- "One, two, Freddy's coming for you. Three, four, better lock your door. Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, better stay awake. Nine, ten, never sleep again."
- ―Children's rhyme
| A Nightmare on Elm Street | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Credits | |
| Title: | A Nightmare on Elm Street |
| Directed by: | Wes Craven |
| Written by: | Wes Craven |
| Produced by: | Stanley Dudelson; Joseph Wolf; Robert Shaye; John Burrows; Sara Risher |
| Music by: | Charles Bernstein |
| Cinematography: | Jacques Haitkin |
| Edited by: | Pat McMahon; Rick Shaine |
| Production | |
| Distributors: | New Line Cinema; Media Home Entertainment; Smart Egg Pictures |
| Released: | November 16th, 1984 |
| Rating: | R |
| Running time: | 91 min. |
| Country: | USA |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $1,800,000 |
| Gross: | $25,504,513 [1] |
| Navigation | |
| Previous: | — |
| Next: | A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge |
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 horror film of the slasher sub-genre, written and directed by Wes Craven. Produced by New Line Cinema and Media Home Entertainment, Inc., it was released theatrically in the United States on November 16th, 1984. The film is the first in a franchise that includes six sequels, a spin-off television series, a crossover film and a remake as well as countless novels, comic books and merchandise. The central villain of the franchise is Freddy Krueger (played by Robert Englund), a serial killer who returns from the grave to stalk his victims in their nightmares. Using his signature weapon, a leather glove with straight razors attached to the fingertips, Freddy slashes his way through the teen populace of the fictional town of Springwood, Ohio (Los Angeles, before the sequels, as evidenced by the palm trees in the neighborhood, which are not in Ohio). The only who stands a chance of surviving Freddy's dreamtime assault is fifteen-year-old Nancy Thompson, who discovers that she has the ability to pull things out of her dreams.
Plot[]
The man of her dreams.
Tina Gray is having a nightmare. She dreams of wandering around a greasy, echoing steam filled boiler room. All at once, something begins to chase her. The sight of a horribly burned man wearing a dark brown fedora and an ugly, torn red and green striped sweater torments her. He pursues her with a set of straight razors sewn into a leather glove. Tina wakes up screaming only to discover that her nightgown has been sliced open. Her mother thinks its because Tina needs to trim her fingernails.
The following day, Tina recalls the story to her friends Nancy Thompson, Glen Lantz and boyfriend Rod Lane. Feeling haunted by the ghastly visions, Nancy and Glen promise to stay over Tina's house that evening to console her.
The slumber party becomes a disappointment for Nancy and Glen as the surly Rod Lane crashes the party. Rod and Tina go into her mother's bedroom to have sex, leaving Nancy and Glen in the other room to do nothing.
After their sexual escapade, Tina drifts off to sleep and is attacked once again by the clawed nightmare villain known as Fred Krueger. Unfortunately for her, what happens in the dream dimension is reflected in the real world. Rod awakens to the sounds of Tina screaming in bloody terror. Even though he can't see Tina's invisible attacker, he can plainly see her insides being ripped apart. Tina's body finally falls to the floor dead. Terrified and confused, Rod escapes through the window.
The following day, the news of Tina's death is all over town and people are quick to accuse the delinquent Rod Lane of the murder. Handling the case is Lieutenant Donald Thompson who also happens to be Nancy's father. Thompson knows that Lane might seek out Nancy and he executes a stakeout on his daughter's whereabouts.
"You forgot your hall pass!"
During class, Nancy falls asleep and her dream state places her in the same locale that Tina had been trapped in. She finds the murderous Freddy Krueger scraping his knives across some plates of sheet metal. Nancy struggles with Freddy briefly until her arm is knocked into a hot steam pipe. Nancy awakens with a start in class and notices that she now has a fresh burn on her left arm. She is sent home for the rest of the day.
On her way home from school, Rod approaches Nancy swearing that he did not kill Tina. He can't explain what happened, but he knows for certain that he is innocent. Lieutenant Thompson and his men leap out of the bushes and arrest Rod. Nancy is angry with her father for 'using' her to trap her friend.
