Number 8 of My Top 31 Horror Movies : The evil spirit of a slain killer seeks revenge by invading the dreams of teenagers whose parents were responsible for his death : A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is the epitome of terror and Wes Craven was the master of serving it up, he knew what scared his audience and delivered a fearsome, bloody nightmare which has since spawned eight movies and a dreadful remake : In 1984 I was barely a teenager when Wes Craven gave us the iconic FREDDY KRUEGER, with his trademark hat, red & green sweater and a glove with razors for fingers, this demented killer not only petrified me and gave me sleepless nights back in the 80s but still does to this day : in 1984, and to make his movie Craven needed an actor to play a deceased child murderer built from the fires of hell, he needed a villain with menance & pure evil in his eye’s so they turned to Robert Englund a charasmatic actor known for bit parts in movies such as Galaxy of Terror, Dead & Buried and Eaten Alive to turn this monster into horror icon : like Carpenter’s Halloween Wes Craven’s movie also needed a heroine, a teenage girl who was innocent, beautiful and smart, a girl who would be Freddy’s equal on the horror battlefield, so after an extensive search Craven discovered Heather Langenkamp she would be the film’s Nancy and the perfect fit for Craven’s horror masterpiece : but why is A Nightmare On Elm Street still scary after all these years? well unlike Craven’s Scream the killer is supernatural, for me there’s something brutal about the way Freddy goes about his business of killing his victims, the death scenes are terrifying and made more squeamish due to the not seeing of who’s performing the act, you see the blood, the mutilation and you know it’s Freddy but you don’t see him and that’s where Craven excels, Tina’s death scene is the best example, as her boyfriend watches on she’s sliced open and then thrown around the cealing of her bedroom like a rag doll, blood draining from her body as she crashes back to her bed and the way Johnny Depp’s character Glen, like a vaccum cleaner is sucked into his bed and then spat back out pureed, the room awash with his remains, I found the scenes when Nancy wakes up from her nightmare in the Katja Institute bringing back Freddy’s hat and her arm sliced to be alarming and I still find the boiler rooms scenes particulary scary, the steam and the darkness only lit by the reflection of the flames engulfing the oven to be so unnerving, you just know Freddy is lurking somehwere in the shadows : from it’s chilling score written by Charles Bernstein, the wonderful John Saxon who plays Nancy’s dad and sheriff of the town to Wes Craven’s script that was turned down by Universal & Paramount Pictures back in the day but thank god for New Line Cinema who showed their trust in the filmmaker and was rewarded with a box office smash A Nightmare On Elm Street is essential Halloween viewing and even after all these years will turn your stomach and make it hard to sleep when the lights go down…… 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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