Amazon.com Essentials:
In the trinity of modern horror films, there's the father (Michael Myers of Halloween, the first masked maniac), the son (Jason of Friday the
13th fame, a knockoff), and the unholy spirit, Freddy Krueger of the
Nightmare on Elm Street films. The spectral man who haunted the
nightmares of unsuspecting teenagers with deadly consequences, Freddy (as
played by Robert Englund) was a truly frightening bogeyman and icon for the
'80s. Unlike the hockey-masked Jason, who dispatched horny teenagers with
mechanical and monotonous ease (he never talked, never took off his
mask), Freddy was a truly creative and diabolical villain, with a sadistic
and blackly funny personality. The hallmarks of the Nightmare on Elm
Street series were imaginatively gruesome suspense pieces, set in the
overactive imaginations of the teen victims. The first film of the series,
Wes Craven's truly intelligent and scary film, was so hugely successful it
begat not one, not two, but six more sequels, each pretty much
diluting the originality and horror of its predecesor. (Horror fans will
fondly remember Drew Barrymore's assertion in Scream that the first
Nightmare film was great but all the rest sucked.) Still, there's
fun to be had in the remaining films in the series, seeing as a number of
aspiring filmmakers cut their teeth on the continuing saga of Freddy. Frank
Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) and Chuck Russell (The
Mask) worked on the third installment, Dream Warriors (starring
a young Patricia Arquette), and Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2) came to
prominence with the ingeniously macabre fourth film, The Dream Master,
coscripted by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential). Craven and
original star Heather Langenkamp did return for the last film, New
Nightmare, which presaged the tongue-in-cheek postmodernism of the
Scream films and resharpened Freddy's ability to scare. --Mark
Englehart
Amazon.com video review:
Wes Craven's 1984 horror film is a better movie than it is
generally credited for being. Forget the tawdry sequels; this highly
original, almost surrealist work stars Robert Englund as a mutilated
monster who kills teenagers during their dreams. Craven, who only
directed one Elm Street sequel (Wes Craven's New
Nightmare), takes the Hitchcockian step of layering in
psychological explanations for the terror and then proving them all
irrelevant in the face of mindless evil. The horror in the film is
emotionally raw, in contrast to the overimaginative set pieces of most
of the sequels that followed; and the final scene is as deeply
unsettling as anything Luis Buñuel ever committed to
film. --Tom Keogh
