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A
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
In writer/director Wes Craven's horrific
teen slasher film, it told about a demonic, vengeance-crazed
and sadistic dream-world character with a wicked sense of humor who
terrorized teens in the small (fictional) suburban town of Springwood,
OH (on Elm Street) while they slept. The fearsome, sexually-deviant,
child murderer in the series of Nightmare
Franchise Films who was causing "nightmares"
was horribly scarred, disfigured and burn-faced Freddy Krueger (Robert
Englund). He wore a striped, blood red/green sweater, with
a brown fedora hat and had a metal or razor
fingered-bladed-clawed or gloved right-hand.
[Note: Later in the film, it was revealed
that years earlier, local child killer Freddy was the victim of vigilante
justice, when angry parents in the community of Springwood, OH (after
the killer was released from custody because of a minor legal technicality)
burned the child murderer to death in a basement furnace or boiler
room. The premise was that years later, the children of
his persecutors (responsible for Krueger's death) --
grown-up teens Nancy, Tina, Rod, and Glen (Heather Langenkamp, Amanda
Wyss, Nick Corri, and Johnny Depp) who were living on Elm
Street, would experience the terrorizing
nightmare of Freddy's returning presence if they fell asleep. Freddy
would emerge from Hell to haunt them during their sleep.]
This 91 minute slasher film came late in the year 1984,
after both other competing franchises Halloween
and Friday the 13th had already
been launched. This one featured a "dream
world" hideously-grotesque child killer, very different from
the hulking, mask-wearing Jason Voorhees (and his mother!), and the
lunatic homicidal escapee Michael Myers. The body count in this film,
all due to Krueger, was 4, during dream sequences.
Director Wes Craven - who had previously made
two ultra-violent horror-revenge films -- the low-budget rape-revenge
shocker The Last House on the
Left (1972) (a re-tooling of Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin
Spring (1960)) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) made
a name for himself with this more mainstream horror film. Craven's
film was rejected by all the major studios - and ultimately became
one of the earliest films of neophyte New Line Cinema, which went on
to major studio status later in the decade. New Line became known as "The
House That Freddy Built." With a production
budget of $1.8 million, this first film in the series did very well,
with box-office gross receipts of $25.6 million (domestic).
The films in the Nightmare on Elm Street series
(through 2010) included nine films (one was a hybrid). Craven returned
to direct the sequel Wes Craven's
New Nightmare (1994), the 7th film in the series, with original
star Heather Langenkamp, Craven himself, and Robert Englund all playing
themselves. The series of nine A Nightmare
on Elm Street films (from 1984-2010) films grossed $370.5 million (domestic).
- during the film's title credits, disembodied
hands of an anonymous individual were seen in a boiler room assembling
a right-handed leather work-glove with sharp thin blades for fingers,
using various crude metal-working tools and a welder; the figure
placed his hand into the deadly claw-hand with four razor/talons
for fingers - and then slashed through a canvas
- the unknown man entered into the nightmarish dream
of 15 year-old Christina "Tina" Gray (Amanda Wyss) who
was wearing a thin nightgown:
- Tina was pursued down a dark concrete
hallway with steam pipes emitting vapor and dripping water, and
into an immense, echoing boiler room with pipes and catwalks;
someone called out her name, "Tina" and cackled at
her, as she was terrorized; the brown fedora-wearing individual
with the bladed hand (seen in a shadowy silhouette) tore through
some canvas near her and lunged at her, as she ran to an open
furnace fire and screamed and was grabbed from behind

Stalked In Concrete Hallway
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Canvas Claw Marks
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Grabbed From Behind
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Christina "Tina" Gray (Amanda Wyss) -
Pursued During Nightmarish Dream
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- suddenly, Tina woke upright in bed, realizing she
had just experienced a nightmare; Tina's single
mother (Donna Woodrum) entered her bedroom and asked if she was
alright, and was told: "Just a dream, Ma," but
her mother noticed that there were four vertical, scalpel-like
lacerations (made from the man's gloved hand) in the front of Tina's
nightgown near her chest: "You
gotta cut your fingernails. You gotta stop that kind of dreaming.
One or the other"; Tina grabbed the crucifix hanging above
her bed and pressed it to herself
- in the next soft-focus segment, girls in white dresses
were skipping rope and singing a haunting children's song:
- "One, two, Freddy's coming for you,
Three, four, Better lock your door, Five, Six, Grab your
crucifix..."

