A Nightmare on Elm Street
USA 1984 Directed by Wes Craven.Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, John Saxon.
Imagine that you are hunted in a dream, and how relieved you are when you wake up and realize that it only was a nightmare. Nancy has nightmares all the time that she is hunted by a badly burnt man with filthy clothes. On one hand has he a glove with knives attached to his fingers, which he intend to cut her up with. Now is this not an ordinary dream, for if Nancy doesn´t wake up screaming she won´t wake up any more.
This is the number one nightmare movie. The story about the infanticide Freddy Krueger who is burned to death by irritated parents, and afterwards haunt the parents children in their dreams, is one of the best horror film plots that been made. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" changing the whole time between dream and reality, and sometimes is it really hard to know which is what. Just as when you dreaming oneself. The film is produced in sharp bright colors which relieve the dreary story a bit. It occur relatively few deaths, but none of them leave one unaffected. Here it takes bucketfuls of blood. The special effects are with a few exceptions very good.
The beyond recognition masked Robert Englund (the kind-hearted lizard from the TV series "V") plays Freddy Krueger brilliantly. He has also played Freddy in all the sequels, but there has the film company New Line Cinema turned him into a comical little devil with one-liners full of go. But Freddy is still more colorful than Jason, Michael, Pinhead and all that they are called. Heather Langenkamp in the role as Nancy is also great. She acting natural and without any overacting. However is Nancy´s mother some of the most dumb I´ve seen, when she tries to force Nancy to sleep all the time. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is clearly horror master Wes Craven´s best. Far better than the overrated "Scream".
Rating: 
Review by Kent Palmgren.
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