A Nightmare on Elm Street

I was grinning during the scene where Johnny Depp is pulled into his bed after falling asleep because a memory of a MTV commercial using it as an advertising clip in the 80s returned to me. I think, when the mind dates back, that the new generation of kids who have little idea what an exhilarating experience it is to feel dread and to actually find a boogeyman scary are really missing out. When I was a kid, A Nightmare on Elm Street was the film that produced such feelings for me. I did actually have nightmares about Fred Krueger. I think a movie that actually does that, ably producing such an emotional response, deserves the long-term praise it still garners and commands.

Whatever you do...Don't. Fall. Asleep.

I’m afraid that the series’ final sequels may’ve dulled the impact of the initial movies (the first three films, mainly). Fred was a sparsely used nightmare killer who used his dreamland realm to get you, his domain is exactly where you must enter each and every night: a person needs their dreams, that deep sleep, and when it is deprived of  a person the result is Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) by the end of A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

An emotional wreck, her mental state certainly fragile from the seven-day sleep deprivation because of the dreams-invader, dead child murderer Freddy Krueger (who would take children to a section of an abandoned boiler room in an industrial building, committing unspeakable horrors towards them) who attacks her every time she falls asleep even temporarily, Nancy shows on her face and exhaustive appearance the physical, psychological, and emotional toll such an excruciating experience can be. Even worse is how her father and mother, adults, and her boyfriend all believe she’s nutty, unaware of just how real her boogeyman truly is.

One of the main reasons I think this film endures is the deck stacked against our heroine, Nancy. She’s up against it because her parents are seriously estranged, her mom a drunk, very much incoherent or zoned out a great portion of the time while her father stays at the station, working his investigation of the Freddy murders. Nancy’s condition worsens and, as gauged by her boyfriend’s disgruntled father as such an example, she’s considered a troubled child in need of some sort of help. 

Mom takes Nancy to a sleep studies clinic but all it does is determine major high levels of sleep disorder and anxiety, off the charts, and further allows her to pull things from her nightmares into the real world, Fred’s hat, not to mention, a claw mark on her arm. Nancy hides coffee and pills from mom so she can remain awake, attempts to get beau Depp to watch over her while she sleeps (or remain awake so he can harm Fred when she pulls his body into their world), and is aggressively persistent that the murderer responsible for the heinous deaths fits the description of the man her parents (along with other families with children killed by him) knew from years before.

So many iconic nightmarish images and murder set pieces brought to us courtesy of the creative and innovative minds of Craven’s filmmaking team and inspired screenplay. The ending is often the point of inquiry in how odd and rather “out of the ass” it feels. It just feels like a scene added on to leave open the idea that Nancy never escaped from the nightmare as she so thought, with all her friends also caught in the same predicament (or maybe her friends are just figments within her nightmare, still dead but momentarily alive and well in her fantasy of “all is well”.) . Whatever the case, it feels like one of those scenarios where the entire experience is perhaps one long nightmare, Nancy caught in an inescapable situation, with Freddy always nipping at her heels. I don’t know what the hell that bit with Freddy pulling mom through a hole in the entrance door was about. It was certainly wild and unpredictable, but just so awkwardly random in its execution. It is surreal enough and if the film remained inside a nightmare, its inclusion, as a car with Fred’s sweater colors characterizing the convertible top cover closes Nancy and her friends inside speeds away, isn’t so out of the ordinary. 

Even before this bizarre scene, Freddy, set on fire by Nancy, his “fiery footprints” left inside the house while his desired target had retreated to get help from her father (still over at the other house attending the latest crime scene, another aftermath of Freddy’s carnage), focused on getting his hands on Marge (Ronee Blakely). You have Marge, totally wasted, left to sleep in bed by Nancy, engulfed in flames as Freddy pounces on top of her: Freddy’s gone while Marge’s burned figure, barely recognizable except in a somewhat shaped human figure, steadily descends into a portal inside the bed, until only the bed appears, as if never slept in. I don’t even know what to think of this scene, either. It is so surreal; it seems to fit the madness that follows Freddy wherever he goes. I think this really proves that Nancy has never truly woke up from her nightmare, even as she and her father, Lt. Donald Thompson (John Saxon) find Marge’s remains totally changed thanks to Freddy’s attack.

Such a premise as Fred, the nightmare man, running free inside the dreams of his quarry (teenagers of those whose parents helped to burn him alive) gives Craven a creative carte blanche to go in all sorts of directions, taking the template of a Bunuel film, spinning a sleep terror tale from the master of surreal cinema, and, in turn, introducing the horror genre to a new boogeyman who’d make the rounds for several films in the future. There were still places to take the character and plenty more victims for him to terrorize and butcher. Having the nightmare as a place to chase and execute those teenagers who just so happen to fall asleep, directors after Craven had chances to play around with the formula and invent unusual ways to trap/ensnare the youth Freddy wishes to bury his gloved steel-claw nails into.