"Tina" Gray (Amanda Wyss)
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Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp)
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Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp)
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Rod Lane (Nick Corri)
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- the next day at school, Tina arrived at school with
her three high school friends: Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp)
- her letter-jacketed best friend, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) (in
his feature film debut movie role) - Nancy's cute boyfriend, and
Rod Lane (Nick Corri) - Tina's horny delinquent, musician boyfriend;
Tina told them about her "worst nightmare"; Nancy admitted
to having a bad dream also, and tried to reassure Tina: "Everyone
has a bad dream once in a while. It's no biggy"; Glen
hinted that when he had nightmares, he would tell himself that
it was a bad dream and then he would wake right up
- that evening, Nancy and Glen
had decided to stay over at Tina's house to keep her company, while
her mother was out of town in Las Vegas for a few days with her boyfriend
(Paul Grenier); Glen had fooled his mother into believing that
he was staying at his cousin's house near the airport (by playing
a sound-effects tape); Tina told how she kept "seeing
that guy's weird face and hearing those fingernails"; Nancy
was astonished - it was identical to her dream about a guy in a
dirty red and green sweater with hand-made "finger-knives...
made a horrible sound" Tina was startled: "You dreamed about the same creep I did." Glen
interjected: "That's impossible"
- to scare his friends, Tina's
boyfriend Rod made unusual scraping noises in the backyard ("There's
something out there"), and then pounced out from hiding at
Glen, bringing him to the ground; he had come "to make up" with
Tina after another one of their minor squabbles; he had invited
himself over to crash their "sleepover date"; he had
used a small three-pronged garden hoe to scrape the side of the
house, producing the screeching noise
- sensing that Tina's mother
wasn't home, Rod told Nancy and Glen: "Me and Tina got stuff
to discuss" - implying that they would go upstairs to have sex
in her mother's bed; Tina asked for her friends to stay with her,
although they would remain downstairs; Nancy told Glen when he began
kissing her that they wouldn't have sex like the other couple: "Not
now. We're here for Tina now, not ourselves"
- later than night at 2am, Glen
was painfully forced to listen to the orgasmic love-making moaning
and screaming of the couple upstairs, mumbling to himself: "Morality
sucks," as he slept on the couch; post-coitus, slutty Tina told
Rod (cleverly named): "I knew there was something about you
I liked...Jungleman fix Jane...No more fights"; but Rod strangely
admitted to having nightmares too: ("No more nightmares for either one of us")
- during the remainder of the night, odd occurrences
happened; in Tina's bedroom where Nancy slept by herself,
the wall above her bulged out like a stretched piece of elastic
or plastic in the shape of a human face and pair of hands pressed
against the surface from inside the wall; however, the face
retracted and when she felt the wall, it had already been restored to normal
- meanwhile, as Tina slept next to Rod in her mother's
bedroom, she experienced another horrific nightmare:
- in the dream, she was awakened by the sound
of a pebble repeatedly hitting the window pane, one of which
cracked the glass; after hearing her name called, she asked: "Who
do you think you are, whoever you are?"; Tina ventured
out into the backyard, where she was summoned by a phantom
voice and lured to a back alleyway - similar to the one in
her nightmare; a metal garbage can lid rolled noisily in front
of her, and she saw the shadowy silhouette of a laughing, sweatered,
fedora-wearing man with elongated arms and a disfigured face;
it was Freddy's first startling silhouetted appearance; he
unnaturally spread his elongated arms wide to about 10 feet
on both sides to scrape his right-hand fingernails -- razor-bladed
-- on the alley wall, causing sparks; when she said: "Please,
God," the stalker responded: "This is God!" while holding up
his phallic-like steel-tipped hand
- Tina ran screaming from the attacker as he pursued her -- impossibly leaping
out in front of her; Tina fled back to her own backyard, where
the figure emerged from behind a small tree, and told her: "Watch this" -
he lopped off (or castrated) two of his left hand's fingers with
his deadly right-hand taloned glove, causing yellow blood to
spurt from the stumps in a symbolic sexual image; the disfigured
man then lunged at her on her back porch, where she grabbed his
hideously-scarred face, although it only slid off, revealing
another deeper layer of bloody skull flesh and skeletal bone
- Rod awakened from the screams and the struggle going
on under their bed-covers, as she grappled with her phantom-invisible
attacker; Rod pulled off the blanket and sheet, but could only
see Tina flailing about; he watched as her bare torso was bloodily
slashed open with four long gashes from an invisible source - obviously
the bladed glove; she was picked up into the air, thrown upside down
against the wall, and dragged up to the ceiling
feet-first - with blood smeared along her path, as she was slashed
further and blood splattered around the room [Note: This scene
paid homage to the revolving set in Royal Wedding (1951),
with Fred Astaire.]
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Boyfriend Rod Watching Tina's Prolonged
Demise During Dream - Dragged Across Ceiling
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- in the middle of the ceiling, her body was suddenly
released, and Tina flopped onto the bloodied bed and floor below
- dead; her terrified screams and Rod's loud threat: "Who
did this? I'll kill you!" woke up Nancy and Glen, who broke
through the locked bedroom door and saw the grisly murder scene;
confused and horrified, Rod had apparently jumped through the
window and fled to escape, prompting Heather and Glen to think he had massacred her
- the murder was reported to police -
and although a razor was suspected as a weapon, nothing was found
at the scene; the victim's boyfriend Rod Lane was the prime suspect
in the homicide, due to his prior history of arrests for brawling and drugs

