Happy Halloween my little air-breathers.

This week, I decided to review another of my personal favorites…A Nightmare on Elm Street!

Let me first say Fred Kruger is an enterprising young demon and quite handy with the tools, too. For those of you in a Turkish prison for the past 20 years, the plotline goes a little something like this: Fred Kruger is a very dapper demon with a fetching sweater and finger claws (that he made himself!!) and burned face that haunts teenagers through their dreams. Before being a demon, he allegedly murdered like 20 children and was hunted down and burned by their parents in retaliation. I personally think he was set-up; he probably only killed 7 or 8. 20 is just boring.

Anywho, Fred stalks the dreams of Nancy, Tina, Glen (a very young Johnny Depp) and Rod. He kills Tina first after she makes sweet love to young strapping Guido-wannabe Rod. This scene is truly insipred and I love that Wes Craven likely borrowed the set from Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling" video. She gets drug bleeding across the ceiling, as Rod grabs his package and screams...Ahhhh...it makes me long for the gravity free days of the Dark Ages...but that is another story.

Rod gets thrown in jail by Nancy's father (I am very glad they decided to make all cops in this movie, short, paunchie, balding and uber reactionary). So while Fred kills Rod in jail, Nancy and Johnny Depp devise some plan to kill Fred that cannot hope to work. Depp falls asleep, gets sucked into the bed by Fred, and then expectorated in a million bloody pieces everywhere (a truly classic scene). Nancy runs around screaming which leads Fred around through multiple boobie traps, sets him on fire, locks him in the basement, and… eventually… kills him after he eats her mom (sort of)....or does she? Nope! It was all a dream and Fred now posseses the car nancy is driving away in....DAMN! I mean YAY!!! I love it when the bad guys win especially when they are awesome and sarcastic and hilarious.

I read somewhere this movie was made for $1 million. Impressive. Even though the blood looks like Hawaiian Punch, the effects I think are pretty well done. Craven did an excellent job creating some really creepy moments, like when Fred's hands and face make impressions on the wall above the girls bed…inspired work. Also inspired is the scene when he is walking down an alley with his spaghetti-stretched arms out, making that scratchie noise. This is a character, Fred Kruger (no, I am not calling him “Freddie”, saps - he is Fred - that is way more Goth), that is truly one for the ages, frightening AND funny at the same time. I dare Dracula, Frankenstein, Michael Myers, or Jason to pull that off.

While I love this movie what with the great memorable scenes, the scary nursery rhymes, the awesome villain, the wonderful use of sheep early in the movie, and teenage angst cured by some nighttime murder, this film does have its negatives. First and foremost, while I love that the bad guy wins, the movie was all a dream and everything won't be okay??? Bleh. I haven't seen that like a trillion times. I have been involved in many horrific situations like when Chupacabra and I ate an entire Guatamalan village. And I can tell you, nothing ever ends as a dream. I know, I get it…the movie is about a demon killing people in their dreams, but still, unimaginative and derivitive. Also, Nancy's dad's comb-over is offensive…even to a Zombie whose hair smells like a dead muskrat’s butthole. Wes Craven SHOULD have had her father have a beard down to his knees and pluck a banjo. That would have been more fun.

In conclusion, great movie that reinvigorated a genre, still almost as funny as it was scary (maybe horror movies to me are comedy...hmm...something to explore), with some truly classic horror scenes that has a sucky ending. I give it 4 out of 5 dangling eyeballs. 4 and a half if I could.

Forever yours,
~Laz