Mutants, I am ashamed to admit this but in the two summers we've been watching horror double features we have not watched a Wes Craven film. We've hit pretty much all the other greats, actor, director, writer and otherwise: John Carpenter, Stephen King, Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Stuart Gordon, Alfred Hitchcock, Tom Holland, Larry Cohen, William Lustig, Sean S. Cunningham, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kane Hodder, Frank Henenlotter, Vincent Price and Clive Barker. And yet we had failed to watch a single film by Wes Craven. With all that he has contributed to the horror genre, this is blasphemy. We are going to fix this mistake this weekend by showing the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" from 1984 along with continuing our journey through season 4 of Stranger Things, by watching episodes 3 and 4. We will be serving mid-western cuisine namely Indiana and Ohio where the two pieces of cinema takes place. This means get ready for meat and starch on starch goodness.
Yes we are watching the classic, the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" the movie about a vengeful spirit child murderer with knives for fingers who punishes those who wronged him in life by entering into their child's dreams. And no matter what anyone says it's not a slasher dammit!
I am will say that "Nightmare on Elm Street" helped fuel the slasher genre when it was going through it's first slump, and before it went through it's second supernatural faze, and there are slasher elements in the film, certainly, but I would argue that there just isn't enough here to call "Nightmare on Elm Street" a slasher. It is more akin to Clive Barker's "Candyman," a film we discussed at he beginning of the summer, that has aspects of the slasher but is classified as urban horror.
Let's just look at the elements of the slasher and compare it to the Wes Craven classic.
These are the 10 elements of a true slasher film.
An Other, typically masked, and difficult to kill who's purpose is to kill possibly for revenge, but perhaps just because they are an entity of evil.
A group of young people either in college or high school who we don't care about that get killed throughout the movie in creative ways.
The audience wants to see these characters die because they are either: morally loose with sex and drugs, rude, arrogant and/or pretentious, or ineptly stupid, as Wes Craven would later famously quote in his postmodern slasher masterpiece "Scream:" they run up the stairs instead of through the front door.
Their weapon of choice is male and phallic to represent the conservative male patriarchy that must hold the rebellious liberal younger generation in check.
There must be a final girl who survives the ordeal to warn the next group of hopeless teens in the sequel. The key word here is survive, not overcome. The final girl is not more clever than her group of friends, she is more innocent and pure and that is what keeps her alive by the end of the film, not her brains or strength.
A safe place becoming unsafe: school, suburbs, summer camp.
Typically this takes place over a short period of time. This is actually a key difference between slashers and the 90s replacement the Serial Killer Thriller which can take place over months of time, even years or more. An example of this is the 2007 masterpiece "Zodiac," which happens over the course of 15 years.
It typically has a gimmick for marketing: it's on a train (Terror Train), has hip disco music (Prom Night), it takes place on Halloween (Carpenter's Halloween).
A severe lack of communication or the inability to communicate. "Oh my god the power is out!" or "I can't get a signal to dial 911!" Even though you can always dial to an emergency number even if you do not have a signal on a cell phone. The invention of the cell phone has really destroyed the slasher genre as a whole. Someone died? Better call 911, because I can because it's passed 2006. Those who point out these discrepancies though really do miss the point of good genre movie. Genres are about world building, if you are in a slasher movie, the phones do not work and they cannot save you. Just like there is no god only luck in a film noir film, in a Bond movie spies are well-dressed, drink to excess, and never have liver problems and women are all extremely desirable. Funny how feminists will go after slashers for being sexist but they completely ignore the James Bond franchise for the same kind of irreverent fun. An example of this was when Halle Barry was tickled to be in "Die Another Day" and had no problem with the misogyny in that movie. The feminist community applauded her for becoming the first African American woman to become a Bond girl, no Grace Jones as May Day in 1985s "A View to a Kill" was Jamaican. Critics applaud the James Bond franchise for being adventurous and tongue-in-cheek meanwhile many to this day scorn the 80s slasher for doing the exact same thing.