Lt. Donald Thompson (John Saxon)
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Marge Thompson (Ronee Blakley)
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Nancy's Concerned Parents in the Police Station
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- in his office, Lt. Donald
Thompson (John Saxon) questioned his own daughter Nancy, who was
living with his perpetually-drunk ex-wife Marge Thompson (Ronee
Blakley); although "lunatic" Rod
was the obvious murder suspect for having frequent fights with
Tina, Thompson was angered by Nancy's behavior:
- "But
I'd sure would like to know what the hell you were doing shacking
up with three other kids in the middle of the night -- especially
a lunatic delinquent like Lane"
- Nancy affirmed that Lane wasn't the killer: "Their
fights weren't that serious"; she then told how the murder
was foretold by Tina: "She dreamed
this was gonna happen...She had a nightmare that someone was
trying to kill her. That's why we were there, Mom. She just
didn't want to sleep alone"
- Nancy insisted on attending school the next morning,
after a fitful night of sleep; as she walked to school (and noticed
a man watching her - part of Lt. Thompson's stake-out), Rod
grabbed her from behind, clamped his bloody hand over her mouth,
and dragged her into some bushes; he wasn't there to hurt her,
only to affirm his innocence: "I never touched her...There
was somebody else there"; before he could explain further,
Lt. Thompson held a gun on the young fugitive and arrested him,
although Rod fled (barefooted), but was soon apprehended down the
street; he yelled out: "I didn't kill her, Nancy"; she
was offended that her father had used her to capture her friend,
and walked off
- in Nancy's English class, the teacher (Lin Shaye)
was lecturing about Shakespeare's Hamlet and another student
read aloud from Julius Caesar in front of the class, while
an exhausted Nancy nodded off - and the next sequence was her
hallucinatory daydream - she was the next one to be terrorized:
- Nancy imagined Tina speaking to her from inside
a bloodied, zipped-up plastic body bag (looking like a condom)
in the hallway just outside the classroom; then ,
Nancy saw a large pool of blood on the floor, and found Tina
lying there in the body bag with
a bloody, slimy smear marking where she had been dragged; the
bag was suddenly and invisibly dragged away into an adjacent
corridor, and as Nancy followed and ran around the hallway
corner, she collided with a female student hall-guard (Leslie
Hoffman); when scolded for not having a pass, Nancy replied:
"Screw your pass!"
- as Nancy ran past, the
student hall-guard changed into the killer brandishing his
razor-gloved hand, warning with a male voice: "Hey Nancy,
no running in the hallway"; she continued down into the
school basement, where Tina's red/green sweatered, hatted killer
with a burned-melted face confronted her; when she asked: "Who
are you?", he cut open his own chest with the blades - and yellow fluid
with maggoty worms poured out; he also scraped his knives across
some metal piping to scare her.
- the killer chased after her and trapped her
against a wall, and as she screamed: "It's only a dream!",
he taunted back and beckoned: "Come to Freddy!" and
wiggled his demonic tongue at her; as he reached out with the
bladed gloved hand to kill her, she scalded her left forearm
on a steam pipe
- Nancy awoke from her daydream - screaming in her
English classroom; the disruption embarrassed the shaken Nancy
in front of the other students, and she left to go straight home;
she soon noticed a fresh and round, red burn mark on her arm; on
her way home, she visited Rod in his jail cell, where he partially
described the invisible killer who wrestled with Tina under the
bedcovers, and cut her simultaneously with four razor blades as he
watched: "It was as if there were four razors cutting at the same time, but
invisible ones"; and then Rod mentioned that he could have saved
Tina if he moved faster, but he thought he was in his own nightmare: "I
thought it was just another nightmare, like the one I had the
night before. There was this guy - he had knives for fingers";
this fearfully confirmed for Nancy that they had
been haunted by the same figure and nightmare - and that Rod was
innocent
Freddy's Attack on Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) in Bathtub
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- that night in Nancy's home,
at the start of the film's most memorable and celebrated scene, Nancy
was innocently singing the skipping rope song while taking a luxurious
hot bubble bath; she became drowsy and fell asleep:
- with her legs open, she was terrorized by the
killer's clawed hand appearing and moving towards her crotch
