- Director: Wes Craven
- Writer: Wes Craven
- Stars: Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Rodert Englund
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3qdjwJI
This week, we’re looking at the Horror Guys’ all-time favorite horror films, where each of the guys pick his top two favorite well-known horror films. First up is Kevin’s #2 all-time horror favorite.
Synopsis
We open on a man in a red sweater breathing heavily digging through tools in his basement. He starts working on something metal, and we soon see that it’s a razor-fingered glove!
Credits roll as a girl runs through a creepy corridor into what looks like a factory. She’s terrified and the glove-man is following her. Her name is Tina, and she wakes up; it was just a dream. When she wakes up, her nightgown is all slashed up. She’s reminded of an old jump-rope song:
One, two, Freddy's coming for you
Three, four, better lock your door
Five, six, grab a crucifix
Seven, eight, Ya better stay awake
Nine, ten, he's back again
Tina is friends with Glen and Nancy. Nancy tells her dream, and it’s the same thing. Glen looks on; he doesn’t admit it, but so did he. Rod, the high school’s major creep, stops over to do something nasty with Tina, while Nancy and Glen talk about other things. Rod’s also been having nightmares.
The wall above Nancy’s bed starts to stretch. Tina has the dream again. Tina goes out to the alley behind the house and sees Freddy, with really long arms. Rod wakes up and sees her body twitching, covered with blood, and rolling around on the ceiling.
Lt. Thompson and the police investigate, and they immediately assume that Rod murdered her. He’s Nancy’s father and he’s not happy. Nancy explains about the nightmares, but Thompson doesn’t believe any of it, and immediately arrests Rod.
Nancy drops off to sleep during class, and soon finds herself alone in the school. She see Tina being dragged downstairs, so she follows the trail of blood down to the boiler room. She finds Freddy, who chases her. She burns herself on a pipe and wakes up back in class, screaming. She still has a burn mark on her arm from the dream.
Later on, Nancy’s mother warns her not to go to sleep in the bathtub. She says that could never happen, and then… falls asleep. Freddy grabs her, but this time, she more easily gets away from him. She starts taking pills to help her stay awake.
She gets Glen to watch her while she sleeps. In her dream, she walks to the police station and watches Freddy kill Rod in his cell. She also sees Tina, who is being devoured by worms. Freddy chases Nancy back home, and they do battle. She has no chance, as Glen has gone to sleep. The alarm goes off, waking her up just in time. Meanwhile, Rod’s sheet strangles him in his sleep in the jail cell; it looks like a suicide to everyone else, but Nancy knows what really happened.
Nancy describes Freddy to Thompson and her mother. Nancy’s mother sends her to a psychologist who specializes in sleep disorders. They hook her up to monitors and put her to sleep. Dr. King explains that we don’t know what dreams are or where they come from. Nancy starts to dream, and they wake her up. This time, she grabs Freddy’s hat and brings it back to the real world. The name “Fred Kruger” is written inside.
Nancy loads up on the coffee, terrified of going to sleep. Her mother knows the name, and she says there’s no way Fred Kruger could be coming after Nancy and her friends. Glen tells Nancy about “dream skills” something from some island tribe that he read about. Nancy’s reading a book on “Booby Traps and Improvised Anti-Personnel Devices”; she’s learning some new dream skills all right.
When Nancy gets home, there are bars on all the windows. Her mother explains that Kruger was a child murder who killed at least twenty kids in the neighborhood. They caught up to him, but he was freed on a technicality. The parents tracked him down and burned him to death. She even has his knife glove hidden away – the real one in the real world.
Nancy wants to bring him out of the dream the same way she did the hat. She arranges to meet up with Glen at midnight, but Glen goes to sleep. Nancy calls Glen, but his parents are being jerks and won’t wake him up. She yanks the phone out of the wall, and then it continues ringing– it’s Freddy! Over at Glen’s place, he’s eaten by his own bed, and it rains blood inside. “You don’t need a stretcher up there, you need a mop” says the paramedic.
Nancy tells her father everything, and she wants him to come get Freddy when she brings him out of the dreamworld. He promises to come over in 20 minutes, but he’s really busy and doesn’t take it too seriously. She gets her booby-traps ready for Freddy.
Nancy goes to sleep and finds a basement beneath her basement. She has everything timed on her watch for when her father is supposed to rescue her, but he doesn’t show. Freddy, on the other hand, follows her into the real world, where she’s luckily got all the booby traps. She screams at the windows to get the attention of the police across the street. She sets Freddy on fire and locks him in the basement.
Thompson hears the screaming and breaks in. He and Nancy watch the mother burn up in bed and vanish; Freddy wants his revenge. Could he have done that in the real world? Nancy suspects that she hasn’t woken up at all. Freddy appears, and she denies that he has any powers over her. He vanishes. She goes outside and gets into the Freddy-colored car with her friends and drives away.
Commentary
I think one succeeds so well because while it does have a little humor, it overall takes itself very seriously. We don’t know who this killer is or why he’s doing all this until near the end, so there’s a lot of mystery involved with this new monster.
Freddy says a few words, but he’s mostly silent and very dangerous. The stupid wisecracks didn’t come until later films. He’s got some very limited powers in the real world, but can do about anything in the dreams.
The production values are really high, and the soundtrack is awesome. The acting is mostly good. John Saxon got top billing, but he’s not really in it very much until the end. Still, I think it’s the mysteriousness of Fred Kruger that sells this one, one factor that doesn’t apply to any of the silly sequels.