A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
She is the only one who can stop it... if she fails, no one survives.
There will never be a time I think when I don’t look into what movie to watch and realize I haven’t done one that seems obvious and I would have thought I already did. Combine that with the fact that it’s finally at long last October, potentially the best month of the year, and we already got an idea where this is going. When the leaves start dying, the excuses for the onslaught of horror movies rise from their graves and ya’ll get to either pump your fists in the air or collectively face palm depending on your tolerance of “scary movies.” Well, hopefully tonight’s flick aged self won’t give you too many bad dreams, tonight it’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Yes, I know, I can’t believe I haven’t done this either. I checked my list twice though, and it tells me that I haven’t. Not the remake, not the OG, not the twenty inbetween or the crossover one. When a group of kids stars dying off in weird ways, things get weird. Each of the kids are having some strange dreams - nightmares really - that all seem to involve the same weird guy clad in finger knives and burns. Our main character starts seeing the writing on the wall when she ends up coming out a dream with a burn she got in it and nothing around her bed to cause it, but nobody seems to believe her. In some cultures, dreams are a powerful thing, but most don’t leave a body count like this. She better find out what’s going on and fix it fast, or else her and the rest of her friends might end up in body bags.
Characters are what they are. There’s some depth in there as far as things that pertain to the plot or twists, and we get a bit more on the main villain as we go through it, but I wouldn’t exactly say that people are going crazy with depth and advancement. Mind you, that sounds like a horrible thing but I’m in the camp that not every story needs to have someone go through massive growth in order to be good - sometimes it’s more about the ride. Here, the character interactions are well enough done, and it’s one of those weird movies where it could be considered a slasher movie even with it’s somewhat small body count, but also doesn’t really have a lot of characters that you hate - which honestly became the MO of slasher movies as time progressed. The parents actually get a bunch of mileage as well, which is surprising considering how much they don’t really play into the plot as it’s happening.
Actors do a decent job, although there are some spots where it’s perhaps a bit aged and not as high-end as it could be. That said, there are a few folks in here that future generations would recognize - like a young Johnny Depp - and older generations would probably remember - like John Saxon. Of course, the real star of the show would go on to be our villain who many a horror fan would recognize and has been in a ton of stuff as well - Robert Englund. It’s a suitable job out of most folks that it feels fine - although it might not be dragging you in by your feels, it also normally doesn’t make you jump out of the movie with a “that was horrible” either. Our villain will go on to be far more comedic and punch-line in later installments in this original one, but he does retain some of the comedic vibes with potentially terrifying but goofy moments. Chemistry is pretty good for the most part - but again, I feel like with such a wide variation of things available through the years, some might not be writing home about the acting in comparison, or find it as a bit camp at times.
The nightmare club
The scares could be there, but likewise might not benefit from it’s age. Don’t get me wrong, I came into my horror movie phase way later then a lot of folks, and by the time i first watched this movie I think it was well past the ‘I find this scary” and more knee-deep in “that’s an interesting idea or effect” phase. That said, the core concept is pretty solid as far as scare possibilities, and who hasn’t heard a spooky story about how if you die in your sleep you die for real at some point in there life? Combine it with the extra parts that a dream-killer brings into play such as the seclusion of nobody believing you or questioning how you would even fight it in the first place and you do have a plethora of possibilities. That feeds into the gore department as well - although I’m going to be honest about it here - it’s less gore and more just violence, and less violence and more blood then anything else.
Said effects are pretty decent, but also somewhat aged. Stage blood has kind of been one of those things that’s continually gotten better with time - although in recent times we kind of restarted the process by swapping over to CG blood - so it’s not exactly the most convincing cuts going on here. You can get away with a lot of it on account of the dream side of things - although it’s still kind of weird that that much blood would happen in the real world when we don’t even know what really happened - although that’s part of the scare is the unknown, right? The burn prosthetics look pretty good, and most of the situations have some stuff that probably looked better at the time or with an open mind, whereas some of the stuff can be super simple but really effective like the push-wall effect. Costumes outside of our villain are rather generic - although in honesty outside of the finger blades I guess there isn’t anything too crazy unique about our burn victim monster - but that didn’t stop it from becoming an iconic look anyways.
Audio is good - it’s got a lot of chilling tunes and plays on nursery rhymes in here. Yes, it doesn’t really stick around with me that strongly even though it’s has some strong synth vibes in there at times, but that’s just me probably. Line deliveries are largely fine, although I feel you could make the argument that you won’t necessarily find too many that are absolutely stand out. That said, some are really fun, like the letter’s spacing comment used as a crude joke at one point. Overall humor levels will be hit or miss because the nature of people finding things funny, as i always say - but if nothing else that got me to have a good giggle. For the thoughtful type there might be a surprising amount of stuff here - but really that’s only because everyone seems to think that horror movies are dumb movies for psychopaths unless they are fans for horror movies. We’ve got everything in here you might expect about trauma to some extent, but also some things about street justice, trusting one another, and a spin on “the sins of our fathers” kind of stuff as well. Mix in that loving “maybe nice small towns ain’t as nice as they seem” angle and you could do a lot with the movie - at least, if you weren’t me who usually doesn’t hit the big brain stuff.
The man of your dreams
I’d say it’s still a good movie, and you can still appreciate why it’s a classic. That said, I would also say that it’s showing it’s age in a couple of different areas, so I can see why some might not have that level of appreciation for whats on display because their frame of reference isn’t the same. That said, I do still feel that largely the story-side feels better then the remake version of it, although at times perhaps some of the acting in the remake was a bit more dramatic. I think the biggest problem for the newer one was just not having Englund in the role and tweaking that character a little bit, and after so long for many viewers he’s as much Freddy Kreuger as Kreuger is him (but that’s a different movie’s plot). It’s a decent time, I feel like it’s not as scary as it once was - but that probably depends as much on the watcher as humor does - so folks mileage at having a fun “spooky” time might vary. All in all, it won’t be haunting my dreams, but I still have a good enough time all these years later, even if it is older than me.