area; she was violently jerked, dragged and pulled under the
water beneath the surface of the tub -- into a bottomless well or abyss below
- in a panic, she flailed, gasped, choked and
struggled back towards the surface, managing to break through
with her hands by grasping the tub's edge; Nancy's mother heard
her screams and came to the rescue by picking the door lock
- and awakening her from a deadly fate, although Nancy claimed
she had only slipped getting out of the tub
- before going to bed, sleep-fearing
Nancy took some fast-acting StayAwake pills, and also watched TV
(The Evil Dead (1981)), when she was
startled by Glen at her second-floor
window; invited in, he was told all about her experiences of the
day (her freakout and burn in English class), causing her to noticeably
age; she looked in a mirror in vain disgust: "Oh, God, I look
20 years old"
- she asked Glen questions about dreams foretelling
the future, or his belief in the Boogeyman, and then asked him
for a favor to help her in an experiment; she told him: "I'm
gonna go and look for somebody," while he would function as her alert guard
- the light was turned off and the picture faded
to black -- the start of her dream - presumably?
- Nancy left her home barefooted, in her nightclothes,
checking once to make sure that Glen was watching out of sight
behind a tree; she proceeded to the police station where she
watched through a barred basement window as the scarred killer
approached Rod's cell where he was sleeping on a cot; she turned
and yelled for Glen, but there was no answer; she pounded on
the window to alert Rod when the killer passed right through
the bars of the cell; although the killer vanished, she turned
and saw an apparition behind her -- it was Tina in the plastic
body bag, with a large creepy insect crawling out of her mouth,
and coiled eels oozing around her feet; Nancy kept yelling: "Glen,
wake up! Are you there?"; the killer answered her: "I'm
here," and lunged at her, and chased her back to her home
- on her stairway, she couldn't
easily climb because the steps had turned into a sticky, gluey,
quicksand-like substance that held her back; behind her, the
killer (wearing a Tina mask) broke through the tiny front door
window, and in Tina's voice pleaded: "Nancy, help me, please!
Save me from Freddy!"
- back in her bedroom,
Nancy saw Glen sleeping in an armchair next to her bed; he
had fallen asleep while keeping watch to prevent her from having
another nightmare; she insisted to herself: "This is just
a dream. He isn't real," but the killer crashed through
her mirror in a shower of splintered
glass and pinned her to the bed; after wrestling with him,
as he slashed at her, pillow feathers were sent flying; when
the blades were about to rip open her face, her alarm clock
that had been thrown to the floor loudly sounded -- and she
and Glen were both awakened
- after her nightmarish experience, Nancy was furious
at Glen for falling asleep in the chair next to her bed and not alerting
her: "I just asked you to do one thing. Just stay awake and watch me --
Just wake me up if it looked like I was having a bad dream. And
what did you do? You s--t! You fell asleep"
- after a short interruption
by Nancy's mother worrying about her, Nancy and Glen rushed over
to the police station (it was now 3 am); she was fearful from her
premonition that Rod was going to be the killer's next victim,
and she asked her father to check on him: "I just want to
see if he's OK"; before they were allowed in, the nightmare
that Rod was experiencing became real:
- Rod's bedsheet snaked toward his throat and
made a noose around his neck; the sheet was twisted and jerked
tightly around his throat, as he was pulled off his cot, dragged
backwards and hauled upright; he was strung up in the cell
- and murdered; he hung from the bars of the window with a
snapped neck when the sheet was powerfully wrenched
- the officers assumed that Rod's death was a self-inflicted
suicide; after his gravesite funeral/memorial
service, Nancy told her father: "The killer's still
loose, you know"; he skeptically replied: "You saying
somebody else killed Tina? Who?"; she described the phantom
killer who used dreams to kill people:
- "I don't know who he is. But
he's burned, and he wears a weird hat,
and a red and green sweater, really dirty, and he uses these
knives like giant fingernails"
- after her vivid description of the killer, Lt. Thompson
and Marge shared an unspoken, knowing look with each other
- Marge sought help for Nancy at a sleep
clinic, the Katja Institute for the Study of Sleep Disorders;
Nancy's sleep patterns were monitored with sensors and other
instruments via a one-way mirror into her sleep chamber; Marge