Morality sucks.

My favorite moments involve the murder and sights of a bloody Amanda Wynn, as Tina (her mother is unemotionally vacant, not nurturing as much as miserable), who is shown dragged up walls and across the ceiling as Freddy’s slash across her deeply wounded chest causes her to bleed profusely while her f-buddy Rod looks on in horror helplessly, soon considered himself the one behind her vicious demise, as well as, the sight of her in a body bag, beckoning Nancy from outside a classroom standing in the middle of the school hall. When her body bag was dragged invisibly around a corner, a blood line train behind her down the hall, it is quite an eerie image. Sure, Depp pulled into his bed and a water fall geysers to the ceiling from the hole that “ate him” is a showstopper, but to me, Tina’s grisly demise, how she’s still alive as Freddy, his form missing since we see all of this from Rod’s point of view while his babe’s caught asleep during her nightmare, carries her body all throughout the bedroom, is the kill scene that never leaves me. 

You can have Freddy’s glove arising from a bathtub between the legs of a dozing Nancy (a really psycho-erotic scene, I have to admit still arouses me) or Nancy’s feet *sinking* in her stairs while trying to move up them, which both leave quite an impression and add to the film’s cult (or even the “I’m your boyfriend, now, Nancy.” scene where she picks up the phone as Freddy’s tongue and mouth attempt to give a French kiss), but Tina’s tragic fate is what sets up just what kind of serious threat the burned man with the hat and red/green sweater and glove with knives as fingers really is, and will be later. 

I'm your boyfriend, now, Nancy.

When Freddy later arrives in the jail of Rod, delighted at how easy it will be despite a visiting Nancy’s cries for help (Nancy was asleep, expecting Depp to wake her up while supposedly standing watch), the number of friends left alive to help Nancy prove who is behind the murders will be non-existent, leaving her to fight him alone. The nifty bed sheet hanging of Rod in his jail cell isn’t as extraordinarily bloody, but still it proves how Freddy can use even the simplest weapons to kill those victims he targets under the vulnerability of the sleeping state.

There's a scene I consider key to how Freddy starts to wiggle his way into Nancy's psyche, closing in on her as she is cornered after evading his pursuit through the infamous boiler room as he screeches his glove blades into metal, smiling as he senses eventual bloodshed, with her having to resort to burning an arm against a hot pipe. Her screaming freak-out, that gives a jump to her classmates in the English class (including teacher, Lin Shaye, who shows the appropriate nervous concern), is epic in promoting just what kind of damage ole Fred can cause to those he gleefully terrifies.

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Heather Langenkamp's performance isn't exactly complemented with great plaudits. I never felt she had to give us an earth-shattering performance because Craven and his filmmaking team provide all we need in the make-up and conveying her worsening physical condition. She looks like someone with all her energy and life force drained due to sleep deprivation. We get that she can barely stomach her mother's drunkenness and bars on the windows keeping her prisoner in the home (hiding the keys somewhere), and the fact that no one takes her seriously regarding the dream killer. That, to me, is performed reasonably well...she's beat and has been put through hell after her friends taken by Freddy. I will put it this way, I never grimaced or winced at a scene performed by her. She's just a kid undeservedly run through the ringer.

I

I really think the sparing use of Robert Englund is especially well done. He isn't treated like a wise-cracking rock star, but is a heel who enjoys terrorizing an innocent foursome by cutting off fingers squirting blood, slicing open his chest to show maggots spitting out, standing in the alley of what should be a harmless unassuming suburbia having his arms outstretched several feet, chasing girls with a wicked relish that symbolizes how joyous the pursuit and murder of victims is to him. He's a human monster with a burned visage and total dedication to using his self-created now-iconic glove--and especially the confines of the nightmare world he's trapped in but uses to his advantage--whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

When the film opens--and this was well homaged in Ryan Nicholson's Gutterballs--with Fred crafting the glove and fingered knives to go on it, it is almost like we're given an inside peep into the beginnings of a psychopath. It leaves a very definite mark; I think hearing him breath only adds dimension to this moment seeing the meticulous process until its conclusion, knowing this all happens inside the place he took his victims. Seeing the early films, it is fascinating to me how Freddy would evolve during the series of films until he was a celebrated prankster laying waste to characters associated with a heroine that ultimately defeated him time and again.

Oh, God, I look twenty years old.

Oh, man. Baseball bats and boogeyman. Beautiful.

What did the coroner say?

He’s been puking in the john since he saw it.