This brings us to the finality of it all. Slashers by their very nature are sexist. Women are either pure and innocent, sluts or prudes, (I'm looking at you "Friday the 13th Part III"). We accept this within the genre just as we accept the blatant racism regarding indigenous people in the classic western. It was a product of its time and is part of the world that makes up that genre. Both are fantasy. Both should not be considered mainstream, but a part of significance in the history of entertainment.
I will freely admit that slashers do not have to have all of these traits to be a slasher. But a slasher must stand up to most of these and other genres shouldn't pop into an audience member's head while watching it. It must truly have the spirit of the slasher. We discussed earlier this year how "Candyman" is about the fear of an urban environment and that element superseded everything else that could make it a slasher film. I believe "Nightmare on Elm Street" is the same. It has elements of the slasher, but it is a different beast entirely.
So let's really look at "Nightmare on Elm Street," and see if it holds up to the slasher test.
There is an other. He's not masked, but he is vicious and his burned face could be seen as a mask of sorts. Certainly the red and green sweater, fedora, and clawed hand make him iconic, so sure it fits here.
Here is one of the big differences in the movie. I care about who dies. And if you look at it "Nightmare on Elm Street" has a relatively low body count for a slasher film (4), which in my opinion builds the suspense rather than shocks us with something disturbing. Yes the character of Tina, played by Amanda Wyss, has an iconic kill after she has animal sex with her boy friend Rod Lane, played to Cro-Magnon perfection by Nick Corri, but the death is horrifying, not sensational like Kevin Bacon's Demise in the original "Friday the 13th". To top it off the kids here aren't making that dumb of mistakes regarding the killer other than falling asleep, which is a matter of constitution not intelligence. Tina and Rod are in a toxic relationship and it's unwise that they are making mad animalistic love in Tina's mother's bed while the mother herself is partying it up in Vegas, but they aren't going to the dark cellar to "get it on" during a power outage, nor are they leaving the safety of the bedroom to investigate a strange noise. They aren't Scooby Doing it by splitting up. They are having consensual sex in the safety of a bedroom. Beyond all of that we care about the couple Nancy Thompson, played by Heather Langenkamp and Glen Lantz, played by Johnny Depp in his first ever film role. Even if Glen is unreliable, these characters are not making inherently bad decisions, though Tina and Rod are not the sharpest knives in the drawer. I don't think these characters are dumb like in most slashers, especially not Nancy who is the most intelligent and resourceful of the bunch.
Yes slashers use slashing weapons, but Freddy's knives for fingers are more about fear and control as opposed to sex and morality. Robert Englund, the man who has played the character since 1984 has gone into this in many an interview. It's not about being male getting that sexual release, he's a rapist a self-described "bastard son of a thousand maniacs" and it's about power, it's about the violation, as it is with any sexual predator. Kruger is about the the violation of being in his victim's bed, in his victim's mind and he doesn't just quickly stab his victims he toys with them. He drags Tina around the wall and ceiling as if he were Fred Astaire in "The Royal Wedding" leaving a trail of crimson in his wake. He pulls Glen into what can only be described as a sinkhole in the middle of the bed and then a fountain of blood erupts from the mattress. He reaches for Nancy in-between her legs through the water, in a bathtub while she's sleeping, just the knifed glove and the cuff of Freddy's sleeve visible as it creeps closer to his victim. Freddy will not quickly kill his prey but slowly engages in a kind of foreplay to savor the perverse transgression of entering into his victim's psyche and subconscious. Actually the films just refer to him as a child killer, because that is how the parents who put him to death refer to him as, but there is enough implication here that he's a rapist. It just becomes yet another detail the parents don't fully communicate to their children. The power of a sexual predator does not come the brutish strength of the phallus, it comes from the caress of the back of the hand or a hot harsh whisper in someone's ear. It's not hard and stiff like a machete (Friday the 13th part anything after the first one) a butcher knife (Halloween) or even a pitchfork (The Prowler). Jason takes his metaphoric manhood and thrusts it inside you forcing the will of the patriarchy into society. Freddy doesn't do that. He softly glides his knife fingers down your cheek and teases you with a sick joke or pun. This is evident in "Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy's Revenge" where the protagonist this time isn't Nancy, but a kid named Jesse who is implicated to be a gay male in the closet. If he were part of the conservative patriarchy Freddy would have shamed young Jesse, no, he doesn't do that, he instead plays with that idea, caressing his mouth softly with a single blade, suggesting oral pleasure as Jesse shivers in fear. Freddy simply doesn't represent the traditional male patriarchy; it was the patriarchy that killed him, turning him into a vengeful spirit. The conservative patriarchy wants Jason to kill all the fornicating and drinking teenagers, Mike Myers represents the dark side of humanity as a whole and the victims are slutty defenseless teenagers who drink, fuck and smoke pot. The patriarchy sees this as tragic but business as usual and if only those teenagers hadn't brought it upon themselves in the first place. Freddy is a child molester, getting even with the patriarchy by going after their children in their dreams.
