“One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you…”
1984 was a banner year for horror movies. We had Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, arguably the best of the entire series (though it was by no means the final chapter), Night of the Comet, C.H.U.D., Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Company of Wolves, Children of the Corn, Razorback, and The Hills Have Eyes Part II, directed by Wes Craven. Gremlins. (It counts!) Were they all great? No, but they were (mostly) enjoyable, AND, most importantly for me, by 1985 they were all easily accessible at my local video store. I watched them all, some of them multiple times, but none of them as much as that OTHER Wes Craven film that came out that year, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Aside: There was actually a third Wes Craven project that year – a TV movie called Invitation to Hell, broadcast on ABC – but I don’t think I’ve seen it.
It’s hard to explain now how much of an impact Nightmare had on the horror genre. 1984 was still awash in slasher flicks, the progeny of Halloween and Friday the 13th, but their popularity was waning. Even the Friday the 13th series was ready to throw in the towel (though Part IV did so well they couldn’t leave Jason in his grave). And then came Freddy, with his ratty green and orange sweater, burnt face and glove with knives for fingers. While he wasn’t as crazy and full of quips as he would eventually become, Freddy still made the remorseless, faceless killers of your standard slasher flick seem uninteresting and lackluster. Freddy had personality, and for the rest of the 80s he’d be a pop culture powerhouse. (I mean, kids dressed up as him for Halloween – they made kid-sized costumes of a child murderer!)
For me, as a young horror aficionado, Nightmare was lightning in a bottle. I had already started to tire of the slasher genre, and up until Nightmare came out my favorite film from 1984 was probably Night of the Comet – a weird little sci-fi zombie comedy (scizombedy?). I was looking for something different, and Wes Craven provided. I probably rented that film a dozen times in 1985 alone.
While Nightmare contains the basic structure of your average slasher – a killer with a strange backstory stalks and murders attractive teenagers before being taken down by a resourceful “final girl” – everything else was new and different. Instead of a camp or other remote location, Nightmare took place smack in the middle of American suburbia, in the same places, and with the same sorts of characters, that populated your average John Hughes movie (Sixteen Candles also came out in 1984). And Freddy stalked his victims in the one place they couldn’t escape him – in their dreams. I don’t think I was the only one somewhat uncomfortable going to sleep for a few days after watching the film the first time. That refuge from the real world was no longer safe.
By the time the second movie came around, Freddy had already entered the cultural zeitgeist and with each subsequent film he became less frightening and more a figure of sinister fun, a bogeyman who was also a clown, dispensing one-liners and murderous set pieces with equal aplomb. Not that those movies weren’t fun, but over the years they left this impression on me that Freddy was ALWAYS more comedian than killer. It was easy to forget Freddy used to be scary.
The Medium
I have the Nightmare on Elm Street Collection that came out on Blu-ray in 2013, and it’s a pretty decent set with a lot of extras. As 2024 is the 40th anniversary of the film’s release, I expect we’ll have a 4k option at some point this year. (Hopefully of the whole set, but probably just the first film.)
For streaming, A Nightmare on Elm Street is currently available for subs on Netflix and can be rented/purchase through AppleTV, Microsoft, Fandango and Amazon.
The Movie
Watching this again for the first time in a long time, I suddenly remembered that Freddy was freakin’ TERRIFYING when he first arrived. That burned face, the tattered red and green sweater, and those claws… Coming at his victims when they were the most vulnerable and taking a fiendish glee in his work. The sound of the claws scraping on metal really got on my nerves back then, and the little kids jumping rope while singing that Freddy rhyme? Creepy as hell.
Craven paces Nightmare perfectly, with little time for us to digest what’s happening. We see Freddy build his horrible glove and then stalk Tina (Amanda Wyss) in what turns out to be a dream. Then we meet her friends Rod (Nick Corri), Glen (Johnny Depp), and Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), who are also having horrible nightmares. Ten minutes or so later and Tina is being torn to shreds, suspended in midair as horrified Rod can only look on. Tina – and we – can see the killer slashing her to ribbons. Poor Rod can only watch as reality is subverted, as the dream wreaks havoc on the real world.
That “rubber reality” Craven creates in the film – the way the dream bleeds into the waking and back again – is arguably handled here better than any of the sequel films (except, perhaps, the more meta New Nightmare). It’s more subtle, at least, and the deaths – while spectacular for the time – aren’t treated as special effects extravaganzas like they will be. We rarely see when the characters fall asleep. They turn their head or blink, and then they’re in Freddy’s world. One of my favorite bits this time around is when Nancy asks Glen to watch over her as she sleeps. As she leaves her house to go see Rod (currently in jail as a suspect in Tina’s murder), she turns and asks if Glen is watching. He steps out from behind a shrub and assures her he is… but of course we know she’s dreaming. And probably Glen is too.
Many of the scenes are horrific, especially when compared to the more spectacle-oriented set pieces of the later films. Tina being killed on the ceiling still chills and the geyser of blood from Glen’s bed is gloriously sickening. For my money, though, the most disturbing sequence is when Nancy falls asleep during class after Tina’s murder. The apparition of Tina in a bloody, translucent bodybag is truly nightmarish.
I remember thinking the first time I watched the movie that Langenkamp wasn’t very good, but I was used to a slicker style of acting, or at least a more wooden one. She’s fairly good as a believable teen in this – in fact, most of the acting is a cut above your average slasher, giving you interesting characters that you identify with and want to live. And of course Robert Englund gives a master class in creepiness as Freddy. I remember being astonished that this was the same actor that was also playing mild-mannered alien resistance member Willie on the TV show V.
The parents in most horror films, slasher films in particular, are usually absent or useless. In Nightmare, they’re actively terrible. All of them are murderers, of course – having burned Freddy alive after he escapes justice on a legal technicality – but they also are obstacles to the survival of their children. Tina’s mother leaves her alone while Tina suffers nightmares, Glen’s parents refuse to listen to Nancy when doing so could save their son, and Nancy’s mother is actively trying to force Nancy to sleep – putting her at Freddy’s mercy. (Spoiler alert – he doesn’t have any.)
Nancy, then, is forced to defend herself, reasoning that if she can’t affect Freddy in her dreams, maybe she can bring him out into the waking world and defeat him there. (A possibility suggested when she’s able to bring Freddy’s hat out of her dream at a sleep clinic.) She sets a series of traps for the child murderer, but plans rarely survive meeting the enemy.
The ending is ambiguous – are we still in a dream, then? Or has it been one the entire time? – but still somehow satisfying. Wes Craven never intended for there to be more Nightmare on Elm Street stories, but 7 movies, one remake and a TV series later we’re still a little worried that Freddy might show up in our nightmares one evening.
Or maybe that’s just me.
The Bottom Line
A Nightmare on Elm Street is still a freaky, frightening horror movie even forty years later. Yeah, there are some plot holes – how does Freddy affect the real world before Nancy brings him out? And some dodgy effects – the mom’s laughable skeletal hand reaching out as she sinks into the bed for instance. But overall? Nightmare is one of the best horror movies of the 1980s.
