A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

 

 Channel 4’s “100 Scariest Moments” list, #10

 

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street

(1984)

 

 

 

This is a Slasher film, so I should start with the question, what is a Slasher?

 

It’s a sub-genre of Horror film that has so many shared elements that is has been virtually impossible to make an interesting or original one since the release of “Halloween” in 1978. Though other critics might disagree, but I call “Halloween” the second “true” Slasher film, after “Black Christmas” (1974); so, the sub-genre was basically dead to me once it was recognized.

 

By 1980 there were ten-or-more Slashers getting released every year, and these numbers would remain pretty consistent for most of the rest of the decade. A “true” Slasher will have at least twelve of the following elements:

 

1. I don’t consider any film made before 1974 a “true” slasher. Films like “Psycho,” “Peeping Tom” (both 1960), the entire of the Italian Giallo (a genre that was initiated with either “The Girl Who Knew Too Much” (1963) or “Blood and Black Lace” (1964)) and “Last House on the Left” (1972) are more rightly seen as progenitors that Slashers borrowed from/plagiarized.

2. Slashers borrow from/plagiarize each other more than anything made prior to 1974.

3. The villain is a Serial Killer, there is usually no Supernatural elements, and when there is, the Supernatural part is generally treated haphazardly.

4. Contradicting this (but Slashers always ignore their own contradictions) is that the Serial Killer generally displays super-human traits.

5. Though a few slashers explore the Character of the Killer, it is more common that the Killer is a masked and ambiguous identity. Sometimes, in the climax, the Killer is definitively unmasked and/or identified, but even then, the identification generally fails to strip him (usually a him) of his ambiguity.

6. The climax is more-often-than-not open-ended, encouraging the creation of a franchise.

7. The main settings are often mundanely residential or recreational, well-maintained suburbs, summer camps, high schools, or college sorority houses. If the main setting is a place of business more associated with the adult world, it will most likely be a hospital. Generous critics often describe Slashers as being about the “dark side of suburbia” and that would be true if more of them showed greater awareness of the significance of setting, but they generally don’t.

8. The films are often set around a holiday or other group celebration, like a prom.

9. The cast is dominated by young, attractive Characters who were already familiar with each other before the film began. They are mostly poorly-developed and the majority introduced to provide fodder for the film’s body count. It is usually not hard to guess who will die, and to some degree, in which order, even before the Killings start. It is rare-ish that the Killer strays outside this small, closed, group. In other words, this Serial Killer doesn’t butcher random strangers, but destroys the security of a group of friends.

10.                  It is notable, given that the victims are so young, how often there are few adult authority figures. In Slashers the role of parents is marginalized and often they are completely invisible.

11.                  The body count must be at least four brutal killings and usually a great deal more.

12.                   At minimum, half the Victims should be female, and when the female Victims die, they will most often be scantily dressed or completely naked.

13.                  All major killings should be proceeded by a stalking sequence, and almost always the camera will take the Killer’s POV to encourage the (usually young and male) audience’s identification with the Killer, not the largely interchangeable Victims.

14.                  Unstable hand-held cameras are often preferred over tracking shots or steadicams.

15.                  The visual esthetic of the suspense scenes is unlikely to be shadow-or-chiaroscuro-dependent; more often soft blue hues simulating darkness are preferred because dark shadows tend to obscure the explicitness of the violence.

16.                  The violence is more-likely-than-not very gory, which is odd because the violence of the first two “true” slashers (“Black Christmas” and “Halloween”) were largely blood-less.

17.                  The killing scenes are the most inventive moments in these films, and the deaths often involve common house-hold items as weapons or significant props.

18.                  Edged weapons are preferred over guns, poisons, explosives, etc, and the more phallic the edged weapon, the better.

19.                  After the requisite number of cast members are dispatched, one lone female is left to face the killer in the climax (this is referred to as the “Final Girl,” a phrase coined by Critic Carol J. Clover).

20.                  More often than not, the films prove to be about a sick relationship between the Killer and the Final Girl, though the Final Girl generally has no idea that she was in this relationship until very near the end. Slashers are far more about stalking than murder, and the dynamic between Villain and central Victim is such that the fore-play is the body-count and the orgasm is her violent triumph over, or death at the hands of, her the unwanted partner (Clover used the phrase “psychosexual fury” to describe the motive for, and manner of, almost all Murders in Slasher films).

