Scariest Scary Movie #10 – A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon)

If Nancy Doesn’t Wake Up Screaming, She Won’t Wake Up At All…

Quick Plot: A disfigured murderer begins attacking the teenagers of Elm Street… in their dreams.

Firsthand Fright: I still remember the nightmare I had about Freddy Krueger when I was eight years old. He was our babysitter! My parents went out and left him in charge of me and my younger sister. And then he tried to kill us!!! He chased us around the house and outside in the dark, wielding all sorts of scary weapons. The details are fuzzy now, but we were both still alive by the end. I can say that it was an extremely intense and colorful action-horror nightmare. The strangest part was that I had never seen the movie and didn’t fully realize until many years later that attacking in dreams was the major plot point.  – Athena, TV Listings

Final Say: Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street combines surrealistic terror with over-the-top gore and creates the ultimate bogeyman. Nightmare still has the power to scare us because of the psychological tricks that blur lines between what is real and what is imaginary. How do you fight an enemy that doesn’t exist? How do you control what goes on in your dreams? How can you watch this movie and not be terrified?

Just for fun: Look for Johnny Depp in his first film role.