A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

After such gruesome drive-in flicks as "The Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes," master of horror Wes Craven wanted to make a movie that would bring the slasher genre back to life, since the genre was clouded by untalented, unoriginal films that shouldn't have been made. So, along came "A Nightmare on Elm Street." To this day, Craven's masterpiece of modern horror is the movie that elevated the horror genre. Avoid the awful sequels that followed it. The first "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie is still the scariest and most effective movie in the series.

The story revolves around four teens in the town of Springwood: Nancy Thompson, Tina Gray, Rod Lane and Glen Lantz. All four have had horrifying dreams involving a terribly burnt boogeyman in a red and green sweater and a brown fedora on his head with extremely sharp blades for fingers. Sure, they're just dreams. But not until Tina is graphically murdered in her sleep. No weapon was found, but there were four long cuts in Tina's chest. The rest of the group soon finds out that it is the Springwood maniac Freddy Krueger that is haunting their dreams. None of them are safe. If they fall asleep, they will meet their gruesome demise. Now it's up to Nancy to stop Freddy once and for all. But how can she stop somebody that isn't supposed to be real?

"A Nightmare on Elm Street" created a terrifying villain, a plot that is very original, and a group of characters that you care about. Everybody knows who Freddy is, just like everyone knows who Michael Myers is, or Jason Voorhees, or Leatherface. He is now one of the most iconic slashers in horror cinema.

One of the things that I admire the most is the cast. Heather Langenkamp is an awesome heroine. Nancy is one of the girls in the genre that fought the villain and didn't run. Langenkamp creates a suburban teenage girl that is filled with pizazz and wit, which she has the most of out of all the characters. In a very brief performance, Tina is played by Amanda Wyss of the hit comedy "Fast Times At Ridgemont High." Her character's death is uncomfortable and disturbing to watch. Craven shows no mercy during Tina's death, not having an ounce of the scene edited. He makes you watch all of it, and that creeps the viewer out even more. Nick Corri is a very good rebel. And you'll also notice Johnny Depp in his first big movie as Glen. His death is second best.

Nancy's parents, Donald and Marge Thompson, are played by John Saxon of "Black Christmas" and Ronee Blakely of "Nashville." They are the last of the parents on Elm Street to hold a very dark secret about Freddy, something that they aren't telling Nancy or the others. Not such a good idea, since Freddy never seems to leave them alone.

I can't imagine anybody else playing Freddy other than Robert Englund. Englund is flawless in the role that made him a star. This is where Englund is scariest as Freddy. In the sequels, Freddy becomes a comedian with rather stale wisecracks. What makes Freddy so scary in the first "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie is how his dark, macabre sense of humor comes off as frightening. And he's always there, wherever you are. "Since he's a dream figure, he can basically do anything," says critic Aviva Briefel. "He can transform into anything. That's what makes him so scary. How can you resist sleep? He's everywhere." If horror movies got nominati

Fmovies: This movie might very well be one of the best horror movies of all time, together with movies like "Poltergeist", "Dawn of the Dead (1978)" "The Exorcist" and "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)".

I didn't expected it to be but this movie was just brilliant. Certainly the best slasher movie ever made. There are several things that make this movie a good horror classic. Of course the classic 'killer' Freddy Kruger is one of them. Another thing is the concept. Yes, the story of course is just simply ridiculous at times but it's the perfect concept to fill a movie with, with some scary scene's and brutal killings with tons of blood.

The movie has the same scary gritty atmosphere like a horror movie from the 70's, when the horror genre was at an all-time high.

The actors are giving their best but some of the dialog is just plain cheesy. Still I think that the actors should deserve more credit then they are getting right now, especially Johnny Depp made a impressive movie debut. The talent was already showing, back then. His role in this movie was way bigger than I expected it to be by the way.

Really entertaining horror classic. Some things might look cheesy, especially the ending (I really laughed my butt off!) and the story in general but the atmosphere, gore and Kruger make up everything! Guess you have to be a fan of the genre to fully appreciate it though.

