The best thing about A Nightmare on Elm Street is the font in the opening titles. It's something sans serif and it's slightly off and it looks good. To be fair to the movie's reputation, I did jump twice, both times at the end; maybe because it was waking me up. As opposed to encouraging me never to sleep again A Nightmare on Elm Street made me wish I was comatose for its running time.
It's not hard to pinpoint what's wrong with the movie. Wes Craven's script is atrocious and his direction is worse. His actors--with the exception of Johnny Depp--are awful. Ronee Blakley might give one of the worst performances I've ever seen. John Saxon's not as bad as the rest, but he's bad. Heather Langenkamp is terrible as the lead. She and Blakley are never once believable as mother and daughter.
I've seen this one before and I remember it being poorly made. I can't understand why it has a good reputation. The number of Halloween lifts are few, but visible enough to remind of a far better film.
Craven's ineptness as a director doesn't get any help from editor Rick Shaine, who's unspeakably bad. I think some of the problem might be lack of coverage, which would be Craven's fault, but come on. People move five yards between cuts.
Charles Bernstein's music is silly.
It's a crappy movie and it's disheartening it launched a franchise. I guess audiences weren't any better read then either.
CREDITS
Written and directed by Wes Craven; director of photography, Jacques Haitkin; edited by Rick Shaine; music by Charles Bernstein; production designer, Gregg Fonseca; produced by Robert Shaye; released by New Line Cinema.
Starring John Saxon (Lt. Thompson), Ronee Blakley (Marge Thompson), Heather Langenkamp (Nancy Thompson), Amanda Wyss (Tina Gray), Jsu Garcia (Rod Lane), Johnny Depp (Glen Lantz), Charles Fleischer (Dr. King), Joseph Whipp (Sgt. Parker) and Robert Englund (Fred Krueger).
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