Meanwhile in 1984, the year of Police Academy and Friday the 13th: The Final [sic] Chapter, it seems the slasher fad was coming to a premature end, as do all such movements, due to filmmakers’ absolute refusal to do anything with a strict formula. But salvation lingered in a single pioneering movie. And thus a new formula arises, to drain dry like the first. This is all courtesy of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Let’s attribute this film’s artistic success to the actual interest of writer/director Wes Craven. This is no mere cash grab, like all those post-Friday the 13th copycats – which ironically is why A Nightmare on Elm Street was far more financially successful than any of them. But as an example of how helplessly horror stagnates, Craven’s Nightmare script existed as early as 1981 – the absolute height of horror franchise mania. But no studio would risk this idea – too far from the guaranteed Halloween mold. And that’s even with Craven an established figure in the genre, with his Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes.
Though when A Nightmare on Elm Street DID get made (in ’84), it didn’t just do well. It jumpstarted an entire studio – New Line Cinema.
But let’s save that story, and ponder just what about this movie makes it so distinctive. Well, it’s supernatural. Blatantly so, when the genre was mostly just embracing the stupidly unrealistic. That’s not supernaturalism in the tired sense of vampires or werewolves, but a new psychological, psychosexual fantasy – it’s closer to Hellraiser, which it predates. In a genre often thought dumb, there is an intelligence to A Nightmare on Elm Street. And all this connected to a single, all-encompassing theme. Craven’s inspiration came from an L.A. Times article about Hmong refugees dying inexplicably from their dreams. A natural storyteller, Craven picked out the most intriguing detail: Hmongs!...No, wait…Dreams!
We know the gist of it now – if you die in your dreams, you die for real – but Elm Street builds to that revelation. Though knowing from the outset that we’re witnessing surrealistic dreams helps to ground the mind in what’s taking place. No matter, it’s unmistakably a boiler room, and for whatever reason teen Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is creeping about in a nightgown. It’s no doubt a sinister place, as Craven manipulates his soundscape and off screen space far more intentionally than your standard “someone does household chores = suspense” mode of horror filmmaking. It’s a notably effective stalk sequence, so there is some legitimate tension once a shadowy man descends upon Tina…
But it was all just a dream! Far from feeling ripped off like with most movies which deploy this tactic (and also the spring-loaded awakening), we still get a sense of threat, as Tina’s nightgown is shredded precisely as in the dream. So was it really a dream?
In fact, the barrier between dreams and reality is constantly broken, even within a single shot – such as the surrealistic, unexplained presence of jump rope girls before the high school. Every image, every detail builds to a greater whole, serving a theme and mood and all these other things you’d be hard-pressed to find in your standard slasher film.
In fact, I wouldn’t even call A Nightmare on Elm Street a slasher movie. Sure, it’s pretty similar, what with teenaged victims, a knife-wielding killer, the standard high school milieu, and even a 1984 date stamp. But I think, beyond these ornamental details, the slasher is more defined by a rigid structure, where would-be victims and Final Girls do not even sense the danger until nearly the end. And that shadowy dream stalker, he operates unhinged from any “safe” genre dictates as well.
Surely, Tina and her small coterie of close friends – four in total, barely the numerical mass this genre prefers – are already aware of shared dreams concerning the same boogeyman, even if they don’t wholly realize the threat yet. Far from actively encouraging potential psychopaths by, say, wandering a forest nude while saying ironic things, this group seems to preternaturally possess the Scream self-preservation instinct. So they band together at Tina’s house that night, acutely aware of something. And while Tina does commit genre suicide by having sex (with her greaser thug boyfriend Rod Lane – Nick Corri), here it seems more an actual comment on loss of innocence, childhood, all that, and not a mere exploitative scene.
Likewise, once we realize it’s a dream, it’s harder to fault Tina for wandering outside alone, responding to a sinister voice. That dream boogeyman emerges yet again, performs a few ghastly gags (stretches his arms wiiide, self-mutilates), and…Well, it was all just a dream! But Tina, still asleep beside Rod’s spent form, isn’t safe anyway. In mid-dream, gashes appear all across her torso, as some invisible force drags her across the ceiling like a gory version of Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding. This is a brutal moment, possibly the horrific highlight of the series as a whole, and grabs your attention far more effectively than the seven or so banged-out murders in Jason X’s opening.
Actually, despite her sexual promiscuity, A Nightmare on Elm Street has thus far treated Tina as its heroine – as the focus, at any rate. Making her the first murder (a belated twenty minutes in, which feels longer for how efficiently this film runs through the usually deathless Meet the Meat shenanigans) is doubly disturbing, mimicking the hero-switch shock of Psycho. And with the audience good and off balance, with all the elements ignoring typical horror logic, we can meet the true Final Girl: Nancy Thompson (Heather Lankenkamp), Tina’s best friend.