The final girl survives through her ingenuity not her morality. No ,she doesn't have sex with Glen in the film, but it is implied that they have had sex before. She is merely mature about it and ethical about it, as opposed to moral. Sex is great, if the timing is right, not while they are house-sitting and supporting her friend Tina. And though Glen is annoyed at not getting a little action Nancy is seen as being correct here not prudish or hung up on female hysterics, (again looking at you Friday the 13th Part III).
The events happen in a safe place becoming unsafe, in this case the suburbs, your bedroom, the bathtub, or your dreams take your pick.
The timing is all wrong for this to be a slasher. This is not a single night of fear. The movie takes place over what is approximately a week of events so that the sleep deprivation obstacle can be used effectively. This is not "one night when the killer came to town." this is "you have to sleep sometime Nancy, my pretty Nancy. "You were always my favorite."
There is a marketing gimmick. It takes place in your dreams. This film like all horror movies of the 80s was marketed as a slasher. The only horror movies of the time period that were successful and not advertised as a slasher were ones the studio didn't spend money on to market and gained their success through word of mouth, such as last weeks vampire flick "Fright Night."
There is a lack of communication between people, and there is a very important scene where Nancy cannot get ahold of her boyfriend because his father puts the phone off the hook. So there is a case here, but it's not as drastic as the power going out, or no cell reception in a remote area and Nancy can reach law enforcement if she needs to. It's just the law won't believe her because Freddy's dead. Silly hysterical little girl. This is a case where the adults refuse to believe her, not that she is helpless and no one is available to be reached to come save her.
Finally, this is not a sexist movie. Nancy Thompson is one of genre entertainment's strongest female stars, right up there with Ripley in "Alien" or Sarah Conner in "Terminator". She controls her fear and goes up against Fred Kruger, standing toe-to-toe with him, pulling him into this world, and goes "Home Alone" on his ass booby-trapping her entire house and ultimately setting him on fire and killing him just as her parents had done, even as he comes back, smoldering from the netherworld to claim his revenge, she tells him that it was fear that made him powerful and she "...takes away any bit of fear [she] ever gave him. You're nothing Kruger. You're shit." And he dissolves back from whence he came. Yes there's the stupid jump-scare at the end of the movie, but in terms of franchise cohesion (Heather reprises the role of Nancy Thompson in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) we have to assume that was a dream and not reality, much like the equally silly jump scare at the end of "Friday the 13th."
I really see only three strong cases for "Nightmare on Elm Street" being a slasher and it mainly has to do with the idea that Fred Kruger played to such great effect by Robert Englund has created a character we enjoy watching. This is a credit to Englund who made a child molester charismatic, much how Anthony Hopkins would do in "Silence of the Lambs" seven years later with a cannibal.
