With A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven would enter his second phase as a filmmaker. His first phase being the previous seven films and the third and last phase starting with Scream. Phase one started off with a notable first film, The Last House on the Left which allowed Craven to etch out a career as a director. He worked both in both the theater and television world but by the time he made The Hills Have Eyes Part II it was looking like television was where he belonged.
His television work was pretty good too, for TV standards but his cinema work paled, on average, in comparison. So far he hadn't lived up to the promise of his debut film and things weren't looking good. Hidden away amongst those films, dead center at number four, was the underrated Deadly Blessing but that film quickly disappeared from the public eye.
So it was with the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street that Craven entered phase two of his career. This film gave Craven stability as a director. It allowed him to do whatever project he felt like doing and it gave him a new sense of credibility, something that he had had but was now beginning to wane. It also catapulted him to the front of the list of legendary horror directors.
Now I have seen this film more times than any other film in Craven's 22 film catalogue. I have seen it more than any other in the Nightmare series and it is probably at the top of my list of most watched horror films along with Halloween, Friday the 13th part 2 and The Shining. With that said, I have not seen it in a few years (maybe five?) and not since I saw Deadly Blessing.
With Deadly Blessing, which so far has been Craven's best film to date, you can see the ideas of A Nightmare on Elm Street being sprouted. It's got sequences where a girl is being haunted in her dreams by a demon, scenes where these dreams become hard to distinguish between reality and fiction. It's got the same slasher vibe as Nightmare, down to sets and locations that wouldn't look out of place in Freddy's boiler room. There's the precursor to the bathtub scene and the same shock ending. But Deadly Blessing also had a lot of faults that detracted from making it any better than it eventually was.
Now with this new perspective on A Nightmare on Elm Street I am ready to watch it again for perhaps the twelfth time (in 22 years). I hope to see things in it that I never saw before; maybe it will more closely resemble Deadly Blessing than I remember; maybe after the previous seven Craven films A Nightmare on Elm Street will seem even better than I remember it. After all, Craven hasn't made a film I would recommend since Deadly Blessing and that was four films ago!
But A Nightmare on Elm Street should change all that. It should boost his average film score, which right now is at 55%, to somewhere at least in the early 60's. It should also put Craven back on the fence with an equal amount of recommended films versus not. Maybe it won't though? Maybe I will see a whole lot of things that I missed before that will bring down this film? Maybe? Let's find out shall we...
Review:
Breakdown:
Having seen what Craven did in the past, it's actually amazing what a good job he did with this film. The Last House on the Left showed the world a director with a lot of promise but it took him seven more tries to capitalize on it. In A Nightmare on Elm Street Craven has grown up. He's more creative and more original than he has been before. There is very little to complain about here as Craven has done an immaculate job in all departments. Truly a great job, in fact his first great job as a director.
Having seen what Craven did in the past, it's actually amazing what a good job he did with this film. The Last House on the Left showed the world a director with a lot of promise but it took him seven more tries to capitalize on it. In A Nightmare on Elm Street Craven has grown up. He's more creative and more original than he has been before. There is very little to complain about here as Craven has done an immaculate job in all departments. Truly a great job, in fact his first great job as a director.
Directing: 9 out of 10
I have seen this movie at last a dozen times and each time is just as exciting as the last. Sure, the scare factor after twelve times is a little lower but watching it at night, by yourself on a HDTV, it still manages to raise the hairs on your arms a few times. Still not boring, so many times later and still as clever and original as it was back in 1984 (wow, almost 30 years ago).
Re-playability: 10 out of 10
Craven has taken the slasher flick and thrown it for a loop. He's taken the set of teenagers, led them up for slaughter and delivered in spades. He has done it by pulling elements from his past films and combining them with new elements to make something that (if you've seen his films so far) seems somewhat familiar but at the same time feels completely new.
