A Nightmare on Elm Street – USA, 1984. Dir. Wes Craven. Starring Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund.
You know what’s really fun? A cross-country red eye flight after a nice long week at work. Especially when you can’t sleep. Because maybe you watched Final Destination a week before your trip. Maybe. Just maybe.
This is what the gin and tonic is for. This is also the disclaimer and excuse for any nonsense that occurs in the rest of this post.
It does seem somewhat appropriate though that I choose now to write about A Nightmare on Elm Street. With the not sleeping and all that. You know what I mean. I’m not delirious at all right now, I swear.
I mentioned Nightmare the other day when I posted about Poltergeist. It belongs in that same group of films, the scary movies I heard about as a tiny child in the eighties, the ones I would go on to be scared of well into college. Poltergeist. The Exorcist. Alien. A Nightmare on Elm Street. They are the four.
They are the ones that the mere idea of scared me silly. Well, those four and the one scene from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Do you know which scene I’m talking about? That sh*t gave me nightmares.
However, like Poltergeist, I find A Nightmare on Elm Street to be much less frightening now as an adult versus then when I was still a kid. And I wonder why that is. Why does a film like Alien hold up where Elm Street does not? I’m not sure exactly but I’m trying to figure it out.
Watching Nightmare now, I find it to be really kind of silly. The effects sure, but also the production, the acting, the writing. There’s a lack of subtlety – the girl running in the almost see through white nightgown, the classic shot of Freddy’s hand reaching up between Nancy’s knees in the bathtub… the terrible acting… oh wait, I said that. Eh, the acting is pretty bad. Bears repeating. Sorry Johnny Depp.
And yet… like Poltergeist, I still love this movie. It’s partly a nostalgia thing sure. It’s also more than that. While so many parts of this movie are so very bad, there are couple of key bits that are amazingly good.
The effects are terrible at times, sure. The scene where Freddy is stalking down the alley and his arms stretch out after his victim is laughable. A lot of the blood spilling, knife cutting, mom being sucked into a bed, whatever, is absurd. But there are three moments that for me make up for all of that.
1) The early scene when Tina is flung around the bedroom and eventually dragged across the ceiling by an unseen assailant (Freddy). I mean, seriously. That is terrifying. She is not only flying around the room, something is tearing her to pieces as it happens. Someone we can’t see.
2) The scene when Nancy falls asleep and starts dreaming in school. I will never forget the image of Tina’s body being dragged down the hall by its feet or Nancy’s screams as she burns herself in order to wake up.
And…
3) When Johnny Depp is finally sucked down into his bed only to be spewed back out in a fountain of blood. Yes, it looks amazing, if a little obvious, when the blood hits the ceiling. The most effective part however is when the blood soaks through the floor and starts dripping through the ceiling in the living room below. That is a tremendous amount of blood.
At this point in the movie we begin to lose track of when Nancy is awake or if it’s still all a dream. After a point it just all gets so nightmarish and surreal, the lines between waking and sleep are completely blurred.
I think that’s what makes this movie so good. After a while we no longer have a firm grasp on where we are. We’re trapped in the nightmare.
What Wes Craven succeeds in doing amidst the cheesiness, is bring to life a truly terrifying concept. We’ve all had bad dreams. Despite whatever our logic tells us, we are afraid of the monsters in our sleep. How much more terrifying is it to think that one day we may have a bad dream that we may never wake up from?
So maybe it’s not that the film doesn’t hold up exactly. In terms of craft it may be pretty silly but in terms of ideas… Freddy is a monster in our sleep, in our dreams, in our heads. He’s a monster in the one place we can never escape from. If that’s not a good idea for a horror movie, I don’t know what is.
October 7, 2011 at 4:22 pm
I saw the remake of this recently and like most of the other remakes I thought – what is the point. It wasn’t, I have to admit, as bad as the truly appalling The Omen remake though.
I like this film though – Freddy is such a great villain. I’m quite fond of the second sequel too – I think it’s called Dream Warriors or something.
October 10, 2011 at 11:31 am
I can’t really say much about the Nightmare remake but yeah, in general I’m not a big fan of any of these remakes. I feel like remaking a movie should be about bringing something new. As far as I can tell, most of these fail to do that. Instead they’re just a rehash of things we’ve seen that were done better the first time around.