noted to the doctor that Nancy started experiencing disturbing
nightmares after Tina's murder: "Now she thinks her dreams
are real"; the doctor explained the substance of dreams: "Mysteries.
Incredible body hocus-pocus. The truth is, we still don't know
what they are or where they come from"
- during
her monitored sleep study, Nancy drifted into deep sleep, with rapid
eye movements (REMs) indicating that she was dreaming:
- suddenly, the graphing
needles indicated jarring and jagged movements, as Nancy's body
contorted spasmically on the bed and she screamed in terror
- once awakened from her intense dream, Marge
noticed a wide lock of gray-streaked hair on Nancy's head,
and there was a deep and bloody gash on her left arm; beneath
her covers was the killer's filthy Fedora, and when asked where
it came from, Nancy replied: "I brought something
out from my dream...I grabbed it off his head"; her mother
stared back in horror
- in their kitchen the next day, Nancy (who hadn't slept all night) overheard her mother on
the phone talking about the fedora - and then when questioned,
her mother claimed she had thrown the "filthy thing" away: "I
don't know where you really found it or what you're trying to prove";
Nancy still asserted that Rod didn't kill Tina and that he didn't
hang himself; she asserted that someone was seeking revenge from
beyond the grave to murder them: "It's this guy, he's after us in our dreams"
- to prove her claims to her denying mother, Nancy
opened a kitchen drawer where her mother had stashed the fedora -
and then claimed it was real and had a name written in it --
Fred Krueger; she demanded to know about the man and if her mother
knew about him, although her persistently-lying mother only wanted
Nancy to get some sleep to feel better; Finally, Marge divulged: "Fred
Krueger can't come after you, Nancy -- he's dead!"; Nancy
was furious with her betraying mother ("You knew about him all this
time?") and smashed her bottle of gin on the floor; as Nancy left
the house, Marge called after her: "Nancy, it's just a nightmare"
- while Nancy strolled through town with Glen, he
told her that he had been studying about the Balinese way of dreaming,
and how a dreamer could enter the magical dream world and acquire
a song or poem: "They get all their art and literature from dreams. Just wake up and
write it down. Dreamskills"; Nancy asked what happened if
they met a monster in their dreams; Glen responded: "They
turn their back on it. Take away its energy, and it disappears";
but he cautioned that if they didn't, the dreamer wouldn't wake
up to tell what happened; Glen was surprised to see the survival
techniques book that Nancy was reading - "BOOBY TRAPS & Improvised
Anti-Personal Devices"
- when Nancy returned to her home that
evening to 1428 Elm Street, every window and door was covered with
newly-installed bars, and a wooden trellis was covered with prickly
roses; her mother explained that it was for "security," and
led Nancy to the cellar to further elucidate the truth about Fred
Krueger - a terrorizing child killer:
- "He was a filthy child murderer who killed at least twenty kids in
the neighborhood, kids we all knew...It drove us crazy when we
didn't know who it was -- but it was even worse after they caught
him"
- Marge reached into the furnace behind her and
removed a dirty sack, before continuing with her story about how
Krueger was released on a legal technicality, but tracked down
by parental vigilantism:
- "All the lawyers got fat and the judge got
famous, but somebody forgot to sign
a search warrant in the right place and Krueger was free just
like that....A bunch of us parents tracked him down after they
let him out. We found him in an old abandoned boiler room where
he used to take his kids...Took gasoline, poured it all around
the place, and made a trail of it out the door. Then lit the
whole thing up and watched it burn. But he can't get you now.
He's dead, honey, because Mommy killed him"
- Marge unwrapped the dirty bundle, displaying Fred's
glove and rusted blade knives that she had saved, and then she
assured Nancy that she could now sleep, although she had avoided sleep for seven days
- Nancy phoned Glen, who lived across the street,
to warn him about the demonic dream killer, predicting that they
might be the next victims; she explained how the killer was taking
revenge on the children - descendants of those in a lynch mob
who had murdered him years earlier; she told him about her next
plan: "Just give me some help nailing the guy when I bring
him out...(of) my dream"; Glen expressed his love for Nancy
although he thought she was "nutty as a fruitcake";
her simplistic idea was to grab the guy in her dream, and then have
