On the surface A Nightmare On Elm Street is viewed as a generic slasher film in which a supernatural killer stalks adolescents in suburbia, picking them off one by one. This would be true if it were not for specific factors which have given Freddy Krueger the power to haunt children's, and in some cases adult's, dreams for over two decades, the most important of these factors being the ability to kill one in their dreams. This detail alone makes A Nightmare On Elm Street stand head and shoulders over most slasher films of the time. Where one could argue that the victim should have run faster from Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th films or perhaps that the victims should have been smart enough not to take the back roads in Texas as portrayed in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the same cannot be said for avoiding the dreadful swipe of Freddy's claws. Freddy is pure evil, the kind you can't outrun no matter how hard you try, because eventually you have to fall asleep. This idea alone gave Nightmare an edge over the competition, but what made the idea even scarier was the fact that the characters could not differentiate between being awake and dreaming.
While I could simply mention the dream aspect of the film I find it unfair to leave out the terrifying performance by the amazing Robert Englund. While other slashers were interchangeable, seeing as how they were simply a hulking figure in an intimidating mask, Robert managed to give Freddy a unique and macabre personality due to the fact that he actually had lines in the film. With a dark brand of humor and now legendary mannerisms, Englund portrayed an unforgettable monster still imitated by children and adults alike come Halloween. While the great actor Jackie Earl Halye portrayed Krueger in the remake of Nightmare, horror fans still agree that Krueger will always belong to Robert Englund.
On a personal level A Nightmare On Elm Street holds a special place in my childhood. At the time I was way too young to watch horror movies, but I snuck the tape into the VCR late one night when no one was awake and had I known the effect would be a week long bout of insomnia I might have waited a few years. The shadow in the closet, the phantom sound in the night, the creaking of old wood in the house all became Freddy Krueger to me. I would lie awake with one eye open waiting to find that I had been asleep the whole time and that Freddy Krueger had found me. Although some would see viewing the movie at such a young age as a mistake, I wouldn't change a thing. The fact that it had such an effect on me only makes the memory that much better. To this day my home has hints of Mr. Krueger sprinkled throughout. A poster here, a large replica of the monster there, and my personal favorite, a replica glove. The legendary performance of Englund and the genius plot helped to make me a horror fan, a catalyst to my fascination with movie monsters and fear himself.
