August 4, 2017
Insomniacs of the world, unite!! To tell it plain, I have
always had trouble sleeping. Part of it is just my nature, I know that. But
part of it is the simple fact that I love the nighttime (yeah, get that song
out of your head now… ). I have always felt that sleeping just wastes a great
part of the 24-hour day. Sunlight is highly overrated. In the night, everything
looks like it has a secret. The shadows of night are so much more… interesting…
than the ones in the daytime.
Even so, the night can be frightening. Even sleeping can be
a fearful experience. Children fear the monsters in the closet, or under their
bed. But, as Wes Craven helped us find out, the monsters are not just figments
of our imagination. You could die in your sleep, and die for real. Especially
if Freddy Krueger is waiting for you in the dream world. He does just that in
the minds of the kids of Springfield, on one particular street.
You guessed it, we’re all trapped in A Nightmare on Elm
Street.
If you don’t know the story by now (and shame on you if you
don’t), the teenagers on Elm Street are all having the strangest dreams. A
horribly disfigured man, wearing a glove made of what look like razor-sharp
claws, is pursuing them. And he isn’t going to be satisfied until he catches
them. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is one of these kids. Her friends,
Glen (Johnny Depp, WAYYY before Jack Sparrow), Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss), and Rod
Lane (Jsu Garcia) are all seeing this monstrous stalker in their dreams, or
rather, in their nightmares. One by one, Nancy’s friends succumb to the
monster, named Freddy Krueger, in their dreams, and by doing so, they wind up
dead. The only way they find to stay safe is to stay awake, but, as we all
know, eventually, the body has to sleep. And when they do, that safety zone
disappears.
For the very few of you who may not have seen Nightmare
before, I will leave it at that. You can see the rest for yourself.
I was a freshman in college when Freddy Krueger entered my
world. And I was soooo very happy he did. This movie, directed by Wes Craven,
who was mainly known for his visceral horror movie Last house on the Left,
created Freddy, and thus, creating the legend. What makes this movie so intense
is the very fact that it hits the viewer right in the heart. Every person
sleeps, and every person has bad dreams once in a while. The movie takes that
fact and implants the thought in your head – what if your bad dreams could
actually kill you? Then, it takes that fact a step further by personifying the “boogeyman’
in our bad dreams in the form of a terribly-burned man with a handful of
razor-sharp claws, who is only focused on killing you. And every time you go to
sleep could be the last time you go to sleep…
Now, let’s call a spade a spade here. Robert Englund brought
Freddy to life in a way that immediately made him unforgettable. In this movie,
the FIRST of several, Freddy was not a wisecracking antihero, the guy you loved
to fear. Here, he is just evil incarnate. The great actor David Warner (he of
Time After Time, Titanic, Tron…. wow… alliteration… ) was originally cast as
Freddy, but the pre-production took too long and his other film commitments
cause him to bow out. In steps Robert Englund. While he is buried under
prosthetics and makeup, his eyes are his own. And you can see a particular
something in those eyes that made Freddy different. With Robert’s eyes, you see
the fact that he is LOVING being evil, and that transfers into his portrayal of
Freddy. Freddy is relishing how evil he is. He is not a prisoner of evil, he is
not a tortured soul. In horror movies of old, the monsters are usually
misunderstood. Frankenstein's monster was not evil, he was just a creature, made by
another, who just wanted to be accepted. Freddy has no desire to be accepted.
As we learn later in the film, Freddy was a child molester who had been preying
on the children of Elm Street, and the parents formed a vigilante group one
night and caught him and burned him to death. Freddy is after those parents’
children out of revenge, and he could care less about himself. He only wants to
torture those kids. He is not misunderstood, he knows exactly what he is doing,
and he loves it. And that, folks, is an evil bastard.
The other cast members are very good. Most of the Elm Street
kids are played by virtual unknowns. Heather Langenkamp was a beautiful young
girl who only had one on-screen credit to her name. She had done some scenes in
The Outsiders, but they had been cut. One TV movie role, then, boom, she is in
a movie that would make her a scream queen who is still revered to this day.
Amanda Wyss went on to have a solid career after this, but, according to her
own words in several interviews, she is more recognized for being slaughtered
by Freddy than anything else she has done. And we all know how Johnny Depp’s
career has gone.
But let’s talk about John Saxon and some of the other
supporting actors. Saxon had a second-level career as an action movie
star. He was best known for being the only Caucasian in Bruce Lee’s Enter The
Dragon, but he had played off that into assorted ass-kicking roles. Here, he is
Lt. Thompson, a policeman who was part of the group who burned Freddy to death.
Craven made sure Saxon knew to play the role as straight as possible. This is
not a camp movie, this is a serious horror film. Saxon’s portrayal is perfect.
Ronee Blakely, who plays Nancy’s alcoholic mother, does a very tight job here.
Blakely’s character, on the surface, is just a drunk mom, but we learn that her
drinking comes from her own guilt in creating Freddy as a supernatural killer.
When that is revealed, it makes you see just how good Blakely is as an actress.
Look for two special people in minor roles. One is Charles
Fleischer, who plays the doctor trying to treat the kids. You may not know who
Fleischer is to see him, but you know him for his role as the voice of Roger
Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? If you listen carefully, you can pick up his
vocal style and hear shadows of Roger Rabbit when he speaks.
The other person I have to mention is Lin Shaye. Shaye, who
plays the high school teacher, also played Woody Harrelson’s nasty, unwashed,
horny landlady in Kingpin. Shaye has done many roles since, but Nightmare was
her first real role. She does a great job as a voice of sympathy while most of the adults are hiding secrets. She is also the sister of Robert Shaye, the founder of New
Line Cinema, the studio that made Nightmare.
New Line Cinema had made its name only by distributing
foreign films and art films to college campuses. Shaye himself signed a deal
with John Waters and drove around the East Coast with copies of Pink Flamingos
and Desperate Living in the trunk of his cars, taking Waters’ films to college
campuses, making them into cult classics. New Line earned a lot of respect on college campuses, too, for signing a contract that brought the ridiculous classic Reefer Madness back into vogue. When they made Nightmare, it was
rejected by virtually every major studio in the business, so Robert screwed up
his courage and decided to release it himself under the New Line name. He
risked everything on Nightmare, and it paid off in spades. Now, New Line is one
of the major players in Hollywood, probably best-known now for being the studio
that made The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. But, when it comes down to it, New
Line Cinema is the house that Freddy built.
Go back and watch the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Try
to put the sequels behind you for a while and watch how many times you find
yourself jumping in fright rather than laughing at Freddy’s wisecracks. Craven
knew how to make terrifying movies, rest his soul, but Englund’s wonderful
worship of his character’s black heart makes Craven’s ideas even better. You
won’t be sorry. And, who knows, you may never sleep again…
And, from all of us who thought you were a genius, we miss you, Wes... and we always will...
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