Happy Birthday Wes Craven

August 2nd would have been horror icon Wes Craven’s 79th birthday. Along with other visionaries like John Carpenter, George Romero and Tobe Hooper, Craven’s movies serve as a large part of the foundation of modern horror. In his honor, I watched 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The Movie

A Nightmare on Elm Street Introduced the world to a fresh faced Johnny Depp. Nightmare is his first acting credit and his role is fairly straightforward performance as an average teen boy named Glen. His girlfriend, Nancy Thompson, is the true hero. Nightmare On Elm Street opens with their friend Tina having a horribly realistic dream in which she is being chased by a man in a red and green sweater, hat and burned face. She wakes to find her nightgown torn in the exact spot where the man slash her with his knife fingers. While walking to school, Tina relates her dream to Nancy and Glen. Nancy seems to be having similar dreams. Their discussion is interrupted by Tina’s Classy, tough guy boyfriend Rod. Rod joins the conversation, telling Tina of his dream “ “I had a hard-on this morning when I woke up, Tina. Had your name written all over it.” Despite this romantic description, Tina is not impressed and tells Rod (haha ROD) that her name is only four letters long and therefore too long for Rod’s rod. Aside from Rod, all of the kids seem to be dreaming of the same creepy man. The situation worsens that night during a coed sleepover. Glen and Nancy are apparently waiting for marriage but Tina and Rod are definitely not. After a surprisingly satisfying romp(remember Rod’s rod is not even big enough to fit four letters on it), Rod confides that even he has nightmares and rolls over and falls asleep. Tina falls asleep too and is soon confronted by the man from her nightmares again. Tina is not able to escape this time and is brutally murdered. Rod quickly becomes the prime suspect and the police, led by Nancy’s father pursue him instead of reaching the logical conclusion that a creepy man in her nightmare killed Tina. Rod is not much of a fugitive and is arrested.

Nancy does not believe that Rod is the killer. She believes that she is now having regular encounters with the killer including in her English class during an impassioned reading of Shakespeare. She wakes screaming in the middle of class with a fresh burn on her arm which is also how I used to react to Shakespeare readings too. Nancy is sent home from school. Later that night while trying to relax in the bathtub, Nancy dozes off and a knife gloved hand emerges from the bath water and attempts to kill Nancy. Nancy concocts a plan to capture the man from her nightmares, who to this point has only once been given a name. She will go to sleep with Glen standing guard waiting to wake her when she has caught the man. The plan results in near fatal consequences as Glen can’t be counted on and falls asleep. Nancy is ab;e to determine that Rod is in danger and rushes to the police station to try to save him but in the time it takes her to convince them to let her see Rod, he is killed in his cell. Sleep studies fail to help Nancy’s nightmares and she is now hardly ever sleeping. FInally out of desperation, Nancy’s mother tells Nancy some truth and we learn the name of the man from the nightmares. Nancy’s mom explains that Fred Krueger was a local man who was a “filthy child murderer.” Krueger was caught and put on trial but walked on a technicality. Nancy’s mom and other local parents took justice into their own hands and burned Krueger to death. So problem solved, they all live happily ever after except not so much. To go to much further would be to spoil the end but Johnny Depp’s greatest cinematic moment is still to come.



How It Fits I With the Day/ Why Did I Choose This Movie

A Nightmare On Elm Street was one of my first experiences with horror and a lasting one. At the time, it was one of the scariest movies I imagine existing. Few things scared a younger me more than my dreams having direct consequences on my survival. Craven created a monster that i could transfer into real life not like zombies, psycho killers and other supernatural types. Those were never quite real but a dream monster resonated.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is absent of many of the hallmarks of the series. It takes over 50 minutes to even hear the name Fred Krueger and only once does he refer to himself as Freddy. With very few exceptions, the wisecracks that are unavoidable in future installments are nonexistent. Craven had been making amazing horror movies for more than a decade but A Nightmare on Elm Street was the movie that brought him widespread notoriety.


Lessons

If you're going to be a big star don’t start out by wearing a white polo and sweater vest. It’s really a horrible look even for the 80s and really highlights scrawny arms.

Believe your kids when they tell you that a deranged man is killing their friends while they sleep. Just because it sounds odd does not mean it’s not true.

100s of people a year get killed in tubs- falling asleep and or getting out. Nancy’s mother believes this and so do I and you should too. Tubs are dangerous even when Freddy isn’t trying to feel you up.

Nobody knows what dreams are or where they come from. This lesson is from the doctor conducting Nancy’s sleep study. He’s a doctor and he doesn’t know. I don’t know. I bet you don’t either therefore nobody knows anything about dreams.