Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street

High-schoolers Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), Glenn (Johnny Depp), Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Rod (Nick Corri, AKA Jsu Garcia) are all having nightmares. Nothing too crazy about that, right? Except they’re seemingly all having nightmares about the same burn-scarred, red and green jumper-wearing, razor-gloved menace. And before long, the kids are turning up dead, after being killed in their nightmares. Eventually Nancy starts to investigate this phantom killer who seems to have very real-world killing proficiency and eventually discovers that he is Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer whom their parents burned to death after he got off on a technicality in the court room. Now it seems Freddy has decided to carry out his sadistic revenge on the kids of those parents, haunting them in their dreams. John Saxon plays Nancy’s rational cop father, Ronee Blakely is Nancy’s alcoholic mother, Lin Shaye plays a teacher, and Charles Fleischer turns up as a doctor.

I’ll always argue that “Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors” is the best of the series, but seeing this 1984 original from writer-director Wes Craven (“The Hills Have Eyes”, “Swamp Thing”, “Scream”) again, I can’t deny it’s well and truly a cut above at least 90% of the rest of the 80s horror films that were churned out. This series has always been, at least on a visual and thematic level, far more imaginative than most 80s horror films (The “Friday the 13^th” series, for instance, is horror at its most basic and cheap). It’s an iconic film with a great villain and fascinating themes. It’s also basically the film that built New Line Cinema.

The opener is especially memorable, with images of child murderer and dream slasher Freddy Krueger making his signature glove, before we move onto the opening nightmare through Amanda Wyss. Well-shot by Jacques Haitkin (“Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge”, “The Hidden”), it sets the tone of the piece nicely and also introduces us to the iconic boiler room that serves as Freddy’s lair of sorts. It’s a perfect location for a child murderer like Freddy. Later we get a terrific visual of Freddy starting to come through Nancy’s bedroom wall, which if I’m not mistaken was also used in “The New Nightmare” and also the remake of this film. “Hellraiser” (much as I’m not really a fan of it), “Razorback”, and “Near Dark” are the only other 80s horror films I can think of that managed to be as visually stunning, and the latter may not even count as a horror film. Looking back having seen all the subsequent films, it’s fascinating to see so many things that are present in this film having been repeated in later films, like Freddy chopping his own fingers off. Meanwhile, there’s a great money shot with the infamous bathtub scene as well. It also contains a genius development that “Dream Warriors” would later carry on, where Nancy comes out of a nightmare having taken Freddy’s hat out of the dream world and into the real one. Obviously the bit with Nancy and the phone is beyond stupid, but it’s brilliant at the same time. Meanwhile, one character gets what in my view is one of the greatest and most gloriously bloody deaths in cinematic history. If you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about. It’s almost David Warner having a close encounter with a pane of glass in “The Omen”-levels of awesomeness. The shadowy presentation of Freddy throughout is excellent, even if in this film in particular you can clearly see that Robert Englund isn’t very tall and his natural speaking voice isn’t very scary. They’d fix that latter issue in subsequent films.

Freddy is pretty much at his most minimalist here, not getting all that much dialogue, and only a few wisecracks. Still, he’s an iconic horror villain, one with far more personality than Michael or Jason. Freddy’s a sick bastard who, upon being killed, turns into an even sicker bastard who clearly enjoys killing. Despite being a phantom, he’s actually more human and relatable (but not in the positive sense of the term ‘relatable’) than Jason or Michael Myers, if you ask me. We also get a creepy, understated music score by Charles Bernstein (“Cujo”, “The Entity”) with the soon-to-be familiar theme that, although not ‘Ave Satani’ or ‘Tubular Bells’, is still well-known in horror movie circles.

For me there are only two flaws with the film. The first is the majority of the acting. Lead actress Heather Langenkamp is simply awful as Nancy. I know it’s a film about sleep-deprived teens, but like Patricia Arquette in the otherwise superior “Dream Warriors”, Langenkamp’s performance is somnambulant. It’s interesting, though, that despite Langenkamp’s Nancy being our lead, it’s Amanda Wyss who we start the film with, and whose dream we first enter. She’s much better than Langenkamp, but truth be told even a debuting Johnny Depp isn’t so significantly better than Langenkamp that you see that he was a star in the making. For that you’d need to watch “21 Jump Street” (Seriously love that show. It kicks arse). I’ve heard that TV actress Tracey Gold was one of several auditioning for the part (as was Demi Moore), and although not a great actress, I think Gold might’ve actually been rather well-suited to the role. She certainly couldn’t have been worse than Langenkamp. John Saxon is probably the best actor in the film and he’s fine, but he is hampered somewhat by his character having to be wrong at every turn. He does his best. Ronee Blakely, however is even worse than Langenkamp. Playing her drunk mother, I highly suspect she was indeed inebriated, and it’s not to her credit as an actress even if she really wasn’t. So acting isn’t the film’s strong suit. The other thing that shits me about the film and always has is the ending. Nothing about it works at all, and is clearly evident of studio demand hoping for a franchise. Well, they got one but given how spectacularly bad “Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” was, they were pretty bloody lucky the franchise progressed. Apparently the ending is a mixture of several endings, and although there is one part of it (involving Ronee Blakely) that I don’t mind, the whole thing together just doesn’t work, doesn’t make sense, and looks exactly like what it is: A combination of Craven’s intended ending, the studio’s preferred ending, and another compromised ending all in one. It’s bizarre.

Although I prefer the subsequent “Dream Warriors” this is such a unique 80s horror film, it really does stand out from the rest of the pack thematically, visually, and ultimately artistically. It isn’t the bare-bones terror of a “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or the brilliantly directed “Halloween”, in fact it’s kind of the opposite sort of horror film to that. It’s a horror film that, if not intelligent, is at least a film with ideas in its head and an imagination. It’s a rare horror film that is about something other than simply sex= death. It isn’t without flaw, but any horror fan owes it to themselves to see it. It’s iconic.

Rating: B