Whatever you think you remember about Nightmare on Elm Street--Freddy Kruger saying stupid shit before kills, shape-shifting, shitty acting, gratuitous nudity--was almost almost certainly from one of the sequels. The original Nightmare is scary as fuck. I'd say there are moments in a few of the others before Freddy becomes straight camp and sold the fucking Freddy dolls and shit that will get you, but none of the others, with the except of New Nightmare, are terrifying from start to finish like this one. Note that with the good one out of the way, I am going to start delving into the rest of them. I will rank them in the end on best to worst based on my amateur opinion.
One thing everyone knows about this one is that it is Johnny Depp's first movie... Hate to ruin it, but... He is not in this as much as one would have thought. Also, I don't think he is really anything special in it. He is just some young, good looking kid. But so is Nancy. After rewatching this, if it were one person who were going to breakout after this movie, I would have put my money on her. Imagine his breakout role was actually Jump Street, though this gets more of the credit since it was his first.
Overall, solid fucking scare. A fitting start to one of the definitive boogeymen. Wes Craven is at the top of his game. For the franchise, it's all downhill from here.
Rotten Tomato Consensus: Wes Craven's intelligent premise, combined with the horrifying visual appearance of Freddy Krueger, still causes nightmares to this day.
Pros: Starts the franchise off right. Freddy is immediately iconic. Doesn't talk a lot here. John Saxon. Nancy. So fucking scary.
Cons: Nancy's mom. Some dumb looking, unnecessary dream stuff (Bob Shaye specials).
Disclaimer: My notes pretty much always contain some spoilers but I rarely give away the ending.
Notes: This first 20 minutes of the movie are genuinely terrifying. This is long before Freddy the joke. Opens with Tina, the blonde, getting chased around by Freddy, a mystery at this point, through the old boiler room and when she wakes up she got her nighty slashed. Then after her folks leave town, she has Nancy, Johnny Depp, and her meathead boyfriend Rod over. Her and Rod bone. What follows is fucking crazy. As she is being murdered in her dream, Rod sees her as she gets dragged from up the walls and across the ceiling by an invisible, damned thing which ultimately ends up brutally slashing her to death. I was advanced when it came to horror as a child. The first time I watched this, I was maybe five (had a cousin watching me), this scene scared the fucking shit out of me. It was beyond fucked. Now watching it, while scary, is pretty unintentionally hilarious. Freddy's arms grow really long, like 20 feet, and it looks fucking stupid. Tina is running away and Freddy stops her with a “watch this,” and chops off his fingers for no reason, WTF. They are wrestling around and she pulls off his face. It looks dumd. When Tina is flailing and getting twirled about, Rod, in his tighty whities, tries to grab her and she spins around and headbutts him and he goes flying. He is such an idiot and is shirtless most of the rest of the movie (he gets caught wearing a leather jacket with no shirt on underneath).
Everyone always blames Rod, of course, except Nancy. Rod gets away and fucking kidnaps Nancy. So Rod was the only one in there when she was killed with the door locked from the inside, his explanation that he delivers in such an aggressive way--”don't look at me like I'm some fucking fruitcake or something,” and then when he is in jail “how was there someone in there without you knowing?” “How the fuck do I know”--is insane, but Nancy is like, “yeah, I believe you.” The fuck?
Now Nancy starts seeing Freddy and shit in her dreams including two cool ones, one in class, the first of a million in school dreams that show up in every fucking NOES movie forevermore, and the one where Nancy is falling asleep in the bath and the glove pops up from the bath water. Also get the horrible Bob Shaye addition of Nancy trying to walk up the stairs and the stares turning into goo. In this dope documentary about the film series, Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, both the actress that played Nancy and director Wes Craven were both like, yeah, that part was stupid and gross. Meanwhile, Shaye is like, “that was a dream I had once that I thought should be in the movie. I thought it was cool.” Well, it's not. Anyway, eventually sees him go and kill Rod which looks like a suicide. Drunk mom acts like Nancy is crazy and needs help. BTW, her dad, John Saxon, is the fucking man. He has almost 200 IMDB credits which include a lot of real gems. Not only was he is some really solid horror (three NOES movies including New Nightmare, easily the best, Black Christmas, and From Dusk Till Dawn) he was also in MST3K's best all time roast, Mitchell, and was a total badass in Enter the Dragon. He is fucking great.
They send her to a sleep doctor and act like everything is cool and a guy is not killing teens in their sleep. At some point we get the story from the mom of how the parents burned Freddy, a child molester/murderer, to death after he got off on a technicality. Some dark shit. The last thing of note before getting into the ending here is Depp's death which is ridiculous. He gets sucked into his bed, I feel like this happens in every movie too, and blood pours out of the hole like it was being shot from a fire hose.
So I won't get into how they off Freddy in case someone hasn't seen it, but the end end is something that needs attention. Another Shaye demand, you can basically tell what his ideas are in these movies because they are shitty, that fucking sucks. Nancy's mom is alive, they are out front of her house. All of her dead friends show up in a 57 Chevy that is fucking Freddy. The car takes over. It rolls away. Nancy knows what's up. She is going crazy. Her mom stands there waving like an idiot. Freddy's glove busts through the window of the front door and pulls an obvious dummy in through the hole made to look like the mom. It looks like complete shit. That is the way they end the movie. On a Bob Shaye special. Leave it alone, man. Should have just let Wes do his thing.