I try, even though there's no way to stop it, I'm getting
older. One of the few upsides to getting
older is having been there in a lot of "you had to be there
eras". I was there for A Nightmare
on Elm Street and the subsequent Freddy mania.
I did not watch this in the theatres but I watched it in home media,
which reports that the movie was released on VHS in "early 1985". The
crazy thing was that I didn't need to watch it to know all about Freddy. His
glove with the blades, his "Christmas sweater", and that he killed
you in your dreams. Everyone was talking
about the movie. Was I eight years old, or nine? I don't know. What I do know
is I watched A Nightmare on Elm Street and I LOVED it. Hell, everyone did, and
this was before Freddy started cracking wise.
He was just a force of evil at this point.
What was it about this movie that had me so engrossed? I was a boy, and I know that I liked things
that were tough, mean, scary and evil. It seems logical that I would gravitate
towards the entity that was Freddy, although the movie only referred to him as
Fred Krueger when the characters spoke about him. The jump rope song was where
Freddy was coined. We were all kids so that's what we remembered, the silly
song. There's more to it though, the
dream imagery? Was this a precursor to
my liking surrealist art? It's difficult
to pin point but having watched this movie again for the first time in years
and still enjoying it says a lot about how well the movie is constructed. I'll
be brief with my little reminiscence and critique.
A group of teens, Nancy, Tina, Rod, and Glen, are terrorized
in their dreams by a dirty, scarred man with a glove that has blades attached
to the fingers. Once the teens begin to die horrifically while asleep, the
Nancy discovers that he is Fred Krueger, a child killer murdered by the
neighborhood parents years ago. He is getting revenge on the children of those
that killed him.
What I couldn't understand at eight or nine is how sexual
the movie is and how sex aggressive Freddy's taunts are to the women. The tongue flicks, the glove between the legs
in the bathtub scene, and the "I'm your boyfriend now" taunt. He's such a bastard, and definitely has
issues with women. He doesn't play with his male prey, just kills them. The
women he delays gratification by drawing out the chase. Subconsciously I think I gravitated towards
this because I love a good heroine in science fiction and horror story. Two of my favorite protagonists are Ellen
Ripley and Sarah Conner, both would be victims who faced personifications of
death and not only survived but flourished because of it. They became symbols
of hope, determination, and discipline. Will Nancy Thompson be added to this
list? Too early to tell from this first movie. She survived this encounter with
Freddy. Didn't she? Maybe? We'll catch up to her down the road. Many heroes are defined by their villains, and
there is no doubt that Freddy is demonic chaos personified.
Another aspect that I gravitate towards is the parents being
oblivious of the dangers or being impotent to help. There's a major component of the movie that
deals with ineffective parents and adult role models. The teacher, the doctor, the police, the
parents. The parents are actually to
blame for unleashing the evil upon the children although just as unforeseen
circumstances of their vigilantism.
Nancy and the rest have the added obstacles of the parents trying "to
do what's right for the kids" and thereby causing more damage than help. The parents don't realize that they are
killing their children with poor parenting.
Another example of this is the movie Kids. Truth be told my fascination
with obfuscated or ineffective parents started with the Peanuts newspaper
strip. Omnipresent parents, yet they are
never seen nor heard properly. It's fascinating to have the children in their
own worlds and the parents are actually sub-villains or obstacles to their
goals, which in the case of A Nightmare on Elm Street is survival.
There’s also the questioning of reality and the possible descent
into madness that I enjoy. I intended to keep this short and here I am rambling
incoherently in a dozen different directions. I like the movie. Sure, some of
it is rough and silly, but it retains its charm and horror. I could go on rambling but I won't. If
inclined I'll follow the series by posting more here on the blog.
-Bobgar
A Nightmare on Elm Street
is Written & Directed by: Wes Craven. It stars John Saxon, Ronee
Blakley, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, and Robert
Englund.
