Night 24 of 31 Nights of Horror

As of 2025 Johnny Depp has been in over 70 movies and has a net worth of approximate $150 million dollars and it all started with A Nightmare on Elm Street. He’s not even the star of this movie, Heather Langenkamp is, although, it could be argued it’s really Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger.

It’s interesting what scares us when we’re younger. My mother made a big production of getting my brother and me to watch the movie that scared her the most when she was younger. The Exorcist. We thought it was okay, but nowhere near as frightening as she seemed to find it. Wes Craven’s tale of a serial killing pedophile that stalks you in your dreams however, terrified me like no other movie ever has. After watching it, I slept on the floor in my brother’s room with a camping knife under my pillow, and not one word of that is an exaggeration.

I’ll cut to the chase. Yeah, it still holds up. This movie is so well made, it comes close to being called perfect. Okay, maybe perfect is pushing it, but watch the movie and look at those visuals. The makeup, the practical effects, they built an entire set that could rotate upside down for the scene where blood fountains out of the bed. They squeezed that $1.1 million budget for every penny and it shows on screen. This was all in the days before CGI was commonplace, everything was handmade. A lot of times when you watch a blue-ray copy of an older movie, the HD transfer can highlight some of the trickery filmmakers use, greenscreen in particular often stands out, but not here. My cheap BD collectors set looks amazing and even scenes like Freddy passing through the bars of the jail cell, are visually seamless.

The premise of the film itself is a perfect canvas for this genre. Everyone has had a nightmare at some point in their life, it’s part of being human, so we can all immediately relate to Tina’s sense of terror and relief upon waking, right from the start. Also, the way our brains just accept the strange and nonsensical while dreaming gives the effects people freedom to do what they want. Another aspect of dreams that aided tremendously, is not knowing when they’ve ended. The uncertainty of what’s real and what isn’t throughout just heightens then tension.

The film is structured well, it grips you from the opening scene and even the quieter parts aren’t dull enough to make your attention wander. The scene with Glen calling his mom on the phone still makes me laugh. Not having watched Psycho yet, this was also my first experience with a movie tricking you into thinking someone was the main character.

Since we’re on the subject of main characters, can we talk about Nancy Thompson? Personally, I think she ranks right up there with Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor in the world of badass cinema heroines. While most “final girls” in a horror movie get the title simply by being the last one standing, Nancy does research, she makes a plan and seeks Freddy out in an attempt to end his murder spree.

Maybe I’m gushing too much about a movie that made such an early impression on me, but it’s refreshing to find one that still looks and feels so good even when re-watched 40 years later.

If you’ve never seen A Nightmare on Elm Street before, then I apologize for the spoilers, but I promise, you’ll most likely forget everything I’ve said within the first few minutes of pressing start.

There are sequels. A lot of sequels, one re-make and a TV series, but I’m not going to review them this month. They’re not bad, personally I think the 2nd movie gets more hate than it deserves, but there aren’t a lot of nights left before Halloween and I’m in the mood for more variety before our time runs out.