A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Director:

Wes Craven

Writer:

Wes Craven (written by)

Release Date:

16 November 1984 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

She is the only one who can stop it... if she fails, no one survives.

Plot:

In the dreams of his victims, a specteral child murderer stalks the children of the members of the lynch mob that killed him.

Plot Keywords:

Dream | Nightmare | Freddy Krueger | Death | Victim

Awards:

2 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

John Saxon	...	Lt. Thompson
Ronee Blakley	...	Marge Thompson
Heather Langenkamp	...	Nancy Thompson
Amanda Wyss	...	Tina Gray
Jsu Garcia	...	Rod Lane (as Nick Corri)
Johnny Depp	...	Glen Lantz
Charles Fleischer	...	Dr. King
Joseph Whipp	...	Sgt. Parker
Robert Englund	...	Fred Krueger
Lin Shaye	...	Teacher
Joe Unger	...	Sgt. Garcia
Mimi Craven	...	Nurse (as Mimi Meyer-Craven)
Jack Shea	...	Minister
Ed Call	...	Mr. Lantz
Sandy Lipton	...	Mrs. Lantz
David Andrews	...	Foreman
Jeff Levine	...	Coroner (as Jeffrey Levine)
Donna Woodrum	...	Tina's Mom
Shashawnee Hall	...	Cop #1
Carol Pritikin	...	Cop #2
Brian Reise	...	Cop #3
Ash Adams	...	Surfer #1 (as Jason Adams)
Don Hannah	...	Surfer #2
Leslie Hoffman	...	Hall Guard
Paul Grenier	...	Tina's Mom's Boyfriend
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
John Richard Petersen	...	John, Kid in Classroom (uncredited)
Antonia Yannouli	...	Girl in Nancy's English class (uncredited)

Directed by
Wes Craven

Writing credits
Wes Craven		(written by)

Produced by
John Burrows	....	associate producer
Stanley Dudelson	....	executive producer
Sara Risher	....	co-producer
Robert Shaye	....	producer
Joseph Wolf	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Charles Bernstein

Cinematography by
Jacques Haitkin

Film Editing by
Patrick McMahon		(co-editor) (as Pat McMahon)
Rick Shaine

Casting by
Annette Benson

Production Design by
Gregg Fonseca		(as Greg Fonseca)

Set Decoration by
Anne H. Ahrens		(as Anne Huntley)

Costume Design by
Dana Lyman

Makeup Department
Kathryn Fenton	....	makeup artist (as Kathy Logan)
RaMona Fleetwood	....	key hair stylist (as RaMona)
David B. Miller	....	special makeup effects artist (as David Miller)
Mark Wilson	....	makeup effects assistant
Louis Lazzara	....	special makeup effects artist (uncredited)
Mark Shostrom	....	foam latex technician (uncredited)

Production Management
John Burrows	....	production manager
Amy Rabins	....	production supervisor
Rachel Talalay	....	assistant production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Nicholas Batchelor	....	first assistant director (as Nick Batchelor)
Peter C. Graupner	....	second assistant director

Art Department
Dorree Cooper	....	set dresser
Don Diers	....	art department assistant
Bill Kroyer	....	storyboard artist
Kara Lindstrom	....	assistant props
Michael Listorti	....	swing gang (as Michael E. Listorti)
Timaree McCormick	....	assistant props
Gavin McCune	....	swing gang
Barbara Metzenbaum	....	art department assistant
Mix	....	set carpenter
John Krenz Reinhart Jr.	....	construction coordinator (as John Reinhart)
John Stadelman	....	prop master
Craig Clark	....	storyboard artist (uncredited)

Sound Department
Jack Cooley	....	sound re-recording mixer
James LaRue	....	sound mixer
Al Nahmias	....	sound editor (as Albert Nahmias)
Greg Nave	....	boom operator
Abe Nejad	....	assistant sound editor
Jess Soraci	....	supervising sound editor
Karen I. Stern	....	looping editor

Special Effects by
Tassilo Baur	....	special effects assistant
Charles Belardinelli	....	special effects assistant
Lou Carlucci	....	special effects assistant
Jim Doyle	....	mechanical special effects design
Peter Kelly	....	special effects assistant
Larry Lapointe	....	special effects assistant
Christina Rideout	....	special effects assistant
Jim Rynning	....	special effects assistant
James Upham	....	special effects assistant
William Guest	....	special effects assistant (uncredited)

Stunts
Cynthia Brannon	....	stunts
Bruce Carson	....	stunts
Tony Cecere	....	stunt coordinator
Tony Cecere	....	stunts
Kerrie Cullen	....	stunts
Jeff Habberstad	....	stunts
Leslie Hoffman	....	stunts
Christina Johnson	....	stunts
Maggie Koehnen	....	stunts
Larry Phillips	....	stunts
Don Pike	....	stunts
Christina Rideout	....	stunts
Tanya Russell	....	stunts (as Tanya Lee Russell)
Paul Shaver	....	stunts
Jim Stern	....	stunts (as Jim Stearns)
Cindy Wills	....	stunts
Sandy Wilson	....	stunts
Debby Porter	....	stunts (uncredited)
George A. Sack Jr.	....	stunt driver (uncredited)

Camera and Electrical Department
Joseph Adolph	....	best boy grip
Scott Buttfield	....	gaffer
Anne S. Coffey	....	first assistant camera (as Anne Coffey)
Stephen Crawford	....	gaffer: second unit (as Steve Crawford)
Nelson Elwell	....	grip
Rowdy Herrington	....	best boy electric
Warren Kroeger	....	grip
Cindy Lagerstrom	....	key grip: second unit
Joyce Rudolph	....	still photographer
Henning Schellerup	....	camera operator: second unit
Toni Semple	....	electrician
Thomas Vanghele	....	second assistant camera (as Tom Vanghele)
Craig Horwitz	....	set lighting (uncredited)

Casting Department
Lauren Roman	....	casting assistant

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Lisa Jensen	....	costume supervisor
Terence McCorry	....	costumer

Editorial Department
James Flatto	....	apprentice editor
Kevin Krasny	....	editorial assistant: Los Angeles
Alison Paul	....	apprentice editor
Valerie Schwartz	....	assistant editor

Music Department
Michael Arciaga	....	music supervisor (uncredited)
Jeff Vaughn	....	score mixer (uncredited)

Transportation Department
Chuck Clarke	....	transportation coordinator
Brian Delahanty	....	transportation captain

Other crew
Stephen Abramson	....	production executive
Steve Cassling	....	production assistant
Lisa C. Cook	....	production coordinator
Lillian Fuentes	....	craft service
Steve Harris	....	production assistant
David B. Householter	....	set production assistant (as David Householter)
Sheridan Liu	....	assistant accountant
Anita Luccioni	....	assistant to producers
Steve McAfee	....	production assistant
Dan Perri	....	title designer
Jim Picciolo	....	animal wrangler
Craig Pointes	....	location manager
Wally Uchida	....	production assistant
Kathryn Weygand	....	script supervisor (as Kathy Weygand)
Benjamin Zinkin	....	legal consultant
John Burrows III	....	blood sweeper (uncredited)
Sean S. Cunningham	....	director: chase scene (uncredited)
Don Wyse	....	fire safety (uncredited)

Thanks
Sean S. Cunningham	....	special thanks (as Sean Cunningham)
Sam Raimi	....	special thanks
Jack Sholder	....	special thanks

Production Companies

• New Line Cinema (presents)
• Media Home Entertainment (presents)
• Smart Egg Pictures (presents)
• Elm Street Venture, The (copyright owner)

Distributors

• New Line Cinema (1984) (USA) (theatrical)
• Succéfilm AB (1985) (Sweden) (theatrical)
• Senator Film (1985) (West Germany) (theatrical)
• Image Entertainment (1985) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Image Entertainment (1995) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Elite Entertainment (1996) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• New Line Home Video (1999) (USA) (DVD)
• New Line Home Video (2001) (USA) (DVD)
• New Line Home Video (2003) (USA) (DVD)
• RCV Home Entertainment (2003) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Alliance Atlantis Home Video (2006) (Canada) (DVD)
• New Line Home Video (2006) (USA) (DVD)
• Tele 5 (2006) (Germany) (TV)
• RCV Home Entertainment (2007) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Lucernafilm - Gama (1992) (Czechoslovakia) (theatrical)
• Pan-Canadian Film Distributors (198?) (Canada) (theatrical)
• Abril Vídeo (19??) (Brazil) (VHS)
• Alliance Atlantis Home Video (19??) (Canada) (VHS)
• Anchor Bay Entertainment (????) (USA) (DVD)
• Asso Film (video)
• Astral Films Limited (1985) (Canada) (VHS) (with Media Home Entertainment)
• CBS / Fox Video (19??) (Netherlands) (VHS)
• CBS/Fox Home Video (19??) (New Zealand) (VHS)
• Fox Video (199?) (Netherlands) (VHS)
• Media Home Entertainment (19??) (USA) (VHS)
• RTL2 (????) (Germany) (TV)
• Video Treasures (19??) (USA) (VHS)

Other Companies

• Cinema Research  opticals
• Cinopticals  opticals
• Glen Glenn Sound  production sound
• Gomillion Sound  looping and adr
• Leonetti Cine Rentals  grip and electrical equipment
• Magno Sound  sound re-recording
• Magnofex  sound editing
• Optical House, The  opticals

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:MA (2005 re-rating) | Portugal:M/18 | Iceland:16 | Germany:16 (re-rating) (2007) | West Germany:18 (original rating) (1984) | Singapore:PG (heavily cut) | New Zealand:R16 (DVD rating) | Netherlands:16 | Singapore:M18 | Italy:VM18 (original rating) | South Korea:18 | Argentina:18 | Australia:R (original rating) | Canada:R | Finland:K-18 | France:-12 | Ireland:18 | Italy:VM14 (re-rating) | Mexico:C | Peru:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:R | Canada:18+ (Quebec) | Norway:18 (video premiere) (1987) (cut) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

