Some films need to be reviewed twice, or even several times; with each generation, there may be a new way to interpret it. Approaching it 30 years after the fact, Nightmare on Elm Street has only become further distinguished from its era and the genre it spawned in the years since its release. Though its immense popularity at the time is doubtlessly due to Robert Englund’s performance as Freddy Krueger, its enduring appeal can be chalked up to its wit, its intelligence, and its uncommon sensitivity to the pain and suffering of its teenage victims. Even after Happiness, American Beauty, and almost countless indie dramas, Elm Street makes the most trenchant statements about living in the suburbs that any American film has ever made, and it makes it with the clarity that only a slasher film could.
The set-up for an Elm Street film (pretty much all of them) is a simple one, and was more or less perfected in the initial film (in contrast, it took Friday the 13th three movies before Jason even wore a hockey mask); sexy, fun-loving teens have their good times cut short by an ominous, blade wielding psychopath, presumably as revenge for not being horribly disfigured, friendless, and having better sex than derelicts are known to have. In this case, the teens at risk are good old standbys dork Glen (Johnny Depp), slut Tina (Amanda Wyss), jock Rod (Nick Corri), and smart virgin Nancy (Heather Langenkamp). They are targeted by Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child molester and murderer who was burned alive by their parents for his transgressions, and has now returned to take revenge on their children. The central dynamic is not dissimilar from that of Friday the 13th and Halloween, but what elevates Krueger from the pack is the way that the film adopts the archetypes and scenarios of the genre, and then inverts their politics.
By now, the rules of the slasher film have been fairly well established: if you have sex (and worse, like it), you’ll be punished by the omniscient blade of a maniac. In the case of most other films, that’s arguably a natural facet of the film’s worldview: the teenagers who were preyed upon were rarely personified in greater detail than the largely mute killers that were their end (before this, the most notable exception was Black Christmas). But while Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are basically large children, Krueger is an adult, physically more powerful and intellectually more advanced than his prey, with nearly omnipotent power over them. And he is only one of a long series of negligent and inept adults in this film, and maybe not even the worst one; that title arguably belongs to the parents (John Saxon and Ronee Blakely), who are frequently too busy boozing or working to pay too much attention to what’s happening to their children. By their own defaults, they enable Krueger to go on his killing spree, laying down their own children as a sacrifice to maintain their lifestyle of frivolity. By an admittedly simple turn, the slasher film is transformed from a conservative moral play in which death is a just punishment to a sad and frighteningly accurate portrait of an America that seems ready and willing to demonize its children for expressing an interest in sex but totally disinterested in educating them about it or even acting as a positive force in their lives.
To the credit of the filmmakers, it is not Krueger who forces the adults to reveal what they know about his existence (initially, they try to convince the children that they are crazy when they tell them what's happening to them), nor is it even a sense of collective guilt or preservation; it’s Nancy, who’s already taken it upon herself to figure all of this out against the conspiracy of housewives. While the character clearly takes something from Jamie Lee Curtis’s good girl Laurie from Halloween, she perhaps takes even more from Dorothy, Wendy, and Alice; a girl lost in a dream world who is old enough to keep herself grounded, but youthful enough to accept it on its own terms. In a world of corruption, denial, and ignorance that feeds the likes of Krueger so easily, Nancy is a reason for hope in the future, and for the survival of sexy teenagers everywhere. If Freddy is the face of the franchise, Nancy is clearly the heart, and among the only worthy opponents to a more popular villain in the history of slasherdom.
Even if the series (and the genre itself) has devolved into little more than a dumping ground for popsicle stick puns and kills with diminishing returns, it pays to go back to the original, even if the boilerplate remains essentially the same. It retains its palpable sense of not only evil but outrage, even with an ending that still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Nightmare has been released on DVD numerous times, and has retained most of the special features from those releases. The disc features the documentaries "The House That Freddy Built", "Never Sleep Again", and "Night Terrors" (all of which are solid documentaries, particularly "Never Sleep Again"), as well as two feature commentaries (one filmmakers, one cast and crew), along with alternate takes, alternate endings, and an interactive trivia track. Needless to say, the disc is not suffering for bonus features, but having said that, there’s an inescapable feeling of ‘tie-in’ going on here. The remake is mentioned directly on the back of the box, and the disc comes with movie cash you can use towards seeing it. Also, I don’t know what materials they had to work with, but I couldn’t help but feel that the transfer could have been a little sharper. I would by no means dissuade you from buying this disc (especially if you’ve never seen it before), but for the pure collector, I have the feeling that something bigger might be down the pipeline (potentially for the sequel to the remake).
"A Nightmare on Elm Street" is on sale April 13, 2010 and is rated R. Horror. Written and directed by Wes Craven. Starring Amanda Wyss, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Nick Corri, Robert Englund, Ronee Blakely.