Glen wake her up during the struggle: "We both come
out, you whack the f--ker, and we got him" - and then they could
bash him with a baseball bat
- Nancy suggested meeting Glen
on her porch at midnight to carry out her plan, and then sternly
warned him to not fall asleep; that evening about 11:42 pm, Glen
had dozed off (while listening to his headphones and watching TV),
but was awakened by his concerned mother Mrs. Lantz (Sandy Lipton)
- although Nancy was also fighting off sleep at about
11:45 pm and her mother comforted her and urged
her to sleep while vowing that "the nightmare's over," Nancy
was uncertain; she was attempting to stay awake by taking
more pills and drinking coffee (from a hidden coffee brewer in her
room); a few minutes later at 11:50 pm,
Nancy phoned Glen to keep him from falling asleep, but his over-protective
parents (who had been keeping guard on their outdoor porch and suspected
that she was a 'lunatic') answered the phone and forbid her to talk
to their son, and then Mr. Lantz (Ed Call) took the phone off the hook
- in frustration because she couldn't reach Glen
(who was dozing off on his bed), Nancy ripped her phone cord from
the wall; then, during a mini-dream, she received a taunting phone
call - although her phone was disconnected - from Krueger:
- the killer transformed the mouthpiece of Nancy's
phone into his own mouth, darting his long tongue out into
the startled Nancy's mouth, as he triumphantly told her: "I'm your
boyfriend, now!" - a premonition
of her boyfriend Glen's retributive death
- Nancy stomped on the phone and then raced downstairs,
fearing that Glen was about to die; she was prevented
from leaving the house because her mother had locked all the doors
and windows from the inside; her drunken mother was lying on the
sofa and telling her: "Locked, locked, locked!"
Freddy's Bloody Murder of Nancy's Boyfriend Glen
- A Spectacular Geyser of Blood and Gore
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- at midnight, Glen drifted off to sleep sprawled
back fully-clothed on his bed with a blaring portable TV on his lap:
- Freddy's clawed hand burst through a hole
in the bed under him, and hungrily sucked, swallowed and
pulled him through the bed cover down into the hole (along
with the TV, stereo, bed covers, pillow, sheet, and headphones,
etc.); in the liquifying death scene, Glen was reduced
to a bloody geyser or column of his shredded remains that
exploded (or was vomited) out of the vaginal-like hole
and gushed toward the ceiling, drenching the room in his
blood, and then dripping into the downstairs living
room
- Glen's murder was reported to police, and Nancy
sensed that Glen was gone when she heard the sirens; looking out
of her window, she saw the flashing red lights of police cars and
emergency vehicles across the street; she phoned her police-officer
father at the scene and offered a proposition to him about capturing
the killer - Fred Krueger:
- "I'm gonna go and get the guy who did
it. And I want you to be there to arrest him when I bring
him out, OK?...Fred Krueger did it, Daddy. And only I can
get him. It's my nightmare he comes to. Just come here
and break the door down in exactly twenty minutes."
- Nancy had her father agree to break down her door
at 12:30 am, allowing her enough time to fall asleep and find him;
her father patronized her for the sake of calming his disturbed
daughter, so that she would fall asleep; to be fully prepared to
capture Freddy, the resourceful Nancy set up booby traps in her
house:
- she filed a small hole in a lightbulb, wrapped
wire around two thumb-tacks stuck inside the pinchers of
a wooden clothespin, and then inserted a life-saver candy
in the clothespin; then, she unspooled the wire across
the downstairs living room floor to function as a trip-wire; she
poured gunpowder into the small opening in the lightbulb and
then screwed the lightbulb back into a floor lamp; if the
wire was triggered as she expected, it would light up the
bulb - and cause an explosion
- she installed a sliding bolt on the outside
of her bedroom door, and propped up a heavy sledgehammer
connected to another triggering mechanism outside her door
- Nancy said goodnight to her drunken mother (who
vowed she had only wanted to "protect" her daughter by not telling
her), and then prepared to fall asleep in her bedroom; she closed
her eyes - and the screen went black (her dream state):
- she descended her stairs and went into the
cellar; she noticed that the bladed glove was no longer in
the dirty sack bundle hidden in the furnace
- she found another door that hadn't existed
before, and climbed down its long staircase, deeper and
deeper down a spiraling staircase toward Freddy's boiler
room (with catwalks, ladders and steaming pipes with dripping
