Every Town Has An Elm Street: The Tao of Freddy K.

In William Schoell and James Spencer's superlative companion, The Nightmare Never Ends: The Official History of Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare on Elm Street Films (Citadel, 1992), director and horror icon Wes Craven briefly recounts the youthful experience that led him to create cinematic dream-killer Freddy Krueger.

Specifically, Craven reported that -- as an eleven year-old -- he awoke one night from slumber to the sound of strange, scuffling sounds outside his bedroom window.

Young Craven got up out of his bed, went to the window, and gazed down to the avenue below. There, a mysterious stranger stood. The man looked up at the window and met young Craven's stare. A terrified Craven hid for several minutes.

When Craven returned to the window, the stranger was still standing there; still looking up at the window...in the exact same position. He hadn't moved.

Then, the man entered Wes Craven's building, slowly climbed the stairs to the family apartment -- his footsteps audible -- and neared the front door...

"As an adult, I can look back and say that that was one of the most profoundly frightening experiences I have ever had," Craven told the authors of The Nightmare Never Ends. "That guy has never left my mind, nor has the feeling of how frightening an adult stranger can be. He was not only frightening, but he was amused by the fact that he was frightening and able to anticipate my inner thoughts..." (page 179).

Meet Freddy Krueger, the villain of Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and unarguably the most popular movie boogeyman of a generation.

This Friday the legend of Freddy K. is re-born with a big budget remake of the seminal Nightmare on Elm Street but -- disappointingly -- without Craven's input, advice or participation.

Considering the imminent silver-screen re-birth of Krueger, this seemed like the ideal time to go back and remember those qualities that made Robert Englund's Freddy such a powerful cultural influence in the mid-to-late 1980s.

1. When the Parents Are Away, Freddy Plays:

In Craven's original film, Freddy's teenage victims have literally no place to turn.

Tina's Mom is more interested in shacking up with her boyfriend than in helping Tina (Amanda Wyss) deal with her night terrors. Nancy's Mom (Ronee Blakeley) is a (mostly) useless drunk. Nancy's Dad (John Saxon) is a police detective, and always "on the job." Instead of listening to Nancy and helping her fight Freddy Krueger, he uses Nancy as bait to catch the wrong person (Rod). Glenn's Dad, Mr. Lantz (Ed Call) hangs-up on Nancy when she calls to check up on Glenn (Johnny Depp). "You've got to be firm with these kids!" he barks. The price of that self-righteous telephone hang-up: Glenn gets torn up by Freddy in the blood-flood to end all blood floods.

The adult world depicted in A Nightmare on Elm Street is not one friendly to children. In fact, local children sing the famous jump rope song ("one, two, Freddy's coming for you...") from one generation to the next, to warn one another about Krueger and his monstrous actions. The parents themselves are too busy burying the past; too busy burying the "truth" in the hope that what they repress and deny will simply stay buried. Of course, it doesn't.

Freddy visits the sins of the parents (murder) on the children, and because their parents aren't honest with them, the children of Elm Street don't even know why this is happening to them.

Writing for People in May of 1985, critic Ralph Novak wrote that "Craven is something of a generational turncoat. While he is 35, all of his adult characters have the intelligence and courage of cantaloupes."

That's exactly right...by design. Nightmare on Elm Street is about the younger generation learning to make it on its own; about recognizing the terrors of adulthood. And yes, there are some things worse than lying or obfuscating parents.

And that's what Freddy is: the amused stranger from Craven's childhood who enjoys terrorizing children because he can.

There's something especially upsetting about this aspect of Freddy, the fact that he preys on children, on the young. The world can be a pretty frightening place even for adults (even without Krueger) in it, but just imagine being eighteen and finding out that this guy is after you. One of my favorite lines from the original film is Nancy's (Heather Langenkamp) shocked realization that -- without sleep -- she "looks twenty." That comment is so innocent, and yet so dead-pan. She means it. Not being forty years old like me for instance, she doesn't see that it's funny...that twenty years old is just a blip on the radar. Freddy is such a monster because he destroys such innocence. And he relishes the job.

2.) Freddy is the Man of Your Dreams:
Freddy is also incredibly frightening because, much like Michael Myers, he's utterly inescapable.

The great white shark from Jaws can't kill you if you don't go into the ocean, for instance. However, everyone must sleep sooner or later. Everybody has to dream. And that's the field where Freddy stalks his prey, on the dream plateau. Freddy can afford to be patient because he knows that he always has the home-field advantage. He lives in dreams, and we just visit that often-surreal place.