Later that evening, Nancy has a second dream. In this one, she sees Freddy Krueger attacking Rod at the jail house. Waking up, she knows that she has to rush down there or else Rod may die. Nancy and Glen both go to the police station and beg Officer Garcia to let them see Rod. Meanwhile, the sleeping Rod is attacked by his own bed sheets, which curl around his neck pulling him off the bed towards the wall. The sheets stretch to the ceiling and pull tight, snapping Rod's neck. Nancy and Glen are too late to save him and Rod's death is written off as a suicide.
Nancy falls asleep in the tub.
That night, Nancy has a third dream wherein Freddy attacks her in her own bath tub. She only escapes death because her mother is pounding on the bathroom door, forcing her to wake up. Nancy is now convinced that somebody is using people's dreams to kill them. She tries to explain this to her alcoholic mother, but Marge Thompson (as well as Glen) suspect that Nancy might be beginning to lose her mind from lack of sleep.
The following day, Marge takes Nancy to the Katja Institute, a dream clinic specializing in sleep disorders, so she can determine if her daughter is merely disturbed by the deaths or whether or not she's really going crazy. Once again, Nancy enters the dream state where Freddy attacks her anew. Doctor King wakes her up to find a startling result. Nancy has actually succeeded in pulling something back with her from her dream; Freddy Krueger's hat. Nancy's hair is beginning to turn gray at this point.
Being a dutiful boyfriend, Glen decides to research dream phenomena. He tells Nancy that if one were to meet a monster in their dreams, the only recourse open to her is to turn her back upon it, stealing away all of its power. This does little to cheer Nancy up and her day gets even darker when she learns that her mother has placed bars on all of the doors and windows to their house.
That night, Nancy decides to take the offensive for a change. Using Glen as the go-to guy, she goes to sleep with the intention of bringing Freddy Krueger back into the real world with her. Glen is present in order to "whack the fucker" when she wakes up. This plan fails however since Glen falls asleep himself. Nancy nonetheless survives, but she is extremely angry at her boyfriend. Glen returns home leaving Nancy to deal with her inebriated mother.
At this point, Nancy learns the true origins of her nightmare attacker. Mrs. Thompson takes her down into the cellar and relays to her a story that occurred in their town of Springwood some years prior.
There was a notorious child murderer known as Fred Krueger who had terrorized the neighborhood, killing at least twenty different children. He was finally captured and his arrest made headline news. But the search warrant papers were not filled out correctly and Freddy was released on a technicality. Enraged, a group of the townspeople, including Donald and Marge Thompson, hunted Freddy down. They trapped him in the boiler room where he used to bring the children and set fire to the entire facility. Freddy died and Marge collected his finger knives. Now his ghost has become some sort of dream demon, taking his revenge on the children of those who murdered him.
As this is going on, Glen Lantz falls asleep while watching television in his bedroom. Whether he is dreaming or not is unknown, but there is no question as to the outcome. Glen is swallowed alive by his own bed, which then regurgitates a flowing column of blood. Police arrive quickly on the scene. When Nancy sees the flashing red police lights outside her bedroom window, she knows that Glen is dead.
Freddy is ready.
Nancy calls her father and tells him that she is going after Fred Krueger. She wants him to be at the house in twenty minutes to arrest him. Lieutenant Thompson agrees, but only for the sake of humoring his disturbed daughter. Not willing to take any chances, Nancy sets various booby traps all around the house.
Nancy goes to sleep one final time. In the dream, Freddy appears and this time it is Nancy who attacks him. The two fall through a rose trellis and continue their struggle as the alarm clock sounds, waking Nancy up. Her plan works. Freddy is now in the real world and he begins to chase her throughout the house. His attacks are delayed as he falls into each of Nancy's booby traps one by one. Trapped in her own house, Nancy shouts through the window to her father across the street. Before anything can be done, Freddy kills Mrs. Thompson in her own bed.
