Terrifying and Beautiful: On A Nightmare on Elm Street at 40

This year celebrates the 40th anniversary of my very favorite horror movie of all time: A Nightmare on Elm Street.

A movie that took horror to a new level, thanks to the brilliant Wes Craven, who floods the film with layers of subtext, beautiful imagery, universal fears, a legendary villain and my favorite Final Girl in cinema.

The first horror movie I ever saw was actually A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, upon its release in 1985, when I was six; I hadn’t seen the original and I was absolutely terrified of Freddy Krueger. I can remember having nightmares for weeks, and actually trembling with fear in my bed, absolutely horrified at having to go to sleep. I avoided seeing the original for years, but when I did, my whole perception of the film flipped and I fell head over heels in love with it.

When I like a film, I enjoy watching it over and over and I have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street more times than I can count, showing my cherished VHS to all of my friends in junior high and high school, feeling the thrill of watching them watch the film and everyone’s reaction to its visuals, its soundtrack, its atmosphere – its brutal kills.

For a movie from 1984 to have effects that still look amazing – and really affect the audience – is always a delight, and these are some of my very favorite Special FX in film.

Nowadays, when I show the film to someone who hasn’t seen it before, I have to remind them that the FX they are seeing (besides some early computer graphics, sparingly used) are all practical – they built a room that spun! They had one take! Tina’s death is my absolute favorite death in all of horror cinema, period.

The deaths are gruesome, to be sure, but also creative, terrifying and somehow beautiful.

This movie endures because of its quality, but also because of its genius use of a universal fear – what if a monster in your nightmare could kill you in real life? We all have to sleep, and the inevitability of the ghastly murders, as well as the specificity of each death to the victim, really take the terror to a new level.

When I met my best friend, Marion Kerr, in college, she had never seen any horror movie before. What do you show to someone who has NEVER SEEN A HORROR MOVIE BEFORE? A Nightmare on Elm Street, of course! I know it’s a creepy film, so I told her that if she didn’t like it, we wouldn’t ever have to watch another scary movie together. She was so scared during Glen’s death scene that she actually fell off of the couch onto the floor. (That’s the power of cinema!)

She loved it, and especially loved Nancy – her strength, stamina (remember, she’s battling Freddy after not sleeping for a week!), and her kickass, independent spirit. She was especially taken by Nancy’s line “I’m into survival!” She asked if there were other characters like her in horror, and I explained that, while Nancy Thompson is the best one, there is a whole Final Girl trope within horror films.

She said that maybe if we watched enough horror movies, we could learn how to survive and be the Final Girl ourselves – she was hooked! 

I was overjoyed, and shortly thereafter we made it our goal our senior year of college when we were roomies to watch every horror movie in the horror section of our local video store, Gold Star Video – 275 tapes. We kept a very nerdy notebook that had an entry for each film we watched, synopsis, stars, quotes and our own rating system – chainsaws for film quality, and a separate rating for gore factor.

Fast forward to 2017, when Marion and I started our podcast Horror Movie Survival Guide, originally based on the notebook we kept in college together. Our very first episode? A Nightmare on Elm Street! The podcast is still running today with myself and my bestie Teri Gamble – it’s been more than seven years and 390 episodes, all told.

None of that would have happened without this specific film. 

I live down the street from the house used as Nancy’s in the movie here in Los Angeles, and getting to walk by and see a piece of film history that is so important to me is still surreal.

I recently got a chance to see the incredible Women of Nightmare on Elm Street panel at the Aero for Beyond Fest and getting to hear Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Lin Shaye and Ronee Blakley talk about their experiences making the film 40 years ago, not knowing the impact it would still have, was so special.

I even learned something new and kind of earth-shattering about the film in the Q&A – Ronee Blakley spoke about the scene where Marge shows Nancy the glove she has hidden in the furnace and how it was originally much longer. Marge explained to Nancy how each Elm Street kid we meet in the film originally had an older sibling – including Nancy herself – that Freddy had already dispatched. Nancy had a brother?

This answered so many questions I have about the film – where has Freddy been since the parents burned him 15 years ago? Why are the parents so messed up and strange? Having already lost a child to Krueger, and now seeing the cycle start again, of course the parents would turn to drink and fantasyland. Learning this from this Ronee Blakley’ s own mouth was revelatory to me – a whole new way to see a film I have seen hundreds of times!

This movie is still as magical to me as it was when I first saw it in junior high.

I am thrilled with the legacy it is still fulfilling, and always jump at the chance to watch it with someone who has never seen it before (especially on the big screen) – seeing it through fresh eyes is such a joy.

Thank you to Wes Craven for creating this masterpiece of horror cinema, and to everyone who performed and worked on the film for their contributions – they will live in film history forever.