Saturday, October 31, 2015

My Review of A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)


Written And Directed by Wes Craven

Children: "One, two, Freddy's coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, gonna stay up late. Nine, ten, never sleep again."

And to finish off my series of Halloween themed reviews for the last few days would be this little creepy gem from the early 1980s. If Michael Myers, Leatherface and Jason Voorhes aren't enough to scare the bejesus out of you, then Freddy Krueger has to, given that even in sleep you're not especially safe from the guy.

In this movie (and it's many, many sequels), former child killer Freddy (Robert Englund) met a violent death at the hands of a community he terrorised years ago only for his spirit to haunt the dreams of the neighbourhood's teenage population and subsequently murder them in their sleeps. 

The ball got rolling in a spectacular fashion when Tina (Amanda Wyss) became the first onscreen victim, quickly followed by her boyfriend Rod (Jsu Garcia) and then both Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and Glen (Johnny Depp) found themselves in danger.

Like with a few classics, this was not a movie I saw as a child but one I caught up with in later years and it's pretty easy to see why it's stood the test of time, inspired many parodies as well as an easily forgotten remake back in 2010.

The idea of a killer being able to kill you in your sleep is as terrifying a concept as you can imagine and Craven certainly amped up the scares throughout this movie as Nancy became the final girl and was forced to risk her own life in order to stop Freddy's reign of terror once and for all.

It's an extremely compelling battle of wits between the frightened teenage girl and the heavily burned serial killer and definitely one that took an unexpected twist as the final moment neatly showed us.

- Parts of this movie were inspired by a childhood bully that Craven had, which is a little unsettling, isn't it?
- The creepy jump rope song for Freddy certainly added to the terror of this movie for me.
- Despite the terror he inspires, Freddy doesn't actually have a lot of screentime. That also added to his effectiveness as a threat.
- It took three years for this movie to actually be made. The script was written in 1981 but it took a while for a studio willing to shoot the movie, which took 30 days.

Another classic of a movie and a conclusion this year to my Halloween themed blogs. A Nightmare On Elm Street is a perfect viewing for tonight in lieu of anything else on television but you might want to sleep with a light on afterwards.

Rating: 9 out of 10

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