A Nigthmare on Elm Street (1984)

Like my recent first viewing of the original John Carpenter Halloween movie from 1978, my introductory viewing of 1984's  A Nightmare on Elm Street was precipitated by a theatrical showing at a local cinema. Bot the Halloween and Elm Street franchises are ones I have long been interested in at least perusing, but they start out at very different levels of quality, with Halloween easily the superior product. Not that the original Elm Street isn't watchable, or intriguing, in fact the conceit of the killer Freddy Kruger stalking children in their dreams would have been almost strikingly original.

Things I liked about the film include that the leading cast of" teenagers" seem so young, slightly older in fact then they appear to be on screen but still convincing as actual teenagers. Especially  Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, whose not a tremendous actress but perfectly suited to this part, in fact if she had been a better actress it would not have worked as well, a certain nativity, uncertainty, and "rolling with the punches" quality was really needed here to pull this thing off. John Saxon plays Nancy's father and an investigating police officer, much as he did in the earlier horror picture Black Christmas in 1974. I liked that it appears that Saxon and Nancy's mom are separated and/or divorcing but the movie never really goes into that in much detail, such home life situations were increasingly matter of  fact for children in the 1980's. Robert Englund's role as Krueger would become iconic as well as carrier defining, and Johnny Depp, here with an "introducing" credit playing Nancy's boyfriend Glen Lantz, well it's probably the most "normal" character he ever played.

There is a scene early in the film where the character Tina is being attacked by Krueger in a dream and he's knocking her body through the air in 'real life' and its the most legitimately scary image in the film, though inspired no doubt by similar moments in the Exorcist movies. From a promising start the film gets increasingly more hokey and at times really ridicules. Much of it just don't make a lot of sense, and that's not even counting the films central conceit, if before his death Krueger has killed '20 kids' in the neighborhood  you'd think Nancy would be on some level aware of this, especially if a group of parents got together and killed him you'd be very hard pressed for some rumors not to get out. I also have to "harrumph" the films supper non committal ending, which smeared with ambiguity everything that came before. This movie is camp, but it struck a cord and cemented itself solidly in the 80's zeitgeist, though I'm sure its all down hill from here in terms of quality, this first movie at least had some originality going for it, and again is watchable at an efficient 91 minutes running time. So I'll be a little generous sand give it ***