10/10

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I love A Nightmare On Elm Street. Every time i watch this i think it has a terrific energy and strength running through it. I like the way the film starts with Freddy Kruegar making his Finger Knife Glove in his basement cellar, then the music kicks in (what a creepy score) as the first teenager is frantically running around his maze-like Boiler Room in her dream state. Freddy is only hinted at in the shadows or ripping through cloth with his glove and i love the way you can hear animals and creepy noises emitting from all around Tina, as she becomes cornered before Freddy comes out of the shadows. A great opening.

Tina Grey is played by Amanda Wyss, who is really good in her role for the short time she is in this film. I always remember her character in this film the way i remember the Chrissie Watkins character at the start of Jaws, i think you know what i'm coming too. Tina's encounter with Freddy in her backyard is my favourite moment in this film, and it is one of the most horrifying deaths I've ever seen. Its frightening to see and if you are faint hearted at splashing blood then look away because it is a screamer.

Heather Langenkamp is excellent in this film. Shes very attractive,and gives 100% as Tina's friend Nancy Thompson who starts to have the same nightmares. My favourite moments with Nancy are mostly her scary encounters with Freddy scored to an energetic music beat by Charles Bernstein. I would say part of the movie's success is down to his creepy score. I also love the bathroom scene when Nancy falls asleep, absolutely gross and hilarious at the same time. The thing is, these 'funny' moments are actual imagines of how Freddy wants to prey on his victims before killing them, this is done in this first film with a measured discipline, then you watch The Dream Master and Freddy is basically killing kids while being 100% comic about it as well.

One of my favourite other scenes in this film is when Nancy is following Tina's corpse down her School halls (having falling asleep)and runs into a prefect women who states 'Wheres your pass?' Nancy doesn't respond in kind, and as she goes running down the hall, the girl reveals herself to be Freddy 'No running in the hallway' an eerie moment that is funny too.

Finally, special mention must go to Robert Englund as Freddy Kruegar. This actor's contribution to the character is 100% superb. I think that Freddy Kruegar IS Robert Englund and vice versa, even though a lot of his moments in this film are about injecting a scary visual presence, he also creates a mystic before the film's revelation: Who is he? Where does he come from? Why is he doing these things? After the third film of the series, Englund would become a Hollywood star and a horror icon. Rightfully so.

A Nightmare On Elm Street is a classic horror thriller and, along with Halloween, is one of the best horror movies ever made.

A Nightmare on Elm Street fmovies. Wes Craven created Freddy Krueger and when he did the world of Horror welcomed a great new character to its screens (or should that be its Screams).

Freddy, a child murderer in life, now hunts the children of the men and women that killed him, while they sleep.

Very gory, tense and full of over the top deaths scenes A Nightmare on Elm Street brought something new to the Horror Genre, and will go down in history in recognition of this.

The rarity of the film, is the character of Freddy, because he actually has character without distracting from the terror (in this outing at least)

Thanks Wes

9/10

Do you need a big budget to make a good Horror Movie? No, Wes Craven and many other Directors of that Genre proved that more than once. From today's point of view some special effects might look a bit poor but some others are still impressive and they still stick in my mind. What I impressed more than the blood and gore scenes are the creation of a new kind of Horror figure: Freddy Krueger. In a kind he is a modern Vampire. He isn't like Bela Lugosi's or Christopher Lee's Dracula a fashionable and handsome man who tries to seduce his victims. No he is more like Max Schreck's Count Orlok of the classic Nosferatu. An ugly person you fear when you see him. Freddy Krueger doesn't suck out the blood but the sucks out the fear of his victims. He needs their fear to live and like a Cat with a Mouse he plays with his victims before he kills them. Most of them are teenager and like a Vampire he is coming into the night when all the children sleep. If one of the youngsters let him in their dream it's pretty difficult to survive for them.

