Proof of a Movie God: A Nightmare on Elm Street

Thursday Movie Picks: Movies Set in a High School, Secondary School or the Equivalent

Movies I Grew Up With: A Nightmare on Elm Street

By November of 1984, I was only thirteen years old, but already starting to develop my lust for slasher flicks. I had already seen Halloween, Prom Night, Sleepaway Camp, and the first three Friday the 13th movies. There are probably a few more that I'm forgetting, but you get the picture. Naturally, when I saw the commercial for Wes Craven's latest, A Nightmare on Elm Street, I had to see it as soon as possible. My bestest buddy in the whole wide world also wanted to see it. Here's where Mom came in. I was only thirteen. How else was I going to get there? Sure, my friends' had parents that might be willing to take us to the theater, but they weren't all as liberal as my mom when it came to what types of movies us kids watched. all, she was fully aware I was watching stuff like Porky's, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Last American Virgin, and Zapped!, along with the aforementioned fright movies.

Don't judge her.

In this case, I can't recall the amount of begging that actually took place. I do know that Mom isn't much of a horror movie fan. She's not utterly opposed to them, at least back then she wasn't, but she'd rather watch something else most of the time. Still, I, or we, did enough whining to get her to bite the bullet, load up the car, and take a bunch of us to meet Freddy Krueger. By a bunch of us, I mean myself, three siblings, my bestest buddy, and his little brother. My three siblings, by the way, all younger than I. In fact, I was the second oldest of all since my friend was six months my senior. My youngest brother brought up the rear at a whopping four years of age.

Don't you dare judge her.

What we saw was simply, and still, one of the best slasher flicks ever made. Just in case you're somehow unfamiliar with the story, I'll give you a quick rundown. Years ago, Freddy was the janitor at a local school and murdered a bunch of kids. He was arrested, but got off on a technicality. Not willing to take that lying down, the neighborhood parents got together and burned him alive. Now, it seems Freddy is haunting their children from beyond the grave through their dreams. The kicker is that if he kills anyone in their dream, they die in real life. And yeah, he kills up some Elm Street kids in their dreams. One of them actually went to have a fairly successful career. It was the kid who got sucked into his own bed during a dream only to have all of his blood and guts come shooting out of it like a geyser. He was played by some guy making his big screen debut by the name of Johnny Depp. You might have heard of him.

Didn't I tell you not to judge her?

That scene featuring Depp is just one of a number of surreal sequences. Another featured a girl who seemed to be flying about the room as her body was being repeatedly gashed. Still another, showed the heroine being dragged into her own bath water which turns out to be a bottomless pool, waking up just before she meets her end. Often it wasn't immediately clear that the person being shown had fallen asleep. This added to the mystery of things. The entire movie significantly raised the bar on what could be done with dream sequences. Of course, spoiler alert, the good guys figure out a way to stop Freddy. They think they kill him, but that's not really the case as we're set up quite nicely for a sequel. The credits roll. We go home. Then the fun starts.

That four year old brother of mine had watched this entire movie unfold without flinching. At least, I didn't see him flinch. He certainly never crawled into Mom's lap, bury his face in her bosom, or even call her name. He hung in there like a champ. I was proud of the boy. Then, he showed his true colors. Whatever colors a four year old has, of course.

When we got home, he had to use the restroom. He ran to the upstairs bathroom, went in and dropped his pants. I happened to be coming up the stairs right behind him and noticed he left the door open. Being a good big brother, I closed it without even thinking about it. Suddenly, my brother screamed as loud as humanly possible, ran to the door, and yanked it open. My first reaction was to ask what in the world was he doing, since his pants were still down around his ankles. All he could do was point toward the bathtub. I laughed and tried to close the door again, but he was having none of that. So yeah, my brother used the bathroom with the door wide open. I don't know about your house, but that was most certainly not a normal occurrence at mine.

The fun wasn't quite over for my brother. During those days, he and I slept in the attic which had been transformed into a bedroom. We each had a side and were separated only by the staircase leading up to it. Once he made it up there, it was well past his bedtime, so he got his pajamas on and...

didn't get into bed.

