"Everyone has a bad dream once in a while."

Rating: 7/10 (8 November 2000)

WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. ONLY READ IF YOU'VE SEEN THE FILM.

Well worth another glance, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a striking film. In a time when its creator is associated more with "Scream" or 94's "Wes Craven's New Paycheque" (where this film would be regurgitated for a sanitised cash market with only a hint of satire), this still stands up remarkably well.
A sort of Halloween meets Salvador Dali; Nightmare stars a Fred  not yet Freddy, note  Krueger who is genuinely disturbing. The 80's incidental music may sometimes sound like Depeche Mode on an all-night drinking session, but it's low-grade trappings and the amateurish acting only serve to make things more unnerving.
This is light years away from the rest of the franchise, an independent low budget horror. There's some appalling dubbing, disjointed dialogue ("What the Hell are dreams anyway?" Nancy's mother cues an exposition-friendly Doctor), plus occasionally ropy special effects. Long-armed Freddy, anyone? Most importantly, though, it takes it's own world seriously. How odd that the sequels from the third onwards opted for send-up, while the second collapsed under the weight of it's own absurdity. You would have thought that at least one of them would learn from the original. The denouement is slightly limp, though clearly signposted by earlier dialogue. If your idea of a weak ending is the lead villain being called "sh*t" and having a back turned to him, then this fits the bill perfectly. But then again endings never did seem to be Craven's strong point, as New Nightmare's underdeveloped finale goes to prove.
Rather sensibly, Wes opted out of the studio-enforced sequel, Freddy's Revenge (4). Made and brought out within a year of the original, it contains the most homoerotic imagery you'll see this side of the gay soft porn industry. Even Freddy lovingly uses his claws to comb Jesse's (Mark Patton's) hair, while his S & M loving P.E. teacher is stripped naked and his bare bottom towel-spanked. While this is an unusual tack in the genre, it fails to be commendable, as the teacher in question is also a rapist. The unsettling surrealism of the first is perverted into pool parties and spontaneously-combusting parakeets. Freddy makes too much of an appearance, and the old horror classic of setting the villain in broad daylight and with incidental music that sounds like dolphin calls only adds to the lack of fear. It misses anything approaching the artistry of the original, and completely overlooks it's own prime remit: to scare.
As if in revenge for Freddy's Revenge, Craven took on a producer/co-writer function for the third film, the only time he would be involved until the tenth anniversary. Probably the best sequel if only because it has more plot than the rest of them stuck together, Dream Warriors (5) finally sees the franchise tip over into the mainstream. Nancy is back, as is, briefly, her dad. She's now a staff member at a juvenile amateur dramatics group, er, I mean, psychiatric ward, where they all develop special powers in their dreams. Violent, gory, comic book like and reliant on special effects and bad language, it also contains the first real example of nudity in the series. However, most of Freddy's appearances are shot with a psychological aspect in mind once more (particularly the head snake, a Freud-worrying concoction), and it's probably worth seeing just to see Krueger tell Zsa Zsa Gabor "Who gives a f*** what you think?" Generally, though, coming from the pens of Craven and Frank "Shawshank" Darabont you would expect a lot more. Direction, too, by Chuck Russell, lacks Craven's defter touch. From hereon it was only two films to go before the all-time low of Freddy's Dead (3).
The notion of vastly inferior sequels is always an odd one. Occasionally the originals can still hold their reputations intact (People still discuss Psycho without having to mention 2-4 in the same breath), but the adventures of Freddy & Co. are violently affected by what followed. The five painfully weak attempts to recreate its appeal means it's often forgotten that the first was a genuinely good film and worthy of... 7/10.