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A Nightmare on Elm Street
Original US movie poster
Directed by	Wes Craven
Produced by	Robert Shaye
Written by	Wes Craven
Starring	John Saxon Ronee Blakley Heather Langenkamp Amanda Wyss Jsu Garcia Johnny Depp Robert Englund
Music by	Charles Bernstein
Cinematography	Jacques Haitkin
Editing by	Patrick McMahon Rick Shaine
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	November 9, 1984
Running time	91 min.
Country	United States
Language	English Rating = 4.5 stars
Budget	$1.8 million
Gross revenue	$25,504,513 (domestically)
Followed by	A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

A Nightmare on Elm Street is 1984 American horror film directed and written by Wes Craven. The film features John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Robert Englund and Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers being terrorized in their nightmares by a convicted child murderer, Freddy Krueger.

Craven produced A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1,800,000,^[1] yet grossed only $1,271,000 at the United States box office in its opening weekend.^[2] Despite the small box office takings on its initial release, A Nightmare on Elm Street has become one of the most popular entries in the horror genre and the film's villain "Freddy Krueger" has become one of the most well recognized villains in cinema history. Craven has mentioned that the film itself was inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), which was hugely influential in spawning a long line of slasher films and originating many clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s.

The film's premise is the question of where the line between dreams and reality lies. The villain, Freddy Krueger, thus exists in the "dream world" yet can kill in the "real world". Sequels to the original would continue to blur the distinction between dream and reality before finally challenging the line between art and reality by showing Heather Langenkamp, playing a fictionalized version of herself, haunted by the villain of a series of films she has starred in. Critics encouraged and praised the film's ability to rupture "the boundaries between the imaginary and real,"^[3] toying with audience perceptions.^[4] Some movie historians interpreted this overriding theme as a social subtext, "the struggles of adolescents in American society",^[5] and their overwhelming need to confront "the harsh realities of life".^[6]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 Writing 3.2 Casting 4 Reception 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

A fifteen-year-old girl named Tina Grey (Amanda Wyss) has a disturbing nightmare in which she is stalked through a dark boiler room by a figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives for fingers on one of his hands. Just as he catches her, however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream. The next day, she finds out that her friend Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) had the same dream.

That night, Tina, Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) have a sleep-over to make a distraught Tina feel better. Tina's rebellious boyfriend, Rod Lane (Nick Corri), crashes the party and goes to bed with Tina in her mother's bedroom. However, Tina has another nightmare, and this time the killer catches her and brutally murders her. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives and then dragged across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, is of course suspected of the killing and is arrested the next day.

Nancy then has three sadistically violent nightmares where she is viciously stalked then attacked by the same terrifying figure who attacked Tina. These nightmares lead her to talk to Rod in prison, who tells her what he saw in Tina's mother's bedroom. Much to the dismay of her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley), Nancy becomes increasingly convinced that the figure appearing in her dreams is the person who killed Tina. Nancy and a skeptical Glen rush to the police station late at night to talk to Rod, only to find that he's been strangled by his own bedsheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide.

Nancy's mother takes her to a Dream Therapy Clinic to ensure she gets some sleep. Once again, she has a horrendous nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut, but she finds that she has brought something out from her dream: the killer's battered hat. It arouses concern, but also other feelings in Nancy's mother, who is clearly hiding a secret. Eventually, Marge, increasingly drink-sodden, reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat, and the killer, was a man named Fred Krueger, a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade earlier. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. Nancy's mother, however, reassures Nancy that Krueger can't hurt anyone, pulling Kruger's knife glove from a hiding place in the furnace as a visual aid.

Nancy devises a plan, with Glen, to catch Krueger, but Glen succumbs to sleep and is viciously killed by being sucked into his bed and shot back up in a fountain of blood and guts. Nancy is left alone with Freddy after pulling him into the real world. She runs around her house and forces him to run into booby traps she had set earlier. After setting Freddy on fire Nancy locks him in the basement, and finally gets her father and the rest of the police to help. After discovering that Freddy has escaped and that fiery footsteps lead upstairs, Nancy and her father, Donald Thompson, a police lieutenant, witness Freddy smothering Marge with his flaming body, disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed. After sending her father away, Nancy faces Krueger on her own and succeeds in destroying him by turning her back on him and draining him of all energy, which also seems to revert all of the murders and bring everyone back from the dead. In the last scene, Freddy possesses Glen's car and makes him and the gang drive away with Nancy screaming for her mother when Marge gets grabbed by a clawed hand and pulled through the door window.

