A much different Freddy.

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2019)

The first Nightmare on Elm Street movie introduced us to horror icon Freddy Krueger, a man with razor sharp knives on his glove that attacks you in your dreams. It was dark. It was scary. And it cemented Robert Englund as a horror movie staple.
As a stand alone film it stands up really well. There is genuine menace from the character and a reliance on atmosphere and wanting to tell a scary story over jump scares and gags.
But as a part of a series it's a lot different than the subsequent movies that turned him from a scary figure to one that made bad puns and used things like the "power glove" to do somebody in. As such until "A New Nightmare" came out this was the scariest incarnation of Freddy which means if you started watching the series after the first one you'll see a remarkable difference.
The story is of a former gardener of an elementary school that is accused of child molestation and gets off on a technicality. The parents decide to take justice into their own hands and burn him alive. Years later he shows up as a horribly scarred man haunting the dreams of the children of the parents who killed him and kills them in a rather gruesome way.
The special effects are great for the era considering that computer animation was very primitive at the time. There's lots of blood to appease the gore hounds and there's a good story to appease those that want to see a scary movie.
While not my favorite of the series, that would be the third one a.k.a. "Dream Warriors", it remains a horror classic.