Originality: 9 out of 10
Give or take a slight effect here and there (for example, when Freddy's arms extend) the special effects are excellent. Not only do they look amazing for the budget of the film but they still look good today. Every death is creatively done and just looks amazing, as do the sets and locations. Freddy's boiler room is an inspired location and is immaculately designed for the ultimate scare. The way the characters move from one locale to the next, and the creative ways of getting into Freddy's boiler room work wonders and create and enhance the dreamlike quality that the film eludes to. Every set and every location is immaculate and feels very very real.
Production Design (Special Effects/Sets/Locations): 9 out of 10
When we look at the costumes and make-up of all involved there is nothing to complain about. Scars and burns and scratches all look real and convincing and the copious amounts of blood that appear looks ultra realistic. But it is Freddy Kruger that makes the film; his famous striped sweater, his famous hat and of course the excellent make-up job on his face making him look like a burn victim, the glove made of knives. So well done is Freddy that he has become one of the most well known icons in cinema. There have been many sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street and even a remake, and his make-up may have got more elaborate but never (except maybe in Wes Craven's New Nightmare) has he ever been this scary or this believable.
Costumes and Make-Up: 10 out of 10
A Nightmare on Elm Street takes the slasher film and spins it in new directions. At it's heart it is another spin on the classic genre that first came to prominence with Halloween. So right down at the centre of it's inner core it isn't so unique. But Freddy, and the use of dreams and nightmares and what is real and what isn't, elevate this film way beyond its predecessors of the slasher genre. The scenes themselves are incredibly well written, the characters are well defined and there are some gems of dialogue that are scattered throughout. But there are also some (very few) bad lines of dialogue, and some scenes that after careful reflection don't make much sense in terms of the films structure. There are times when Freddy does things that aren't part of a dream and based on the rules of the film make no sense on how achieves these things in real life. But with that said, the viewer is so enwrapped in the film when these things occur they tend to be overlooked. Also, the amount of things Nancy can achieve in 20 minutes is nothing short of a miracle but again that can be and usually is overlooked.
Script: 8 out of 10
The lighting in this film is stunning. It hides just enough of Freddy, or shows just enough to make him scary. It shows enough to allow us to know exactly what is going on, but hides enough to keep us in suspense the whole time. When daytime hits, the colours are vibrant and things are overly bright making the contrast to the terror filled nights even stronger. While the lighting excels at creating the mood, the actual camera work is nothing spectacular. It's smooth, it's competent but there is nothing special or creative about it. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination but it does pale in comparison to the lighting.
Cinematography: 8 out of 10
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a perfectly edited film. It is the perfect length at 92 minutes, with no scene running on to long and no scene being cut to short. There are no jarring cuts and no bad juxtapositions of shots. In fact I could find nothing wrong with the editing of this picture. Enough said.
Editing: 10 out of 10
While there are some performances that are better than others, on the whole the acting is pretty good. There are a few moments near the beginning where the acting comes off wooden but that soon disappears and the acting becomes quiet good, if not top notch. John Saxon and Ronee Blakley are great as Nancy(Heather Langenkamp)'s parents. Johnny Depp in his debut role fairs pretty nicely, but is no where near the great and nuanced performer he would become. Everyone who dies in the film dies really well, and I'm taking it they were hired on that basis.
Acting: 7 out of 10
The music, for the most part, is amazing. It is scary, it is tense, it is pulse pumping, fist raising, shout at the screen good! It gets the blood boiling and it is totally original. The music and main theme in general has become instantly recognizable as has the children's rhyme that reoccurs throughout the film. There are only two instances that bring down the music. The first occurrence happens in a dream sequence where suddenly the music switches from horror-like to action-like. This only lasts about 15 seconds but is very noticeable and is why I think the remake ended up being a failure (action music for the whole movie and maybe 15 seconds of horror music). The second bad piece of music occurs during the end credits. It is one hell of a bad 80's song that belongs stuck there in the 80's and nowhere else. It dates the film and it is just plain bad and thank god it only happens during the credits.