water), where she heard Freddy's maniacal laugh: "I'm
gonna get you!" Freddy was nowhere to be seen, but
she found Glen's bloodied headphones
- she cried out: "Come out and show yourself,
you bastard!" - and he lunged at her; she ran, jumped
in a free-falling swan dive, and fell into her own front-yard,
again shouting, "Where are you,
Krueger?" as her timer on her watch showed only 10 seconds
until wake-up time
- Nancy's scheme succeeded when Freddy appeared in
the real-world in the rose-trellis on the front yard, and she
tackled him with a bear-hug to hold onto him; she awoke in her
bedroom with her alarm sounding, wondering to herself: "I'm
crazy after all..." - but then Freddy attacked her from behind;
she fought him off, ran out into the hallway and locked
her bedroom door from the outside, where she rigged one of her
booby traps (her bedroom door bolt and the sledgehammer) - to delay
and fend off Freddy; she called across the street from a second floor window to the cop posted
to watch her house: "I've got him trapped. Help!", but the clueless officer responded
simply that everything was under control
- she ran downstairs, and vainly continued to call
for help across the street; she lured Krueger into the living room,
where her second booby trap was activated; Freddy tripped the wire
and the light exploded, sending him sprawling, as she continued
to desperately call across the street through a downstairs window
to help capture Freddy
- she fled into the cellar again, threw a jug of gasoline
onto Freddy, and set him on fire; finally,
she was able to alert her father, Lt. Thompson and other officers
to cross the street, break through the front door, and assist;
Nancy found Freddy's fiery footprints or footburns leading up
the stairs to her mother's second floor bedroom, where the flaming
Freddy had pinned Marge to the bed and was strangling her; to fight
the flames and smother them, a blanket was tossed over them, but
when removed, Freddy had disappeared, and nothing was left but
Marge's blackened, half-skeletal corpse - it
sank into the fluid-like mattress and vanished
- in a state of shock, Nancy spoke to her father: "Now
do you believe me?"; she suggested that her father go downstairs
while she was left alone in the bedroom; Freddy rose up from
under the bedsheet and loomed over her - imprinting his face
on the stretched sheet - and then burst out with his gloved hand;
but she turned her back on him, unphased by his threat to kill
her by explaining that he wasn't real; she calmly stated:
- "I know you're there, Freddy...I know
you too well now, Freddy...It's too late, Krueger. I know
the secret now. This is just a dream. You're not alive.
This whole thing is just a dream. (She turned toward him
and spoke firmly) I want my mother and friends again. I
take back every bit of energy I gave you. You're nothing.
You're s--t"
- Nancy turned to leave the bedroom as he lunged
at her to stab her, but her resolute lack of fear caused him to vanish
and fade away; as she exited her mother's
bedroom after vanquishing the demonic dream killer, she found herself
outside her front door in the bright but diffuse morning fog
Nancy On the Front Porch With Her Mother
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Nancy and Teens in Glen's Convertible
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Trapped by Freddy in Glen's Convertible
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Freddy's Arm Grabbing Marge And Pulling Her Through
the Front-Door Window
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Film's Dreamy Epilogue
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- in the film's ambiguous, tacked-on, twist-ending
epilogue, it appeared that everything that had occurred earlier was
a dream (now followed by another dream??); all of the teens were
now alive; her cheery mother saw her off to school and vowed to
stop drinking; Nancy (without any arm bruises)
was picked up by her friends (Glen, Rod, and Tina), no longer deceased,
in Glen's convertible in front of her house
- as the car roof tightly clamped shut over their
heads, it revealed itself as red/green striped (the colors of
Freddy's sweater); uncontrollably, the windows rolled up and
the car drove off, with the frightened and kidnapped teens trapped inside
- oblivious to their entrapment, Marge waved goodbye,
as the camera panned to the right where a group of white-dressed
young girls were jumping rope and singing the Freddy rhyme; suddenly,
Freddy's right arm smashed through the front door's small window
and grabbed Marge - and pulled her entire body through the opening
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Opening Title Credits
Haunting Children's Song

