A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

What I Knew:
Its A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy, dreams, blood fountain, Johnny Depp.
What I Got:
A man is building a glove. This glove has hinged blades on it. A Nightmare on Elm Street. A man stabs a curtain and a girl runs down a hallway. A sheep scares her and a man laughs. She is now in some kind of a factory. Or hell. A Hell Factory. She creeps down the corridors and stumbles across a curtain. The gloved man, now wearing a fedora, slashes the curtain, disappears, and reappears behind her. She suddenly wakes up. She was just dreaming. She has a bunch of slashes in her nightgown. Maybe the dream was more real than she thought!
A bunch of teenagers are walking to school. The girl's name is Tina.  All her friends had nightmares. Tina assumes that they're going to have an earthquake because things get weird before earthquakes. What. Tina and her friends, mixed gender friends, are having a sleep over. Male friend is a doofus. Tina has been having visions of her dream guy. That made her female friend remember her dream, which was the same dream as it turns out. He had "finger knives, something he made himself." Nancy is female friend. Nancy and Tina. They had the same dream. A creepy sound happens at the window and the friends go to investigate. They send Male Friend out into the yard to find out who made the noise. He threatens to punch the noise's lights out. A guy named Rod. Glen is the male friend's name. Nancy, Tina, Glen, and Rod. Tina and Rod go indoors to have sex. Nancy is a party pooper. Glen is Nancy's boyfriend. They go inside to have sex also.
Later that night, Glen is listening to Tina and Rod have sex. It turns out Rod had a nightmare too! In Tina's room, a crucifix falls off the wall and hits a sleeping Nancy. Tina hears a scary noise. She goes to investigate it. Something is being thrown at her window. Finally the window breaks and someone whispers "Tina." Meanwhile in Tina's room, a face stretches out of the wall over Nancy. Nancy knocks on the wall a few times to find it solid. This is really, really cool.
Tina goes downstairs and follows the whispers. They lead her out into the backyard and down an alley. A familiar fedora pokes around a corner and glove guy appears, except he has gigantic arms. He chases after her, teleporting back and forth in front of her. He chops off his own fingers for some reason but he bleeds green blood. Glove bro finally catches her and she rips his face off. She starts freaking out and this wakes up Rod. She is having a seizure in her bed. She starts getting thrown around and slashes/blood appear on her body. Rod is powerless to help her as she is smushed against the ceiling. She falls limp on her bed. Nancy and Glen wake up and come to investigate, finding a bloodsoaked and a missing Rod.
Later the police are investigating, they suspect Rod. Nancy's dad is the detective in charge. He lectures his daughter on the seriousness of death and the seriousness of premarital sex. Nancy tells her dad that Tina dreamed about her own death.
Later a news report tells us that they are hunting for Rod. Nancy's mom want to let Nancy go to school because she didnt sleep the night before. Eventually she relinquishes and Nancy makes her way down the block. She sees a bald guy. She no longer sees a bald guy. Rod grabs her and drags her into the bushes while she is distracted. Rod tells Nancy that he didnt do it. Nancy's dad shows up and tries to shoot Rod but Nancy helps him escape but cop cars show up and they arrest him. Nancy is mad at her dad. This is a good Father's Day Film.
In English class Nancy learns about something rotten in the state of Denmark. She starts to fall asleep as a hawaiian shirt guy reads Julius Caesar. Nancy sees Tina in a bloody bodybag. Hawaiian shirt bro quotes Hamlet. Tina disappears into a pool of oil. Nancy gets up from her desk to go investigate. Down the hallway, she sees Tina being dragged by an invisible force. A hall monitor wearing a red and green sweater asks Nancy for a hall pass, the hall monitor then grows a claw and develops the Man's voice. Nancy wanders down into the sub-basement, following a trail of what is presumably Tina's blood. The Man shows up, scares Nancy, and slices open his chest. Worms and green pus bleed out. Nancy tries to run but she is trapped. The clawed man chases her through boilers and upstairs and into dead ends. He laughs maniacally and taunts her. She shouts that its only a dream and he says come to "Freddie." He is Freddie.  Nancy burns her arms on a boiler, screams, and wakes up, back in English class. She runs out. Out in front of the school she cries and notices a very real burn on her arm.
Later, Nancy interrogates Rod. Rod describes Tina's murder at the hands of an invisible razor monster. Rod's leather jacket is incredibly loud. Rod tells Nancy that he had a nightmare about a man with knives for fingers. Freddie.
That night, Nancy takes a bath. She sings a song about Freddie and falls asleep in the tub. Freddie's hand comes out of the water between her legs and tries to get her. Nancy's mom wakes her just before disaster strikes, but Nancy falls asleep yet again, Freddie dragging her under. The tub is miles deep now. Nancy screams and her mom breaks in to save her. Nancy is alright now. Nancy watches a horror movie in bed. Glen has climbed up her rose trellis and is trying to get into her room. Glen notices the burn.  Nancy asks Glen to be her guard as she looks for someone.
Nancy walks alone from her house. She asks Glen if he's still watching, and he emerges from a bush. She continues walking. She goes through an old door and ends up out front of her school, i think. Through a window she sees Freddie. She shouts for Glen's protection. Oh its the jail that she is in front of and Freddie is trying to kill Rod. Nancy keeps screaming for Glen but Tina comes instead, and then she turns into a bunch of bugs. Freddie jumps out and starts chasing Nancy. She makes it back to her house, locks the door and tries to run up stairs. The stairs have turned to marshmallow. Freddie is still coming. Nancy keeps saying its just a dream and he isn't real, but he bursts through the door and begins to murder her. Nancy fights him off, but he keeps coming. Nancy's alarm clock goes off, waking her up. Glen was asleep the whole time. Nancy is pissed at Glen.
