Nightmare Week: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984)

This may be considered heresy amongst horror movie fanatics – I don’t travel in those circles myself, though I can see them from here – but I’ve long thought that, of the major American horror filmmakers to emerge in the 1970s, Wes Craven was easily the most overrated. I’m talking about the American Nightmare crowd, the Mount Rushmore of which is generally considered to be Craven, George Romero, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. (No, David Cronenberg doesn’t count, silly – he’s Canadian.) The other guys have certainly had uneven careers, but they’re each responsible for at least a couple certified classics of the genre – Romero’s original Living Dead movies, Carpenter’s Halloween and The Thing, Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist (and yes, I know the Spielberg conspiracy theories on that one, but give the guy a break, he made the freakin’ Texas Chain Saw Massacre!). Sure, Craven’s got the coolest horror movie director name, I would never dispute that. But to my eyes, the early films that forged his reputation – specifically Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes – are half-baked concoctions sprinkled with a dash of grad school pretension, too silly to truly be scary despite some extremely unpleasant moments.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is somewhat overrated too, but it’s probably the best work Craven has done. (Some might make a case for the Scream movies, though I’ll never understand why.) It certainly preys on one of my most primal fears – no, not my fear of wisecracking burn victims in ratty fedoras and smelly sweaters, although that’s way up there, too. What truly terrifies me, though, is the idea of not being able to go to sleep. Boy, do I loves me some sleep. In fact, I think I’m going to take a nap right now, just because I can.

Ahhh, much better. Anyway, the first Nightmare movie springs from a premise that also informs the recent, so-so documentary Cropsey: that of the semi-mythical fiend from a small town’s past, based partially in truth, but amplified by years of exaggeration into a boogeyman that haunts the dreams of children. Indeed, one of the film’s most indelibly creepy moments is the languid, sun-kissed slow-motion shot of little girls skipping rope while chanting a nursery rhyme they can’t possibly realize is based on a notorious child murderer from their own hometown.

That, of course, would be Fred Kreuger (as he is billed here, not yet the lovable “Freddy” of the later films), who, as we learn later in the film, killed more than 20 children and got off on a legal technicality before the parents of Springwood decided to take justice into their own hands and burned him alive. Years later, Kreuger has returned to haunt the dreams of the Springwood teenagers; worse yet, if he kills you in your dream, you die in real life.

That’s what Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) believes, anyway, even if her alcoholic mother (played by a disturbingly orange-hued Ronee Blakley) isn’t buying it. After both Nancy’s best friend Tina and her boyfriend Glen (young Johnny Depp, resplendent in poofy hair and a football jersey/belly shirt) meet with mysterious, violent deaths, Nancy is convinced that the only way to save herself is to pull Kreuger out of her dream world into reality for her police chief father (John Saxon) to capture.

As a dreamsmith, Craven is no David Lynch, but he manages his share of cost-effective creep-outs, strategically deploying clanky boiler rooms, elongating hallways, quicksand staircases and, in what may or may not be an oblique nod to Psycho, the emergence of a razor-clawed hand between our heroine’s legs as she takes a bath. (Another bit I enjoyed which may or may not have been intentional: the contrasting “secret drinking” of both Nancy and her mother – the former hiding a coffee pot beneath her bed to stay awake, the latter with a fifth of vodka tucked in the linen closet.)

The movie is saddled with one of those shockeroo endings (reportedly not Craven’s first choice) that seems to make hash of the story’s internal logic in order to set up an inevitable sequel, but if you can get past the shaky acting of the young leads and the score comprised of bombastic keyboard squalls pitched at a frequency not even Tangerine Dream can hear…well, you’re probably a more forgiving viewer than I.

Best Kill: Depp dozes off with a television in his lap (Note: never do this), and gets sucked into his bed, then spit back out in a raging geyser of blood and bone. (Runner-up: Tina, who does a little Lionel Richie “Writhing on the Ceiling” number before her own evisceration.)

Worst One-Liner: As alluded to above, Freddy had not yet evolved into the Henny Youngman of slasher movie villains – in fact, Robert Englund is little more than a bit player in this first installment. So there’s not much to choose from, aside from a leering “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy!” as Freddy’s tongue slithers out of a telephone receiver.

– Scott Von Doviak