The dream sequences of a Nightmare on Elm Street -- at least before some of the more outrageous rubber reality set-pieces of the sequels set-in -- all play cannily on very basic human fears. That we're being chased for instance, and that our feet get, essentially, stuck in mud. Or that there's something hiding in the bubble bath unseen...where we're vulnerable. Or that the monster chasing us can stretch beyond human proportions to grab us.

Freddy scares us because we're all vulnerable to the irrationality of dreams. But again, Freddy thrives there. He uses that irrationality, that vulnerability against us. Our nightmare landscape is his playground.

3.) To Be Or Not To Be: That is the Question Freddy Poses:
I always say that Nancy Thompson is Hamlet for the horror set.

Consider that A Nightmare on Elm Street serves as a direct thematic counterpoint to John Carpenter's Halloween (1978).

In Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) sits in high school English class while an unseen adult teacher drones on about "fate" and "destiny." In the midst of the class, Laurie sees Michael Myers' car on the street: she thus glimpses her fate. As the teacher explains on the soundtrack that "you can't escape fate," we are led (through the visuals) to understand the connection: that Laurie cannot escape her impending connection to an escaped serial killer.

By contrast, A Nightmare on Elm Street finds Nancy Thomas in another high school English class as a teacher discusses the resourcefulness of the melancholy prince in Shakespeare's Hamlet. The teacher notes that Hamlet "stamps out the lies" of his mother, something which Nancy will do in Elm Street as well, and that the prince "probes and digs" to find the truth. Again, that's the very task Nancy undertakes: seeking information about the life and death of Freddy Krueger, and her parents' role in his murder.

The Elm Street philosophy suggest that only by digging beneath the surface, by learning the truth of a thing, can one overcome the sins of one's parents and survive. The key to beating Freddy is to know and understand him: to see that he thrives on the energy of your hate, and then rob him of that energy.

4.) Freddy is the 1980s Personified: Apocalypse, Armageddon, and Deficit Spending

I realize that my conservative friends and readers get exasperated with me for pointing out some, er, unpleasant facets of the Ronald Reagan years in America.

Like the fact that Reagan repeatedly expressed a belief that we were living in the Bilbical End Times.

Like the fact that he joked about bombing Russia on an open mic, or claimed, erroneously that nuclear missiles could be recalled after launch.

Or that his tax cuts for the utra-rich turned an 80 billion dollar deficit into a 200 billion deficit in just two years.

Or that 35 million more Americans lived below the poverty line in 1983 than did before he was inaugurated.

It was in this decade, as well, that middle-class American families, by trying to keep up with the yuppie Joneses, had to become two-income households. And that meant the advent of the "latch-key kid" syndrome: the child who came home from school to find...nobody at home.

All of this context plays into the terror that is Freddy Krueger. The sins of the father -- the national debt -- is visited onto the children; just as the sins of the father (murder) was visited upon the children of Elm Street. More than that, the ascent of Freddy - a hellish demon -- in supposedly secure middle America suggested nothing less than an apocalypse in the making.

In Freddy's Dead we saw what ultimately became of Freddy's Springwood. As you may recall, the affluent community had turned into a ghost-town. And today, to continue the economic metaphor, there are hundreds of small towns in America where Main Street looks just like Springwood: places where the economic policies of the last thirty years have destroyed prosperity.

This is who Freddy was. Who Freddy has been for a quarter-century.

After Friday, I'm not sure who he will be. If the talents behind the remake are smart, they have paid adequate note to our unsettled times; to America's continuing dreads and fears.

If the new Freddy can tap into these 2010 bugaboos, then the long-lived dream demon will survive the translation to the next generation.

If Freddy becomes, instead, just a ring-master shepherding a circus of impressive special effects, this new iteration of the legend may not carry the power of his predecessor. I wish Craven had been involved in the making of the film; at least then we would know for certain that the film would carry some sub textual meaning, or genuflect to the ideas that have currency in today's America.

If you're interested in reading more about Freddy and his creator's history, don't forget to check out my 1998 book: Wes Craven: The Art of Horror.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: Home Sweet Home (1980)

"A little craziness never hurt anyone..."

- Dialogue from Home Sweet Home (1980)

In honor of the approaching holiday, today I'm looking back at a really terrible horror film that I first encountered while writing Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

Conveniently, it's both Thanksgiving-themed and a turkey.

Advertised with the ad-line "The Bradleys won't be leaving home. Ever," Home Sweet Home (1981) is the not-so-riveting story of a deranged serial killer and his holiday rampage.

Said serial killer is portrayed by Body by Jake's (1988) gleeful Jake Steinfeld. The enthusiastic exercise guru -- also known for his music label, "Don't Quit Music" -- plays this muscular madman as a cackling, bulging-eyed freak. This looney killer has the tattoo "home sweet home" emblazoned on his fist, and was incarcerated for eight years over the bludgeoning death of his parents.

In one of the film's first scenes, this hyperactive, super-fit killer takes PCP by injecting it into his tongue, guns his car engine rowdily, and then runs over a little old lady crossing the street.

Lots of maniacal, silent-movie-style, villlainous cackling over that. Unfortunately, Jake has no moustache to twirl.

Meanwhile, at a Southern California ranch, the unconventional Bradley family is preparing for a holiday that may or may not be Thanksgiving. Let's see: there's a turkey. There's a celebratory meal. There's a family gathering. And there are guests. But no one mentions Turkey Day by name. The VHS box does it for us.

Anyway -- for some reason -- the obnoxious Bradley son, charmingly named "Mistake," is dressed as a mime for the occasion. He's a practical joke-playing mime, no less. And did I mention, Mistake also dabbles in the electric guitar?

Unfortunately, the mime is one of the last characters to die in Home Sweet Home, meaning the audience must endure Mistake's lame antics for a very long time before the movie arrives at his fateful, and wholly-deserved electrocution.

The holiday meal with the Bradley family promises to be an unusual one too, not just because Mistake is a mime and because an uninvited serial killer is on his way, but because one of the invitees "won't drink anything," since "she hates to go to the bathroom." WTF? You know, I don't particularly like going to the bathroom either. I think I'll stop drinking too. I didn't realize it was that simple...

And did I mention that some crack cops are on the case, investigating the murders and pursuing the body-builder killer? The classy cops gawk at one character's overripe breasts after stopping her for speeding, and share this colloquy:

"Did you see that chick with the big bazooms?"

Since Home Sweet Home is incompetently shot, written and acted, one might hope that the violence Jake ultimately inflicts on the Bradley family would at least prove entertaining. But it isn't (well, except for the death of the mime, to be fair...). One character dies when she falls over and cracks her head against a rock. Can you really blame Ole Jack for that? Another character gets his head crushed under the hood of a car.

Home Sweet Home exhibits the familiar flaw of the worst slasher films, meaning that the killer is always positioned right where he should be in order to kill the one character who happens to be left alone at any given moment. You might accept that level of expertise from a Michael Myers or a Jason...but by Jake Steinfeld? I just can't ascribe supernatural abilities to this guy. Enthusiasm, gung-ho inspiration, yes. Boogeyman capabilities...no.

Mere words can't truly convey how irrevocably horrible this movie is. So Happy Thanksgiving, caveat emptor, and...gobble, gobble.

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Prey (1984)

As I wrote in my compendium, Horror Films of the 1980s (McFarland; 2007) I've always enjoyed the "mountain man" variation on the 1980s Slasher Paradigm as seen in such films as Just Before Dawn (1983), The Final Terror (1985) and even Wrong Turn (2003).

You know the type of genre movie I'm talking about: all the same Friday the 13th stock characters (bitch, jock, stoner, Final Girl, drunken Cassandra warning against trespass...) and all the same stock situations (the car won't start, vice-precedes-slice-and-dice, the false scare, the cat jump, etc.).

One significant difference, however is that the villain is a hulking sometimes-disfigured "mountain man" rather than a masked, faceless killer.

These "mountain man" slasher variations are often set in extremely isolated, picturesque settings -- meaning no rescue is possible -- and tread heavily into the transgressive realm of the savage cinema (which includes the territory of rape and revenge, among other things...).

A modest but noteworthy entry in this mountain man/slasher sweepstakes is Edwin Scott Brown's The Prey, a super-low budget film of the Reagan Era (though reportedly it was shot near the end of the 1970s..). It is not an elegant film and it is not a spectacular one...and yet -- in many important ways -- it accomplishes the primary mission of any good slasher: it terrifies. That terror is augmented by some good location shooting; shooting which tends to augment the leitmotif that the offending lead teens are not welcome in the domain of the wild forest. There, they must reckon with all sorts of predators...including the the wild mountain man. The mountain man is part of nature himself; nature's avenger even.