October 7, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Oh, I know which scene you’re talking about, all right. A true classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RryZV8NK9-Q
I named our Boston Terrier “Margie” after Large Marge on the way home from the shelter. Big rig passes us, lady driver, it hit me that second. Boston’s with those big ole eyeballs, dead ringer.lol
I would posit that Alien holds up because it’s set in such a strange, foreign world (the planet, the ship), that any human has yet to see, and until that happens, it will remain timeless.
The scene that didn’t scare me the most when I first watched it, in a theater, was the arms stretching out in the alley scene. It haunted me. I could. Not. Forget. That image. I actually had nightmares where I was the one he was chasing. When he starts running and cackling as he closes in, it still creeps me out. The lack of computer effects in that scene, to me, makes the effect all the more compelling. If the effects in your horror movie are sanitized, perfected, you’ve lost me. That said, I hope — and darnit, you better — have the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Shining on the docket! Wanna talk about lots of blood, how about a lake of it flooding a giant hotel lobby, in the latter.
The Tina in school sequence scared me the most at the time. Not jump scared, because the suspense was so drawn out; plus the iconic imagery of Tina in a body bag — in the middle of a school day. It was all I could do to simply keep one very protected eye barely open. What I was seeing made me feel evil by proxy, if that makes any sense.
If you were looking for any suggestions, may I offer “Re-Animator”, a positively batty B movie that had no shame, no boundaries, and just a ton of humor. It’s got quite a cult following, if for nothing else, because until it came out, there really hadn’t been a gore movie as daring. It almost singlehandedly created the “gore” genre of magazines, starting with “Fangoria”, that created a legion of future Rick Baker’s, all of them determined to outdo each other in the macabre. All of them, tipped their hat to Re-Animator. It’s a stoner’s horror movie. If you were gonna cover as many different horror sub-genre’s as you could, this landmark film is a must. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWmEReju2w0
Also, was wondering if you thought The Silence of The Lambs can be billed as a horror movie. Suspense, for sure, but that last act is pretty gory, not to mention just plain scary. The movie-going world had never seen a cannibal villain before, and it offended quite a few. It was the only movie at the time besides It Happened One Night to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. (American Beauty is the only one since.) The Sixth Sense also did very well at the Oscars, and it was a smash hit at the box office, so does that diminish its credentials as a horror movie?
I saw Phantasm once, at a theater, and I couldn’t make it through. Creeped me out, felt like I was literally in a nightmare, had to leave. One of the all time creepiest movies I can remember, but again, I didn’t make it all the way through and I haven’t thought to rent it since. Maybe you can?
And yes, what made this film so popular, and so effective, was that it brought the Boogey Man inside your mind, and since it’s impossible not to sleep, not to dream, you were more or less mincemeat.lol Indeed, a brilliant premise. No wonder they kept revisiting it for a slew of sequels, and though they all thoroughly sucked, they all made good money for that very reason. “Dreamscape” played with the idea a little bit, had its own spin, and there are a few scary jumps in that one, wonder if you’ve ever seen it. I remember watching it every chance it came on the tube, and unable to turn the channel. The villain, that dude from “The Warriors”, would be scary to watch if he were doing nothing more than having breakfast and reading the morning paper. Wow.
Down the road I wonder if you’d do a scenes thing, Best Comedic scenes, Tear-jerker scenes, Ending scenes, Creepiest scenes, etc. For instance with the latter, if this one from Repo Man isn’t creepy, I don’t know Creepy. Estevez is tasked to repo a Chevy Malibu, and crosses paths with one J Frank Parnell: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VKzqAefBVY
Enjoy, and keep ‘em coming!
October 10, 2011 at 11:38 am
Haha, that’s the scene all right! And that’s such a great name for a dog. Well done sir.
I definitely plan on getting to The Shining AND the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre this month. I adore the Re-Animator and it is on my list but I don’t own it so I’m not sure if I’ll have time or not. It’s such a great movie though. I don’t think I’ll include Silence of the Lambs but it is really a great movie. It’s just not quite as into the horror genre as I’m trying to stay. I think it certainly has elements, and you’re completely right about the ending, but for the most part it is definitely more “Thriller” than “Horror.” I don’t think I’ll do the Sixth Sense either but not because it isn’t horror, just because I don’t think I have anything more to say about it that hasn’t been said.
Phantasm though. Phantasm is happening for sure.
That’s a fun idea to focus on just scenes! Not this month but like you said, down the road. If I was doing scariest scenes, Silence of the Lambs would definitely be there. Possibly more than once.