A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STEET [1984]

Hello to Jonathan, Dave, Úna, Lorraine, Mammy, and Eamon, my loyal followers/readers.  Sorry for the delay, but I am in the midst of re-writing the script, so the blog is on the back burner for the next week or two.  I haven't forgotten about you though!  Today I am going to treat you to the first of many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many Nightmare on Elm Street reviews.  Having watched the whole series over the past few weeks, it's interesting to view them in light of the franchise as a whole.

  While Stitches is a comedy-horror rather than a straight up scary movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of my big inspirations.  As he disposes of his victims, Freddy Kreuger freely spouts comic remarks and puns.  Is it just me, or does that sound suspiciously  like a killer clown?  So read on, and whatever you do, don't fall asleep...

My father is wont to open stories with, 'When I was a lad.'  I am going to borrow that expression here as I tell you that, when I was a lad, I was never allowed to watch scary movies.  I was the eldest in my family, so as is usually the case, my parents were stricter with me than with my subsequent siblings (cue sentimental music). 

  I remember when A Nightmare on Elm Street was first screened on television.  It was the mid-eighties, and my clothes and hair were the height of fashion.  The day after A Nightmare on Elm Street was broadcast, 75% of the boys in my class wouldn't shut up about how cool this guy Freddy Kreuger was.  As there were only four of us (yes, city folk; country school classes can be that small!), it put me somewhat in the minority.  The other boys were the youngest in their respective families, so they had been allowed to stay up and watch it with their older brothers and sisters.  The way they described it, A Nightmare on Elm Street sounded like the most amazing movie ever made, ever, by anyone.  Ever!  So all of these years later, had I really missed out?

Yes, I had.  A Nightmare on Elm Street is a classic, plain and simple.  It gave us one of the greatest screen villains of all time.  It made Wes Craven one of the most recognised names, not just in horror, but in cinema.  It took fledgling studio New Line Cinema from the verge of bankruptcy into the big leagues of Hollywood (they became known as 'the house that Freddy built').  It gave a young unknown actor called Johnny Depp his big break.  It paved the way for six sequels, a television spin-off, a crossover with the Friday The 13th franchise, a remake, novel and comic tie-ins, figurines, and a thousand imitators.  It inspired more than one musician to write truly god awful music, gave rise to a staple fancy dress party costume, and a partridge in a scare tree (I couldn't resist that and no, I'm not even remotely sorry).

  The story begins in the quiet town of Springwood, Ohio.  Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is a teenage girl who is plagued by a recurring nightmare.  When she tells her friends at school - her best friend Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), Glen (Depp), and her boyfriend Rod (Jsu Garcia) - they realise they that their nightmares all have something in common, a guy with a burnt face, a stripy jumper, a fedora, a knife-fingered hand, and a kung fu grip.  As the story unfolds, the line between dreams and reality inevitably blurs.  The swiftly diminishing group of teens realise the horrifying truth (and the story's central and most powerful concept); if you die in your dreams, you die in the real world.

  The idea that the only way to escape Freddy is to stay awake is a stroke of genius.  Try though you might, at some stage you will doze off, and when you do, Freddy will be waiting.  It puts the characters in a position where they cannot avoid confronting there fear.  As dramatic tools go, this is a flawless concept.  We are never more vulnerable than when we are asleep.  That this is exactly when Freddy strikes automatically triggers a primal terror.

  Fear is a very basic emotion and the filmmakers keep this in mind when delivering the scares.  The effectiveness of the nightmares lie in their simplicity.  Rather than attempt to represent the unfathomable scope of the dreamscape, Craven keeps things rooted in the real world of Elm Street.  At any given moment, the characters can't be sure if they are asleep or awake.  I'm not going to go into detail - I don't want to spoil it for the uninitiated - but there are several images in A Nightmare on Elm Street which will stay with you forever, none more so than Johnny Depp in a belly top.

  As the teens explore their nightmares, they learns of the real Freddy Kreuger, and of his connection with the parents of Springwood.  This back story is something that is much elaborated on in the sequels (most notably in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), but what we get here is perfect on its own.  It creates a personal connection between the antagonists and the protagonist, and gives a real sense of the evil that can lurk behind the seemingly benign façade of a small town.  The philosophy of A Nightmare on Elm Street has deep roots in the human psyche, in that the sins of the father shall we visited on the son.  Mothers and daughters, it would seem, can do whatever the hell they like!

