A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984)

 


There must be nobody on this planet who has not heard of this movie. Freddy Krueger is one of the most celebrated horror baddies and he is the symbol of fear for many people. This movie was directed by Wes Craven and this was when he was at his best. There were so many sequels that I can't remember them all, but the original is the best.
A young girl, Tina(Amanda Wyss) is having nightmares about a man with razors attached to his hand. He is chasing her through a dark boiler room. He is just about to catch her when she wakes up screaming. She is relieved that it is a dream only to see four razor cuts in her nightdress. She finds out that her friend, Nancy(Heather Langenkamp) has had the same dream. Nancy and her boyfriend Glen(A very young Johnny Depp) sleep over at her house to make her feel better, but then Tina's boyfriend, Rod(Nick Corri) crashes the party and sleeps with Tina in her mother's bed. They fall asleep and Tina has the dream again, except that the killer catches her this time and Rod wakens to see her being cut open by invisible knives. As he was with her at the time, the police arrest him for her murder.
Nancy is having the nightmares too and she goes to see Rod in prison to ask him about what happened that night. He tells her about the invisible knives and she thinks that it is the guy in her dreams that killed Tina. Nancy and Glen go to the police station to see Rob again but he is dead, supposedly having committed suicide. Nancy's mother, Marge(Ronee Blakley) takes Nancy to a dream clinic so that she can sort out her sleep problem. She nods off and this time she gets cut in her sleep and she brings back a hat with her from her dream. Marge is horrified and it becomes clear that she is hiding something. She tells Nancy that the hat belongs to a killer called Freddy Krueger(Robert Englund) who murdered lots of kids years earlier. It comes out that furious parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality. He is coming to the children of those parents in their dreams so that he can get bloody revenge on them. Nancy's mother produces his glove to prove that he can't hurt anyone.Nancy and Glen try and come up with a plan to get Freddy but Glen nods off and he is killed by Freddy. Nancy is terrified when Freddy comes into the real world and after her. She had set booby traps earlier to catch him and she sets him alight and leaves him in the basement as she gets her dad who is a cop to come and get him. But he has escaped and they find him smothering Marge with his burning body. This makes Nancy send her dad away and she tries to face him down on her own, sapping him of his horrible powers. The next scene is morning time and it is revealed that it was all just a dream. That's great, isn't it? Everyone is still alive and well. That is, until Nancy realises that she is still in a dream and that Freddy is in her car, taking her somewhere...She screams for her mother who is at the front door only to see her pulled back through the door by a clawed hand.....

This a cult classic and I think that it is one of those movies nearly everyone has seen. It is great fun and I like it a lot. I heard that there might be a remake, but as usual, that means nothing to the original which I am going to watch yet again. I give this movie a 9/10.