Movie Review – A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

“If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

Back in 1984, the world was introduced to the horror of Freddy Krueger.  Unlike other slasher films where teenagers were brutally killed by a knife-wielding psychotic in a blank mask, or a man in a hockey mask attacking people at a summer camp, A Nightmare on Elm Street gave us a crazed killer who could attack his victims no matter where they tried to run or hide.  Freddy Krueger thrived in people’s nightmares, stalking and attacking in their dreams while they slept.

A Nightmare on Elm Street was directed by legendary slasher film maker Wes Craven.  The 1984 horror film stars Heather Langenkamp as the high school teenager Nancy Thompson.  Johnny Depp, in his first major role, plays her boyfriend Glen Lantz.  John Saxon plays the role of Lt. Don Thompson, Nancy’s police officer father.  Robert Englund terrorized the audience in the role of Freddy Krueger, a serial killer back from the dead.  Supporting them are Amanda Wyss as Tina Gray, Nick Corri as Rod Lane, and Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson.

A Nightmare on Elm Street begins with an unknown man constructing a special glove with knives during the opening credits.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

The action begins as teenager Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is running through a creepy boiler room while in her nightgown.  We see that she’s being stalked and harassed by a menacing man (Robert Englund) with burned skin and a razor sharp knife glove on his right hand.  Just as the man grabs her, Tina wakes up in her bedroom.

Tina’s is clearly terrified from her nightmare, and she must have been screaming because her mom opens the girl’s bedroom door to check on her.  Tina claims that she’s okay, that it was just a nightmare, but the front of her nightgown has four slash marks, implying that it was more than just an innocent dream.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

The next day Tina goes to school with her friend Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and Nancy’s boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp).  Tina tells Nancy about her nightmare, claiming that it was the worst nightmare that she ever had.  At that point Nancy admits that she also had a bad dream recently.  Tina’s boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri), shows up and tries to make light of the situation, but Tina shrugs him off.  Tina tries to dismiss the nightmare by suggesting to Nancy that maybe all of them having weird dreams means that an earthquake is coming.

That night Tina’s parents are away, so Nancy and Glen both spend the night with Tina.  They hear a noise outside, but it turns out to be Rod.  Back inside the house, the two couples head into separate bedrooms.  Nancy and Glen hear Tina and Rod having wild sex before they fall asleep.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Tina falls asleep and she again has a nightmare.  Instead of being in the boiler room, this time Tina is walking around her home.  Everybody is sleeping as the scantily clad Tina walks around and investigates the strange sounds.  Once again she’s terrorized by Freddy Krueger.  He chases and terrorizes the teenage girl, popping out and staying a step behind her at all times.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Rod wakes to Tina’s screams and finds his girlfriend being viciously attacked by an invisible creature.  Four knife wounds suddenly appear across her chest, and then the bloody girl is dragged up a wall and onto the ceiling.  Rod can only watch in horror as his girlfriend is tormented and killed right before her eyes.  Her lifeless body is finally dropped onto the bed.

Nancy and Glen finally enter the room and are shocked by the bloody sight of their friend.  Rod keeps claiming that he didn’t do it, but nobody else was in the room.  The bedroom door was locked tight.  Rod flees before the police arrive.  At the police station, Nancy’s father, Lt. Don Thompson (John Saxon) is upset that his daughter was at an unsupervised sleep over, especially one that ended in tragedy.

The next morning, Nancy’s mother, Marge (Ronee Blakley), tries to convince her daughter that she doesn’t have to go to school that day, that Nancy needs to stay home and recover.  Nancy still heads to school and promises her mother that she’ll be careful.  As she’s walking to school, Nancy is surprised by Ron.  He takes her aside and tried to plead for her help, claiming that he’s innocent of killing Tina, but Nancy is still hesitant.  The bottom line is that nobody else was seen in the bedroom besides Tina and Rod.  Nancy’s father suddenly appears and the police capture Rod and arrest him for the murder of Tina.  Nancy is furious at her father for him using her as bait to lure Rod out of hiding.

In class, Nancy falls asleep in class and has another nightmare.  She’s in school but things aren’t right.  The boy speaking in the front of the classroom is speaking strangely, and Tina’s dead body is in the hallway.  Nancy leaves the classroom to follow Tina’s dead body, but there’s only a trail of blood.  She follows it and runs into a hall monitor demanding to see a hall pass.  This hall monitor is wearing a red and green striped sweater and has a knife glove on her right hand.  Nancy continues and follows the blood downstairs and into a teacher’s lounge.