  For most of its running time, A Nightmare on Elm Street doesn't put a foot wrong.  The characters are strong, the villain is amazing, and the scares delightfully creepy.  If there is one discordant note, it is one which runs throughout the film.  Wes Craven specifically wanted to cast the role of Nancy with someone as far removed from a typical Hollywood heroine as possible.  To this end, he cast Heather Langenkamp.  While this does add to Nancy's credibility, the unfortunate truth is that the demands of the role are slightly beyond Langenkamp's abilities as an actress.  While she isn't awful, her delivery is a little flat.

  When Freddy stepped onto the screen in 1984, he was a new kind of villain.  In the past, the nightmare protagonist was a relatively silent killer.  This may have been a vestige of the early days of horror, the likes of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and the early Dracula pictures, but even modern movie legends like Michael Myres, Jason, Leatherface, or the Terminator (which was realised only a month before A Nightmare on Elm Street) would have a hard time conducting a conversation.  Freddy was completely different.  Not only did he speak, what he said gave the impression that he really, really liked what he was doing.  Whereas the killers of the past went quietly about their business, Freddy scared you, laughed at your pathetic fear, and then he killed you.  What a shit!

  Like all of the best storytelling, A Nightmare On Elm Street has aged well.  Despite its flaws, it is a true masterpiece.  While Freddy's status in pop culture has faded, time has not dulled the edge of those razor claws.  Wes Craven had intended this be a stand alone movie.  He wanted it to end on a happy note, but was forced into creating a more open ending by the producers, who saw the franchise potential in the story.  Despite this reasoning, and even if no sequels had been made, the ending here is fantastic, and the movie is better for it.

  A Nightmare on Elm Street is complete in and of itself.  While some of the sequels are fun, none of them manage to achieve the perfect balance found here.  It is a must see, and I defy you to not have the nursery rhyme running through your head when you walk away!

I was in my twenties when I first saw A Nightmare on Elm Street.  It was the only one of the Freddy movies that I had seen before I commenced my research for Stitches, but between various trailers and video clips, I was very familiar with the character, or at least I thought I was.  The Freddy that pop culture idolises is a one-liner-spouting killing machine.  But this was never Wes Craven's intention for the character.  In his mind, Freddy was a nightmare villain, pure and simple; there was nothing comic about him.  It was the later installments that enhanced this side of his personality.

  I wish I had seen movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street at an age when they might truly have frightened me.  Watching them later in life, I appreciate the scares more than I actually feel them.  In more recent years I've been given good solid jolts by movies such as The Descent, Ring and Ring 2 (the Japanese versions), and the Korean film The Eye, but in terms of a movie that actually gave me an honest to goodness nightmare, that honour goes to, of all things, The NeverEnding Story.  The night that I saw it, I dreamed I was being chased across the fields by a man in black who was riding on the back of Falkor.  I woke up screaming.  Yes people, what it took to scare me awake was a benign character in a children's movie.  Behold, the face of terror:

I am not going to pretend for a second I want more nightmares, but while it wasn't a pleasant experience at the time, it sure made for a good memory!

Next up, we're going to trip the rift.

P.S.  As this post went up on May 24th, there is one final order of business to which I must attend; Happy Birthday, Sinéad!

FREAKS AND GEEKS [1999]

I stated in the opening blurb to this blog that while I would be looking at a lot of material that deals with clowns, killer and otherwise, I would also be delving into other ideas that are thematically relevant.  The idea here isn't just to share a bunch of reviews; it's to give anyone who is interested an overall flavour for the project I am writing (currently titled Stitches, but that may change).  This is a killer clown movie, so obviously, a lot of what I share here will be to do with that.  But the killer clown is our antagonist.  What of our protagonists?
  A good movie is about one of two things; people and/or boobs.  Ours, unfortunately, focuses more on people.  It doesn't matter how many cool deaths you have, if the people in danger aren't worth caring for, then your movie isn't worth caring for.  Outside of our titular psychopath, the main characters in Stitches are teenagers (which instinctively makes you want them to die).  They are a bunch of friends in school, and like any such group, for every moment of laughter and banter, there is one of tension and rivalry.  As such, it is important to study examples where this has been done particularly well, and one my main points of reference is a 1999 American TV series called Freaks and Geeks.

Freaks and Geeks ran for one season back at the turn of the century.  It consists of eighteen episodes and focuses on the lives of various students at William McKinley High School during their 1980-81 term.  While the show centres on the characters of Linday Weir (Linda Cardellini) and her brother Sam (John Francis Daly), these are just our in-points: Linday and her friends being the 'freaks,' Sam and his, the 'geeks.'  Once we meet these groups, the show essential becomes an ensemble piece.

  The series was created by Paul Feig and was executive produced by Judd Apatow before he hit the big time with The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and a whole bunch of mediocre crap.  The show attracted a major amount of young talent.  If you were to film this today, with this cast, you would need a hefty budget.  James Franco and Seth Rogan are the two biggest names to emerge from the series, but the show also launched the careers of Jason Segal, Linda Cardellini, and many of the other leads (and several supporting characters) have gone on to achieve moderate success (moderate in the light of my own staggering achievements).  It's kind of strange when you first start watching it, because you see all of these familiar faces looking so damn young (except for James Franco, who sold his soul to the same deity as Johnny Depp, as he looks practically the same).

One of the great things about Freaks and Geeks is its authenticity.  This isn't an über-glamorous Beverley Hills high school where every class is populated by super-wealthy supermodels (like where I went to school).  Nor is it an all too knowing take on adolescence, where everyone talks like neurotics with degrees in sociology.  This series tries, and succeeds, at presenting a realistic world as seen from the point of view of high school teens.  It perfectly captures the innocence of that period in our lives when we are torn between the blithe freedom of the children we were, and the impending responsibility of the adult we are becoming.
  Rather than cast people in their mid-twenties, the producers tried to cast as close to age as possible, and this is one of the series biggest successes.  These guys look like kids and talk like kids.  This verisimilitude brings a level of realism that no amount of de-aging make-up can achieve.  The naivete of the young performers shines through in their characters, and completely sucks you into their worlds.

  This isn't a depressingly ersatz take on high school life where everyone is gorgeous with perfect hair.  Even though there are some very attractive future stars in this show, all of that is played down.  These are just ordinary people, but don't confuse ordinary with boring.  There are no one note characters here.  You truly get to know these people as the story unfolds.  They are all complicated creatures, plagued as they are with teenage doubts and insecurities.  None of them have figured out who they are yet, and those that think they have, well, they have some surprises in store.

  In terms of an overriding series narrative, there isn't one.  This isn't a programme you watch for complex plot machinations, you watch it so that you can laugh and cry with the characters.  You find yourself loving and hating people at different times.  Sometimes they feel like your best friend, then they say or do something that you don't approve of, and you find yourself at odds with them.  I constantly felt like these people were my friends; that I was one of the gang, taking different sides as my mood dictated.  You are at the centre of all of these friendships.  The group dynamics, both internally, and in how they groups themselves interact with one another, are brilliantly realised.  This is all down to both great characters, and the quality of the performances.

  What really resonates about Freaks and Geeks is that it doesn't matter that it's an American high school in the eighties.  Its not about a specific place and period, but a time in our lives.  Even though many of the frames of reference are different, they are only superficially so.  They play softball, I played gaelic.  They have audio visual club, I helped set up the school web page and was teller in the school bank (I was one of the cool kids).  What translates best here is what matters.  It's the universal struggle to figure out who we are.  I doesn't matter if that's in school or looking at our place in the universe; it's always the big question.  All of that, it's great fun!

  When I watched the penultimate episode of Freaks and Geeks, I felt quite mellon chollie and the infitine sadness.  I deliberately put off watching the final show, as I knew it would be the last time I got to hang out with these people.  The only other series I ever felt that for was The Mysterious Cities of Gold!  In a world where we have Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Peep Show, Arrested Development, and countless other great TV series, I would put Freaks and Geeks in my top ten.  It's such a shame it was cancelled, but at least we got this much.  I really loved this show!

Judd Apatow went on to make a series called Undeclared, which I haven't seen yet, but seems to be a college version of Freaks and Geeks.  While it is not a direct sequel - it doesn't feature the same characters - it does feature much of the same cast.  I'm looking forward to acquainting myself with it!

  I hope that with Stitches, we can achieve something on a par what they did with Freaks and Geeks.  If our characters can live and breath as they do here, I will happily kill them off one by one, knowing that they have earned the life we are so gleefully taking away from them!
  To close, and just to keep things thematically relevant, here's a great image of some killer clowns:

Next up, it's about time I watched a Zombie movie.