Halloween is coming up soon and the Dietrich Theater will be hosting their first Spooky Fest in October where you get to see some horror classics on the big screen! So, I decided to start things a little early for Halloween and start with a well known Wes Craven classic that is going to be showing during Spooky Fest and will also be celebrating its 40th anniversary.
A Nightmare on Elm Street opened in 1984 and scared audiences everywhere, and introduced us to the now iconic Freddy Krueger. This slasher classic ultimately spawned numerous sequels (some good, some not), a cross over with ‘Friday the 13th’ (corny by fun) and a 2010 remake (less I say about the remake the better).
In Wes Craven’s classic slasher, several Midwestern teenagers fall prey to Freddy Krueger,a disfigured midnight mangler who preys on the teenagers in their dreams - which, in turn, kills them in reality.
After some investigating, Nancy begins to suspect that a dark secret kept by her and her friends parents may be the key to unraveling the mystery, but can Nancy and her boyfriend Glen solve the puzzle before it’s too late?
Out of all the ‘Elm Street’ movies out there, the 1984 classic ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ is still the best out of the entire franchise. The original ‘Elm Street’ still delivers plenty of scares and the premise is still very inventive.
I have seen this iconic Wes Craven classic many times over the years and there are still quite a few moments that still stand out and can give anyone a little scare. A lot of the “dream” sequences are still really tense, especially as the main character (Nancy) tries to get Krueger into the real world.
Another thing that is still awesome in this classic are the practical effects that we see throughout the movie. The visual effects help make the dream sequences really unsettling and surreal and the effects/makeup used for Kruger is still the best. The practical effects that were used for the infamous sequence where Glen (Nancy’s boyfriend) gets sucked into the bed by Krueger. If that scene was done today by CGI, it wouldn’t look the same at all in my opinion.
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ also delivers quite a few twists and turns throughout the classic film, which helps build some of the suspense in the story. Sure, the 1984 film does have a few flaws (like the rest of the series), the first ‘Elm Street’ is still the best of the franchise. And, Robert Englund is ALWAYS the best Freddy Krueger (compared to the actor who portrayed him in the 2010 remake).
The movie studio, New Line Cinema, was actually saved from bankruptcy by the success of this film, and was jokingly nicknamed “The House that Freddy Built.” Actress Heather Langenkamp beat over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy Thompson, among them Jennifer Grey, Demi Moore and Courtney Cox.
In 2021, the classic slasher was selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. The film was also pitched to several studios, but each of them rejected it for different reasons.
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ is rated R and has a running time of 91 minutes.
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