Actor	Role
Robert Englund	Freddy Krueger
Heather Langenkamp	Nancy Thompson
Amanda Wyss	Tina Grey
Johnny Depp	Glen Lantz
Nick Corri	Rod Lane
John Saxon	Donald Thompson
Ronee Blakley	Marge Thompson
Charles Fleischer	Dr. King
Joseph Whipp	Sgt. Parker
Lin Shaye	Teacher
David Andrews	Foreman

Wes Craven wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street's screenplay around 1981. He pitched it to several studios, but all of them rejected it. Interestingly, the first studio to show interest was Disney, although they wanted Craven to tone down the content to make it suitable for children and pre-teens. Craven declined and moved on.^[7] Finally, the fledgling and independent New Line Cinema corporation — which had up to that point only distributed films, rather than making its own — gave the project the go-ahead.^{[citation needed]}

During filming, New Line's distribution deal for the movie fell through and for two weeks it was unable to pay its cast and crew. They stayed with the project nevertheless, until New Line found another distributor.^{[citation needed]} Although New Line has gone on to make much bigger and more profitable movies, Nightmare holds such an important place in the company's history that the studio is often referred to as 'The House That Freddy Built'.^[8]

Principal photography took place between June and July of 1984, in and around Los Angeles, California. The fictional address of the house is 1428 Elm Street that appears in the film, as the home of Freddy Krueger when he was alive. The actual house is a private home located in Los Angeles, California on 1428 North Genesee Avenue.^[9]The house was sold in 2006 and contains 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Special effects for the film were fairly simple and limited by the budget. Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.^[10] For the famous blood geyser sequence, the film makers used the same revolving room set that was used for Tina's death. They put the set so that it was upside down and attached the camera so that it looked like the room was right side up, then they poured gallons of red water into the room, due to the fact that the normal movie blood would not make the right effect for the gesyer.^[11] The now famous razor glove was built by Jim Doyle. Since Krueger was to have worked in a broiler room he wanted it to be made out of parts that he could have had easy access to. He used a work glove, copper piping and tinners rivets. The blades were made out of some steak knife blades that were turned upside-down.^[12] Also, the scene where Nancy is attacked by Freddy in her bathtub was accomplished by with a special bottomless tub. The tub was put in a bathroom set that was built over someone's swimming pool. During the underwater sequence Heather Langenkamp was replaced with Christina Johnson, a stuntwoman who is also married to sound effects man Charles Belardinelli. The "melting staircase" as seen in Nancy's dream was created using Pancake mix.^[11]

Wes Craven originally planned for the film to have a more evocative ending: Nancy kills Freddy by ceasing to believe in him, then awakes to discover that everything that happened in the movie was an elongated nightmare. However, New Line leader Robert Shaye demanded a twist ending, in which Freddy disappears and the movie all appears to have been a dream, only for the audience to discover that they are watching a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, where Freddy reappears as a car that "kidnaps" Nancy, followed by Freddy reaching through a window on the front door to pull Nancy's mother inside.^[11] Both a happy ending and a twist ending were filmed, but the final film used the twist ending. As a result, Craven (who never wanted the film to be an ongoing franchise), dropped out of working on the first sequel, Freddy's Revenge (1985).^[11]

The film's inspiration came from many different occurrences that had affected Wes Craven during his life. Craven states that the film was inspired by several newspaper articles printed in the LA Times on a group of Cambodian refugees and their children, who, after fleeing to America from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, were suffering horrific nightmares, after which they refused to sleep. Acting on medical advice, their parents encouraged them to do so. However, each of the children died in their sleep soon after, following the second dream.^[13][14] After Craven read the articles covering these events, he began writing the film. Craven asserts:

it was a series of articles in the LA Times, three small articles about men from South East Asia, who were from immigrant families and who had died in the middle of nightmares—and the paper never correlated them, never said, ‘Hey, we’ve had another story like this.’ The third one was the son of a physician. He was about twenty-one; I’ve subsequently found out this is a phenomenon in Laos, Cambodia. Everybody in his family said almost exactly these lines: ‘You must sleep.’ He said, ‘No, you don’t understand; I’ve had nightmares before—this is different.’ He was given sleeping pills and told to take them and supposedly did, but he stayed up. I forget what the total days he stayed up was, but it was a phenomenal amount—something like six, seven days. Finally, he was watching television with the family, fell asleep on the couch, and everybody said, ‘Thank God.’ They literally carried him upstairs to bed; he was completely exhausted. Everybody went to bed, thinking it was all over. In the middle of the night, they heard screams and crashing. They ran into the room, and by the time they got to him he was dead. They had an autopsy performed, and there was no heart attack; he just had died for unexplained reasons. They found in his closet a Mr. Coffee maker, full of hot coffee that he had used to keep awake, and they also found all his sleeping pills that they thought he had taken; he had spit them back out and hidden them. It struck me as such an incredibly dramatic story that I was intrigued by it for a year, at least, before I finally thought I should write something about this kind of situation.^[14]