Glen and Nancy run down to the station, demanding to see Rod. Rod, asleep, is being attacked by his blankets. Nancy's dad is there and wont let the two of them see Rod. He decides to go down and see for himself. Rod is being strangled by his blankets. Freddie made it look like Rod hanged himself. The cops cut him down and declare him dead.
At Rod's funeral, Nancy is upset. Nancy describes Freddie to her parents. Nancy's mom takes her to a sleep clinic where they are monitoring her dreams. As Nancy drifts off, they doctors don't find anything wrong with her. Nancy starts freaking out and her hair turns grey. There's also a huge slash on her arm as well as Freddie's hat in her bed.
Back at home, Nancy's mom is whining about her daughter over the phone. Nancy overhears. Nancy is drinking coffee so she doesn't ever sleep. Nancy explains that there is someone killing her in the dream. Fred Kruger is the murderer. Nancy's mom is a jerk and also knows who Fred Kruger is. Nancy storms out
Down at the river, Glen and Nancy talk about dreams. Nancy is learning about booby traps from library books. Someone installed bars on all the windows of Nancy's house and also tore down the trellis Glen climbed on.  Nancy is so pissed at her alcoholic mom. The two of them go down to the cellar to talk about why there are bars. Fred Kruger, says Nancy's mom, was a child murderer in the neighborhood. A murderer who never got convicted. The neighborhood parents, including Nancy's mom, murdered him by burning down his home. Nancy's mom even has his knives hidden in the furnace.
Nancy calls Glen. He makes a Prisoner of Zenda joke. She's planning on bringing Freddie out of the dream so Glen can kill him. She warns Glen not to fall asleep. Their plan goes into action at midnight. As the clock ticks, Nancy looks at a picture of her deceased friends and takes a sleeping pill. Glen's mom comes in an lectures him for having his music and television on at the same time. It is 11:42. Nancy has a hidden coffee machine and mug under her bed. Glen's parents think Nancy is some kind of lunatic.
Nancy calls a sleeping Glen's house but Glen's parents just hang up on her and leave the phone off the hook. Glen is doomed. Nancy unplugs her phone in retaliation, but it keeps ringing. She answers it and Freddie is on the other end. He sticks his tongue at her through the phone and she stomps it. Nancy runs downstairs where her mom is drunk. Nancy is trapped indoors.
At Glen's place, Freddie drags him into his bed. A fountain of blood rockets from the bed and soaks Glen's ceiling. Glen's entrails fill the room as his mother walks in. She screams. An ambulance arrives saying they need a mop, not a stretcher. Nancy's dad also shows. Glen has been entirely liquidized. Nancy calls her dad and gives him a proposition. She's going to trap Fred Kruger and needs her dad's help. Her dad acquiesces and hangs up.
Nancy creates a home alone-style series of booby traps and contraptions in her house. Gunpowdered light bulbs and spring-loaded sledge hammers. Back at Glen's house, the coroner is throwing up. Alcoholic Mom is still rambling about Freddie to Nancy. Nancy heads back to her room and prepares for war against Freddie via prayer and an alarm clock. She has ten minutes in her dreams to pull Freddie out. She falls asleep.
Nancy is climbing down some stairs while the score plays some creepy dream music. She heads down to a basement and checks for Freddie's glove in the furnace. Its missing. Nancy finds a secret passageway into the Boiler Room of Death and begins her hunt. The burn on her arm begins to hurt again as she cries Freddie's name, attempting to lure him out. In Freddie's bed, she finds her crucifix. Freddie begins clacking his finger-knives together ominiously. Nancy finds glen's headphones next to a furnace. Nancy begins swearing. Freddie jumps in from out of frame and Nancy falls out of her bedroom window into the lawn. Her alarm says seven seconds remaining so she leaps on Freddie and pulls herself out of her dream. She awakes covered in lawn trimmings and stuff but no apparent Freddie. Nancy laments her insanity as Freddie jumps out and scares her. Freddie's real and now he's in the real world. She locks him in her bedroom and calls for her dead, but her dad is an "asshole."
Freddie escapes only to get hit in the head with a sledgehammer and knocked down some stairs. He then like i dont even know trips over a bomb or something and explodes a little. He chases Nancy down into the basement were she soaks him in liquor and throws a match at him. Flaming Freddie chases Nancy upstairs, but she manages to lock him in the basement. Everything is on fire. Nancy's dad finally comes. There is smoke everywhere. The door is locked though and her dad cant get in. Finally he breaks down the door and leads the cops into the basement. Freddie however broke out of the basement and climbed up the stairs to kill Alcoholic Mom. They incapacitate Freddie but not before Alcoholic Mom gets charred and dragged into the bed. Her skeleton waves as she enters the abyss. "Now do you believe me?" shrieks Nancy.
She sends her father out of the room. Freddie climbs out of the bed to kill her. They have a little conversation, apparently it was all a dream. A dream fueled by Nancy's fear. Freddie goes to kill her and disappears. Nancy then steps out into the day with her living Alcoholic Mother at her side. Glen, Tina, and uh that other guy,are there! The car seals itself on them and drives off. Freddie grabs Alcoholic Mother and drags her through a door. Fade to black. The End.
How I Felt
Well, I feel like I should get the elephant here out of the way: It took me three months to watch this entire film. I have not watched a single horror movie since I started watching this on May 12th. For a while there I thought that maybe Dead Tone would be the last horror film I ever watched considering how low my enthusiasm for Nightmare was. I'm glad i finished it though. It is a good movie, significantly better than most of the Friday the 13th films. I guess  my standards for "good movie" are pretty low these days. This movie would probably be better though being watched in a single sitting and not spread out over an entire summer.
Sequel
Well there's six of them before I can watch Freddie vs Jason and we all know how stoked I am for Freddie vs Jason.