But it’s not a teacher’s lounge.  Nancy is now in a boiler room just as Tina was during her first nightmare.  Nancy encounters Freddy Krueger, and the killer tries to catch the girl.  He corners her and tries to grab her, but Nancy wakes herself by placing her arm against a steaming hot pipe.  She wakes up screaming in the classroom, and the teacher urges her to go home and get some rest.  As Nancy leaves the school she notices that her left arm now has a burn mark.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Instead of heading home, Nancy stops by the police station and speaks with Rod who is now sitting in a jail cell.  Again, Rod claims his innocence that he did not kill Tina.  He again tells Nancy about the attack and then admits that he’s also been having nightmares.  As Nancy walks away Rod describes a burned man with knives on a glove.  At that point Nancy realizes that Rod is innocent, and she leaves the jail.  She needs solid evidence if she needs to stop the nightmares and get her friend out of jail.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Back at home, Nancy tries to relax in a warm bath.  We see a gloved hand with knives appear as she begins to drift asleep.  Her mother warns her about the dangers of falling asleep in a bathtub, but Nancy shrugs off the warning and falls asleep anyway.  In her nightmare the girl is quickly pulled down into the tub, sinking much further into the bathtub as thought possible.  Nancy struggles and eventually frees herself and swims to the surface.  Nancy’s mom hears her cries for help and manages to unlock the bathroom door just as Nancy crawls out of the bathtub.  She convinces her mother that it was just a bad dream and everything is all right.

Nancy is in her bedroom watching The Evil Dead when Glen suddenly appears in her bedroom window.  He’s not allowed to be there, but Nancy gladly welcomes him into her room.  She decides to use his help so that she can further investigate her nightmares.  All Glen has to do is stay awake and to wake Nancy when she starts fighting and screaming in her sleep.  Seems simple enough.

The girl falls asleep and quickly beings another nightmare.  In her sleep, Nancy walks around the neighborhood and heads to the police station.  There she looks through a barricaded window and sees Rod sleeping in his jail cell.  She then sees Freddy Krueger appear and walk through the bars and into Rod’s cell, taunting the girl while doing so.

Nancy then sees Tina’s dead body again, and Freddy jumps out of the bushes and tries to grab her.  Nancy flees and runs back into her house.  She locks the front door and tries to go back upstairs, but her feet keep sinking into the carpeted steps, greatly slowing her progress as Freddy tries to break open the door.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

She makes it into her bedroom and sees Glen asleep and next to her bed.  Nancy tries to convince herself that what what she’s seeing isn’t real, and at that point Freddy Krueger jumps through the mirror on her bedroom door and attacks her.  They wrestle on the bed and the floor until an alarm clock wakes Nancy from her nightmare.  She’s furious at Glen for falling asleep, and she kicks him out of her bedroom before her mother investigates Nancy’s screams and cries for help.  Her mother is growing more and more concerned about her daughter’s worsening nightmares.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Concerned about seeing Freddy attack Rod during her nightmare, Nancy and Glen go to the police station to check on their friend.  The police officers assure them that Rod is safe and secure in the jail cell, and he’s also asleep.  He tells them to come back another day, but Nancy continues begging the officer and then her dad to let them check on Rod.  They make their way back to his jail cell, but that turns to horror as it looks like Rod committed suicide by hanging himself.  We know that an invisible force made the sheet form a noose and wrapped itself around Rod’s neck, strangling him.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

After Rod’s funeral service, Nancy’s mother convinces her to see psychiatrists and have a study conducted on sleep disorders.  The girl is hesitant but agrees to go through with the study.  When Nancy falls asleep, at first everything seems fine.  But as the doctor and nurse are monitoring the equipment they see Nancy having a terrible nightmare.  Nancy awakens with a white streak in her hair, a nasty slash on her left arm, and Freddy’s hat as a souvenir.  Her mother is horrified when she sees the hat.  She knows what it means but is hesitant to tell her daughter the truth.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Back at home, Nancy’s mother is upset with her daughter drinking coffee and attempts to stay awake.  She herself is drinking alcohol and developing a bad habit.  They argue and Nancy confronts her mother with the hat that she recovered from her nightmare.  The man who has been terrorizing her has his name stitched into the hat — Fred Krueger.  Mentioning the name sends shivers up Marge’s spine.  She keeps denying the evidence and insisting that Nancy will feel better once she gets some sleep.

Nancy runs off and meets with Glen.  The two of them discuss dreams and nightmares, and Glen gives her some advice to help her with her problem.  He tells her that these creatures feed on the energy from a person’s fear, and by no longer fearing them, then they’re powerless.  Meanwhile, Nancy is reading a book about improvised explosives, claiming that she’s interested in survival.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

The teenager returns home and finds the doors and windows barricaded with steel bars.  Her home is now a fortress.  Nancy finds her mom drunk but willing now to tell her what she knows about Fred Krueger.  They head into the basement and Marge reveals the truth about the man in Nancy’s nightmares.

Some time ago, a man named Fred Krueger murdered at least twenty children.  The police finally tracked him down and took him to court, but Fred was released on a technicality because of an improperly signed search warrant.  The neighborhood parents took justice into their own hands and, including Marge, they tracked Fred into the boiler room of an old warehouse, filled the area with gasoline, and burned him to death.  Marge pulls Fred’s knife glove out of a hidden spot to show Nancy proof that the man is dead.

In her bedroom, Nancy calls Glen and tells him about Freddy Krueger.  She also tells him her plan of pulling Freddy out of her dream world, and then having Glen knock out the guy so they can take him to the police.  Nancy tells him that since she brought back his hat, she’ll be able to pull him too as long as she’s holding Freddy when she wakes from her nightmare.  The most important thing though is for Glen not to fall asleep.