21.                  The female-empowering “Final Girl” trope is in conflict with the fact that the violence is usually misogynistically sexualized and the over-all attitude is to blame the Victims’ (especially the female victims’) sexual urges for their own victimization.

22.                  They are generally thinly plotted.

23.                  The dialogue is generally worse than the plots.

24.                  They are cheaply made.

 

There are masterpieces of cinema that have a number of these elements in play, like “Alien” (1979, so, obviously, made after 1974, the cast of victims were all familiar to each other before the film began, the Alien’s more vicious body parts prove to be very phallic, edged, weapons, the stalking is as important as the kill, the cast is killed off one-by-one until only the Final Girl remains), but true Slashers will share not only a few of these features, but at least half.

 

“Halloween” made Slasher’s financially successful (“Black Christmas” is often referred to a box-office failure, but I recently read it was decently profitable, just not industry-transformingly so). In “Halloween’s” wake, the Slasher explosion was insane, and over-saturation should’ve killed the sub-genre by the end of 1981 as some heavily-promoted Slashers starting bombing in the box-office.

 

Nope, they didn’t die.

 

By 1982, the increasing prevalence of VCRs gave the even the cheapest of the newly-appearing Slashers a shot at profitability, so the sorta-hits kept coming, and kept becoming even worse.

 

Then, in 1984, came this film, which redeemed the Slasher-market for about another decade, and though I love this movie, I don’t really love its industry consequences. From 1984 on, the most successful Slashers proved to be long-running franchises and those franchises became increasingly unbearable.

 

Writer/Director Wes Craven was a populist who wanted more substance, this is obvious even in his first directorial effort, “Last House on …,” a fairly crude Grindhouse Exploitation film but one with aspirations, it was disguised remake of Ingmar Berman’s Art-House hit “Virgin Spring” (1960). With “A Nightmare on …” Craven seemed to have said to himself, “This is the most profitable low-budget horror market, can I do more with it?”

 

And he did.

 

Regarding “A Nightmare on…” he has stated he was inspired by a true story, just like he said about “Last House on …” In both cases the “true story” was several times removed. With “A Nightmare on …” there was newspaper coverage of Taiwanese children who died in their sleep after experiencing violent nightmares. Most likely the children were victims of one a handful of genetic disorders collectively known as “Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome,” which strikes almost exclusively among certain Asian sub-groups.

 

Of course, the film isn’t really about that. It is about Craven’s favorite theme: vengeance by, and against, a contemptable deviance that threatens the stability and security of the USA’s wholesome petite bourgeoisie. He also displays a remarkable flair for surrealism in the context of a populist entertainment, and though this was not his first Supernatural Thriller, I think it is safe to say it was the first time he demonstrated he was actually good at this sort of thing.

 

It is set, as Craven’s films often are, in a well-manicured suburb, and opens with a far better display of sensitivity toward the habits and humor of American teen-agers than most other films of that era, Horror or otherwise. If you watch Craven’s films in chronological order, you can see his evolving skills, and here he displays that he’s sharpened his writing tremendously over the prior decade. Like “Last House on …” he sets up the Horror with young people casually lying to and defying, their parents, but it doesn’t come off sickly punitive this time around. He treats the deceit as a ritual of adultescence, played out a thousand times every day in this great nation, and the victims cannot be blamed for the violation of their security that is at the heart of the film.

 

Though his writing characterization was improving, his ability to direct his actors is still lacking (you’ll have to wait for “Scream” (1996) for him to display that), but unlike his earlier films, there’s no awful performances, just too many flat ones.

 

Here the tale revolves around four teenagers, the parents of one of the four, and a Monster from Hell.

 

Our teenagers are Nancy (Heather Langenkamp, giving one of the films two best performances), her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp, in his first film role, and given what he’d achieve later, you’ll be amazed how dull he is here), her best friend Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Tina's boyfriend Rod (Nick Corri). As they sit around doing more-or-less-wholesome teenage things during an unauthorized sleep-over, when they realize that most of them been sharing the same, terrible, nightmare.