During Sleepover at Tina's House, The Wall in Tina's Bedroom Bulged
Above the Sleeping Nancy

During Another Tina Nightmare, in a Back Alleyway, Freddy's Arms Extended
to 10 Feet Long

Freddy to Tina as He Held Up His Razored Hand: "This is God!"

Freddy Chopped Off Two of His Fingers

Freddy's Skeletal Face

Nancy's HS English Teacher (Lin Shaye)

Nancy Dozing Off in Class

Nancy Seeing Tina Speaking to Her Within a Bloody Body Bag in the Hallway
Outside Her Classroom

The Body Bag Dragged Away In the Hallway

Student Hall-Guard (Leslie Hoffman) Transformed Into Freddy With Gloved
Hand




Tina's Killer in the HS Basement - To Nancy: "Come to Freddy" and
Wiggling His Tongue at Her

Saved By Her Mother After the Bathtub Incident

The Beginning of Nancy's Next Dream Sequence

Nancy Fleeing From the "Boogeyman" Up Her Home's Gooey Stairsteps

Rod Found Hanging Dead in His Cell

Nancy Tested For Sleep Disorders

Gash On Nancy's Arm Acquired During Sleep Study

Freddy's Fedora Hat Brought Back From Her Dream

Nancy's Realization to Her Mother: "It's this guy, he's after us
in our dreams"

Her Mother's Confession to Nancy: "Fred Krueger can't come after
you, Nancy -- he's dead"

In Her Elm Street Home's Basement, Nancy's Mother Explained The Back-Story
About Fred Krueger ("A Filthy Child Murderrer")

Nancy's Mother With A Dirty Bundle Containing Freddy Krueger's Glove and Rusted Blade Knives

Glen's Overprotective Parents Mr. and Mrs. Lantz (Ed Call and Sandy
Lipton) Keeping Guard on Their Outdoor Porch Across the Street From
Nancy's House

Nancy's Disconnected Phone (With a Darting Tongue) and Freddy's
Voice: "I'm your boyfriend, now!"


After Glen's Death, Nancy's Proposition to Her Father to Capture the
Serial Killer Fred Krueger




Nancy's Final Dream - Descending Stairs, Deeper and Deeper - to Confront
Fred Krueger in Boiler Room

Krueger Tackling Her on Her Front Lawn (in the Real-World?)

Waking Up In Her Bedroom: "I'm crazy after all... "

Attacked by Krueger in Her Bedroom

Freddy Was Set on Fire in the Cellar

The Skeletal and Burnt Remains of Nancy's Mother in Her Bed

Nancy to Freddy: "This is just a dream. You're not alive"

Freddy Rising Up Out of Her Mother's Bed Behind Nancy

Nancy Denying Freddy's Existence - Turning Her Back on Him
Last Image: Girls Jumping Rope Nearby
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