Instead, he just stares at the thing. I remind him that it's time for him to hit the sack. Since he was obviously having a flashback to the demise of Johnny Depp, he started feeling all over the mattress, checking for holes to be sucked into. It took quite a while for him to be satisfied that Freddy Krueger was not going to grab him from somewhere beneath the bed and spray his insides all over the ceiling. When he reached that point, he manage to lie down and actually sleep through the night.

You still can't judge her.

Greatest Slasher Flicks

If you've been here since the first of the month, you know that every October, horror flicks reign supreme for me. That makes this a perfect time to take on the slasher genre. What the hell is a slasher flick, anyway? For me, a slasher flick is a movie in which a deranged, homicidal, often masked and/or disfigured and possibly supernatural maniac leaves a trail of dead co-eds through a series of increasingly grisly murders that we get to watch. So borderline stuff that might make my greatest horror movie list like Psycho, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Saw don’t make the cut, pardon the pun. However, there are exceptions. The victims don’t always have to be teenagers.

With that in mind, let’s get down to bloody business…

Dell's Top 13 Slasher Flicks

13. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her buddies run over and kill a man on the night of their high school graduation. Of course, they do what any of us would do: dump the body in the ocean and agree to never speak of what happened. Well, whaddya know? A year later and they all receive ominous notes warning them “I know what you did last summer” before being bumped off one by one by a pissed off version of the Gorton’s fisherman.

12. Final Destination (2000)
Yes, I’m counting FD as a slasher flick. After all, a supernatural killer leaves a trail of dead co-eds (and a teacher) through a series of grisly murders. Sure, its over the top, even for a DTM (dead teenager movie in Roger Ebert lexicon), but it’s so damn fun. Oh, the plot? Just before his senior class boards a flight to Paris for their graduation trip, Alex (Devon Sawa) has a vision that the plane goes up in flames. He causes a big fuss and he, along with a number of his classmates and one very sexy teacher, are kicked off the plane. Said plane does indeed blow up. Death…as in the actual entity Death…feels cheated and hunts them down in the order in which they were to be seated on the doomed flight.

11. Prom Night (1980)
A little girl is accidentally killed during a particularly vicious game of hide & seek. Six years later, on their prom night, the kids responsible begin dying one by one during the big event. This is Jamie Lee Curtis during her "scream queen" days and has grown into one of the more beloved slasher flicks ever made. Oh, and it gets extra points for the full-blown disco routine plopped into the middle of the movie when Jamie Lee and her boyfriend want to show his ex-girlfriend, of plunging neckline and ample cleavage, "what we can do". John Travolta, eat your heart out.

10. Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
My, oh my, what do you do when the kids are no longer afraid of you? If you’re child-killer Freddy Krueger, you go and draft another homicidal maniac to be your accomplice. In this case, that would be Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series. However, there is a serious problem: Jason ain’t really the strategizing kind. He’s not the sharpest chainsaw in the massacre, if you get what I’m saying. So, of course, old Freddy has to try and put this dog down the old fashioned way. Is it ridiculously over-the-top? Sure. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

9. Child's Play (1988)
Okay, this stretches the definition of a slasher flick just a bit. But hey, it’s my list so shut up. Anyhoo, in this one Charles Lee Ray, AKA Chucky, is a serial killer who is shot by the cops and apparently dies from his wounds after running into a toy store. What they don’t know is that just before he died he performed a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into a Good Guys doll. One thing leads to another and he winds up as the property of 6-year-old Andy. Why, yes, lots of people do wind up dead.

8. Haute Tension (2003)
Instead of going out partying for the weekend, Alex and her best friend Marie, head off to Alex’s parents’ house where it’s safe. That is, until a stranger barges in and starts killing folks. Thinking Alex is the last one alive in the house, the killer spares her life, at least for the time being, but loads her up in the back of his truck and takes off. Marie takes off in hot pursuit to try and save her friend. Lots of blood and lots of tension yank you to the edge of your seat. What’s that? One of the biggest plot-holes in cinematic history? Yeah, it’s got that, too. No matter, the rest of the movie is so damn terrific.

7. Candyman (1992)
While doing research for her thesis on urban legends, Helen (Virginia Madsen) learns of Candyman. Further investigation leads her to the Cabrini Green Projects where the Handy…er…Candyman is said to do most of his work. She also learns that no matter where you are, you can conjure this dude up by looking into a mirror and saying his name five times. Because of this, it’s a miracle that I, and most people I know who have seen this movie are alive. Why? Because right after seeing it every one of our dumb asses tried to make him appear the first time we were alone with a mirror. Hell, I’m still kinda thinking he’s gonna pop up and get me one day.

