A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Horror

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Heather Langenkamp / Robert Englund / Johnny Depp

Plot

Murdered child killer Freddy Krueger returns from the dead to attack the teenagers of Elm Street in their dreams.

What I Liked

*spoiler alert*

The horror film genre has perhaps more sub-genres and styles than any other.  Supernatural horror, comedy horror, slasher horror, monster horror, splatter horror, the list goes on.  Fans of horror tend to prefer one or two of these styles over the others.  One of the great things about “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is that it meshes together elements from every one of the subgenres I mentioned; and it does that so well that it really stands as a landmark representative for all of them.  Name another horror film that could do that.  Go on….  Even if you’re more of a horror geek than me and you did think of one, it took you a while, didn’t it?

Let’s take each subgenre one by one.  The first one I brought up was supernatural horror.  Well, its villain, Freddy Krueger returns from the dead, inhabiting and manipulating dreams.  No question there.  Comedy Horror; of all the famous ‘80s horror film killers, Freddy is easily the funniest, an endless source of cartoonish violence, clownish facial expressions, and menacing one-liners.  Not to mention director/writer Wes Craven’s practically running amok in this film with self-referential parodies of horror clichés and sarcastic representations of suburban bliss.  Slasher horror; the man’s got knives on four of his fingers and spends all his time hunting down teenage girls.  If that isn’t a slasher, I don’t know what is.  Monster horror; he’s cursed and grotesquely deformed.  He’s the living dead.  In your dreams, he can appear as anything.  He’s really a classic movie monster in much the same way the Universal monsters were.  Splatter horror.  I can’t imagine that filmgoers of the 1980s had ever seen as much blood in a mainstream movie theater, except for maybe in Craven’s own earlier entries, “Last House on the Left” and “The Hills Have Eyes.”  This one really does have something for everyone.  Provided you’re a fan of some kind of horror, that is.

So, now that I’ve taken too long to prove that point, let’s get to the reason why I really like this movie.  It’s just one surreal ride.  Full of primary colors, hallucinatory dream sequences, copious blood, and logic-defying effects, the film stands as a testament to how truly entertaining horror can be on a shoe-string budget.  The best effect is easily when Johnny Depp is transformed into a gravity-defying fountain of blood.  Even nearly 30 years later, it’s hard to top “Nightmare” a combination of both shocks and laughs.

What I Didn’t Like

Hampered by a limited budget and technological capabilities, some of the effects in the movie just seem silly to watch now.  However, the effects that do work, work incredibly well, enough so that the goofiness of the rest are easily overlooked.

While we're on the topic of what really works, Freddy should have had more screen time.  Who cares about whiny Heather Langenkamp.  I was more of Freddy’s stalking through the shadows and cheezy wisecracks.

Most Memorable Scene

Needless to say, Freddy is what made this movie stand apart from the hordes of other teen-oriented horror flicks being shoveled onto the market in the 1980s.  For me, his tour de force moment is when a seemingly risen-from-the-grave Tina, clad in body bag and dried blood, lures Nancy into Freddy’s boiler room lair.  The use of the camera, shadows, timing, and perhaps the best horror score of the decade turn a high school into a truly chilling living nightmare.  It’s the most believable, tense, and ultimately frightening of the film's many scary moments.

My Rating: 4 out 5