BONUS REVIEW: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

THRILL SCALE 1-10

9

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE?

Yes, a few times

BEST SEQUENCE

I'll talk about a couple of other scenes in the "Best Kill" category later, but for "Best Sequence" I'll go with the iconic bathtub scene. The shot of Freddy's glove rising out of the water is unforgettable

BEST LINE

"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep"

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE

94%

ROTTEN TOMATOES CRITICS CONSENSUS

"Wes Craven's intelligent premise, combined with the horrifying visual appearance of Freddy Krueger, still causes nightmares to this day."

IMDB SYNOPSIS

"Teenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life."

DIRECTOR

Wes Craven

MAIN CAST

Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, Ronee Blakley, John Saxon, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri

THOUGHTS

• As some of you may recall, for the past few years now, I've been reviewing the Friday the 13th franchise every time a Friday the 13th rolled around. In my last Friday the 13th review I decided, this is all well and good, but we're missing out on some other famous slasher franchises, namely Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and I would consider these three properties to be the Slasher Trifecta. And now, here we are! From this point forward, with every Friday the 12th, I'll review another Elm Street movie (and Halloween movies on every Friday the 14th)
• Given the nature of this, comparisons may be hard to avoid, but I'll try to focus on each franchise as its own thing. I will just say, though, Halloween and Friday the 13th both started out fairly grounded, adding more supernatural touches as time went by (especially Friday the 13th, which basically turns Jason into a magical zombie), but Nightmare was supernatural right from the jump, and it's this flavour of scares that really sets it apart from the others
• Director Wes Craven really let his imagination run wild with Freddy Krueger, a killer who can attack you in your dreams, and Craven's creativity and inventiveness are a lot of fun in this movie, even aside from how effectively he uses the lack of real-world constraints to scare us. Moments like Nancy's phone turning into Freddy's mouth and tongue, or his arms crazily stretching out while stalking Tina, or the aforementioned shot of Freddy's glove reaching out of Nancy's bathtub, all of these moments are not just scary and shocking, but also incredibly memorable
• Speaking of Freddy's glove, certainly not the most practical movie weapon, but maybe the most iconic?
• Which brings us to Best Kill: Johnny Depp getting dragged into his own bed, and a geyser of blood flooding his ceiling
• Second-Best Kill: Tina getting thrown around the room and dragged across the ceiling
• There are some fairly melodramatic performances in this movie, especially from Ronee Blakley as Nancy's mom, and while there's a kind of fun scrappiness to Heather Langenkamp's performance as Nancy, she's not great. In fact, I think Baby Johnny Depp probably gives the best performance. He was 21 or so, and this was his first on-screen performance ever
• I did like Langenkamp setting a bunch of traps for Freddy, a sequence that gave very strong Home Alone vibes
• Especially in comparison to other slasher villains, Freddy would come to be known as the one with a strong personality and morbid sense of humour, but we actually don't get a whole lot of that in this first movie. Which is probably just as well as a starting point, since we need to be scared of him first
• Finally, even without factoring in Freddy as the killer, I find the whole premise of this movie incredibly effective - the idea that you can't let yourself fall asleep, or you'll get killed. When you really stop to think about it, the whole idea of sleeping is really kind of strange, and the fact that the human body requires it, and you can't delay it forever, adds a lot of tension to Nightmare. Eventually Freddy will get his chance to get you, and hey, if you don't sleep, you're going to end up dead anyway. You only have so long before your body forces you into a dangerous situation
• And that's our first Nightmare! We'll be seeing Freddy again in 2027, on Friday, February 12th