#58 -- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Director: Wes Craven
Rating: 5 / 5

When a friend has a horrible nightmare, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) decide to stay the night with her in order to make sure that she's okay. They don't really think much of what their friend says, until she's mysteriously murdered in her sleep. The girl's boyfriend is arrested for the murder and taken to jail, but Nancy and Glen don't believe that he had anything to do with it. One by one their friends are murdered in their sleep, and they soon start to believe that maybe, these dreams are more than what they seem. Nancy begins to have the dreams as well. They feature a terribly burned man in a striped sweater and a brown hat, and that man is Freddy Krueger. Krueger was a child murderer who was burned to death by a bunch of locals, including Nancy's parents. Now, he's back to kill them, as a way to get revenge on their parents, by entering their dreams.

Okay, that's all the synopsis you're getting, because if you don't already know everything I just said...something's wrong with you. Even non-horror-lovers know about Freddy, so where in the hell have you been? Instead of more pointless synopsis, let's get into what makes this movie so incredible. Some people (like my boyfriend, what the fuck's his problem?) think that a killer who murders kids in their dreams is stupid. I guess it could have been stupid if it had been in the wrong hands, but thankfully, it was in the hands of Wes Craven. Here's what I think happened: Wes got together with whoever else helped him here, they decided that they wanted to make a horror movie. They wanted to do some weird things, and they knew that these things were silly, but they were smart about it. They came up with an idea which allowed them to do the stupidest, silliest, and weirdest things and all of that would be A-okay. The fact that Freddy is a dream demon means that everything makes perfect sense. Even the most far-fetched things are perfectly plausible because everyone knows that nothing is impossible in your dreams. It didn't matter what they did with him, there's no way that it could have been stupid. Brilliant. 

That's what I love about these movies. There's no limit whatsoever to what Freddy can do. Anything that he does makes sense because he's always inside someone's dream. Not only does this mean that there are no stupid kills, it means that there are tons of things in these movies that you'll never seen anywhere else. These movies have the most creative and unique kill scenes that you will ever see, and I absolutely love them for that. There's always something new and inventive, and you just can't wait to see what Freddy's going to do next. Again, this is brilliant film-making. 

Another thing that everyone love about these movies is Freddy himself. He is the goofiest serial killer ever, and we love him for it. He's got a very dark sense of humor, he's goofy as hell, and he's always got something to say. He's an asshole, of course, and he's always making fun of people before he kills them, but he does it in such a hilarious way that you can't help but love him. I know that other people have attempted to have those funny killers, but none of them succeed the way that Freddy does. In most cases, those killers end up not being funny at all. In the rare cases that they are actually funny, it only makes them less scary and ruins the horror aspect of the movie. Here, though, everything is executed absolutely perfectly. Freddy is funny as hell, but he's still scary. I don't know how they succeeded at this, but I can only assume it's because they're geniuses. 

Sometimes, when a series goes on for so long, people start to get bored with it. They're tired of seeing the same killer kill basically the same characters movie after movie, and always in the same way. That can't happen here, which is another great thing about it. Because of the dream aspect, with the limitless ways that Freddy can kill, he will never get old. They can keep making these movies for hundreds of years, and as long as someone has new ideas for Freddy's kills, there will always be something different and exciting. As long as it doesn't get into the wrong hands, Freddy will live forever. 

I didn't see these movies as early on in my life as I did Friday the 13th, but I was still pretty young. I still feel like I grew up with Freddy as well, so all these movies have a special place in my heart. I loved them then, I love them now, and I will love them forever. Freddy Krueger is one hell of a killer, one funny motherfucker, and it's no wonder he's become so iconic in the horror world. He's awesome, end of story. And Robert Englund played the part so brilliantly that it is completely, 100% impossible not to love him.