If Sean Cunningham, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper defined the horror genre
in the late 70's, early 80's then Wes Craven destroyed it, not only once,
but twice, with Scream. However, before Scream, there was A Nightmare On
Elm
St and before there was the ghostface, there was Freddy Krueger, bastard
son
of 100 maniacs. Up until this point, horror was very predictable, most
films
adhered to the 'rules' of horror (if you have no idea what the rules are,
they are simply, the 'virgin' survives, if you have sex, you die, if you
drink or get high, you die and never say, "I'll be right back" cause u
won't, for more details, see Randy in the Scream Trilogy). In 1984, this
little film came out about a murderer who killed you in your
dreams.
It was a seemingly simple concept, but it was terrifying to see the main
character Nancy, (played brilliantly by a young Heather Langenkamp)
battling
not only her adversary, (the irrepressible Robert Englund) but the trauma's
of her alcoholic mother, smothering and absent father, their divorce, her
idea that she might be going crazy and sleep, as she deduces from fairly
early on that if she sleeps, she dies. Nancy was a character that you cared
about. She wasn't devoid of emotion or reduced to simply running and
screaming from her attacker, she had emotion, she had issues, she was like
most teenagers in America.
The film begins pretty typically enough. Freddy Krueger stalks those who
according to the rules, deserve what they get. Freddy himself is
frightening, with a very limited dialogue and terrifying persona. In later
sequels, he becomes a humourous villain, but in the first of the series is
where we see Krueger at his menacing best. But somewhere along the line, it
all goes haywire, culminating in the death of Glen (Johnny Depp)Nancy's
boyfriend, polite and sweet who doesn't have sex during the course of the
film.You find yourself saying,"hey this can't be right, he shouldn't be
dead". But that is exactly the kind of reaction that Craven wants from
you.
The horror, doesn't end with the apparent death of Freddy, Craven still
pays
homage to the typical ending of his genre, with the
'he's-not-quite-dead-yet'
ending, but it is the way in which he does it. Craven makes you comfortable
by having you believe that everything is ok, that it was all just a lil
dream and dreams can't really hurt you, that is until the very end. It
shocks you, leaving to come to your own deductions, similar to the ending
of
The Exorcist, it is up to you to judge who triumphed, good or
evil.
When you think about it, what was worse for Nancy, the stalking of Freddy
or
her gradual sleep depravation, how long can anyone survive in their right
mind with no sleep. Plus it also demonstrates that at the core of those
sleepy American towns, something is rotten. The image of these surbanites
in
the form of Nancy and her friends parents, forming a mob and setting fire
to
Freddy Krueger, is in a sense more frightening than the child molesting,
murdering image of Freddy himself. Craven like Stephen King, likes to
illustrate in his work that some of the most horrid things happen in small
quite towns. Maybe because around these times, America was reeling from the
emergence of numerous serial killers. Whatever the reason, this film is a
classic for so many reasons, and I dare anyone to tell me
different!!
company.
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