A Nightmare on Elm Street part 1: Don't Fall Asleep!

This series is the one which inspired my shift in focus at this blog. I've written a bit about the Nightmare series over at Superhero Babylon. But, since in most people's view (not mine obviously) slasher movies have very little to do with heroism or Objectivism I've kept it brief for the most part. This means for instance when I reviewed the Nightmare remake I basically glossed over discussing Freddy. Let that sink in for a moment, I glossed over discussing FREDDY KREUGER, in a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET review.

(The only time this is ever acceptable is if you're talking about part four BTW.)

That being said I do have a lot to say about the whole series. Even more so now that I've recently seen the documentary Never Sleep Again: the Elm Street Legacy. But when you talk about something as big and influential as the Elm Street series there's no where really to start but the beginning.

Wes Craven had a few films under his belt when an article about young Cambodian refugees who were suffering intense nightmares began refusing to sleep at all costs in order to avoid them, with many of them dying in their sleep soon after caught his eye from the LA Times. This germinated in Craven's head alongside an odd experience where he was teased by an old drunk one evening as a young boy.

The end result of this was the story of a man out for revenge, with nearly infinite means to do so, and nearly infinite sadism to exploit this. The plot is pretty simple, a group of high school students find out they're all having variations of the same nightmare and one by one they begin to die in their sleep.

The supporting characters in this one are fairly weak and one dimensional, though each of them do have their moments. Tina is the first girl we see encounter the threat in her nightmares and coincidentally the first to die. I'm hard pressed to find a personality trait for her other than scared shitless, but through the early part of the film she's the filter through which we're introduced to every element of the story.

This includes her boyfriend Rod. He's a typical macho jerk (though I still find him pretty likeable). I'm hard pressed to find a personality trait for him other than horny, but toward the end of his story he does show some depth. Since he was the only person in the room when Tina died, he's considered the prime suspect. His time in prison is emotionally devastating and he winds up being the person who offers the bit of information that makes things click for the whole story. As an interesting aside, the actor Jsu Garcia (who's recently been cast in the Atlas Shrugged movie as Francisco D'Anconnia), said that the main reason he cried in the prison scene was because he was "under the influence" while filming.

Rounding out the supporting teenagers is Glen, who was the first role played by a young Johnny Depp. He's romantically involved, but doesn't have sex. So he's the last person killed in the film (he was watching Ms. Nude Universe after all). Seriously, stuff like this was studio/MPAA mandated back then, but I'll have more to say about this series and those tropes in later entries. But he remains the holdout skeptic of the group. It's clear he's having the nightmares as well, but he's much more dismissive of them. His only real foray into dealing with the nightmare problem is that he tells the heroine the one piece of information that saves her life.

In the minor antagonistic roles we have the adults of Elm Street. For the most part they're all screw ups carrying around the weight of the world, and not handling it very well. You have the divorced Thompsons: a hard, career focused cop for a father and an alcoholic train wreck of a mother. Their primary motivation is in ignoring that there is a problem, or at least the particular problem their children describe. Throughout the movie (and in fact the entire series itself) they only continually offer one solution to any children looking for support, "Just get some sleep, you'll feel better."

Who they're offering this particular advice to is the film's heroine Nancy. There are a lot of things that make her special but there's one thing in particular that sticks out. As I said earlier, the beginning of the film is all about Tina, completely focused on her and how she deals with these problems. The only problem is that about twenty minutes or so into the movie she's brutally murdered. A few scenes later before anyone else has died you see Nancy have her first encounter with Freddy. She falls asleep in class due to stress, exhaustion and boredom. In the early part of her dream she has her first encounter with something that will become very common to the series, she sees a vision of Tina begging for help.

This vision leads her through the dream world to her enemy's center of power. He spends a few moments psychologically torturing her, but right as he goes for the kill she intentionally burns herself on a hot pipe, jolting her awake and leaving her with a real burn. The reason this is so shocking is that, based on the pace of the film, if you don't know anything about this series, you expect her to die in her encounter. When she doesn't you begin to look at her in a new light.

She's the most active character trying to discover the secrets behind the man in her dreams. She continually offers more and more evidence to all the other characters as the film goes on to no avail. Eventually she simply discovers a potential weakness in her enemy and makes plans to exploit it, using a series of brutal booby traps. All the while, solemnly putting on her pajamas every night before bed like they're a suit of battle armor.

And who is this mysterious man who haunts the nightmares of the Elm Street teens? The man who a piece of evidence recovered from the dream world by Nancy referred to as "Fred Kreuger" and who identified himself as "Freddy." We're told that he's a local child serial killer who was lynched and burned alive by the parents of Elm street, and the story of who he was inspired inspired a jump rope song.

One, two Freddy's coming for you
Three, Four better lock your door
Five, Six Grab your crucifix
Seven, Eight Better stay up late
Nine, Ten Never Sleep again

To be honest at this point in the series we're told very little about him. I credit Robert England with most of the development of this character. He spent a lot of time in this man's head, to the point that he could say with a fair amount of certainty what his motivation would be in every situation... but that was later in the series, in part one he was mostly throwing things against a wall to see what would stick. He doesn't seem to settle on the signature "Freddy voice" until late in the movie. This character isn't a "silent stalker" type like Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers. He has a voice and to some degree uses it, making sick jokes while he pursues his victims. This becomes very effective and menacing in later films, but at this point it's clearly still in the experimental phase.

One thing though is the rules are set. Freddy comes to you in your dreams, and if he kills you there, you die for real.

On the whole this is the single entry in the series that is most universally loved, but not necessarily every fan's favorite. What I mean by this, is that I don't think I've ever heard a Nightmare fan say that they didn't love the original, but most of them would name another entry in the series as their favorite.

It is the most purely horrific of the series, though in all honesty that doesn't carry as much weight with me as it would with others. It really plays on the idea of not being able to trust your perceptions, often something as little as a blink or a nod from a single character means that something terrible is about to happen.

But at the same time this movie was the first that really showed that a slasher movie with a final girl could be more than just "survival of the blandest." Nancy is a fully developed character with wit, intelligence, depth and ingenuity. I have to admit that the booby traps gimmick just doesn't quite do it for me the same way that the final confrontations from other films do, but you have to admire a girl who, when faced with a situation like this relies on her rational mind at its best.

Up next: Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge