A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) - ARE YOU READY FOR FREDDY ?

DIRECTED & WRITTEN by Wes Craven.

STARRING  - Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson,  Robert Englund as Fred "Freddy" Krueger,  Johnny Depp as Glenn Lantz,  Ronee Blakeley as Marge Thompson,  John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson,  Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray,  Nick Corri as Rod Lane.

PLOT  - In the town of Springwood, on the suburban middle class Elm Street, kids are having bad dreams. 

Horrific nightmares of being stalked by a hideously burned man in a dirty red and green sweater who wears a glove tipped with razor blades on one of his hands.

Tina Gray is one of the kids who is having nightmares. One night she invites her friends round for a sleepover - Nancy, Glenn and her boyfriend Rod. That night Tina dreams again and this time she is brutally murdered in her sleep.

One by one the Elm Street kids are dying, slain in thier sleep by the ghost of long dead child killer Fred Krueger. Soon only Nancy is left to fight Freddy but how can you defeat a creature that can enter your dreams and murder you whilst you sleep ?...

DIALOUGE  - Nancy - "Whatever you do, DON'T. FALL. ASLEEP !"

PERFORMANCES  - This film marks the first appearance of a character who would go on to become one of the most popular and iconic in the history of horror cinema - dream stalking killer Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund). The character of Freddy became so popular in the 80's that you literally couldn't move for him. He was EVERYWHERE - T-shirts, lunchboxes, comics, action figures - Freddy Krueger fired the imagination of a generation. From the strength of this film it's easy to see why.

Englund is brilliant as Krueger. Hands down, he's one of the best villains ever to grace the screen. In this first installment, Freddy is not quite the fiend that we come to know and love. Here he's more shadowy, you never see his face one hundred percent clearly. He's also pretty short in the witty one liners and snappy dialogue that came to be associated with the character ("I'm gonna cut you in two" is about the extent of his wit in this one, hardly Oscar Wilde I'm sure you'll agree).

 This lack of humour only serves to make the character more sinister, I love the more fun character that he later evolves into but it's also nice to see his darker side. THIS is the boogeyman and he's coming to get you when you're at your most vulnerable...

An interesting thing I noticed is that Englund's voice changes during the film. In the early scenes Freddy's voice is softer than we're used to hearing, more closely resembling Englund's real life speaking voice, it's not until about the half way point that he starts speaking in the throaty growl that we associate with the character.

It seems a strange choice at first but I think it's meant to show that Freddys getting more powerfull as the story progresses. His strength derives from the fear of others, so he gets more power crazed and intimidating as he goes along.

Every good villain needs a memorable hero or heroine to pit themselves against and here we get Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson. Nancy is the main character, the final girl and the only one who can (temporarily) stop Freddy.

Langenkamp perfectly captures the fear of a teenage girl fighting for her life and seeing her friends dying one by one around her. She ends up looking so frazzled and strung out by the events that its easy to see why her parents and others in the local community believe her to be going mad.

On top of being stalked by an undead child molester, Nancy also has the problems that come from having a fractious relationship with her divorced parents - her alcoholic mother - Marge and her distant and bitter cop father - Don (Ronee Blakeley and B-movie legend John Saxon, both great here). You really get the feeling of how ground down Nancy is becoming and this makes you root for her character all the more.

Freddy has less victims than he got in the later movies, but this only serves to let us get to know them better before Freddy dispatches them.

We have Tina (Amanda Wyss), for the first fifteen or twenty minutes it looks like Tina is going to be our main character until she's swiftly (and bloodilly) done in by Freddy. When I first saw this film as a teenager in the 80's, this really pissed me off - I had more of a crush on Tina than I did Nancy, so it annoyed me that I wasn't going to get to perv at her for 90 minutes. I wouldn't swap Nancy as the main character nowadays though.

Then we have Tina's "bad boy" boyfriend Rod (Nick Corri), Rod is initially blamed for Tina's murder mainly because he's seen as being a bit of a wrong 'un by the cosy, middle class townsfolk of Springwood (he wears a leather jacket so he must be bad). His innocence is only proved once he's killed by Freddy and the killings continue.

Finally, we get Nancy's boyfriend Glenn played by future Hollywood megastar Johhny Depp in his first screen role. Depp looks ridiculously young in this, he gives a good performance but he's not yet the quirky character actor that he was to become in later decades. He gets one of the most iconic death scenes in the entire series (more on that later...).

SFX - As this is the mid 80's, it's practical effects all round.

Freddy's facial make-up is great. Designed by makeup artist David B. Miller taken from photos of actual burn victims,  Freddy's hideous, melted face is surely one of the reasons why the character became so popular. It's a great piece of work...

Another great effect is the scene where Freddy tries to push his way into our world whilst Nancy sleeps. An impression of his face and claws appears in the bedroom wall behind her...

This effect was achieved really simply, it was just a canvas sheet that Englund pushed his face into - simple but effective. Of course when the remake came around in 2010 they did this scene with CGI and it looked like utter dogshit. Sometimes less is more...

I also like the bit where the end of Nancy's phone turns into Freddy's mouth and tongue, it looks rubbery and dated now but it's noteable for being the first example of Freddy's dark sense of humour that would later come to define the character...

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Rod and Tina have noisy sex (which pisses poor old Glenn off no end - he's not getting any that night) which eventually results in THIS happening...

Tina gets dragged around the room and eviscerated by an invisible Freddy, she's like a limp bloody rag by the end of it.

Poor old Rod gets blamed for this and Freddy ends up hanging him to death in his prison cell...

We hear a gut churning crunch sound as Rod's neck snaps.

Then we get Glenn's infamous death - he's literally pulled into his bed and spat out moments later as a bloody geyser of gore...

The police have to use a bucket to scoop up his remains. I'm guessing Glenn won't be watching "Miss Nude America" tonight like he was planning to...

Finally you get Marge's demise where Freddy strangles her to death on a burning bed, leaving behind a scorched, skeletal (and not very convincing) corpse.

Marge is briefly resurected, only to be killed again pretty much straight away - this time being dragged through a tiny front door's glass window by Freddy. Its shit being Marge...

RATING  - A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of THE horror movies of the 80's and one of the most important and iconic horror films of all time.

It deserves it's classic status and whilst parts of it haven't aged as well as others, on the whole it still holds up today nearly 40 years later. Don't even bother with the 2010 remake..

I'm giving this 5 child friendly child molesters out of 5. Accept no substitutes.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART -