Halloween Movie #2 & 3: A Nightmare On Elm Street

Today is a two-for-one post.  Every Tuesday in October will probably be a missed opportunity for me to write about the movie I watched on that day, because I work in-house every Tuesday.  So I don't have time during the day to watch movies like I do when I work from home.

Today's movie is A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES) and NES 2: Freddy's Revenge.

NES is the story of Freddy Kruger, a Halloween favorite.  Kruger used to be a vicious child murderer who killed his victims in a boiler room.  After he was found out, his case went to trial but was dismissed on something small like the search warrant not being signed and his case was dropped.  The parents of the murdered children, as well as other concerned parents, rallied together and burned Freddy alive in his own boiler room.  Enter present time.  Now a dead Kruger comes to kill once again to seek revenge on the people who killed him.  He is now targeting the children of the mob that killed him, and he seeks them out in their dreams.  If Freddy kills you in the dream, you die in real life.  Every movie in this franchise is about the next victim (and all their friends) trying to get away from Freddy or defeat him all together in their dreams.

In the original movie (which is also Johnny Depp's introduction into movie stardom), a girl named Nancy is the victim.  Her mother was the one who orchestrated the mob that killed Freddy, and Nancy's mom even kept his creepy knife hand as a macabre souvenir.  After an hour and a half of campy special effects and bad acting, we are left with a cliffhanger ending.  In the (first) sequel, a boy named Jesse and his family move into Nancy's old house and Freddy calls dibs on terrorizing the new residents.  Except this time, Freddy uses Jesse as puppet, moving through Jesse to kill in the real world.  In the end, his girlfriend telling him she loves him over and over convince Jesse to fight against Freddy and Freddy finally lets him go.  This is also an hour and a half, but the special effects are enough better that I wouldn't call them campy.  Still no sign of decent acting.  But, it was the '80s.  Another continuance ending, but not as good as the ending from the first movie.

I'll admit, NES is not one of my favorites.  It's not scary; it's not even jumpy.  I almost fell asleep watching the second movie.  NES is, however, a definite Halloween staple.  So I do feel compelled to watch it to get in the Halloween spirit.  And now only 6 more Freddy movies of spirit-getting-into!  ...yay...