 

The adult leads are Nancy's divorced parents, Police Lieutenant Don Thompson (John Saxon, who starred in “Black Christmas” and gives, as he usually does, a professional but cookie cutter performance) and mother Marge (Ronee Blakley, a former Oscar nominee who is remarkably unimpressive in what should’ve been a juicy role).

 

The Monster from Hell is Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund in the film’s other best performance, prior to this was type-cast as weaklings in comedic roles but here he’s transformed into a projection of breathtaking-evil). It takes a little while, but we eventually learn Freddy is the ghost of child-murderer, burned alive by Elm Street’s vengeful, vigilante parents. The Killer now invades the dreams of the children of his own Killers. Not only can he harm you in your dreams, he can leave scars on your body that are visible in the real-world.

 

This is a story of unspoken sins that are paid for by those ignorant of the crime -- the sins of the father (and mother) visited on the son (and daughter). This classic Horror-genre stuff, and with that, some of this film’s bite is directed towards the imperfection of the wholesomeness of the petite bourgeoisie in ways that Craven’s earlier films were not. The metaphor beneath the plot is that the children are trying to wake up (most are not successful) while the adults want them to stay asleep.

 

The first to die is Tina, it’s a horrific sequence, remarkably well executed given the film’s limited budget (FX by Jim Doyle). Her horrible death leaves unmistakable scars, so this is obviously a homicide, but no one is thinking about Freddy yet, and Rod is arrested by Nancy’s dad.

 

Because of adultescent loyalty and the shared dream, Nancy refuses to believe Rod is guilty. As the rest of the film unfolds, Nancy watches the rest of her friends die one-by-one, she’s repeatedly visited by Freddy in her dreams, unravels the mystery of Revenge from Beyond the Grave, and shows admirable pluck and planning because she has no intention of being just another Victim. Nancy becomes the embodiment of the Final Girl, and this trope had not been this powerfully evoked in any other of the Slashers following “Black Christmas” and “Halloween.” She’s sometimes compared to that other-most-awesome final girl, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from “Alien.”

 

"A Nightmare on…" was pretty cheaply made ($1 ½ million, which it made back during its first weekend). There’s an attention to detail that distinguishes all the greatest Directors, but not always evident in Craven’s films. Quickly paced, without long establishing shots, yet his cinematographer Jacques Haitkin still effectively evokes the geometry of the spaces before the action sequences, absolutely essential because some of that action is fairly complex. The most beloved sequences were set in a dream-version of a vast, filthy, boiler-room transformed into a Dante-esque vision of Hell.

 

Also, Freddy is a character, not as ambiguous as Michael Meyers, AKA "the Shape," the Villain of "Halloween." Though he’s not as developed as his Victims (that will have to wait to later films in the series) we know him fully enough, and the fact that his Characterization is full-blown makes his confrontation with Nancy that much more potent.

 

Though it would soon become an unbearable horror-movie cliché, some credit has to be given to Freddy’s sadistic wise-cracks in their original form; giving Freddy a voice gave him an identity, and Freddy’s identity was uniquely loathsome and vile. Though he killed boys and girls in equal measure, he seemed to take a special relish with his female victims. The famous line, “I’m your boyfriend now,” is in this film, and sexual harassment before butchering only increases as the series progresses. Freddy was a more perfect distillation of toxic masculinity than all the Slasher Villains that came before him combined, it made him all-the-more inescapably loathsome, making the film, ironically, less misogynistic.

 

Also, there’s no shots from Freddy’s POV during the stalking sequences, so even though Freddy is a better-than-average Villain character, the film remains more about the Victims than he. By developing Freddy this way, Craven denied the (male) members of audience the ability to identify with Freddy over his Victims, he makes Freddy as much a commentary on the Slasher as it was actually a Slasher.

 

After this film was released, interesting things happened to the careers of Langencamp and Englund, the film’s best performances. With this as a spring-board, they both had enviable careers, but at the same time became type-cast. Langencamp did several more low-budget Horror films but was more a presence on TV sitcoms as a typical “Good-Girl,” like her character Nancy, and eventually shifted behind the camera, embracing SFX make-up. Englund’s career had already been defined by type-casting, but this new Horror-film type-casting proved more lucrative. Langencamp would return to the series twice, Englund stuck with it for seven more films plus a TV series and other mediums. He’d eventually hand the role over to other actors, maybe tired of the Character, or maybe just tired. The Character of Freddy doesn’t wear a mask, but actor Englund had to endure hours of application of latex make-up before each day of shooting. Englund was 37 when this film was made and 56 when he last appeared as Freddy, and even Boris Karloff refused to be the Frankenstein Monster (first film 1931) after three movies.

