Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t just about the fear of never waking up; it was a tale of the secrets and lies that haunt a picture-perfect street of white picket fences and manicured lawns.
Have you ever had a nightmare so vivid and real that it left a lasting impression? Most of us, at some point in our lives, have had that one nightmare that stays with us forever, haunting us in our waking moments as much as it did in our bed.
In part, Wes Craven based his mid-eighties horror on a true story he had read many years before. It was the story of a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia for the United States. Still, no matter the distance travelled, their young son continued to have disturbing, uncontrollable nightmares. The boy tried to stay awake for days, but sleep was unavoidable in the end. As he drifted into a deep sleep, his screams suddenly awoke his parents, and the room fell silent. The boy was dead, and he had died in the middle of the nightmare that haunted his every waking moment.
It’s easy to see why and how this story helped give birth to Craven’s masterpiece. But while this story sat at the heart of teenage Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her friend Glen (Johnny Depp), Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Rod’s (Jsu Garcia) blood-soaked nightmare, Craven’s movie also had another trick up its sleeve.
Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t just about the fear of never waking up; it was a tale of the secrets and lies that haunt a picture-perfect street of white picket fences and manicured lawns. Secrets that are never fully buried or burnt, no matter how much residents may like to think they are. Freddy Krueger was a child rapist, a paedophile who stalked his young prey before the parents of Elm Street came together to kill him and burn his body; he was every parent’s worst nightmare, and now he has returned to seek his revenge on the mob who murdered him.
Craven’s movie cleverly laces teenage fears with adult (non-supernatural) fears of protecting our children at any cost in a film that speaks to multiple generations and continues to haunt our every waking moment forty years on.
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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS (1987)
Directed by Chuck Russell, Freddy’s third outing, Dream Warriors, would attempt to reverse much of the criticism levelled at Freddy’s Revenge on and after its release by handing the story-writing duties back to Wes Craven for what was initially planned to be the final outing for Krueger.
Craven and his fellow writer Bruce Wagner would jettison the single heroine or hero and introduce a group of sleep-deprived fighters as co-leads in the battle against Krueger. However, they would reintroduce a series of familiar faces from the first outing to ensure continuity, while allowing cameos by Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dick Cavett to boost the humour.
Equally, Dream Warriors would capitalise on the popularity of role-playing games in teen culture, creating a fantasy-laced horror that firmly placed Freddy at the forefront of a changing technological era in filmmaking. The result is a movie that laces sharp humour with teenage fantasy and unforgettable gore.
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