(I’ve covered three of the four – now only three – teen protagonists. The fourth, Glen Lantz, warrants mention mostly for who plays him – Johnny Depp! Well, this satisfies the old wives’ tale about famous actors starting in horror.)
Nancy immediately becomes target number one in her own nightmares, which haunt her every time she falls asleep. Early in the movie, it doesn’t take Nancy long to realize the grave mortal threat she is in. Kudos to the strength of the premise. Survival here isn’t a simple question of fleeing the forest. Nancy must sleep, forcing confrontations with the killer – and everyone else is powerless to help her.
Actually, the notion of dreams nicely extends to the viewer as well. In most horrors, there is the safety of the screen, the knowledge you yourself will probably never encounter a 19th century vampire, or some such. Ah, but if boogeyman Freddy Kreuger – and enough pussyfooting around, this killer is Freddy Kreuger (Robert Englund) – is sufficiently frightening, nightmares are guaranteed. (This goes for a certain portion of the audience, at least.) So A Nightmare on Elm Street assures its viewers are likely to encounter Freddy themselves, in the context where he is most dangerous!
You take the good with the bad. Dreams on film necessitate a certain grammar, an overt surrealism and unreality, which is very easy to make look chintzy. And given it’s the mid-1980s, on a shoestring budget, there’s a certain amount of corniness to undercut Elm Street’s potency. It remains a very solid film, but its scariness is wholly in the eye of the beholder.
But back to Nancy. Her struggle against Freddy isn’t a single skirmish. It’s a multi-day battle against sleep deprivation, and Craven opts to impress us with the waking horrors of this situation (in their soap opera-like glory) instead of the nightmares – which we’re quite impressed with already, especially seeing as Rod has joined Tina up in corpse heaven. And so, while Tina’s slaying resembles the possessions in The Exorcist, so does Nancy’s adventure at the dream research clinic resemble The Exorcist’s own medical terrors. Indeed, the notion of dreaming is fully explored, given credence (and additional dread) by this real world focus – which nicely offsets the synth-heavy zaniness of certain dreams.
Living at home (1428 Elm), not sleeping…It’s no surprise Nancy’s parents are heavily concerned. Actually, it is a surprise! Parental involvement is another big teen horror “no-no” – more even than giving minor characters actual last names. But it ties into that same thing again – theme. The kids in A Nightmare in Elm Street are treated as kids – for every faux-tough, faux-mature utterance, less affected lines (e.g. “Help, Mom!”) mark them out as mere babes. So adults exist to counter that, and to highlight their children’s innocence. It extends the horror sphere as well. We get not only dead teenagers to scare teenaged audiences, but more subtle horror in the helplessness of adulthood.
Nancy’s father, Lt. Don Thompson (Enter the Dragon’s John Saxon), is completely useless against Freddy’s psycho-analytic supernaturalism. Mother Marge (Nashville’s Ronee Blakley) is a greater asset to Nancy (not to mention, as a broken family, it’s Marge who’s always there). Ignoring Marge’s alcoholism (loss of innocence!), she offers insight into this dream killer, recognizing Nancy’s tormenter as one from her own past…
It’s now that we learn the killer’s identity, which we’ve all been anticipating through 25 years of pop cultural osmosis: Fred Kreuger. Yeah, no “dy” yet, as it undercuts the threat. A decade or more ago, Fred was mortal, and a notorious child murderer – Craven switched it up from child molester out of a sense of decorum [cough!] remake [cough!]. Long story short, the parents of Elm Street brought vigilante justice upon Fred (meaning it was probably the ‘70s) burning him down in his beloved boiler room.
Fred(dy) is a fascinating horror villain – no wonder he achieved iconographic status right quick. Unlike Jason, who accidentally obtained his defining mask in Part III, Fred emerges fully formed, fully thought out. He’s not some mere ski-masked dude with a knife. He has a face, a voice, a personality. His look alone is unlike any before it: stylish fedora, scarred skin, a red and green sweater chosen by Craven upon learning those two colors clashed the most – evidence of his great care. And Fred’s weapon! Screw one knife, he has four, all joined to an old glove as though they’re an extension of Fred himself. Craven was hedging his bets, ensuring nightmares out of his audience, and working through his personal horrors as well – Legend has it Fred is based on Craven’s former tormentors, like a homeless man and a bully. (Compare him to Michael Myers, who was named after the lawyer.)
