A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
One of the most perceptive, visceral, and accessible horror premises ever conceived—so much so, that I shamelessly ripped it off for my recent, collective unconscious, sleep death in suburbia short, The Self-Seers, in which Korean kids are tormented in their dreams by a shadowy, malevolent version of themselves. Both films, I’d argue, serve as metaphors for burgeoning adolescence and its myriad, inescapable pressures. Angsty youth themes such as the sins of the elders being visited upon the children, and most importantly, teenagers going through something their parents just don’t understand—and absolutely cannot help with, are certainly present. Here, highschooler Nancy Thompson, her kinda boyfriend Glen, and their two buddies, Tina, and horny jerk, Rod, are the juveniles accosted in their slumber by the same disfigured, fedora-hatted, finger-knife brandishing, omnipresent dream-ghoul, Fred Krueger.
Key visuals like the wall stretching inwards above Nancy’s bed have aged like a fine wine, a suggestive, between the thighs bath sequence featuring the 15-year-old tested the waters of acceptability, and Rod‘s chuckle-worthy tighty-whities nosedive aside; Craven’s imaginative revolving room conceit is still a horrifying, mind-bending sight to behold. On the other (clawed) hand, there are caveats—somewhat of a cacophonous, overkill ‘80s score with no real restraint plays as dated, Krueger’s ludicrously long arms plus other unintentionally farcical moments where he’s stumbling over patio furniture, being impeded by trash cans, his ham and cheese reactions to booby trap explosives, and that hokey, fat-Freddy stunt burn suit. However, Craven’s haphazard deployment of humour and abandonment of true terror becomes a crucial element of Elm Street’s slasher tone. It’s a movie in which a tongue was consciously designed to lick out of a telephone receiver and perversely frighten a young girl, so moaning about the baddie having large limbs seems somewhat misguided.
Back in 1984, Freddy still had enough mystique to be simultaneously cool and frightening. Although his puerile, gross out scare tactics, and coarse, lecherous wisecracks are on show here, the subsequent sequels in the series, including personal fave, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, would mine this aspect further, and take it to absurdly creative extremes. The original may not have reached the franchise’s peak in terms of ingenious imagery—with its increasingly elaborate, atmospheric dream scenes, but it remains somewhat grounded in the sense that it establishes the rules of the Elm Street mythos. Prior to Freddy follow-up fatigue, and his total demystification—which saw him transform into more of a pop culture invading jester, as opposed to the paedophilic, child-killer Krueger was established as here—A Nightmare on Elm Street served, and will forever stand, as the initial feature marking the arrival of one of cinema’s most iconic and enduring antagonists.
Scarious Artists 