A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Wes Craven

MUSIC BY: Charles Bernstein

DISTRIBUTOR: New Line Cinema

STARRING: John Saxon; Ronee Blakley; Heather Langenkamp; Amanda Wyss; Nick Corri; Johnny Depp; and Robert Englund as Fred Krueger

RUNNING TIME: 91 Minutes

PLOT:

A Nightmare on Elm Street opens with several teenagers who have been having similar nightmares. One of the friends, Tina, is seemingly killed by something in her dreams. Her boyfriend is blamed for the crime and eventually arrested. Tina's friend Nancy Thompson believes that Tina was killed by a man in her dreams, a man who is also terrorizing Nancy as she sleeps. Tina's boyfriend Rod gets hung in his jail cell while he is sleeping. Nancy tells her mother that she thinks that it is a man named Fred Krueger. Nancy's mother tells her that Krueger was a child killer who, after being released from jail on a legal technicality, was hunted down and burned to death by some concerned parents. After Nancy's boyfriend, Glen, is killed she goes into her dream and brings Freddy out by holding on to him as her alarm clock wakes her up. She seemingly kills him after he kills her mother.

MYTHOS INFORMATION

According to Marge Thompson Freddy killed about 20 Springwood kids when he was alive. He was arrested, but because of a legal technicality with the search warrant he was released. A group of parents from Elm Street hunted him down at the power plant where he worked and they poured gas all over the place and burned it down with him inside of it.

After they killed Freddy the parents never mentioned him to their kids. Some of the older kids, who knew who Freddy was, made up a jump-rope chant about him. The younger kids learned the chant but never knew that it was about a real person. The words to the Freddy jump rope chant are:

One, two, Freddy's coming for you!
Three, four, better lock your door!
Five, six, grab your crucifix!
Seven, eight, better stay up late!
Nine, ten, you'll never sleep again!

While Freddy has most of his power when he is inside of people's dreams he can effect the real world when people are awake to a certain extent. When Nancy is awake he make her see the phone turn into a mouth.

The ending is very ambiguous about what really happened and what was a dream. Judging by what is revealed in the sequels the ending sequence was Nancy's dream and everything before that (her friends and mother getting killed) was what really happened.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Writer/Director Wes Craven first got the idea of people being killed their dreams from some articles he read in the LA Times about some people who had been complaining about nightmares and died in their sleep for seemingly no reason. Craven took the idea to all of the major studios. He says that he still has a nice stack of rejection letters saying that it's too bloody, too unbelievable, or nobody will be scarred of anything that happens in a dream. Finally New Line Cinema came up with the funding. New Line was a small film production/distribution company that Robert Shaye had started in 1969. They had made a name distributing controversial cult favorites like John Waters' Pink Flamingos.

Nightmare was shot on a shoestring budget. Most of the footage had to be shot in 3 or 4 takes, they did not have the money to shoot a lot of extra film.

Even though the special effects budget was only $50,000 there were several standout effects:

One of the most famous effects from the movie was when Tina is dragged along the ceiling as she is killed. They built the room out of mettle with 3 rotating axis. They just covered the mettle with scenery walls, to make it look like a regular bedroom. They bolted the camera, and every peace of furniture, to the floor of the room. Nick Corri, who plays her boyfriend was similarly harnessed to the floor. As Tina is dragged across the ceiling the room is upside-down and she is simply rolling around on the ceiling of an upside-down room. Since the Camera and Rod are both strapped to the floor of the room it creates the illusion that she is defying the laws of physics.

The same rotating room was re-dressed for the scene when Glen is pulled into his bed and a fountain of blood spurts out. The 'blood' was water that was died red, the effect of it shooting up like a geyser was created by turning the room upside-down. They could only shoot that scene once because they could not afford to re-paper the room and replace anything that was stained red. The effect actually got messed up, they lost control of the room; it spun out of control and blood went everywhere, fortunately it looked really cool.

One of the films coolest opticals (Special effects where an image is filmed and than changed to create an illusion) was Freddy walking through the bars of Rod's jail cell. The shot was created by blending two shots together. The first was of the area with the bars. Than they took the bars down and filmed Freddy walking through the same space. They composted and rotoscoped (blocked out selected parts of each frame) to create the illusion of Freddy passing through the bars.

The sequence where Nancy is pulled underwater in the bath tub was accomplished with a special bottomless tub. The tub was put in a bathroom set that was built over someone's swimming pool. Durring the underwater sequence Heather Langenkamp was replaced with Christina Johnson, a stuntwoman who is also married to sound effects man Charles Belardinelli.

Wes Craven wanted Freddy's makeup to look like most of the flesh has been burned away. Make-up artist David Miller could not take the makeup as far as Craven wanted so they decided to keep Freddy's face obscured in the shadows as much as possible.

Freddy's glove was built by Jim Doyle. Since Krueger was to have worked in a broiler room he wanted it to be made out of parts that he could have had easy access to. He used a work glove, copper piping and tinners rivets. The blades were made out of some steak knife blades that were turned upside-down.

Fred was the name of a boy who bullied Wes Craven in Junior High School. Krueger was a lengthening of Krug, the villain from Craven's first film The Last House on The Left

Made $26 million.

DEATHS:

Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss): Slashed with Freddy's glove, dragged up her bedroom wall and across the ceiling.

Rod Lane (Nick Corri): Freddy strangles him with his own bed sheet in his prison cell. Made to look like he hung himself.

Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp): Pulled down into his bed and squashed. Blood gushes onto the ceiling.

Marge Thompson (Ronee Blakley): Killed by Freddy as he burns up.

SEX/NUDITY

Tina (Amanda Wyss) & Rod (Nick Corri) have sex before Tina is killed. Since in a movie it is possible to have sex with underpants on, so nothing is really seen.

Nancy's breasts are seen when Freddy pulls her underwater in the tub. In the shots where you can see her breasts it is stuntwoman Christina Johnson.

Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) changes cloths before her battle with Freddy but she is facing away from the camera so all we see is her bare back and her panties.