The parameters of the slasher film are so narrow that at this point it’s entirely possible that there are more parodies of the genre than straightforward demonstrations of it. What does it say about the limitations of such movies that Freddy Krueger, whose broad-stroke physical comedy and eventual self-awareness marks him as a tongue-in-cheek spoof, is perhaps second only to Michael Myers in the slasher pantheon? A Nightmare on Elm Street was not the first film to add a sense of humor to the genre—1982’s Slumber Party Massacre blended serious elements with satire—but Wes Craven’s masterpiece remains the best balance of pure shocks and wry comedy. Freddie would one day become a meta-textual comment on himself, but here he is something simpler: a witty, demented kook who knows just enough about himself to know that normal rules do not apply to him.
The slasher is founded upon regressive sexual subtexts, with the killers either responses to perceived deviance among reckless youths or deviants themselves, employing noticeably phallic weapons to dispatch their victims. This certainly comes into play with Nightmare, with its Final Girl protagonist and its stable of horny knife fodder (to say nothing of the killer being the dream shade of a roasted pedophile), but Robert Englund plays Freddy with an amusingly impish quality that often comes off as playful. Early on, when he torments high school student Tina (Amanda Wyss) in her dreams, Englund emphasizes Freddy’s teasing nature: the way Freddy runs with his hands waving wildly in the air, how he calls after her in mocking sing-song, the cruel scrape of his bladed glove on boiler room pipes. Freddy doesn’t just chase; he goads and cajoles, and if that only makes him more frightening, it also makes him an honest-to-god character, not just a presence.
Compounding the character’s sense of goofy fun is the way Craven maximizes the slack physical limitations of a character who exists only when people fall asleep. When Freddy at last closes in on Tina, for example, he not only makes impossible strides to constantly be in front of the fleeing teenager, but he also, in one shot right out of a Looney Tunes sight gag, suddenly leaps out from behind a thin, leafless tree, completely hidden not two seconds before. Other, minor visual cues abound, as in the clues that a character has entered a dream by such giveaways as a hall monitor wearing Freddy’s tell-tale striped sweater. And for a film that cares little for maintaining any sense of logic in the division between awake and asleep, Craven’s line-blurring moments ably give an audience as much information as they need.
The early scene of Tina’s death is shown in her stalked dreamscape, but the more startling payoff comes from watching her flesh rip open in the real world, her body levitating in the air as red gashes etch into her skin. Later, Glen (Johnny Depp) is sucked into his bed as a geyser of blood erupts up to the ceiling. This old-school in-camera effect of an inverted set and camera is simple but chilling for the dissonant motion of the gushing blood as it falls upward, the unreal camera setup turning “reality” into a kind of dream itself.
The gore and reality-bending may define the film, but what especially sticks out today is the fierce competence of the heroine. Even at her most frazzled and sleep-deprived, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) always keeps her wits around Freddy, whether burning herself in the boiler room to wake herself up to figuring out a way to fight the killer when she manages to bring his hat back into the waking world. The finale marks one of the few occasions where the prey, not the predator, remains in control throughout, as Nancy lures Freddy into a series of traps that exploit weaknesses even he did not seem to think he had. Nancy even gets to further some of the earlier physical humor, constantly smacking her opponent with various objects, and his awkward flailing exposes him for the absurdity that he is.
It shows a great deal of confidence on the filmmakers’ part to demystify Freddy with these scenes, yet Craven never allows the character to lose his sense of menace and terror. In some ways, Freddy is the scariest of the slashers, not because of the glove or the cobwebs of burn scars but because of his imagination and the impression he gives relative to, say, Michael or Jason, that he actually thinks about his kills beyond mere bloodlust. As he makes merry in teens’ nightmares, Craven sprints along to keep up, and as much of an audience pleaser as the film is, it’s most remarkable for bridging, in unorthodox terms, body and psychological horror. In watching flesh tear apart or explosions of blood seemingly unbidden in the real world, the film maximizes Freddy’s terror when he cannot be seen at all, and when Nancy finally does goad him into reality, he amazingly becomes less frightening for at last being something she can touch and, therefore, fight.