The movie also takes something safe and makes it terrifying, and there's a strong marketing gimmick with something being after you in your dreams. The original poster shows Nancy Thompson in her bed holding the covers to her chin while Fred Kruger's claw is hanging above her with the quote: If Nancy doesn't wake up screaming, she won't wake up at all.
So what genre is "Nightmare on Elm Street?" is it simply a horror film? No, horror is a genre filled to the brim with sub-genres. Nearly every horror film can be put into a subgenre: slasher, serial killer thriller, sci-fi horror, body horror, zombie film, vampire western, and I could go on. I'm going to argue that "Nightmare on Elm Street" is a kids-on-bikes movie, which is why "Stranger Things" has done so much to parody it this fourth season. Episode three and four really hit this home with a very special guest appearance that I won't spoil here.
What? Kids-on-bikes? You mean like "E.T?" I can hear some of you say. I would remind those naysayers that Stephen King's "It" is also a kids-on-bikes movie. Just look at "Nightmare on Elm Street". The kids are left to their own devices, spending the night at others' houses with no adult supervision. Nancy's father passive aggressively says to his ex-wife "I'd love to know what my kid was doing shacking up with three other kids in the middle of the night, especially a delinquent like Lane!" John Saxon plays Nancy's father, the town Sheriff. He is a man who deeply cares about his daughter and wants to protect her, but is dismissive if she has any real information on the murders, I mean she's just a little girl and girls need to go to school, be good, and not give opinions about open murder investigations. That's for men to do. This is a man who is stuck in the conservative patriarchy which caused this problem in the first place, by taking taking matters into their own hands in the form of a lynch mob when Fred Kruger was released on a technicality. There's actually a lot of victim shaming in the police office scene where we first meet Nancy's father. Both parents are needling each other rather than solving the issue. Nancy's mother, played by Ronee Blakely, deflects Saxon's accusations, and Saxon acts as if his daughter is a porcelain doll who put herself into a dangerous situation where she could be easily broken and not a human being with friendships and Saxon is the good parent here. Gesh.
Nancy's mother is a raging abusive alcoholic usually seen drinking cheap vodka straight from the bottle. She was neglectful of Nancy at the beginning of the film and then spirals into being cruelly overbearing locking her daughter in from the inside with deadbolts on the doors and bars on the windows, so that she will stay home from school, stay away from her supportive if somewhat clueless boyfriend (a rarity in 80s horror movies) who lives across the street, and finally get some goddamn sleep, which of course will kill her. When Nancy rebukes this and asks questions about Freddy her mother, with vacant hurt eyes, slaps her and then cries and tries to pretend that she is the victim. That her daughter's behavior forced her to be slapped. She is the classic woe-is-me-alcoholic.
Tina's parents are worse. Her mother is often out of town and when she is home it's implied she fucks whomever is available. Her father has been missing for over a decade. When Tina wakes up from a nightmare at the beginning of the film with a torn nightgown in the shape of Freddy's fingers her mother scowls at her daughter and says "you've gotta cut your fingernails or stop that kind of dreamin'. One or the other." It's so calloused it makes you want to scream.
Rod Lane doesn't seem to have parents so uhhh there's that. He's in prison and no one comes to see him except his friends, if you can call Nancy and Glen that. Does he have any parents at all? The movie implies no.
Glen has the best set of parents. A worried anxious mother and a blustering father who says "You just got to be firm with these kids that's all. Let's go." He leaves the phone off the hook and he and his wife are leaving late at night to??? Go somewhere???
Bad parenting abound in this film. One of the major tropes of the kids-on-bikes subgenre.
