A Chronology on Elm Street, Part 3

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Are you reading these blog entries in order? Well you really should be reading them in order, because, chronologically, this is actually Freddy's third outing, thus the whole "Chronology on Elm Street" thing. Pay attention.

So enough time has passed for Freddy Krueger to be little more than an urban legend, although why he waited this long to strike again is a bit of a mystery. Maybe he really does need to recharge his batteries, like an old Buick that's been parked in the barn too long. Maybe he realizes that it's a lot sexier to slasher-kill teenagers than small children, and has been waiting for all the kids on the block to grow up. Or maybe he simply craves at least a little bit of a challenge, and teenagers are way more likely to put up a fight than, say, infants, who tend to give up almost immediately when they're attacked by supernatural evil. Fucking pussies. Whatever his logic, the first of Freddy's new slate of victims is this sexy-ass blonde who really should've been the main chick because quite frankly our actual main chick is no great shakes. (Calm down, fans of this chick, I'm not saying I wouldn't fuck her, just that I probably wouldn't brag about it. Much.) It's a good thing for us that the killing begins relatively early in this movie though, because quite frankly almost nothing these kids say or do when they're not being ruthlessly slaughtered rings true, not even Hollywood true. Seriously, you'd think the screenwriter had never seen a John Hughes film, although most of those came out after this movie was released so I suppose I can't fault him for that. (Still, he does occasionally get it right: "Oh god, I look twenty years old,"says the stressed-out, sleep-deprived main chick.) At any rate, the hottie's numbskull boyfriend is next on the hit list, followed by lil' baby Johnny Depp (which will probably please anyone who's been subjected to The Rum Diary or Dark Shadows) and, finally, the main chick.

Sigh. I'll get a tampon...

If you haven't seen this movie in a while, you'll find that it's both better and worse than you remember it, leaning towards worse. The simpler dream sequences are creepy and effective, with the mild surreal logic of real dreams, and the deaths are respectably gruesome (blood geyser!), but overall not enough really happens, especially during the long, dead period between the moment when the main chick hatches her Home Alone-esque plan to "get" Freddy and when she finally carries it out. (Also, it would have been way cooler if some A-Team music played while she was setting up her jury-rigged Freddy trap.) It probably says it all that my favorite part of this movie is when Johnny Depp makes an incredibly dated cat food reference ("Chow chow chow.") that will just sound like random crazy talk to anyone born after 1980 or so.

So yeah, hardly the preeminent Nightmare on Elm Street outing. Assuming there even is one.

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Need to see more "classic" films put in their place? Right here.