A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)


Director/Writer(s): Wes Craven

Cast: John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp.

Genre: Horror / Mystery / Thriller


Plot Outline: A group of high school friends are being slaughtered in their sleep by the hideous fiend of their shared dreams. When the police ignore her explanation, one girl must confront the killer in his shadowy realm.


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This has got to be one of the best ideas ever for a movie. Supposedly based on some "unrelated articles" in a Los Angeles newspaper, Wes Craven , already riding high on The Hills Have Eyes and Last House On The Left, crafted this movie about a killer who stalks a group of teenagers through their dreams.

Of course, just about everyone would know that already. There wouldn't be too many people who don't already know who Freddy Krueger is. What some of them haven't done is actually watched the film.

Taken as a stand alone film, and not the first chapter in a series of 8 films (counting Wes Craven's New Nightmare and Freddy vs Jason as chapters 7 and 8), A Nightmare On Elm Street is a well crafted piece of art. The articles in the newspaper that sparked off Craven's idea, dealt with young people who had escaped the Pol Pot regieme in Cambodia, escaped to America and who died in their sleep. Apparantly they had been sufferring terrible nightmares, and became terrified to go to sleep. Eventually, when they slept and dreamed, they died. (For those interested in a study of this type of event, Hmong Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome, there is a 100+ page paper on it located here : http://www.reninc.org/BOOKSHELF/Hmong%20Sudden%20Unexpected%20Nocturnal%20Death%20Syndrome,%20Bliatout,%20Bruce.pdf )

Wes Craven took this interesting little event, joined it with something he sees as the worst evil in the world and created a very effective horror film. Originally Freddy Krueger was portrayed as a child molester as well as a child killer. This was toned down in the final edit, perhaps audiences in 1984 didnt want molestation to be a driving plot point in movies, so this aspect of Freddy's character in shown in subtext, while his child killing activities are pushed to the forefront of his character.

So what do we have? Well, we have a group of kids who all seem to be having nightmares. At the same time. About the same man. A man they've not seen before. And he's trying to kill them. Bad enough, until Freddy (Robert Englund) succeeds in killing Tina (Amanda Wyss) in her dream which results in her being dragged around her bedroom (and really around her bedroom, up the walls and across the ceiling) while her boyfriend Rod watches. Of course Rod doesn't have any good luck with this. He's just watched his girlfriend get sliced up by an invisible man while they were in a locked room. Rod soon gets carted off by the police, because he's the only one who could have done it, right? Ask Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) who has been having these same nightmares about a guy with a razor tipped glove. The very same type of cuts that appeared on Tina's hacked up body. Nancy suspects there is something more to this, and must fight to stay awake and alive.

Put like that, the plot is fairly basic, but what gives Elm Street its charm is that, as star Robert Englund says in "Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy" is that it is "a damn good story". It's such an original idea, and original ideas are where good, or entertaining films spring from.

The whole scary notion in Elm Street is that the only safe place is awake, and its impossible to remain in that safe place forever. It is inevitable that the kids in this film must end up in Freddy's stalking ground. It is this feeling of these kids not being in control that gives this film its tension, and makes the heroine's struggle against Freddy all the more heroic. Elm Street is a classic story of good triumphing over evil, and is the most creative, well planned and produced piece of art. The only problem is a tacked on ending allowing for the return of Freddy. Though, while this spoils the whole meaning of the climax, it does allow us 7 sequels, which is a good thing.

It's a classic. Five Darios, no doubt about that.