Music: 8 out of 10
Combined Total: 88%
***ALERT: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SERIOUS SPOILERS: ALERT***
***ALERT: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SERIOUS SPOILERS: ALERT***
After:
It took eight films before Wes Craven finally made a movie that was deserved of the title 'classic'. With A Nightmare on Elm Street we get the film that Craven was destined to make. A film that all that came before was eventually leading up to. Having just watched it again I can confirm that it is a film that has lasting power. After almost 30 years this film, more so than anything he has directed yet, it feels almost as fresh as the day it was released.
Freddy Kruger, a dead killer of children, returns to haunt and kill a new batch of teenagers. Only this time he has returned in their dreams where he torments them before he savagely kills them. The line between dreaming and reality begins to blur and it becomes up to Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) to save the day. The film is bloody as hell and the murders are brutal, shocking and graphic. It is an almost perfect horror film that takes a stale formula and pumps it full of originality.
Not that it doesn't have it's share of faults. There is some wooden acting near the beginning and some inconstancies in the script that just don't make sense. Like if Freddy can only access the kids through dreams then how does he call Nancy on the phone? Or when Nancy tells her father to come over in 20 minutes, in said period of 20 minutes she builds a half dozen very intricate booby traps around her house and is in bed and sleeping within 10 minutes. The film is so engrossing you don't really notice these things but after a few repeats you do begin to see the cracks.
Looking at Craven's back catalogue, it is interesting to note the reoccurring motives and themes that come through here. In much of his work he has a family that gets torn apart by evil and must eventually fight back to survive. Unlike most other slasher/horror films of his time, Craven's films centered on families being torn apart not individuals or friends. The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Summer of Fear, Deadly Blessing and Invitation to Hell all feature this motif. A Nightmare on Elm Street has echoes of this with Nancy and her family but unlike the other films the family in this one is already broken with a drunk for a mom and a dad who's never there.
Then there is the taunting of the victims by the killer. Most horror films the killer lurks in the background, silently and never says a word. Craven has given his killer speech and he uses a trick he learned from The Hills Have Eyes' hill dwellers. Like those hill dwellers, Freddy taunts his victims from the shadows whispering their names; calling them over towards him and further away from safety.
But the biggest influence, like I have said since I first watched it, was Deadly Blessing. It's as if he took the best and most original parts of that film and used them as a template for this film. 15 minutes of Deadly Blessing turned into a startlingly original 90 minute film. From that film he takes the bathtub scene and expands on it. Before it was a snake, now it's a hand coming from the bottom and actually pulls in the victim. He also takes what he did in the barn, a sort of blur between reality and nightmare with a figure in a hat stalking his victim from the shadows, and makes an entire film around that plot device. He even uses the same shock ending, where our hero has beaten the demon/Freddy; she has survived only in the last few seconds to find out otherwise and the demon/Freddy pulls her through the floor/door.
But these scenes and moments taken from Deadly Blessing and used again here still feel fresh and original. It's helped by some tremendous special effects like Tina(Amanda Wyss)'s death scene. It's gory, it uses great angles to capture the moment and it looks utterly convincing when she is dragged from the floor to the ceiling. And Glen(Johnny Depp--in his first role ever!!!)'s death scene is legendary with the blood shooting up through the bed. The effects (most of), the make-up and the story still feels as modern today as it did 30 years ago.
A Nightmare on Elm Street comes highly recommended by me. If you haven't seen it you must! If you have seen it, see it again! It never loses it's power and it never fails to grab hold and never let go. It's a film that made a legend out of Freddy Kruger and a horror master out of Wes Craven and for good reason. Craven finally delivered on the expectations set by his first film. He first proved himself adept at the slasher film with Deadly Blessing and he confirmed and exceeded that precedent here.