Later that night Nancy tries to call Glen to tell him to come to her bedroom, but Glen’s parents intercept the phone call.  Glen’s father hangs up and disconnects the phone line, blocking her from calling again.  Nancy then receives a phone call from Freddy claiming that he’s her boyfriend now.  She tries to tell this to her mom, but Marge is doped on alcohol and other pills and unable to do anything.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Across the street, Glen is on his bed and asleep.  He has a nightmare and we see him get pulled into the center of his bed.  There’s a large hole there and suddenly a river of blood rushes out of it, splattering on the bedroom ceiling.

The police arrive and investigate the scene, but it’s one bloody mess.  Glen’s parents are horrified and have no idea what happened to their son.  Still trapped in her parent’s house, Nancy calls her father over at Glen’s house and tries to explain what happened.  He doesn’t believe her, but she still tells him to be back at their house in twenty minutes.  She’ll have the killer there and he can arrest him.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Nancy then goes and sets a series of traps around her parent’s house.  They aren’t lethal, but they should distract Freddy enough to buy time for the police to arrive and arrest him.  She then sets an alarm clock on her watch and settles into bed to fall asleep.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Once again Nancy has a nightmare, and this time she’s back in the boiler room.  This time she’s no longer afraid.  The teenager seeks out the killer, trying to lure him out into the open before her alarm sounds and she wakes from the nightmare.  Nancy finally finds Freddy and she grabs him just as her alarm sounds and she wakes up back in her bedroom.

At first everything is calm and quiet in her bedroom.  But just as Nancy starts to think that maybe it all really was a dream, Freddy Krueger jumps out at the girl.  She hits him over the head and runs out of the room, setting a trap behind her while fleeing.  Nancy breaks a window and calls for her dad across the street, but her dad is hesitant on seeing what she’s crying about.  He’s still trying to investigate the death of Glen.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Freddy makes it past a trap and chases Nancy around the house.  She leads him through more traps, slowing and stunning the killer with each one.  Freddy chases the girl into the basement, but she’s ready for him down there as well.  Nancy has covered most of the floor with a flammable liquid, and when Freddy is in the right position she lights a match and sets him on fire.  He tries to chase her back up the stairs, but Nancy locks him in the basement.  She calls again for her dad and this time her dad notices the smoke and cannot ignore his daughter’s cries any longer.  Lt. Don and a few officers break open the front door and head into the basement to put out the fire.

But Freddy isn’t in the basement any longer.

Lt. Don and Nancy notice the fiery footsteps heading upstairs, and they follow them to the master bedroom.  There they find Freddy still on fire while attacking Marge.  Don throws a blanket on top of them to put out the flames, but when he pulls back the blanket they see a burned Marge slowly descending into the mattress and into the netherworld.  And just like that Nancy’s mother is gone.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

Nancy and her father embrace and reflect on the moment.  Her father leaves and Nancy spends a quiet moment in the bedroom.  On the mattress behind her, Freddy rises from the dead and is back to get his revenge against Nancy.  She knows he’s there but isn’t afraid of him.  She tells Freddy that he’s worthless and she knows his secret.  While stating that she also tells him that she wants her mother and her friends back.  Nancy stands her ground and when Freddy tries to make a final attack, he realizes that his energy is depleted and he vanishes into thin air.

The next morning we see a rested and rejuvenated Nancy step onto the front porch.  Her mother is sober and also looking great.  Marge claims that she doesn’t remember a single thing from the previous night.  Glen stops his car and we see that he, Tina and Rod are all alive and well.  Nancy joins them in the car.  Before they start driving, the car’s retractable roof closes on top of them and the windows all raise, trapping all four of them in the car.  The car’s roof is striped red and green.  Nancy tries calling to her mother for help, but Marge just smiles and waves back to the teenagers.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – (c) New Line Cinema

A Nightmare on Elm Street ends with the car driving away under its own influence and Freddy Krueger pulling Marge back into a house through a hole in the front door.

So is A Nightmare on Elm Street a good horror film?

Despite many of the special effects lacking when compared to today’s films, A Nightmare on Elm Street is still a fantastic horror film driven by a killer story.  The characters are great, the concept of a killer stalking people in their nightmares is scary, and Freddy Krueger himself is a fantastic villain.

Watching the film today, it’s easy to see how this film launched a franchise and Freddy Krueger himself became one of the most widely recognized (and menacing) movie monsters in the history of Hollywood.  Those people who love horror films with a taste of the supernatural will find themselves right at home with this film.

One of the fun aspects of A Nightmare on Elm Street is the blending between the dream world and the “reality” of the teenagers and their small town.  Sure, we know when they’re dreaming most of the time, but there were a couple of moments where you had to wonder just what exactly was happening to the characters and if Freddy was really there.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – movie trailer

Not only is A Nightmare on Elm Street a great 1980s film, but this is also an outstanding horror film.  This is absolutely a must-see for lovers of the horror genre.

Children singing a song – “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.”

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Nancy – “Whatever you do don’t fall asleep.”

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Freddy Krueger – “I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.”