A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Directed by Wes Craven. Starring Heather Langenkamp, Ronee Blakley, John Saxon, Johnny Depp, Amanda Wyss, Nick Corri, Robert Englund, Charles Fleischer. [R]

Suburban teenagers start suffering from sleep deprivation after their dreams keep getting invaded by a burned, blade-gloved maniac named Freddy Krueger (Englund) who can terrorize and slaughter them at will—get mangled in dreamland, become mangled in real life. Inspired premise sets this supernatural slasher apart from the pack; also, Krueger is genuinely menacing, used sparingly, and is permitted to have something approaching a personality (and, hey, hardly a bad pun in sight for this first go-around). A good number of imaginative ideas and indelible images are delivered with the sort of burnished beauty and slickness rarely seen in low-budget fright-fests, but the dialogue is often banal, and the final confrontation is a let-down both in concept and execution. Depp’s film debut. Produced by Robert Shaye; his wife, Lin, has a small role as a teacher. Followed by a slew of sequels, a television anthology program (Freddy’s Nightmares), and a 2010 remake.

73/100