A Nightmare On Elm Street

Wes Craven
1984

When I was growing up the two biggest screen baddies on my radar were Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhees. Years later I'd come to find that many (if not most) of the the franchise entries for these two horror heavyweights are bigger on schlock than they are on scares. Craven's dream-haunting child killer lends himself more to expressionistic psychological terror, and benefits from surreal touches like a phone receiver turning into Kruger's flicking tongue. On the surface it's scarier than Friday The 13th with it's free form lack of rules and unpredictability, yet once the film's atmospheric nightmare fantasy ends (this time with one of those cop-out "no resolution" endings) a more traditional hack and slash teen killer seems closer to home - it's plausibility far more unsettling. Johnny Depp makes his debut here as the quintessentially vacuous 80's teen male, a far cry from the eccentric wizard he's become, and his character definitely seems to set the template for the window crashing best bud Sam of Clarissa Explains it All. In addition to the nocturnal frights Craven injects some real-life social bummers as the heroine suffers a distant workaholic father (John Saxon!) and a vacant souse mother. With folks like these its a surprise that Nancy's prematurely grey hair didn't develop before Freddy came calling.