6. April Fool's Day (1986)
Rich kid Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman) invites a bunch of her friends to her island mansion for the weekend to celebrate their final year of college. As luck would have it, they start turning up dead one by one. Not only do the remaining few have to survive but they can’t trust each other since one of them is obviously the killer. Before a certain other movie on this list, AFD spoofed slasher flicks while still being a pretty good one, in its own right. There’s also a very nice twist at the end that fits the title.

5. Friday the 13th (1980)
Twenty-plus years after Jason drowns at Camp Crystal Lake, the camp is getting ready to re-open. Seeing how, the counselors who were supposed to watching the kid were off somewhere having sex, Mrs. Voorhees has never forgiven camp counselors. It doesn’t help that this new batch of brat-watchers is all about partying and sex. So, of course, they start turning up dead…one by one. A young Kevin Bacon suffers a particularly nasty fate. Anyhoo, after 10 sequels and a remake, this one still stands up as the gold standard of the franchise. What’s curious about this particular series is that it’s most popular character, Jason, is not even in the franchise’s first and best movie. Well, he’s in it but not as the Jason we’ve come to know and loathe…er…love.

4. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Perhaps no movie in history has been ripped off more than this one. Its very basic plot construction has been reproduced in countless horror flicks over the years. It goes, a group of people either investigating something or just plain lost happen upon a peculiar group of locals and get all sorts of kidnapped and killed. That’s pretty much it. However, none of them did it as effectively as this ultra-low budget hack-flick. In fact, the low budget adds to the grit and helps make this all sorts of unsettling. Still.

3. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
So you thought it was over when you and the rest of the neighborhood watch chased down the local child-killer and literally fried him in his own boiler room? Not so fast. Now he’s haunting your kids through their dreams and killing them while they sleep. Nice. Okay, on paper it sounds kind of goofy. However, what’s more terrifying than not being able to sleep, ever? Like, Jason before him and Chucky after, a string of sequels would leave Freddy a mere caricature of the monster we loved to hate. Regardless, this movie remains as one of the genre’s true masterpieces. Oh, and even better than Kevin Bacon, a young Johnny Depp gets it in this one.

2. Halloween (1978)
Michael Myers gets his start early, killing his 17-year-old sister when he, himself, is a mere 6 years of age. Fast forward 15 years and he escapes from the looney bin he’s been kept in, returns to his hometown and starts hacking up babysitters. This is also known for being another of Jamie Lee Curtis’ scream-queen roles. Yes, she handles that quite well, as a matter of fact. This is the movie credited with creating the genre. It’s technically not the first slasher flick but it is the one that started the craze and a rush to emulate it (cough…cough…Friday the 13th…cough…cough). By most aficionados, this is considered the greatest slasher flick of all time. I tried really hard to put it as my number one. Oh well, I’m not most people. Forgive my blasphemy.


1. Scream (1996)
Sidney (Neve Campbell) is trying to cope with the loss of her mom due to a rape/murder only a year ago. Well, there’s also the fact that a couple of her classmates are brutally murdered and someone seems to be hunting down her friends. It’s a perfect deconstruction of the slasher genre while remaining faithful enough to its conventions and having a strong enough narrative to be a great one, on its own. Humor and horror are perfectly blended. It’s also a masterful whodunit. Unlike most other chop ‘em ups there is a real sense of suspense as we try to figure who is behind the mask. And that opening is just a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Setting aside what happens, it’s remarkable simply for who’s in it. With a cast full of nobodies plus that chick from Friends, Drew Barrymore is easily the biggest name on the bill. It only makes sense that before the film opened her name and likeness was used to hype it. She’s even on the movie poster. And that’s who you kill off first? Now, add back in what happened and it’s easy to see why her few minutes of screen time is among the most iconic scenes ever. Sorry for rambling. Go back through the first few sentences to see why the rest of it is great, as well.


Just Missed the Cut...
Happy Birthday to Me (1980)

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Scream 2 (1997)

Urban Legend (1998)

Wrong Turn (2003)

House of Wax (2005)

My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)