The horror classic of Elm Street released in 1984 and directed and written by Wes Craven. Produced by Robert Shaye, it also gave an early film debut to a certain Johnny Depp. The main stars were Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, and of course Robert Englund. This movie started a sequence of movies which I lost count of it went up to seven then there was spinoffs then there was like a reality version and a crossover movie with Friday the 13th. Created on a budget of $1.8m dollars from the opening scene with a sheep walking down a corridor of a school this film took you on a journey. It went on to return $57m at the box office making this a phenomenal success which gives good reason for the number of sequels that followed. Even IMDb who give horrors low scores gave this one a 7.5 out of 10 whilst Rotten Tomatoes gave it a whopping 94%. Loved by many a horror fan the iconic horror fictional character Robert Englund brought to life went on to terrify many peoples nightmares. For those that need the plot here it is.
Tina Gray is having nightmares where a disfigured man wearing a dirty green and red sweater and a right hand in a glove with four sharp long blades protruding from the end of the fingers. Surviving by the skin of her teeth, She wakes to see her mum point out that she has four mysterious slashes in her nightgown. One of Tina’s best friends Nancy Thompson And her boyfriend Glenn Lantz Hear her descriptions of the dreams. The two stay at Tina’s house when Tina's mother is away. When Tina falls sleep she dreams of being chased by this man again Rod her boyfriend is awakened by her thrashing about the bed. He witness's her death as she is slashed, resulting in a bloody mess of the room. Rod Is blamed for the murder and is arrested, by Nancy’s father the chief of police. Nancy is now having similar dreams and struggling to tell her friends as they are also having the same dreams. This murderer called Freddy is appearing in all of their dreams but when he kills you in the dream you stay dead you don't wake up. The obvious form of attack is to not sleep but unfortunately this is a necessity and the kids have to find another way to do battle with him. Will they resolve this battle and stay alive?
I'm not ashamed to admit that's like so many other people Freddy was terrifying. His character was play to perfection by Robert, he was strong scary without an obvious weak point to attack. He haunted my dreams and that just makes things worse because that's where Freddy would attack you from. This was a perfect setup and a perfect horror story and it was played to perfection. Let's be honest here, there were some dodgy sequels and I think it reached a point where they were just looking at different ways of killing people as opposed to making a good story or developing the story. The difference being they were looking at inventive ways of removing characters as opposed to just going for gore for gore sake. I am trying to think of an example and the first one that comes to mind is when Freddy turns someone into a cockroach sized person who gets trapped in a cockroach trap. They were looking for more inventive ways to kill off people. To the point where it got a bit silly and although having many good points the crossover with Jason had sequences that were just awful. For example the pinball Freddy sequence was terrible. For this movie this was the start of something huge and something truly terrifying in this character, that just kept coming back time after time, death after death, he would just be back ready for the next movie. This movie started that whole process and although they got progressively worse the sequel was not good but the third really peaked before the steady decline end inventive ways of killing people. If you want to watch a horror movie and you haven't seen this what's wrong with you go watch this movie you will not be disappointed if you want to be scared.
Next up is a sci-fi classic that for me took a few watch’s to actually work out what the hell was going on..
Comments