Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is having a nightmare. In her nightmare she is being stalked by a man in an old felt hat and wearing a grubby red and green striped sweater. On his hands he has old gloves with knives attached to the fingertips. His face is scarred from burns. When she wakes up her nightgown shows slash marks. Whatever happened in her dream is also happening to her in reality. Scared, she talks to her friend, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). Nancy understands what Tina is going through because she is having similar dreams. Nancy and her boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) stay over Tina’s house to keep her company while her mother is away. Tina’s boyfriend, Rod Lane (Jsu Garcia) also stays over.
During the night Tina is killed in her dream. Rod is blamed for Tina’s death. Nancy’s father is Lt. Donald Thompson (John Saxon), of the Springwood, Ohio police force. He uses Nancy as bait, without her knowledge, to trap Rod. Nancy convinces her father to let her talk to him. He tells her about Tina and what happened. He also tells her that he too is beginning to have nightmares about the man with knives on his fingers. Rod becomes the next victim.
At Rod’s funeral, Nancy tells her parents about the man in her dreams. Her mother, Marge Thompson (Ronee Blakley), takes Nancy to a sleep center to determine if she has a sleep disorder. During her dream cycle Nancy has a fit. When she is awakened, she has an old felt hat with her. She tells her mother that she pulled it off of the man’s head in the dream and brought it out with her when she was awakened. The name on the lining of the hat says Fred Krueger.
Eventually, Nancy’s mother tells her about a child killer named Fred Krueger that killed twenty children. He was caught and put on trial but got off on a technicality. Parents in the neighborhood tracked him down and burned him alive. Nancy now believes that Freddy Krueger’s spirit is seeking revenge by killing the local teen population as they sleep. Nancy decides that the only way to kill the vengeful spirit is to bring him out from a dream and destroy him in real life. To do that she must go to sleep and confront her boogie man on his terms.
“A Nightmare on Elm Street” was released in 1984 and was written and directed by Wes Craven. It is an American supernatural horror and slasher film. It is the first in a series of nine ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ films, one of them a remake, another a crossover film with Jason Voorhees from the “Friday the 13th” franchise. There was also a television series produced called “Freddy’s Nightmares” or “A Nightmare on Elm Street: the series” which was an anthology series with Robert Englund in his Freddy Krueger character as the emcee. It ran for two seasons starting in 1988.
Since most of the movie occurs during various dream sequences, it’s really easy to insert all kinds of crazy effects and weird scenarios. For me, a dead Tina wrapped in a clear body bag and being dragged by an unseen hand through the school hallways is one of the creepier visuals. Tina’s death scene was probably the worst of the dream horrors showcased. If you have an aversion for nails on a chalkboard this movie is going to make you shiver.
In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."