Also no cars. The only car in the movie where kids are able to drive it, is Glen's car. He is the one who can drive. No one else does, and cars are not a common part of teenage life in the film. It's just the one red hotrod, that's in precisely two scenes. When Glen drops Nancy and Tina off at school and the jump scare at the end of the film. Classic kids-on-bikes, someone older has slightly more status because of a vehicle and they need that person to get to someplace. My guess is Glen is 16 Tina and Heather 15 and Rod a super senior of between 18 and 20 with a rap sheet. Classic kids-on-bikes trope. If this were a slasher they would all be in cars and beer would have been involved. They'd all be precisely 16 and they'd all be very stupid. The kids don't drink at all in this movie, in fact the only one who does is Nancy's mother the alcoholic. These kids are in honors English class and Nancy wears a Letterman's jacket that Glen never gives her. She's a successful athlete with decent grades. Her athletic skills really come into play as she can hold her own physically with Fred Kruger once he is pulled from the dream world into the real world. These are all the stereotypes from kids-on-bikes: the academic, the boyfriend, the girl from the broken home, the super senior, neglectful and abusive parents. They are all here. There is no slut, stoner, athlete, and our final girl is not a naïve fantasy of moral innocence but someone who is tough yet feminine and able to hold her old against a vile other such as Fred Kruger.
And where did the idea come from? Urban legends like the slasher? Nope obscure headlines tucked in the back of the L.A. Times regarding Hmong refugees who due to PTSD from Vietnam, suffered from severe nightmares. Some of these victims claimed they were afraid to go to sleep, afraid they would die in their dreams and then you know what, they did precisely that. Though those articles would eventually turn into urban legend, caused by entities called the shadow people, which would not become popularized until the early 2000s thanks to Art Bell on his late night radio show "Coast to Coast AM".
Craven always the academic went to work pulling from everything he could regarding dreams and nightmares. From the slow running victims in their dreams, the sticky stairs that Nancy steps into where sludge comes up to her knees trapping her as Freddy looms overhead, to the long fingernails and shadowy sinuates, the bleating lambs representing the innocence of the children, everything in this film and really any Craven Film has a purpose. He even goes so far as to have Shakespeare read in a very powerful scene where Lin Shaye would play a memorable cameo as the caring English teacher. Which gave the well read horror director the opportunity to reference themes of lies, going against nature, and the insignificance of ones place in the universe by referencing both Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and "Hamlet."
Before he was a famous horror movie writer and director Wes Craven was an educator. He was an English professor at Westminster college in New Wilmington Pennsylvania, a humanities professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam New York, and a high school English teacher at Madrid-Waddington High School also in New York. He researches every movie he's ever written. He does have a talent for fear, but more than that he has a knack for academic research, going so far as to choose the colors red and green for Freddy's sweater because an article in "Scientific American" stated that they were the most jarring for the human eye.
He also pulled from his own experiences. Fred Kruger was the name of a bully from his childhood and an old man who had scared him and all the neighbor kids as a child. And the best choice of all. Freddy would not wear a mask. He wanted to be able to see his face, to know who the villain was. There was still a mask of sorts with the incredible make-up done by David B. Miller, but Craven wanted to see the killer's face. After many auditions Wes finally chose Robert Englund a classically trained actor on the regional theater circuit as opposed to the usual choice of a stuntman to play the role of the Other ( such as Kane Hodder in the Friday the 13th Franchise for example, who was also ironically considered for the role).
Yet even with all the talent that was coming together Craven, who was near broke at this point in his life, even after directing such great films as "The Last House on the Left," "The Hills Have Eyes" and "The Swamp Thing" needed funding for this new project. All the major studios rejected it. Paramount wasn't interested as they thought it was too similar to their current project "Dreamscape." Universal said the writing wasn't very good but that they would be happy to screen it after he got a finished product as they admired Craven as a director.
It was finally Robert Shaye a former copyright lawyer who owned an independent company called New Line Cinema which had never produced a film, only distributed, agreed to back Craven's movie. After finding investors in England and ahem....the mafia, (who had backed other horror classics "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and the original "Friday the 13th" film) they raised the 1.1 million dollars needed. The film would gross 57 million at the box office and millions more after that in video sales and rentals.