Fred(dy) is more than a specter of death. He stands entirely for the loss of innocence which is so central to this movie. His sexuality is unmistakable, whereas most slashers with their phallic blades and accidental misogyny merely stumble. Fred’s attacks are fraught with rape imagery, not unlike Alien’s xenomorph – that final biological step into adulthood, presented metaphorically in genre terms. Hell, the mere notion that he appears in your bed contributes to all this. There’s the penetration, obviously, but little details like spread legs, obscene gesticulations – it becomes somewhat ugly to focus upon, but have you seen The Last House on the Left lately?
That’s for the girls. For the guys, Fred’s attacks arrive in the form of ejaculatory geysers of blood. Yup, no mistaking that!
This is all very solid storytelling, especially for a dead teenager film. Small grace notes, even lightly comic punchlines to scenes, strengthen the foundations. But nearing the end, one question rises with the utmost urgency: How do you stop a dream killer? This isn’t even a challenge like the later Fridays, of putting Jason down for the mid-sequel interim. Fred’s rules are wholly different, and he’s already shown a Wile E. Coyote-like imperviousness to injury – in dreams. In reality, however, he just might be vulnerable.
Nancy first snatches Fred’s stylish fedora, proving Kreuger himself can be crossed over (and not in the Freddy vs. Jason sense). I’m somewhat ambivalent about this revelation, but any solution to the Kreuger problem would inevitably seem a copout – the same challenge as in a Final Destination movie.
Oh well, this is how it must go down. Now completely on her own, Nancy preps her house with booby traps, like a less scary Home Alone. Then it’s she, the Final Girl, who forces the final showdown, at her convenience – Not a slasher movie! And for the first time in about a week, Nancy falls asleep, going on a Freddy hunt.
Come to think of it, the issue with this solution if fairly obvious – It forgoes the underpinning dream theme, for a more basic physical confrontation. Freddy, reduced to his mortal coil and finger-knives, is a more entertaining variation on most psychopaths, but that’s all he is. As though anticipating this problem, Craven starts to weave dream imagery back into the finale, going the dream-within-a-dream (within-a-dream) route well ahead of Inception, and with a more niche intent. And while we may welcome the return of, well, dreamlike imagery, this aping of Dario Argento’s Suspiria as most of the best ‘80s horrors do, it comes with a price. The rules governing Freddy’s dream world were so far immaculate (again, much like Inception), and it becomes a lot harder to piece together a rational summary of the final ten minutes.
And that’s to say nothing of the twist ending, which promises a sequel binge (already!), and offers no closure on Nancy’s struggles to date.
That ending came at the insistence of New Line producer Robert Shaye, who (rightly) saw the business potential in franchising Craven’s creation. All that’s in opposition to Craven’s original ending, one of the few instances where “all just a dream” would work – where Nancy awakes to find all her friends, Tina and Glen and Rod, alive and well. But that puts this at the level of a “Twilight Zone” episode, and undercuts the audience-friendly bloodshed.
Here is where discussing New Line makes the most sense. Far from putting out Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings movies, in 1984 New Line Cinema was barely making movies at all. Rather, Shaye started the company (in 1967) purely to distribute re-releases to colleges – movies such as Reefer Madness. As an effort to maximize profits, New Line became a piddling little independent studio, with Stunts, assorted other forgotten ancient relics, and also John Waters’ Polyester. But they didn’t have a success until A Nightmare on Elm Street, which did well enough to make around 15 times its $1.8 million budget. That’s not a gigantic box office success, in overall terms, but it was gigantic for New Line – enough for the studio to be nicknamed “The House That Freddy Built.”
This started a ball rolling, and New Line was flush with momentum. Elm Street sequels followed quickly, and did incrementally better business than the original – an unusual situation. Most franchises deliver their best entry right out of the bat, while sequels struggle to refashion a complete idea in new ways, but never too new. Indeed, the first Nightmare on Elm Street IS the best, which doesn’t account for its low gross in the series overall. Maybe some of its best elements – solid and intriguing themes, an elegant treatment of an exploitative premise – are not the sort of traits which work best with audiences on first viewing. Shaye’s future Nightmares are more playful, more friendly, achieving that roller coaster equilibrium Friday producer Frank Mancuso, Sr., so desperately wanted. Plus, New Line’s resources were growing exponentially. The original was released on the dime of a studio known for Xtro and Alone in the Dark. The sequels were released by a studio known for A Nightmare on Elm Street. This trajectory is more like a band than a movie series; small but personal first album, more popular follow-ups accusable of “selling out.” Let’s keep that in mind as we probe this Nightmare further.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 2 A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
• No. 3 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
• No. 4 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
• No. 5 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
• No. 6 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• No. 7 Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
• No. 8 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 9 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment