October 2024
Third Round for an Ongoing Nightmare on Elm Street
This article originally appeared in AC May 1987. Some images are additional or alternate. The Nightmare on Elm Street movies have, for better or worse, become a part of our collective movie going psyche, and a grand stylization of its unconscious. The original, directed by Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left), is a small miracle of celluloid horror, deftly mixing its characters’ paranoid lives with the dreams they have — dreams which can kill them. Thus, was created Freddy Krueger, the series’ monstrous and quite witty villain. Freddy’s trademarks are an old hat tipped over his hideously disfigured face, an inhuman laugh, and claw-like hands with long razors for fingers. His arms can stretch out 10 to 20 feet in any...more
