Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Media Home Entertainment/ New Line Cinema Rating: USA: R/ UK: 18
Say what you will about Wes Craven’s 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street, champion it as a classic in the slasher canon, or write it off as yet another teen exploitation flick from an era infamous for its gleeful excesses. No matter how you look at it, it’s a watershed horror film—one that demonstrated that the slasher genre still had some life left in it.
Craven, who took the story’s inspiration from a series of articles that appeared in an L.A. newspaper concerning southeast Asian kids who died in their sleep after having a series of nightmares, almost single-handedly revitalized the genre with this film. After the horror boom of the late 70’s and early 80’s (which featured some fantastic films from directors like Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, and Dario Argento) the genre had become trapped in a rut of its own making. Based on the success of Carpenter’s Halloween and Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th, Hollywood studios were only interested in releasing slasher films. These low-budget exploitation movies were cheap to make, wildly popular, and didn’t take a lot of effort to put one together—making them a great way to turn a quick buck.
Unfortunately, as more and more of these films came to glut the market, the overall quality (which was generally minimal to begin with) began to decline even more as filmmakers sought to churn out as many films as they could as quickly as possible. And in order to gain attention in an already overcrowded market, each new film attempted to up the stakes in terms of onscreen carnage—by making films with little or no atmosphere, but featuring bucketloads of elaborate gore FX. By the mid 1980’s, it was beginning to look as if the death knell was ringing for the genre as a whole—that is, until Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left) unleashed his powerful little film, A Nightmare on Elm Street.
NOES is the story of Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), a normal teenage girl who, along with her friends (Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, and Johnny Depp in his first screen role), begins having an intense series of nightmares featuring an disfigured madman with a glove of knives on his right hand. As the teens begin to die, one by one and under mysterious circumstances, Nancy takes it upon herself to figure out what’s going on and attempts to stop the madman before he kills her.
Once again, we’re treated to a rather simple central premise (proving my theory that the best genre films are the ones that keep the story as simple as possible). Craven does eventually reveal the identity of his killer, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund: Strangeland, Phantom of the Opera, Eaten Alive), a notorious child murderer who escaped on a technicality but was eventually executed by a vigilante mob of angry parents (who just happen to be the parents of the teens having nightmares), yet he never divulges the how or why behind Freddy’s power to control dreams. And as a testament to the power of Craven’s story, we as an audience never really care.
The reason we never care is because Craven gives us so many other things to keep us occupied. Whether it’s the nightmarish imagery, the impressive performances (the cast is much better than what you’d expect in a low-budget slasher flick), or the atmospheric setpieces, the audience is occupied by the onscreen events throughout much of the film.
Now, that’s not to say that the film is perfect, because it’s not. The movie suffers from several logic problems (the funniest being when Nancy tells her father to come and get her in twenty minutes, she then proceeds to booby trap the entire house, have a heart to heart with her drunk mother, and get to bed—all with ten minutes to spare), a terrible ending, and a really bad performance from Ronee Blakley (who plays Nancy’s mom). Of all the problems, the ending is probably the worst. In a best case scenario, it’s a nonsensical add-on to hook people for a sequel, at worst it negates everything that’s happened in the entire film and feels like a cheat.
Further compounding things is the fact that the film loses a lot of its narrative thrust around the fifty minute mark. The early scenes in the film work so well because Craven manages to play with reality—you’re never sure if you’re in a nightmare or the real world…the lines are too blurred. However, after Nancy goes to the dream research center, the film becomes very grounded in the mundane real world—and loses much of its intrigue in the process. Craven eschews the surreal motif that had colored the first half of the movie, and he loses viewer interest because of it. Adding another dream sequence to the second act would have made the film move at a much more effective pace—and probably assured the film of classic status at the same time.
While the film does have its problems, it also has some great things going for it. John Saxon (Cannibal Apocalypse, From Dusk Till Dawn) does a nice job as Nancy’s dad—and let’s face it, he’s a genre legend who brings an air of coolness to any film he’s in. It’s also got a great synthesizer score by Charles Bernstein that’s eerie and effective throughout the film.
However, the biggest pluses have to be Craven’s use of imagery and Robert Englund’s performance. The film’s nightmare sequences are amazing, particularly the one Nancy endures while sitting in her high school English class. Craven sets up an average, normal classroom—complete with a kid reading from Hamlet—then twists it 180 degrees by having one of the film’s victim’s appear in a body bag while the kid whispers some freaky lines about having bad dreams. Equally impressive is the film’s first sequence, which features Amanda Wyss being chased by Krueger through the alleys outside her house, then killing her in front of her boyfriend and dragging her incredibly bloody corpse across the ceiling. These are just a few examples of the unforgettable visuals that Craven has created.
Englund exudes menace as Freddy, playing the character with a deadly seriousness here. Later installments would make Freddy into more of a wisecracking anti-hero, but for his first outing, he’s one of film’s most terrifying creations—a monster who can kill you when you’re most vulnerable…when you’re asleep.
With a budget of less than two million dollars, Wes Craven has done something magical—creating a film that’s frightening and intriguing while never looking cheap. He’s reached into our collective consciousness and found something that manages to frighten all of us and made one of horror’s most infamous icons in the process. And while Craven’s career as a whole can best be described as "hit and miss" (anyone remember Deadly Friend?), A Nightmare on Elm Street can be considered as his masterpiece. If you’ve only seen the turgid sequels, then you owe it to yourself to see what is by far the best film in the series.
DVDS. A decade of wisecracking sequels have not diminished the power of this striking horror film from the director of {#Scream}. Teenagers in a small...More at DeepDiscount.com
From modern horror master Wes Craven (Scream, Scream 2) comes a timeless shocker that remains the standard bearer for terror. Nancy (Heather Langenkam...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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