A true classic Horror Movie about a modern Vampire

Rating: 10/10 (23 April 2009)

Do you need a big budget to make a good Horror Movie? No, Wes Craven and many other Directors of that Genre proved that more than once. From today's point of view some special effects might look a bit poor but some others are still impressive and they still stick in my mind. What I impressed more than the blood and gore scenes are the creation of a new kind of Horror figure: Freddy Krueger. In a kind he is a modern Vampire. He isn't like Bela Lugosi's or Christopher Lee's Dracula a fashionable and handsome man who tries to seduce his victims. No he is more like Max Schreck's Count Orlok of the classic Nosferatu. An ugly person you fear when you see him. Freddy Krueger doesn't suck out the blood but the sucks out the fear of his victims. He needs their fear to live and like a Cat with a Mouse he plays with his victims before he kills them. Most of them are teenager and like a Vampire he is coming into the night when all the children sleep. If one of the youngsters let him in their dream it's pretty difficult to survive for them.
It's not so easy to create a horror figure. Director Wes Craven had the luck to find with Robert Englund the perfect cast for this role. Also some of the young actresses and actors are showing good performances. As Max Schreck was Count Orlok Robert Englund is Freddy Krueger. No wonder that so many sequels would follow. Next to the creation of a perfect new horror monster the whole movie follows somehow the concept of old classics. If you hear a children song in a horror movie it's always scary. The concept of the plot is like an old urban legend, myth or old classic ghost story. A young teenage girl is telling his parents that she dreamed of a monster that tried to kill her. Nobody believes her and keep on telling her it's just a nightmare. Freddy Krueger cannot come into the dreams of adults they don't have the imagination of fantasy anymore.
Next to the plot I was always impressed of the style of directing and photography of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's 80's style with contemporary music. The movie it self has a Gothic nightmarish atmosphere but Wes Craven used the colors and the look of the 1980's for it. The first A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie isn't a typical Horror Mainstream product. Wes Craven not only broke with some of the common rules of the genre he also reinvented some old classic rules of the genre into a new light. I highly recommend this piece of 80's culture to every movie fan not only the horror fans. If you don't like horror series don't watch the sequels but watch Wes Craven's Version of a Nightmare.