Come to Freddy...

Rating: 10/10 (21 June 1999)

There really are, when you come to think of it, not that many films that are truly frightening. The kind of film that gets under your skin and eats away at you. The kind of film that stays with you days ( and nights ) after you see it. There certainly aren't any that come to mind from the 90's. But along with films like Aliens the first Halloween, The Exorcist, Angel Heart, Last House On The Left and the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the first Nightmare is terrifying. And that is owed all to Wes Craven. The sequels of this film are really trash and that is because Robert Shaye may be a good business man but he certainly does not know how to see to it that The Nightmare series stayed it's course and kept viewers on the edge of their seat. The sequels became more comedic than scary and even though Freddy had a personality in the first one, he was still more diabolical and evil than he was funny. More Lon Chaney than Jerry Lewis. But the first one has every element in it to keep you scared beyond belief.
This film is iconic in many ways. There are those that say it is dated. I beg to differ on that point. This is a film that transcends generations and expertly amalgamates gore and tension. When you think of all of the so called horror films that have come out in the last year or so, many of them try to enthrall us with buckets of blood and special effects, but they forget that with a horror film, you must have an element of fear with it. Nightmare on Elm Street captures that better than most, and is on a level with the all time greats.
Fred Krueger, as we all know, was a child molester who was hunted down by the local Elm Street parents after he beat a court systems on a technicality. They trapped him in his basement and lit his house on fire and then watched him burn. Somehow he comes back and haunts their children's dreams and murders them while they sleep. This sets up the premise of the film and it is stated on the SE DVD that Craven got the idea for this film while reading a story in an Asian newspaper about kids dying in their sleep and telling their parents that they knew something bad was going to happen to them in their dreams. It is an interesting concept and because it is done to perfection here, it has now become one of the cornerstones of American horror.
Wes Craven has been revitalized as a master of modern horror with his very commerically successful Scream series, and as much as I love Scream, it is horror lite when comparing it to his efforts like NOES, LHOTL and The Hills Have Eyes. Those films, and Nightmare in particular, revolutionized ther horror genre. Nightmare on Elm Street is his best film and if you forget how truly scary the film is after viewing all of the inferior comedic sequels (with the exception of the last) view this one. Freddy is a horror icon and he has achieved that status because he is the true definition of fear.
10/10 One of the 10 best horror films ever!
Come to Freddy!!