I adore Freddy Krueger. I know, it’s sick really … a strange thing to say for a grown woman, a mother, a teacher, a pillar of virtue. I went too far with that virtue thing, didn’t I? For a lot of movies, I watch them, enjoy them and then promptly forget about them. But A Nightmare on Elm Street has stuck with me, after all of these years (and multiple viewings) because it was a first for me … and of course there’s a bit of nostalgia thrown in there too.
IMDb tells me that Freddy Krueger first hit the silver screen in 1984, but I didn’t seen it then. I was only 14, first of all, and I know I didn’t see it in the theater. Back in the ’80s, it took what felt like decades for movies to come out on video, but I do believe I saw it in my senior year of high school, or the summer right before my freshman year of college.
Until I saw this flick, I had only seen classic horror movies like Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rear Window, Psycho, and an all-time favorite, Wait Until Dark. There were other suspense films like Body Heat (I know, I really don’t know what I was doing watching that as a kid either) and Jagged Edge that I loved as well. But I had never experienced a slasher film. I had always assumed they took themselves very seriously, like the other suspense films I had watched and loved.
I never knew that an evil, otherworldy serial killer could be so damned funny. Taken out of context, most of the quotes aren’t hilarious, but within the storyline, priceless. Is A Nightmare on Elm Street credited for being tongue-in-cheek? I’d like to think so, and I do believe that the sequels ran with that angle and Freddy became even more spooferific. And more than 25 years later, I still consider that freaking clever.
I was so taken by the genre that I wanted a Freddy Krueger poster to hang in my dorm room freshman year. I don’t actually recall if I ever got one, but I remember the longing. Oh, the longing. Freddy Krueger marked my awakening, my passage into a world of teenage promiscuity (not mine!) and blood and gore, all speckled with that twisted sense of humor ol’ Fred is known for. Have I crossed that line of weird again?
OK, back to sanity: I loved the original miniseries of V, and watching cute little alien Willie become a monstrous (if not hilarious) dream world serial killer was nothing short of miraculous to my teenaged self. And then, the bonus of Johnny “21 Jump Street” Depp was almost more than I could take. So much pop culture all at once, plunging me into worlds previously unknown. …
Fast-forward to today: the last horror film I saw was the Jared Padalecki remake of Friday the 13th. In fact, I really don’t watch many movies at all, especially horror films. But A Nightmare on Elm Street will always hold a special place in my heart, from bringing this innocent teenaged girl smack into the heart of slasher film pop culture.
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Oct 04, 2011 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
