Quick recap: Years afters burning to death from a mob, Fred Kruger haunts the dreams of teenagers and murders them while they sleep.

Freddy’s here…..for hugs

Fun (?) fact: The idea of Nightmare on Elm Street comes from a real story in which 3 men from Cambodia had a nightmare and then refused to sleep. When they did finally sleep from exhaustion, the men simply died. The phenomenon is now called Asian Death Syndrome, which also sounds like a cool band name. 

SO 80s

My thoughts: I find it fascinating how, in the horror genre, it is the monster who people end up rooting for instead of the victim. Whether it be Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or Freddy Krueger, they all have some sort of a fan base. Based solely off the first Nightmare on Elm Street, I can sort of see the allure although not that much because he’s a child murderer and basically spends his time popping out and slashing teens. Busty teens, I might add.The final scene where everyone is back alive and piled into the car (which turns out to be Krueger) was the perfect amount of dark humor that made me begin to understand why so many people gravitate towards this movie.

Comparing it to Halloween, which I do because it was also about murdering teenagers, there were more scenes that creeped me out during Nightmare on Elm Street. The ‘scariest’ for me was probably when Nancy fell asleep in school and dreamed that she followed a trail of blood to the boiler room. Seeing her friend in the body bag was also sufficiently creepy. The actual murder scenes weren’t scary so much as gross. Once again, buckets of blood just doesn’t do much for me, horror wise.  I also felt a little more threatened than I did watching Halloween because everyone has nightmares so I could certainly relate to that. Luckily they don’t happen as much anymore because my mind is usually occupied with something else…….

Final review: 4/5. Also worth watching if you are into nostalgia because this movie screams 1980s!

Up next: Horrorfest…..