It's not so easy to create a horror figure. Director Wes Craven had the luck to find with Robert Englund the perfect cast for this role. Also some of the young actresses and actors are showing good performances. As Max Schreck was Count Orlok Robert Englund is Freddy Krueger. No wonder that so many sequels would follow. Next to the creation of a perfect new horror monster the whole movie follows somehow the concept of old classics. If you hear a children song in a horror movie it's always scary. The concept of the plot is like an old urban legend, myth or old classic ghost story. A young teenage girl is telling his parents that she dreamed of a monster that tried to kill her. Nobody believes her and keep on telling her it's just a nightmare. Freddy Krueger cannot come into the dreams of adults they don't have the imagination of fantasy anymore.

Next to the plot I was always impressed of the style of directing and photography of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's 80's style with contemporary music. The movie it self has a Gothic nightmarish atmosphere but Wes Craven used the colors and the look of the 1980's for it. The first A Nightmare on Elm Street Movie isn't a typical Horror Mainstream product. Wes Craven not only broke with some of the common rules of the genre he also reinvented some old classic rules of the genre into a new light. I highly recommend this piece of 80's culture to every movie fan not only the horror fans. If you don't like horror series don't watch the sequels but watch Wes Craven's Version of a Nightmare.

While I love horror films, I am not a big fan of the slasher genre, which has come to dominate and indeed practically to define horror since the late 1970s. While I do love the original "Psycho," most slasher films follow a different, and far more predictable, formula. The idea of a faceless killer going around stabbing teenagers just doesn't frighten me a whole lot, though some of these films do fill me with disgust--a rather different sort of emotion.

I am far more frightened by films that deal with distortions of reality, where it's hard for the characters to tell what's real and what's not. Admittedly, that genre isn't always so lofty either. Dreams are one of the most overused devices in the movies, having a whole set of clichés associated with them. We are all familiar with the common scene in which a character awakens from a nightmare by jerking awake in cold sweat. This convention is not only overused, it's blatantly unrealistic, for people waking up from dreams do not jerk awake in such a violent fashion. Moreover, these scenes are usually nothing more than little throwaway sequences designed to amuse or frighten the audience without advancing the plot.

What makes "Nightmare on Elm Street" so clever is how it creates an entirely new convention for representing dreams on screen. The dreaming scenes are filmed with an airy, murky quality, but so are many of the waking scenes, making it very difficult to tell whether a character is awake or asleep. Indeed, the movie never shows any character actually fall asleep, and as a result we are constantly on guard whenever characters so much as close their eyes for a moment. In crucial scenes, it is impossible to tell whether what we are seeing is real or happening only in a character's mind. But the movie ultimately suggests that the difference doesn't matter. The premise of the movie, in which a child-killer haunts teenager's dreams and has the capability of killing them while they're asleep, turns the whole "It was all just a dream" convention on its head: in this movie, the real world is safe, and the dream world is monstrously dangerous.

The movie finds a number of ways to explore this ambiguity, including a bathtub scene that invites comparisons with the shower scene in "Psycho" without being a cheap ripoff. My personal favorite scene, and one of the scariest I've ever seen in a movie, is the one where Nancy dozes off in the classroom while a student is standing up in front of the class reading a passage from Shakespeare. The way the scene transitions from the real classroom to a nightmarish version of it is brilliantly subtle.

The director, Wes Craven, understood that the anticipation of danger is usually more frightening than the final attack. There are some great visual shots to that effect, including one where Freddy's arms becomes unnaturally long in an alleyway, and another where the stairs literally turn into a gooey substance, in imitation of the common nightmare where it is hard to get away from a pursuer. The movie continually finds creative ways to tease the audience, never resorting to red herring, that tired old convention used in almost all other slasher films.

Despite the creativity in these scenes, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is still a formula movie, with relatively one-dimensional characters and no great performances. This was Johnny Depp's first role, as Heather Langenkamp's boyfriend, and although he does get a f