A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

From https://littleblogofhorror.files.wordpress.com/
2013/09/a-nightmare-on-elm-street-original.jpeg

Director: Wes Craven

Screenplay: Wes Craven

Cast: Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger; John Saxon as Lt. Don Thompson; Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson; Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz; Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson; Amanda Wyss as Christina “Tina” Gray; Nick Corri as Rod Lane

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #124

Out of the main American horror franchises, A Nightmare on Elm Street is the one I've become the fondest of. Even if the sequels are an erratic series of messes, it was a franchise that always had something of interest in each film. Even if the plots started to make less sense by way of contrived, ill thought-out screenwriting, they still contained scenes of pure surrealism where the best of eighties practical effects were allowed to thrive because of the premise. That its premise was entirely based upon dreams immediately won me over, an obsession of mine. My own, even of banal environments, can have a full lucidity where exaggeration takes place. Other peoples' dreams, even the made up ones of Hollywood, are as compelling and entertaining for me to explore. And as someone who views cinema as an oneiric medium, an actual manufactured dream usually viewed in dark rooms be it with people or by one's self, even the lesser sequels for their immense failures had stuff crawling out of the cinematic phantasmagoric to ingest from the franchise.

It helps, that whilst his filmography was erratic, Wes Craven was an intelligent man and at his best he managed to catch a viewer off guard in the horror genre. Based on a real case of people dying in their sleep, there's a tangible horror to how when the characters here in the first film are asleep, they're as vulnerable in their dreams as they are in their sleeping state to the outside world. It taps into the notion of sleep as an experience which leaves one out of control. As much as I adore the dreaming state, I myself as a viewer finds discomfort and ill-ease with the process of falling asleep, openly confessing in this review nights where the prospect of losing consciousness both in discomfort and impatience has led to sleepless nights once in a while. The fragile place one is in sleep is something which Craven was inspired to have tapped into for this film, particularly as it's a state a human being needs to survive, a necessary biological function which eventually wins over baring the most extreme cases of insomnia. Even if the Elm Street the series became absurd with Freddy Kruger cutting a bad rap song and Roseanne Barr making a cameo, it's a series whose premise would survive anything.

From https://gbhbl.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/the-start.jpg

Helping is that the first film is good. Not really a slasher, in a strange nebulous subgenre of horror of its own, and with a cast who despite the flaws in their earnestness are playing interesting characters who are actually likable. In amongst them, Heather Langenkamp is the perfect type of female lead who you are sympathetic to, far from a caricature of a slasher film final girl but one with some personality to her, also with some grit to her when necessary, whilst its strange to see a young Johnny Depp here in his debut, virtually unrecognisable from the older outlaw figure of the modern day with an erratic filmography. And as the villain Robert Englund was the right choice. Whilst he made appearances in genre films before Elm Street like Eaten Alive (1977), he was also a dramatic actor who worked in the theatre. Like Vincent Price, he clearly became comfortable in the horror genre in roles like this because of his innate ability to switch between camp humour and being terrifying on a dime. Whilst later Elm Street sequels failed to get the humour right, here he's as frightening figure shrouded in darkness as you'd want but one with a personality because of Englund.

From https://wheresthejump.com/wp-content/uploads/2015
/06/nightmare-on-elm-street1984-1.jpg

The only real negative blip in the film is the ending. How the central conflict is resolved is really just an existential one, coming from a former English teacher, that works more for an art horror movie. Neither is it really the ending demanded on the film by New Line Pictures head Robert Shaye, which has a great ethereal creepiness to it in spite of being a contrived shock ending. Really it's the mannequin at the door which is infamous, which for anyone familiar of the film, can be easily pictured (even in motion) just from those few words. The rest of the first Elm Street film instead is still creepy. The dreams themselves have a sound take on the logic of real ones, grounded realities which are pierced by irrational sights or distortions. Even if they became less like actual dreams but surreal sequences in later entries, it's arguable that their quality was strong throughout the series even for the occasionally dumb one that cropped up in the later sequels. But the first film's have a greater impact for how both subtle they usually are and how the most elaborate, due to the practical effects on hand, become even more striking and scary as a result. Considering as well how low budget the film was and how New Line Cinema were still a small company at this point, more known for distributing John Waters films, the risk on display especially in the dream sequences is applaudable especially as they are still mind-blowing at points, particularly the first death which involved a set that revolved and turned upside down to defy gravity.

From http://www.fangoria.com/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/
09/A-Nightmare-on-Elm-Street-1984-2-e1441226869688.png

Even the faker moments, such as Krueger with elongated arms in an alley, have the advantage because they are real tangible effects and subtly used, still touching upon what Sigmund Freud called the "uncanny", where like dolls and mannequins being able to unnerve in their likenesses to people, an actor with what could've just been broomhandles¹ shoved up his prop jumper's sleeves are still eerie even if absurd at the same time. (And moments like the infamous blood bed sequence are just gruesome and still powerful in what you both don't see and all the fake gore being hosed across the set at the same time). The cherry on top, which is at its most effective in the first film, is the score by Charles Bernstein, a sinister electronic tinged score which could've easily been used for a grimy shocker set in New York City from the time period but is as appropriate, and dreamlike, for Elm Street too. Combining all this together and the first Nightmare on Elm Street was a damn good beginning for any franchise.

From https://theexportedfilm.files.wordpress.com/
2013/10/anightmareonelmstreet1984pic.jpg

===

1) More than likely more than this was done for the effect, to not offend the original practical effects team, but one wonders....