Craven also stated that he came up with the overall concept of the film studying eastern religions.^[15] Other sources also attribute the inspiration for the movie to be a 1968 student film project made by students of Craven's at Clarkson University. The student film parodied contemporary horror movies, and was filmed along Elm Street in Potsdam, NY.^[16] Like many slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s, critics state, owes much to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1960).^[17] Perhaps coincidentally, Canadian serial killer Peter Woodcock, who was jailed in 1957 for the murder of three young children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, officially changed his name to David Michael Krueger in 1982.^[18] Woodcock was remanded to a mental hospital, where he committed a fourth murder, and is still incarcerated today. Craven, however, has not credited Woodcock with serving any inspiration to Freddy Kruger. By Craven's account, he had been bullied at school by a child named Fred Krueger, and named his villain accordingly. In addition, Craven had done the same in his earlier film The Last House on the Left (1977), where the rapist's name was shortened to 'Krug.' He based Krueger's appearance on another childhood experience in which he had been scared by a homeless man with a very distinctive red-and-green sweater; the same colored sweater he chose for his villain. In addition, it has been stated that Craven had read that those were the two hardest colours to visually process together, which is another reason as to why he chose the respective colored sweater.^[19] The 1970s pop song "Dream Weaver" by Gary Wright sealed the story for Craven, giving him not only an artistic setting to "jump off" from, but the synthesizer riff from the Elm Street soundtrack.^[20]

The cast of A Nightmare on Elm Street included a motley crew of veteran actors such as Robert Englund and John Saxon, as well as several then-unknown actors including Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp. The low budget curtailed the ability of the number of big names that Craven could attract, and most of the actors received very little compensation for their roles.

Then 19-year-old Heather Langenkamp, who had very few acting credits prior to this role, beat out over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy, including Courtney Cox, Demi Moore and Jennifer Grey.^{[citation needed]} Langenkamp, before becoming an actress, worked as a Newspaper copy girl, and saw an ad for extras needed on Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders (1983), which was being shot in Tulsa. She did not get the part, but it encouraged her to continue acting.^[21] According to Craven, Englund was not the first choice for the role of Freddy Krueger; they had initially wanted a stunt man to play the part. Englund, however, was sent a copy of the script, and agreed to star.^[11] Johnny Depp, another then unknown, initially went to accompany a friend so he could audition, yet ended up getting the part of Glen.^{[citation needed]} Amanda Wyss, a stage actress, who had also appeared in Better Off Dead (1985), was cast as Tina Grey, and was the only castmember in Nightmare not to appear in any of the sequels. Langenkamp returned in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and as herself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994), as is John Saxon. Nick Corri (who played Rod) appeared briefly in New Nightmare, and Johnny Depp appeared in the sixth installment, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991).

A Nightmare on Elm Street was premiered in Los Angeles, California on October 21, 1984 to a lukewarm reaction, and a few days later in New York City and Chicago. It was released theatrically on November 9, 1984. Although it performed moderately well with little advertising — relying mostly on word-of-mouth — many critics seemed uninterested or dismissive of the film and its content. However, some critics did acknowledge the films originality tackling the slasher genre. Although, when it was released on home video in early 1985, the film became a cult classic. ^[22]

• A Nightmare on Elm Street at the Internet Movie Database
• A Nightmare on Elm Street at Rotten Tomatoes
• A Nightmare on Elm Street at Box Office Mojo
• A Nightmare On Elm Street at The Nightmare On Elm Street Companion
• Cinescare review

v • d • e The Nightmare on Elm Street series
Films	A Nightmare on Elm Street • Freddy's Revenge • Dream Warriors • The Dream Master • The Dream Child • Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare • Wes Craven's New Nightmare • Freddy vs. Jason
Major characters	Freddy Krueger • Nancy Thompson • Kristen Parker • Alice Johnson
Minor characters	Joey Crusel • The Dream Demons • Rick Johnson • Roland Kincaid • Amanda Krueger • Donald Thompson
People	Patricia Arquette • Wes Craven • Robert Englund • Tuesday Knight • Heather Langenkamp • John Saxon • Lisa Wilcox
Related topics	Comic Books • Freddy's Nightmares (TV series) • Video game

v • d • e Films directed by Wes Craven

The Last House on the Left • The Hills Have Eyes • Summer of Fear • The Evolution of Snuff • Deadly Blessing • Swamp Thing • Invitation to Hell • A Nightmare on Elm Street • Wes Craven's Chiller • The Hills Have Eyes Part II • Casebusters • Deadly Friend • The Serpent and the Rainbow • Shocker • Night Visions • The People Under the Stairs • Wes Craven's New Nightmare • Vampire in Brooklyn • Scream • Scream 2 • Music of the Heart • Scream 3 • Cursed • Red Eye • Paris, je t'aime

v • d • e Films starring Johnny Depp
1980s	A Nightmare on Elm Street · Private Resort · Dummies · Platoon ·
1990s	Edward Scissorhands · Cry-Baby · Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare · What's Eating Gilbert Grape · Benny & Joon · Arizona Dream · Ed Wood · Nick of Time · Dead Man · Don Juan DeMarco · Donnie Brasco · The Brave · Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas · Sleepy Hollow · The Astronaut's Wife · The Ninth Gate
2000s	Chocolat · Before Night Falls · From Hell  · The Man Who Cried · Blow · Lost in La Mancha · Once Upon a Time in Mexico · Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl · Happily Ever After · Finding Neverland · Secret Window · The Libertine · Charlie and the Chocolate Factory · Corpse Bride · Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest · Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End · Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Shantaram · The Rum Diary · Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll