A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American horror film released in the year 1984. The film was written and directed by Wes Craven and was the first film of A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Stars featuring in the movie include John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss and Robert Englund. Set in a fictional town of the Mid-West Springwood in Ohio, the plot of the movie revolves around teenagers who are terrorized in nightmares by ghost of Fred Krueger, a serial child killer.
The estimated budget of the film was $1.8 million which was earned back in the very first week of the film’s release. Grossing around $25.5 million on the US box office, the film is one of the most popular films in the genre of horror movies. Because of this, Fred Krueger, the villain of the film, has become a very famous villains in the history of cinema. According to Craven and the critics, the film also owes some success to Halloween which was quite influential in spawning the line of slasher films.
Amanda Wyss, Tina Gray, a teenager has a nightmare in which she sees herself being brutally killed and she is found dead in reality also. Her boyfriend, who was sleeping with her that night is arrested on the suspicions that he has killed Tina. Similar dreams attack Nancy now, Tina’s friend, who rush to the police only to find that Rod, Tina’s boyfriend, has also been strangled by his bed sheets. After few more dreams, Nancy finds a battered hat who is found to be belonging to Fred Krueger who had killed many children around a decade ago. He was buried alive by the vengeful parents of the killed children and now it seems that he is taking his revenge on other children. Ultimately, Nancy drags Krueger out of her dreams and sets him on fire and draining him of all his energy.
The premise of the film is the distinction between reality and dreams. Fred Krueger, the villain of the film exists in the world of dreams but yet has the ability to kill in reality. The performance of the movie was moderately fine commercially, relying for the large part on the word of mouth. It opened in 165 cinemas in the US in November 1984 and eventually earned $25 million at box office of America. In addition to that, the film was released in Australia, Canada, China and Europe. Rentals and sales of the film was strong and it achieves the status of cult classic very soon. Since then, it has also been released in the form of DVDs.
Since the release of the film, critics have praised it for its ability to break the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. The Rotten Tomatoes has given a rating of 94% to the film and it ranks #17 on the Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments of 2004. This is a four hour program which selects cinema’s scariest moments.