A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

As I will be watching the reboot of the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise sometime in the next week I thought I'd watch the original movie from 1984.  The version I watched was from the US New Line Platinum Series "The Nightmare On Elm Street Collection".

The movie is about a group of high school kids who keep having the same dream.  They dream of a badly burned man wearing a brown fedora hat, a dirty striped jumper and notably a glove with blades on the fingers...and every time they dream about this man if they die in the dream they die for real.  The man in their dreams is Freddy Krueger, the son of 1,00 maniacs who was burnt alive by a group of parents after he escaped charges of child molestation on a technicality.

The are brilliant kills in this movie by Freddy, when he attacks Tina was a seriously jaw dropping moment when I saw it the first time as was Glen when he become the blood fountain...which had to be for me at the time one of the goriest scenes in a movie I had ever seen (I also would never forget the comment shortly afterwards "You don't need a stretcher up there, you need a mop"!) and it got me hooked on the horror genre.

This is a great movie, which for me still stands the test of time.  Wes Craven created a masterpiece and Freddy Krueger was certainly the man of New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye's dreams and New Line is often known as "The House The Freddy Build" due to the massive success of the franchise.  It was also the movie that introduced the World to Johnny Depp (He also was to cameo in one of the many sequels too!).  Robert Englund plays one of the scariest characters in a movie as far as I'm concerned (I'm talking about this movie, not the sequels which almost all just made him into more of a clown than a monster)

When it comes to old school horror movies, this is a truly iconic movie and does make you think...after all how do you defend yourself from your dreams...or your nightmares?

A Nightmare On Elm Street is rated 18 and available on DVD now...or if you want to import it you can get it on region-free BRD from the US or Canada.