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Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
In Wes Craven's horrific and unpredictable film teen
slasher film, about a demonic, sadistic dreamworld character with
a burned face and metal clawed glove-hand who terrorized teens in
the small town of Springwood, Ohio (on Elm Street) while they slept:
- the character of burn-faced, striped sweater-wearing
Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) with a fedora hat, bladed-clawed
hands in this original film and all its sequels - a child murderer
who attacked during dreams [Note: later in the film, it was revealed
that Freddy was the victim of vigilante justice, when angry parents
in the community (after the killer was released from custody because
of a minor technicality) burned the child murderer to death in
a boiler room. Years later, the children whose parents were responsible
for Krueger's death were being terrorized.]
- in the film's opening, 15 year-old Christina "Tina" Gray
(Amanda Wyss), suffering from nightmares, was pursued into a dark
boiler room; when she was grabbed from behind by the
shadowy silhouette of Freddy, she awoke
- in the next soft-focus segment, girls in white dresses
were skipping rope and singing a haunting children's song: "One,
two, Freddy's coming for you, Three, four, Better lock your door,
Five, Six, Grab your crucifix..."
- the next night while Tina slept, she was lured to
a back alley, where she saw a figure with a disfigured face, laughing
at her in his first startling silhouetted appearance, Freddy unnaturally
spread his elongated arms wide to about 10 feet on both sides to
scrape his right-hand fingernails -- razor-bladed -- on the alley
wall, causing sparks
- during Tina's nightmarish dream in her mother's bedroom,
Tina's boyfriend Rod Lane (Nick Corn) watched as Tina flailed about
against an invisible attacker under the bedcovers; he saw her bare
torso bloodily slashed open with four long gashes - obviously the
bladed glove; she was picked up into the air (levitated), thrown
against the wall, and dragged up to the ceiling upside-down and feet-first
- with blood smearing her path, as she was slashed further and blood
splattered around the room; in the middle of the ceiling, her body
was suddenly released, and she flopped onto the bloodied bed and
floor below, dead
- Tina's friend and policeman's daughter Nancy Thompson
(Heather Langenkamp) was the next one to be terrorized - she also
experienced a nightmarish confrontational appearance of Freddy, with
a horribly burned-melted face, in her school's basement hot boiler
room ("Come to Freddy")
- in the film's most celebrated scene, Nancy was taking
a luxurious hot bubble bath when she became drowsy and fell asleep
- with her legs open; she was terrorized by the killer's clawed hand
appearing and moving towards her crotch area; she was violently jerked,
dragged and pulled under the water beneath the surface of the tub
-- into a bottomless well or abyss below; in a panic, she flailed,
gasped, choked and struggled back towards the surface, managing to
break through with her hands by grasping the tub's edge; Nancy's
mother Marge (Ronee Blakley) heard her screams and came to the rescue
by picking the door lock, although Nancy claimed she had only slipped
getting out of the tub
Freddy's Attack on Nancy (Heather
Langenkamp) in Bathtub
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- Freddy's additional terrifying appearance in Nancy's
own bedroom during another nightmare, with pillow feathers flying
as he slashed at her
- in a mini-dream scene, killer Freddy transformed
Nancy's phone mouthpiece into his own mouth, with his long tongue
darting out into the startled Nancy's mouth, as he triumphantly told
her: "I'm your boyfriend, now!"- a premonition
of her boyfriend Glen's death
- the liquifying death scene of Glen Lantz (Johnny
Depp in his debut movie role) when he drifted off to sleep at midnight
with a blaring TV on his lap, while sprawled back fully-clothed on
his bed; Freddy's clawed hand burst through a hole in the center
of the bed under him, sucked, swallowed and pulled him through the
bed cover down into the hole (along with the TV, stereo, bed covers,
pillow, sheet, and headphones, etc.), and then reduced him to a bloody
geyser or column of his shredded and drained remains that exploded
(or was vomited) out of the hole and gushed toward the ceiling, drenching
the room in his blood
Freddy's Bloody Murder of Nancy's Boyfriend Glen
- A Spectacular Geyser of Blood and Gore
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- in the ambiguous, tacked-on, twist-ending epilogue
(it appeared that everything that had occurred earlier was a dream,
now followed by another dream??), all of the teens were now alive;
teenager Nancy exited her mother Marge's bedroom after vanquishing
the demonic dream killer; she found herself outside her front door
in the bright but diffuse morning fog; her mother saw her off and
vowed to stop drinking; she was picked up for school by her friends,
no longer deceased, in Glen's convertible in front of her house;
as the car roof tightly clamped shut over their heads, it revealed
itself as red/green striped (the colors of Freddy's sweater); uncontrollably,
the windows rolled up and the car drove off, with the frightened
and kidnapped kids trapped inside
- oblivious to their entrapment, Marge waved goodbye,
as the camera panned to the right where a group of white-dressed
young girls were jumping rope and singing the Freddy rhyme; suddenly,
Freddy's right arm smashed through the front door's small window
and grabbed Marge - and pulled her entire body through the opening
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Haunting Children's Song
Freddy with 10 Feet Long Arms
Boyfriend Rod Watching Tina's Demise During Dream
To Nancy: "Come to Freddy"
To Nancy: "I'm your boyfriend, now!"
Marge (Ronee Blakley) With Daughter Nancy
Nancy and Teens Trapped in Car
Freddy's Arm Grabbing Marge
Girls Jumping Rope
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