1419 N. Genesee Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

New Line Cinema

Trivia:

The sequence was shot by turning the entire room upside-down on a gyro set and sending the blood down through the bed. Heather Langenkamp and Robert Englund, in costume, were on hand to watch the filming. The room itself was to be turned as the blood flowed, but it was turned in the wrong direction, and blood began to squirt prematurely. A door to the room opened, and the fake blood gushed onto exposed wires, creating a real hazard for the crew. Fortunately, Englund pulled Langenkamp away to safety before anything serious would have happened, and the sequence was somehow salvaged. This incident is described by Englund in a booklet in the commemorative boxed set.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Crash mat visible when Nancy jumps out of the boiler room and lands in her lawn.

Quotes:

[Tina is in the alley behind her home when a trashcan lid suddenly comes rolling out and crashes at her feet. She turns around]
Freddy Krueger: Tina...
[laughs mockingly as he appears, extending his arms across the entire width of the alley]
Tina Gray: Please God!
Freddy Krueger: [reveals his glove] This, is God!
[laughs as he takes off after her]
Tina Gray: [screams and runs toward the house]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Bet (2007/I)

Soundtrack:

Nightmare

You'll never want to fall asleep again

While I love horror films, I am not a big fan of the slasher genre, which has come to dominate and indeed practically to define horror since the late 1970s. While I do love the original "Psycho," most slasher films follow a different, and far more predictable, formula. The idea of a faceless killer going around stabbing teenagers just doesn't frighten me a whole lot, though some of these films do fill me with disgust--a rather different sort of emotion.

I am far more frightened by films that deal with distortions of reality, where it's hard for the characters to tell what's real and what's not. Admittedly, that genre isn't always so lofty either. Dreams are one of the most overused devices in the movies, having a whole set of clichés associated with them. We are all familiar with the common scene in which a character awakens from a nightmare by jerking awake in cold sweat. This convention is not only overused, it's blatantly unrealistic, for people waking up from dreams do not jerk awake in such a violent fashion. Moreover, these scenes are usually nothing more than little throwaway sequences designed to amuse or frighten the audience without advancing the plot.

What makes "Nightmare on Elm Street" so clever is how it creates an entirely new convention for representing dreams on screen. The dreaming scenes are filmed with an airy, murky quality, but so are many of the waking scenes, making it very difficult to tell whether a character is awake or asleep. Indeed, the movie never shows any character actually fall asleep, and as a result we are constantly on guard whenever characters so much as close their eyes for a moment. In crucial scenes, it is impossible to tell whether what we are seeing is real or happening only in a character's mind. But the movie ultimately suggests that the difference doesn't matter. The premise of the movie, in which a child-killer haunts teenager's dreams and has the capability of killing them while they're asleep, turns the whole "It was all just a dream" convention on its head: in this movie, the real world is safe, and the dream world is monstrously dangerous.

The movie finds a number of ways to explore this ambiguity, including a bathtub scene that invites comparisons with the shower scene in "Psycho" without being a cheap ripoff. My personal favorite scene, and one of the scariest I've ever seen in a movie, is the one where Nancy dozes off in the classroom while a student is standing up in front of the class reading a passage from Shakespeare. The way the scene transitions from the real classroom to a nightmarish version of it is brilliantly subtle.

The director, Wes Craven, understood that the anticipation of danger is usually more frightening than the final attack. There are some great visual shots to that effect, including one where Freddy's arms becomes unnaturally long in an alleyway, and another where the stairs literally turn into a gooey substance, in imitation of the common nightmare where it is hard to get away from a pursuer. The movie continually finds creative ways to tease the audience, never resorting to red herring, that tired old convention used in almost all other slasher films.

Despite the creativity in these scenes, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is still a formula movie, with relatively one-dimensional characters and no great performances. This was Johnny Depp's first role, as Heather Langenkamp's boyfriend, and although he does get a few neat lines of exposition (his speech about "dream skills"), his personality is not fleshed out, and there is no sense of the great actor Depp would go on to become.

Within the genre, however, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is a fine work. My main criticism isn't its failure to transcend the formula, but its confusing and obtuse ending, apparently put there in anticipation of sequels, but managing to create a mystery that the sequels were unable to clear up. The climactic confrontation between Freddy and Nancy is weakly handled. The crucial words she says to him are surprisingly clunky, and her father's muted behavior during that scene is almost inexplicable. It has led me to consider an alternative interpretation of the scene, but one that feels like a cop-out. The scene that follows, and where the movie ends, is anticlimactic and unnecessary. These clumsily-made final two scenes come close to ruining the movie, and it is a testament to the film's many good qualities that it still stands as an unusually effective horror film that invites repeat viewings.