Heather LangenKamp would go on to be a moderately successful actress revising her role as Nancy two more times in "Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors," and "New Nightmare." She would also get a lot of work as make-up prosthetics artist.
John Saxon would continue to be a great prolific character actor in such films as Beverly Hills Cop III, and television guest appearances in "Murder She Wrote" "Matlock" "Melrose Place" and "CSI." Unfortunately after this film his great roles from such films as "Black Christmas," "Enter the Dragon," and "Tenebrae" would be a thing of the past. Like many great actors when you became a character actor in a horror film in the 80s you were on your way down, but he would continue to work until his death in 2020 from pneumonia.
Johnny Depp would of course end up being one of Hollywood's most amazing movie stars playing such parts as "Edward Scissor Hands" and Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean." He still to this day thanks the late Wes Craven for giving him his start in motion pictures.
Ronee Blakely as the alcoholic mother of Nancy Thompson would go on to be in "A Return to Salem's Lot" and some television appearances in "Trapper John, M.D". the spinoff of M*A*S*H* and "Tales from the Darkside." Her acting career was also on the decline from her Academy Award Nominated role in "Nashville" nearly a decade earlier. She would end up focusing on other endeavors in music, gay rights activism, gaining a masters degree from California State University and focusing on her family and raising her daughter.
Amanda Wyss would have a great career in the 80s with such great films as "Silverado" and my favorite "Better Off Dead" where she would play the unattainable Beth opposite John Cusack. The 90s she slows down with films like "Shakima" and guest starring in television programs such as "Quantum Leap," "Murder She Wrote," and in the 2000s it would be "Diagnosis Murder" "Dexter," "Major Crimes," and "Murder in the First" where she is continuing to be a working actress mostly working as a guest star in television.
Nick Corri would develop a drug problem that he would eventually conquer within the next year. In the documentary "Never Sleep Again" he would boast being clean and sober for 25 years. He is still a working actor and had quite a career in horror and action in such films as "Predator 2," "Vampire in Brooklyn" "Collateral Damage" and "We Were Soldiers." As well as guest starring in television in "Miami Vice," "Murder She Wrote," "JAG" "Crossing Jordan" and "CSI: NY". Much of his time now is spent on producing film for the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, of which he is an ordained minister. Whether or not he is a part of a cult doesn't really seem to matter as he appears to very happy with his life and satisfied with his prolific career.
Lin Shaye would go on to be an amazing character actress and star in such films as: "Critters," the "Insidious" franchise, "There's Something About Mary," and "Kingpin." She is still working to this day at the age of 79.
David B Miller would go on to do make-up and special effects for such films as: The "Terminator," "Doom," and "Batman & Robin."
Robert Shaye would go on to be one of the best producers and own one of the best independent production companies in Hollywood, New Line Cinema, which would be known as "The House Freddy Built." Their biggest success would come in the early 2000s when they would produce the ambitious "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Wes Craven would become one of our greatest Horror directors and writers with such great films as: The Scream franchise, Red Eye, and "The Serpent and the Rainbow." He would die in 2015 from a brain tumor. He was 76 years old.
And finally Robert Englund would go off in horror history embracing his Freddy persona. The rest of his career would be spent either playing Freddy in various sequels, or playing homage to Freddy in various horror and genre spots throughout the rest of his great career as a character actor. A regular at horror conventions he is considered one of the nicest guys in the business.
So let's get this straight mutants. "Nightmare on Elm Street" does have some slasher elements: a larger than life other, a safe setting becoming unsafe, a marketing gimmick and a lack of communication. It also rejuvenated the slasher movement which moved from a killer in a mask to something more supernatural and grotesque. But with the smarter than average kids, the lack of sexism throughout and neglectful parenting "Nightmare on Elm Street" is a kids-on-bikes movie. Just like Stephen King's "It". Just like "Goonies." Just like "Sandlot." "Nightmare on Elm Street" is cinema's most frightening kids-on-bikes adventure.
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