A Nightmare on Elm Street (R)
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Caution: spoilers.

This was written and directed by Wes Craven. It came out in 1984, when I was 9 years old, and so too young to watch such things. I'm fairly sure I watched it on TV sometime in the 90s (or less likely in the early 2000s), but when I watched it on DVD in October 2019, nothing about it was familiar. (It's possible I had watched a different Elm Street movie on TV, but it's hard for me to believe I would have chosen to watch them out of order, so it was probably this one.) I mean, the character Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was familiar to me, but he would have been familiar whether or not I'd ever seen any of the movies. You can't just not know who Freddy Krueger is. (Although in this first movie, he's mostly referred to as "Fred.") And the basic premise of the movie (or the franchise in general) was familiar. And some of the background score was familiar, but that's more because of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's 1988 song A Nightmare on My Street than because of the movie itself. Of course, the movie has long-since become a classic of the genre, and spawned a bunch of sequels. (The DVD I watched to write this review is part of a box set that includes eight Elm Street movies. I'll probably watch at least a few of them throughout the month, though the last movie in the set, "Freddy vs. Jason," is something I definitely don't want to watch until I've seen the "Friday the 13th" movies, another classic slasher franchise that I haven't seen any of yet.)

Note: I consider this a slasher film first, and a supernatural horror film second. I usually don't consider films with a supernatural element to be "true" slasher films, since I feel that the killers in slasher movies should be living human beings with no special powers. (Though I'm hardly a fan of the genre, let alone an expert, so my opinion on the matter is of no particular value to anyone but myself.) But I do allow for rare exceptions to this rule, and I'll therefore list the films in this franchise under both "slashers" and "supernatural horror."

First I guess I should say that the movie is set in 1981, a fact I only know because of Wikipedia. I don't recall any mentions of the year in the film itself, nor does it seem important, as far as I can tell. But I guess it'll be important in the sequels. I should also say that it's set in the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio. The movie begins with a girl named Tina Gray trying to get away from a man with a burnt face and a glove with finger-blades, who's pursuing her. She soon wakes up and realizes it was just a nightmare, but later finds out that her friend, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), had a similar nightmare. And it's probable that Tina's boyfriend, Rod Lane, and/or Nancy's boyfriend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp), may have also had such nightmares. The next night, Tina's mother goes out of town (and her father's been gone for years, I guess), so Nancy and Glen spend the night at Tina's house, and they're soon joined by Rod. After Tina and Rod have sex, they both fall asleep, and the man from the nightmare (who we later learn is named Fred Krueger) attacks Tina in the dream world. When Rod wakes up, he sees what's happening to Tina, but not who's doing it, and he's unable to save her from being killed. The police believe Rod killed Tina, so he goes on the lam, but is soon caught and goes to jail. Nancy insists that Rod is innocent, but the arresting officer, Lt. Don Thompson (John Saxon, whom I knew from Enter the Dragon), refuses to believe her. Even though he's Nancy's father. (He and her mother, Marge, are apparently divorced, and Nancy lives with her mother.)

Well, Nancy has more nightmares about Fred, and actually, throughout the movie there are indications that what happens in the dream world can affect the real world. (The first indication was when Tina woke up from her first nightmare, and her nightgown had been slashed where Fred had slashed it in the dream.) Eventually, Nancy brings Fred's fedora with her into the real world when she wakes up from one of her dreams. And Marge tells her the truth about Fred Krueger... I won't spoil the details of that, except to say that he's definitely dead, which is why no one believes he could be responsible for Tina's death. Nor any other deaths that happen in the movie, but I won't spoil anything about those, either. So, Nancy decides to take matters into her own hands, planning to drag Fred himself into the real world, where he could then, she hopes, be killed. And before going to sleep to enact this plan, she sets up several booby traps, which kind of reminded me of "Home Alone."

And... I guess I don't want to say any more about the plot (although the ending is rather ambiguous). But as for my impressions of the movie, I was a bit underwhelmed. In fact, while I suspect some horror fans would be appalled at my relatively low rating of the movie, I actually feel like I'm being just a bit generous. I do really like the concept that the movie establishes, and I suspect I'll find some of the sequels more entertaining than this one, but for the most part I just found the story a bit thin, and Freddy himself doesn't yet strike me as being worthy of the iconic status he later comes to have, within the genre. But I'm sure he will, when the character and the movie's concept of the dream world gets more fleshed out, in the sequels. I definitely did like Nancy, though, because of how clever, brave, and proactive she turns out to be in her efforts to stop Fred. (Also there's a line in the movie I thought was really funny, when at one point Nancy looks in the mirror after losing sleep and complains that she looks "twenty," as if that's old. But the funny part is that Langenkamp actually was about 20 when she starred in this movie. And of course, all the main characters, who were supposed to be around 15, were obviously in their early twenties.) Anyway, I guess that's all I have to say, for now.