A Nightmare on Elm Street

Rating: 8/10 (13 September 2005)

I watched this scary movie a couple of times in the past but I suppose I could not judge it properly, watching it again I definitely agree it to be worthy of being one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die in the book, from director Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes, Scream). Basically on Elm Street a group of high school teenager students, Christina 'Tina' Gray (Amanda Wyss), Rod Lane (Jsu Garcia, or Nick Corri), Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and Glen Lantz (introducing Johnny Depp) are having terrifying nightmares. Talking to each other they realise that they are having the same nightmare, of an unknown burned guy wearing a brown hat, green and red striped sweater and a glove with knives for fingers, often in a boiler room, and he is trying to kill them. During a sleepover Tina falls asleep and dreams of this boogeyman, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), he slices her chest with his razors and she dies, this means that she dies in reality as well, and being the only person visible in the room her boyfriend Rod is arrested suspected of her murder, even with no sigh of a murder weapon. Nancy realises if she or the others fall asleep and die in their dreams, they die for real, and she finds out more about the guy in the dreams from her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley), she tells that Krueger was a notorious child murderer, molesting and killing various children, and in revenge she and the other parents on Elm Street caught him and burned him to death. Nancy tries to keep herself awake with anti-sleep pills and coffee, Rod is killed falling asleep in his prison cell, and Glen falls asleep and dies while lying on his bed, and the only thing Nancy can think to do is ask her father, Lt. Donald Thompson (Enter the Dragon's John Saxon) for help, asking him to break down her door after twenty minutes. While sleeping and dreaming she searches for Freddy, and like before pulling his hat from her dream she hopes to pull him out of the dream with her, she manages to do this, hurts him with her booby traps and sets him on fire to burn alive. In the end Nancy is heading back out into daylight to spend time with her friends, they are Glen, Tina and Rod back from the dead, so it is obviously a dream, and they drive away in a car that is recoloured into Krueger's sweater, and Marge looking happy is dragged through the door window by Freddy smashing and grabbing her. Also starring Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Charles Fleischer as Dr. King, Joseph Whipp as Sgt. Parker, Lin Shaye as Teacher and Joe Unger as Sgt. Garcia. The rhyme made famous by the film is "One, two, Freddy's coming for you. Three, four, better lock the door. Five, six, grab a crucifix. Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again!" Langenkamp is good as the young female lead, Depp in his first film role is likable as the mischievous boyfriend of the heroine, and of course the film is almost stolen by Freddy, the cheeky, ugly, nasty and lovably vulgar evil psycho killer, and "Son of 100 Maniacs", played really well by Englund. It is good that the lead villain became an icon with following sequels, but it is questionable how a child molester and murderer can be turned into a hero for the younger generation, with toy stores selling the razor hand gloves! Kraven came up with the concept for this film reading a newspaper article about teenagers dying in their sleep, and of course that gives the film freedom to do almost anything possible within a dream and bringing it into reality, hence inventive deaths, and hence both good and bad sequels with dream inspired plots, this original film is obviously the best, a great classic horror film. It was number 10 on The 100 Greatest Scary Moments, and Freddy Krueger was number 40 on 100 Years, 100 Heroes & Villains. Very good!