Originally published: October 30, 2006 @ 12:51am PST

 

This… is God.

- Freddy Kreuger

Two more days before Halloween and here we have the first of our big genre titles to cover. In the late 70s to the early 80s, three movie series started that have lasted to this day, and this is one of them. As far as the big three, Nightmare came rather late into the game, but it’s held up against its predecessors rather well. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

We open with the credits showing a figure working in a boiler room area, creating the iconic Freddy glove (what’s interesting about this scene is that they show Freddy cutting the fingertips off of the glove he used and even a close-up of the glove in this scene, yet in later sequels, the fingers are all intact). Then, we move to the first of our teenage cast, Tina, wandering through a boiler room and being stalked by a shadowy figure who whispers her name. Finally, the figure appears behind her and she screams and runs away, turning corners until she dead ends near a flaming boiler. She turns and screams as the figure’s shadow stretches across the wall, then disappears. As she slowly approaches the passageway, the figure appears behind her and says her name as he wraps his arms around her and she wakes up to find the front of her nightgown has four slashes in it.

The next morning, we meet her boyfriend, Rod, and best friends Nancy and Glen. The friends are talking about her nightmare and her boyfriend’s less than supportive of her, so she tells him to drop dead. As they head to class, Glen lets slip that he’s been having weird dreams, also. Later, at Tina’s house, Nancy and Glen are there to keep her company as she describes her dream some more, mentioning his fingernails. This mention jogs Nancy’s memory, who also saw fingernails in her dream, "though they were more like finger knives." Just as Glen is about to mention something about his dream they hear a scratching noise similar to the noise from their dreams, and Tina leads the way outside. Glen moves on ahead into her yard to check out the sound, then as he turns back around, he gets tackled from behind by Rod, who’s shown up to make up with Tina. The four head back inside and to respective sleeping spaces… Tina and Rod go to Tina’s mother’s room, Nancy takes Tina’s bed and Glen sleeps on the couch (and gets a nice earful of the couple’s "make-up" session). Afterwards, as Tina’s drifting off, she hears the sound of pebbles hitting the window, one hard enough to break the glass.

 

She heads outside and through the back gate, getting startled by a rolling trash can lid before she hears her name and turns and sees a shadow approaching… a shadow with arms that seem to stretch across the whole alleyway, scratching his claws against the metal fence. Tina breaks into a run, trying to get away from the menacing figure as he starts running after her, until she runs straight into him. She turns and runs back to her yard, but as she passes a tree to get to her door, he steps out from behind a tree and calls her again. She turns to see him cutting off his ring and pinky fingers on his left hand, right before he rushes her and takes her to the ground. She puts her hand up to his face, trying to push him away, but only succeeds in pulling his face off, revealing a laughing skull beneath it. Next, we appear in the bedroom again, where Rod wakes up to find Tina struggling under the sheets with an invisible Freddy. As he pulls the sheets off of her, she gets lifted into the air, her top getting ripped open and her chest slashed. Then, she gets lifted higher and dragged over the bed, where she drops, already dead. By the time Nancy and Glen make it into the room, Rod’s disappeared out the bedroom window…

I remember seeing this movie when it first came out on video when I was 7 or 8. I enjoyed it and had to laugh a little because we also watched it with my older cousin, who obviously didn’t like the movie as much (she sat with a pillow in her arms while watching it and every time a death scene would come up, she’d lift the pillow in front of her eyes so she couldn’t see it). As time went on, I saw each of the sequels, watched as Freddy metamorphosed from the angry stalker he starts out as to the macabre joker he becomes midway through the series and have loved every movie with him in it.

Okay, acting! Heather Langenkamp portrays Nancy Thompson (from THIS scene). She does well in her role and went on to reprise the role in Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (maybe you remember this scene?), and play herself in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, as well as a victim in Craven’s Shocker (which I reviewed), and Nancy Kerrigan in a Tonya & Nancy: The Inside Story. Amanda Wyss played Tina, and went on to play in the vampire movie To Die For, and it’s sequel Son of Darkness: To Die For II. Jsu Garcia played Rod under the name Nick Corri. He went on to play in the third Candyman movie, Day of the Dead, as well as Vampire in Brooklyn. Playing Glen was a relative unknown, Johnny Depp, in his first movie. You might have seen him in a few low budget films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and he’ll be playing the title character in the upcoming Sweeney Todd. Seriously, though, he did pretty well with his first acting job. I also find it kind of funny that his first movie featured a guy with knives on his fingers, while one of his breakout movie roles was Edward Scissorhands. Playing Nancy’s father, Lt. Donald Thompson, was John Saxon who reprised the role for Nightmare 3, as well. He has a total of 184 acting credits, and was recently seen in the Masters of Horror episode "Pelts".

Now, for my final verdict. As stated earlier, this movie was an all-time favorite of mine growing up and the years have definitely been kind to it. It’s just as effective now as it was back then. I feel very confident in giving it 5 out of 5. Well, that’s it for me on this end. Tune in tomorrow, as we get ready to wrap up Octoberfest! Until next time, this is Red Hawk signing out!

In case you’d like to see: Another review of Nightmare on Elm Street by GlowStormLion

-- by Red Hawk of http://www.happyhorror.com

Tags: 80's, classic, horror, movie

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