Nancy is in a state of shock and her father does his best to console her. He leaves the room momentarily and Nancy knows that Freddy is still in the house. Freddy emerges from the glowing bed to attack her, but Nancy recalls Glen's advice from the previous day. She turns her back on Freddy and steals away all the energy he needs to maintain his presence in reality. Before he can kill her, Freddy fades away.
The following day, Nancy finds herself having one final dream. In it, her friends and mother are still alive and everything is cheerful and sunny. Mrs. Thompson even promises to give up drinking. Nancy trots off to meet her friends. She climbs into Glen's car and they take off. Freddy is still in control however as he locks all of the doors on the car and it begins to pull away with the trapped teenagers inside screaming. As Marge waves goodbye, Freddy pulls her through a window on the front door.
Cast[]
Notes & Trivia[]
- A Nightmare on Elm Street is included on the A Nightmare on Elm Street Collection 7-disc Blu-ray boxset collection, which was released by Warner Home Video on March 5th, 2013.
- The opening scene of the movie, filmed in letterbox, shows the human Fred Krueger constructing his razor glove for the very first time.
- At the time of filming, director Wes Craven was married to actress Mimi Meyer, who played the role of a Nurse Donna Cooper in this film.
- The scene with Nancy's encounter with the Hallguard is lampooned in the 1996 Wes Craven film Scream.
- Close inspection of their name tags reveals Doctor King's and the nurse's full names as Samuel King and Donna Cooper. Mimi Meyer-Craven, who played Donna Cooper, also played a character named Nurse Cooper in the 1985 film Chiller.
- Producer Robert Shaye directed the scene where Nancy is struggling to ascend the staircase in her home and her feet are sinking into the steps. [2]
- Heather Langenkamp revisits the "Screw your pass!" scene in the 1994 sequel New Nightmare.
- Playing the role of Mrs. Lantz is actress Sandy Lipton's third feature film role and her first work in the horror genre.
- Actor Nick Corri's real name is Jsu Garcia. This is his first work in film.
- A coincidence on Elm Street? Actress Ronee Blakley starred in the 1975 film Nashville playing a character named Barbara Jean. Ronee's counterpart from the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Connie Britton is the star of the TV series Nashville.
- The unrelated 2022 film short OnlyFans features a character named Ellie Thompson. A piece of mail indicates that she lives at 1428 Elm Street in Springwood, which is the street address for Nancy Thompson's home in this film.
Quotes[]
- Marge Thompson: Nancy, you are going to get some sleep tonight if it kills me.
....
- Nancy Thompson: Whatever you do... Don't. Fall. Asleep.
....
- Nancy Thompson: Fred Krueger did it, Daddy. And only I can get him. It's my nightmare he comes to.
....
- Rod Lane: I probably could have saved her if I'd have moved sooner. But I thought it was just another nightmare, like the one I had the night before. There was... there was this guy; he had knives for fingers.
....
- Freddy Krueger: I'm going to split you in two!
....
- Nancy Thompson: It's only a dream, this isn't real! It's only a dream, this isn't real!
....
- Freddy Krueger: I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy.
....
- Glen Lantz: I'm going to punch out your ugly lights, whoever you are!
....
- Nancy Thompson: I just asked you to do one thing, to stay awake and watch me and to wake me up if it looked like I was having a bad dream, and what did you do, you shit? You fell asleep!
Body Count[]
| Order | Victim | Method |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tina Gray | Multiple slash wounds across body |
| 2 | Rod Lane | Hung with a bed sheet |
| 3 | Glen Lantz | Pulled into bed and regurgitated as a geyser of blood |
| 4 | Marge Thompson | Burned to death in bed |
See also[]
External Links[]
References[]
- ↑ A Nightmare on Elm Street; Box Office Mojo
- ↑ Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy
Keywords[]
Boiler room | Burn victims | Cemeteries | Dreams | Drowning | Female partial nudity | Freddy Krueger | Hangings | High Schools | Hospital | Nightmares | Ohio | Police officer | Psychopaths | Razor | Severed fingers | Skin masks | Slasher | Springwood | Stabbings | Total body destruction
 This article relates to one of the films in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This template will categorize articles that include it into the A Nightmare on Elm Street films category. |