A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American supernatural slasher film written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Robert Shaye. It is the first installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and stars Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, and Johnny Depp in his film debut. The film's plot concerns a group of teenagers who are targeted by Krueger, an undead child killer who can murder people through their dreams, as retribution against their parents who burned him alive.

Craven filmed A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of $1.8 million. The film was released on November 9, 1984, in limited theaters until its nationwide theatrical release on November 16, 1984, and grossed $57.1 million worldwide. The film received critical acclaim upon its release, and has since been considered to be one of the greatest horror films ever made. The film spawned a franchise consisting of six sequels, a television series, a crossover with Friday the 13th, various other merchandise, and a remake of the same name. Along with Stunts, Polyester, and Alone in the Dark, it was one of the first films produced by New Line Cinema, who by that point mostly distributed films, leading the company to become a successful mini-major film studio and earning it the nickname "The House that Freddy Built".

The film is credited with carrying on many tropes found in low-budget horror films of the 1970s and 1980s, originating in John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween, including the morality play that revolves around sexual promiscuity in teenagers resulting in their eventual death, leading to the term "slasher film". Critics and film historians state that the film's premise is the struggle to define the distinction between dreams and reality, manifested by the lives and dreams of the teens in the film. Later critics praise the film's ability to transgress "the boundaries between the imaginary and real", toying with audience perceptions. The film was followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985).

In 2021, A Nightmare on Elm Street was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Storyline

Teenager Tina Gray awakens from a terrifying nightmare in which a disfigured man wearing a bladed glove attacks her in a boiler room. Her mother points out the mysterious slashes on her nightgown. Tina's best friend Nancy Thompson and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen Lantz, reveal that they too had nightmares about the same disfigured man. During a sleepover at Tina's house, Tina's boyfriend, Rod Lane, arrives, and they have intercourse. When Tina falls asleep, she dreams of the disfigured man who attacks her; in real life, Rod sees her fatally slashed by an unseen force, forcing him to flee. Nancy and Glen find Tina bloodied and dead.

Nancy's policeman father, Don Thompson, arrests Rod despite his pleas of innocence. At school, Nancy falls asleep in class and dreams that the man chases her to the boiler room. She deliberately burns her arm on a pipe, which startles her awake in class, and notices a burn mark on her arm. Nancy visits Rod at the police station, where he describes Tina's death along with his own recent nightmares about the same man.

At home, Nancy falls asleep in the bathtub and is nearly drowned by the man. She then relies on caffeine to stay awake and invites Glen to watch over her as she sleeps. In her dream, she sees the man preparing to kill Rod in his cell, but he turns his attention toward her. Nancy wakes up when her alarm clock goes off. The man kills Rod, staging it as a suicide. At his funeral, Nancy's parents become worried when she describes her dreams. Her mother, Marge, takes her to a sleep disorder clinic where, in a dream, Nancy grabs the man's fedora with the name "Fred Krueger" written in it and pulls it into the real world.

After barricading the house, Marge explains that Krueger was an insane child murderer who killed 20 children but was released on a technicality. He was then burned alive by the victims' parents, who sought vigilante justice. Now a vengeful ghost, Krueger is killing Nancy and her friends out of revenge and to satiate his psychopathic needs.

Glen falls asleep and is killed by Krueger. Now alone, Nancy asks her father, who is across the street investigating Glen's death, to break into the house in 20 minutes. She rigs booby traps around the house and grabs Krueger out of her dream and into the real world. The booby traps allow her to light him on fire and lock him in the basement.

The police arrive to find that Krueger has escaped from the basement. Nancy and Don find a burning Krueger smothering Marge in her bedroom. After Don extinguishes the fire, Krueger and Marge vanish into the bed before Krueger rises behind Nancy. Realizing that Krueger is fueled by his victims' fear, she calmly turns her back to him, and Krueger evaporates.

Nancy steps outside into a foggy morning where all her friends and her mother are still alive. She gets into Glen's convertible to go to school when the top suddenly comes down (colored in green and red stripes) and locks them in as the car speeds down the street, while Marge waves them goodbye on the doorstep. Three girls in white dresses playing jump rope chant Krueger's nursery rhyme as Marge is grabbed by Krueger through the front door window.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Contents

Storyline

Also See

Movie Trailer

Sound Effects Used

Original Mix

Remastered Mix

Image Gallery

Audio Samples

External Links