 

“A Nightmare on…” first stroke of genius may have been Craven’s insight that the Slasher could be elevated by being combined with other things. In the credits Craven offers thanks to Sam Raimi whose magnificently over-the-top Zombie flick, "The Evil Dead" (1981) earned a surprising lot of critical love, even from usually Horror-adverse critic Janet Maslin. “The Evil Dead” offered that decades the most meaningful challenge to the Slasher’s undeserved domination and even “The Evil Dead” had several Slasher elements.

 

The other stroke of genius is a wholly unexpected intellectual participation. We are forced to consider the line between Fantasy and Reality, what was the difference between dreaming and being awake. Craven messes with expectations deftly, sometimes the Dreamscape is obvious, sometimes we’re surprised that Reality, well, isn’t, and there are even scenes where we think the Characters are dreaming but they're actually awake. This is the film’s creepiest, and most entertaining, aspect. The Dreams are solidly scary, and their left-overs (like Tina waking in the morning and realizing her nightgown has been shredded) are deliciously disorientating.

 

The franchise “A Nightmare…” sparked proved enormous, and expanded into other media, including a surprisingly good, ultra-low-budget TV anthology series, “Freddy’s Nightmares” (first aired 1988) in which Freddy more-often-than-not served as Narrator, not a Character. But franchises always end up eating their own tails, and the same year the TV series aired, Freddy guest-starred as a wholly Comedic Character in a Fat Boys music video, so it should’ve been obvious to all that he just wasn’t all that scary anymore.

 

Though the franchise disappoints, it not as bad as those of “Black Christmas,” “Halloween” or the wholly risible “Friday the 13^th” (first film 1980). Still, “not as bod” is really faint praise for twenty-five years of labor by I don’t know how many people.

 

It was simply a case of returning to the same trough too many times. Freddy’s sick wise-cracks gave him an evil identity, but as time went on, the jokes increasingly blunted his evil and seemingly made his sadism OK (this is not the only time this happened, think of Actor Roger Moore’s tenue and the Character James Bond (1973 through 1985)).

 

In the end there were nine “A Nightmare…” films, which was a least five too many.

 

I am fond of “Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” (1985) which moved away from “is this real or not?” into clever take on the Orpheus myth, but I must admit I’m in the minority for liking it.

 

“Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors” (1987) concerns troubled teens in a Sanitarium being stalked by Freddy. Nancy returns and teaches the children to harness their own dream power so they could turn the tables and go Freddy hunting themselves. That film had an almost universal appeal.

 

Then I’d skip everything until “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” (1994), an inspired metafiction where cast members from the first film appear as fictionalized versions of themselves. Freddy, who should only exist on paper, has decided he wants a real, and wicked, life.

 

This was followed with a cross-over with the risible “Friday the 13^th” franchise, “Freddy v Jason” (2003) and a remake of the original (2010). Both of these were total wastes of celluloid.

 

Still scary after all these years is Charles Bernstein's spare score. Not as famous as Goblin’s score for “Deep Red” (1975, an Italian Giallo, so think pre-Slasher) or John Carpenter’s for “Halloween,” but still great stuff - eerie and ethereal, and never overbearing.

 

The importance of “A Nightmare on…” went far beyond its genre influence, it turned New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros born way-back in 1967, into major Hollywood player. If one looks at the production house’s biggest grossing films, “A Nightmare on…” isn’t present, but all the bigger-grossers came later, but “A Nightmare on…” made all of them, including Steven Jackson’s outstanding Tolkien films (first film 2001) possible, as well the company’s repeated, lucrative, non-hostile take-overs by even bigger companies. The beating-a-dead-horse franchise reflected that until that point, “A Nightmare on…” was the most exciting thing New Line ever had.

 

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCVh4lBfW-c