A Nightmare on Elm Street

31 Horror Movies I Own #28: A Nightmare on Elm Street
“I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy”

I’ve written previously about my love for A Nightmare on Elm Street, but I wanted to reiterate how AWESOME the original 1984 movie is.

Wes Craven created one badass sicko in the form of Fred Krueger, which is why I continue to forgive him for crap like Cursed. Sure, the hair and makeup are incredibly dated, and twee little Johnny Depp getting sucked into his bed with his television doesn’t make any sense, but those things aren’t enough to tarnish this classic. It’s just that brilliant.

In case you don’t know, the story centers on teenager Nancy Thompson, her boyfriend Glen (Johnny) and her slutty friend Tina and bad boy counterpart Rod being terrorized in their dreams by a man with knives for hands. The only problem is that if dude kills you IN your dream, you actually die in real life. Oh, and it’s actually all their parents fault. Oops!

So lets talk about the good stuff: SO much great gore! So many buckets of splatteriffic goodness. The scene where Tina is being thrown around on the walls and ceiling while she’s being slashed to bits? So, so, so, so great. And Robert Englund as Freddy; the expert at deadly wit, the dream master, the bastard son of 1,000 maniacs—well, what can I say? The man rules all schools.

I also own the complete set of sequels, none of which, of course, are as great as the original, but I do still appreciate them as a whole. It’s also worth mentioning that Freddy Vs. Jason was a nicely done tongue-in-cheek film, with total devotion to both the horror icon’s legends in a way that made me very, very happy.

So the only question is, how did I feel about the 2010 remake? Well, I thought it was horrible and completely unnecessary. There’s no reason for you to see the update, guys. Just rent this one instead.