A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Tagline: If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all...

Curiosity: The Nightmare films always captured my imagination as a child in a way that the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises never could.

Plot: Tina (Amanda Wyss) starts having horrible nightmares in which a burned man with knives tries to kill her. They’re extremely real and disturbing, to the point that Tina seeks out the help of Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), her best friend, and Glen (Johnny Depp), Nancy’s boyfriend. Later, Tina’s boyfriend Rod (Jsu Garcia) shows up for extra protection… also sex. The four seem to be doing OK at a sleepover. Then this happens:

So that went poorly. With Tina dead, it’s up to Nancy to figure out the mysterious identity of one Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a boogeyman of sorts who haunts the teens’ dreams, as well why her parents get so upset when she mentions his name. Whenever Krueger kills someone in his or her dreams, he or she dies the same way in real life, and the body count is rising…

Thoughts: With the Nightmare on Elm Street remake coming out next spring, now seems like a good time to reevaluate the original series. At seven films (Eight if you count Freddy vs. Jason), the franchise had its ups and downs, but I’d argue that, bare minimum, there’s a solid trilogy buried in the mix. They are: A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Coincidentally, they’re the only three that featured Craven, as well as star Heather Langenkamp.

I think the remake has potential to reimagine Craven’s original vision to a fuller extent. For starters, the Krueger character was originally supposed to be the worst kind of person Craven could think of – a child molester. Censorship forced him to downgrade it slightly – turns out he only butchered 20 kids or so. A decent budget might also help carry across the dream sequences.

But then, throwing money at a movie doesn’t automatically make it better. What makes the original so compelling is the premise. Krueger was always scary to me because he could get me in my sleep. The film came out 25 years ago, but dreams still don’t make much scientific sense. Furthermore, while I’m fairly certain Michael Myers will never show up at my doorstep in real life, it doesn’t matter if Freddy is real or not, since I could still die in my sleep anyway. Here’s a killer whose means of murder could actually translate to the real world, something that Craven explored in his later films. Like the original movie asserts, Freddy literally does have as much power as viewers are willing to give him. He is fear incarnate.

A Nightmare on Elm Street has a sort of ramshackle charm. It’s scary more for its concepts than it is for its actual scenes, some of which come off a little clunky. Watch Tina’s death scene again – how dumb does Freddy look with his arms spread like 15 feet? I’ve had dreams with disproportionate body parts, but the idea just looks stupid on film. But the movie moves along pleasantly enough, and there’s at least one more amazing kill late in the film. Craven and Englund were still figuring out the character at this juncture – Englund’s delivery would change in the later films – but as an opening salvo, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a pretty cool movie. There’s one more thing that drew me to it as a kid – more than any slasher flick, this was a series whose stories/kills were limited only by the filmmakers’ imagination.

Reflection: …Is she… IS SHE WATCHING EVIL DEAD?!