personality to create a lasting imprint on the horror genre, Freddy a combination of a twisted nightmare character and contorted cartoonish fun. Englund made a career out of reprising the role in the many sequels, as Freddy became the mainstay and focal point of the series.”

Ace Black continues, “Ironically, Craven wanted a tidier ending that closed the door on sequels. But in a triumph of crass commercialism over schlock art, New Line insisted on a twist ending that launched Freddy into immortal sequel heaven.” “A Nightmare On Elm Street” is one independent and actually smart slasher film, the series is one huge step backwards into continuing duplication.

As I have stated with the other two franchises, if you haven’t seen this film yet, why are you reading this review? Go out and see this one because this is a necessary film that “has” to be seen to be believed. Unlike “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Halloween” and “Friday the 13^th” where the actors playing the villains were changed in every sequel, “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is like “Leprechaun” and “Child’s Play” where Robert Englund reprised the role of Freddy in each sequel. I like the dream sequences in this one and his one-liners are just great, making him legitimately scary, so if you become afraid to fall asleep after seeing this movie, I don’t blame you. Definitely see this movie if you haven’t seen it, you’ll fall in love with it.

Now with the first movie reviewed, check in tomorrow where we talk about the sequel in my “Elm Street-a-thon” in this year’s “Halloween Month.”