A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

I didn't have any special Thanksgiving themed movies to watch like Puneet did, so today I just decided to go with one of the horror classics, A Nightmare on Elm Street. I've already gotten one "You haven't seen that?!" today, I'm wondering how many more will have a similar reaction to this. But don't worry, it was all made up for today. The biggest worry was if an older film like this can hold up, especially with so much hype surrounding it? I mean, even having never seen this movie, I know all about Freddy Kruger... I think. I even already knew that this was Johnny Depp's first movie! Hit the jump to see if there was anything left to impress me.


I won't get super in-depth on the story, as I'm sure most people know all about Freddy Kruger and his movies, just like I do. The basics are that Kruger can attack and kill you in your dreams, and whatever he does to you in the dream, will happen in real life. Another way he can kill you is to affect objects around you in the real world while you're sleeping. Basically sleeping makes you utterly vulnerable to him. So in this story, Freddy (Robert Englund) has targeted a group of friends for an unknown reason. The main character we follow is Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), and it seems to be up to her to try and figure out why he's after them, and stop the demon in the striped shirt.

Freddy starts entering the real world as Nancy sleeps peacefully

First things first, this movie was great! Freddy (or Fred, as they call him in this movie... does that change later?) is a great villain, and his influence on the world seems limited only to his imagination. While traditionally he is known for attacking kids in their sleep, I found it cool that he can also just appear in the real world next to them if he so wanted, so long as they're sleeping. I also liked it that if he killed someone in their dream, they didn't just die quietly in the real world, the wounds he inflicted on them would be real. If he cut them, they would be cut. I guess what I'm saying is that I liked that it wasn't just all in their minds with the "mind over body" concept.

One of the most frightening moments I've seen in a long time!

One of the reasons people watch the "slasher" style horror films is to see people get killed, as twisted as that seems. The deaths in A Nightmare on Elm Street were all things I had never seen before, and the blood and gore was off the charts as far as I'm concerned. In most cases, by the time Freddy was done with his victim, the blood would be covering the room! Some more than others, to say the least.

The acting was cheesy as is to be expected, but most of the time the kids are just running away from Freddy in a nightmare, and so not much is really required of them. It was only in more dramatic scenes, like when Nancy had to speak with her mom about the deaths of her friends, and who Kruger was, that the weakness of the acting was most obvious. Johnny Depp was also quite the let down, but I really shouldn't be surprised, it's his first role ever!

The man himself, Freddy Kruger, played by Robert Englund

Possibly one of the things I'm most thankful for is for FINALLY finding a particular scene that I saw ages ago as a kid, but never knew what horror movie it was in. Basically I had snuck downstairs after I was supposed to be in bed, and witnessed the scene of Nancy trying to escape Freddy in her dream, but when she tries to run up the stairs, they are like the insides of cooked marshmallows, all sticky and gooey, slowing her down. I've been trying to figure out what movie that scene was from for as long as I can remember! Well there it was, in all it's glory! Finally, I can sleep easy. Ironic that it was in a movie about a killer dream monster.

I really enjoyed watching this horror classic, and I think it totally holds up, at least as a slasher flick. Sure it has almost no story, and some really cheesy acting, but that just means you're happy when they get killed. I was also surprised how little nudity there was considering it's an 80s slasher film. I think there was only 1 split second shot of the side of a boob, and that was it. I loved the blood effects, especially since everything was practical, and it really made the attacks work. I wish I had more time to check out a few more of the Nightmare on Elm Street films, but I'm sure they probably just go downhill from here. Besides, I have so many more big titles to watch still. In the end, this was definitely worth watching, even if just for that staircase scene, but then, that's just me.