A Nightmare on Elm Street

SPOILERS!

There were so many colorful sequels that it is easy to forget the beginnings of Freddy Krueger, the child killer who was burned alive by a group of angry parents.  Evil that would not die so easily, back to haunt the dreams of the parents' offspring.  And kill them for real.  Writer/director Wes Craven's 1984 film A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET might be viewed as the least outrageous of the franchise, though still delivers some moments for the Horror Hall of Fame, ones that have created memes the Internet over at the very least.  But can we call it quaint by comparison?

Errrr.  Craven does modulate the pace of his film, building suspense with some nifty payoffs, scenes of violence and gore that seemed pretty innovative for their time.  Two bedroom deaths are especially memorable for their acrobatics and bloodletting, and subtext.  Many of today's viewers, weaned on breathlessly edited contemporary horror movies, will find boredom in those stretches where characters talk to each other.  And to be fair, many of those conversations are the stuff of everyday genre horror.  Mouthed by characters who are mildly interesting. 

Our heroine is Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), a rather sensitive teen with an alcoholic mother (Ronee Blakely, badly overdoing it) and policeman father (John Saxon) who is divorced from the mother.  Her boyfriend is Glen (Johnny Depp, appealing in his first movie).  Two early casualties are their friends Tina (Amanda Wyss, who you may remember from FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and BETTER OFF DEAD), and her greaser boyfriend Rod (Nick Corri), who is accused of murdering her.  It was actually Freddy (Robert Englund), he with the those knives for fingers, of course.  

As you know, the characters who have sex always end up dead.  That's just one of the genre cliches  Craven includes, along with plenty of pop psychology about bad parenting, sins of the fathers, growing pains, and so on.  Will there be a last girl standing? Sure, but that bonkers and thoroughly inspired final scene not only adds a delicious twist to the tired "what is real and what isn't" bit, but also creatively paves the ways for the sequel(s), none of which Craven returned for (save WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, which is a different animal). 

Which, by the way, varied wildly in quality.  My favorite was Part 3, but it would also be guilty of turning Freddy into a ghoulish comedian, complete with one liners in the vein of Roger Moore's James Bond or Arnold Schwarzenegger in COMMANDO.  With each entry, Freddy became more of a clown than a fearsome embodiment of pure evil.  I remember theater audiences, usually on a Friday night, chanting along with (and rooting for) him.  That is, when they weren't telling each other to shut up or producing explosions of flatulence.