Even though this film is as close to a masterpiece as Craven has reached so far, it still doesn't say that he himself is a great director. After all, of the eight films so far that we have journeyed through, only four of them have been what I would call good. That's not a good track record so far but with 14 more films to go there could be a lot more failures. On the flip side of that argument, I still have 14 films to go and I know of at least two films that are if not as good or better than this one, then they sure do come damn close.
After:
Freddy Kruger, a dead killer of children, returns to haunt and kill a new batch of teenagers. Only this time he has returned in their dreams where he torments them before he savagely kills them. The line between dreaming and reality begins to blur and it becomes up to Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) to save the day. The film is bloody as hell and the murders are brutal, shocking and graphic. It is an almost perfect horror film that takes a stale formula and pumps it full of originality.
Not that it doesn't have it's share of faults. There is some wooden acting near the beginning and some inconstancies in the script that just don't make sense. Like if Freddy can only access the kids through dreams then how does he call Nancy on the phone? Or when Nancy tells her father to come over in 20 minutes, in said period of 20 minutes she builds a half dozen very intricate booby traps around her house and is in bed and sleeping within 10 minutes. The film is so engrossing you don't really notice these things but after a few repeats you do begin to see the cracks.
Looking at Craven's back catalogue, it is interesting to note the reoccurring motives and themes that come through here. In much of his work he has a family that gets torn apart by evil and must eventually fight back to survive. Unlike most other slasher/horror films of his time, Craven's films centered on families being torn apart not individuals or friends. The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Summer of Fear, Deadly Blessing and Invitation to Hell all feature this motif. A Nightmare on Elm Street has echoes of this with Nancy and her family but unlike the other films the family in this one is already broken with a drunk for a mom and a dad who's never there.
Then there is the taunting of the victims by the killer. Most horror films the killer lurks in the background, silently and never says a word. Craven has given his killer speech and he uses a trick he learned from The Hills Have Eyes' hill dwellers. Like those hill dwellers, Freddy taunts his victims from the shadows whispering their names; calling them over towards him and further away from safety.
But the biggest influence, like I have said since I first watched it, was Deadly Blessing. It's as if he took the best and most original parts of that film and used them as a template for this film. 15 minutes of Deadly Blessing turned into a startlingly original 90 minute film. From that film he takes the bathtub scene and expands on it. Before it was a snake, now it's a hand coming from the bottom and actually pulls in the victim. He also takes what he did in the barn, a sort of blur between reality and nightmare with a figure in a hat stalking his victim from the shadows, and makes an entire film around that plot device. He even uses the same shock ending, where our hero has beaten the demon/Freddy; she has survived only in the last few seconds to find out otherwise and the demon/Freddy pulls her through the floor/door.
But these scenes and moments taken from Deadly Blessing and used again here still feel fresh and original. It's helped by some tremendous special effects like Tina(Amanda Wyss)'s death scene. It's gory, it uses great angles to capture the moment and it looks utterly convincing when she is dragged from the floor to the ceiling. And Glen(Johnny Depp--in his first role ever!!!)'s death scene is legendary with the blood shooting up through the bed. The effects (most of), the make-up and the story still feels as modern today as it did 30 years ago.
A Nightmare on Elm Street comes highly recommended by me. If you haven't seen it you must! If you have seen it, see it again! It never loses it's power and it never fails to grab hold and never let go. It's a film that made a legend out of Freddy Kruger and a horror master out of Wes Craven and for good reason. Craven finally delivered on the expectations set by his first film. He first proved himself adept at the slasher film with Deadly Blessing and he confirmed and exceeded that precedent here.
Even though this film is as close to a masterpiece as Craven has reached so far, it still doesn't say that he himself is a great director. After all, of the eight films so far that we have journeyed through, only four of them have been what I would call good. That's not a good track record so far but with 14 more films to go there could be a lot more failures. On the flip side of that argument, I still have 14 films to go and I know of at least two films that are if not as good or better than this one, then they sure do come damn close.
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