In The Prey, six young and irresponsible adults from the city, Nancy (Debbie Thureson), Joel (Steve Bond), Bobbie (Lori Lethin), Skip (Robert Wald), Gail (Gayle Gannes) and Greg (Philip Wenckus) hike into the thick woods at North Point, oblivious to the fact that a nice married couple was recently axe-murdered there while camping. Before long, the young adults are the prey of a monstrous assailant, a deformed gypsy (Carel Struycken). A heroic forest ranger (Jackson Bostwick) attempts to rescue the hikers, but the giant wild man is a savage foe...and looking for...a mate.

After an axe-decapitation (our first act coup-de-grace...) at the outset, The Prey next settles down into...stock nature footage. The audience gets long views of centipedes, frogs, spiders and more. There are long shots of impressive mountain ranges, babbling brooks, a spider's web and a majestic hawk overhead, searching for prey.

Then -- in direct opposition to the images of nature featured in this montage -- the camera catches sight of an unwanted invader: a modern van pulling into woods. All too soon, the van ejects bellowing, loud-mouthed, obnoxious teenagers, kids who clearly don't give a damn about the "natural" world around them. In fact, the film's protagonists treat the land as if they own it, committing transgression after transgression. One teenager turns up the volume on her radio in the woods -- literally replacing the call of the wild with rock-and-roll, and, well, you just know Mother Nature is pissed.

Many reviewers have concluded that the stock nature footage included The Prey is mainly just padding, a way to lengthen a film too short for feature release. Indeed this may be so, but in this particular instance, the nature footage also serves a point (even if unintended): it serves as an explicit reminder that the teens have tread into a domain where they are no longer in control, and furthermore that nature is a force to be reckoned with. The teens experience "push back" not just from the scarred mountain man, but from the combined forces of the nature itself, which seem to judge them as invaders.

This approach fits into one of my primary theories about slasher films in general: we enjoy them because -- for the most part -- we all live in safe, artificial communities protected by layers of law enforcement and bureaucracy. We have no real predators, and we are perched at the top of the food chain. I believe some part of us --perhaps a prehistoric part of us -- desires a challenge; a test of our survival skill set. We suspect, perhaps subconsciously, that such a challenge might even emerge from the wild (that's where they came from in the past, after all...). That's why Jason lives in the woods and his approach is almost universally heralded by a crackling thunderstorm. He is, simply put, a Force of Nature.

In other words, we had to invent Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger as horror movie predators because our contemporary lives are so safe and, well, predictable. The slasher films -- as ritualistic and repetitive as a (bloody) sporting event -- provide us the opportunity to imagine ourselves matched up against these predators. I think it's a healthy response, frankly (and I love the slasher format.)

Anyway, getting back to The Prey, there's a point in the film in which Mark (the forest ranger) discovers a corpse. This gruesome find is inter-cut with -- again -- stock footage of vultures high up on a tree limb. The connection between the two shots is explicit: the dead body is no longer a "person" but has joined the food chain of the pitiless forest and shall be treated as such. Again, the "padding" serves a kind of unique purpose. It actually adds to the artistic value of the film.

The Prey's focus on natural images reminds the viewer at all times that the mountain man -- a nemesis who is comfortable in these surroundings -- has the home team advantage in any face-to-face battle. Nature is his ally, because he lives in apparent harmony with it. For instance, at the teens' campsite earlier in the film, nature seems to come to life and encroach on the young interlopers. Snakes slither towards camp, owls land nearby, and nature focuses on the unaware, the oblivious, just as the mountain man also approaches. Ultimately, it is an attack from several fronts, but all fronts have one commander: Mother Nature.

Perhaps the film could have down with fewer shots of "nature" and still made this point, but in this case, the inclusion of stock footage actually grants The Prey a kind of artistic perimeter to work within. The focus on the living forest also serves, after a fashion, as counterpoint to the Friday the 13th films, which, as they progressed, became increasingly lazy and couldn't be bothered to provide such crucial horror elements as atmosphere or mood, let alone character. By contrasts, it's clear in The Prey that this is not Jason's "silent," unoccupied Hollywood forest, but rather a living, breathing ecosystem teeming with life and vying agendas. That's an important distinction in a movie that is very much a man vs. nature story.

The character named Nancy serves as the film's Final Girl, the plucky lass who seems more insightful and aware than her offending friends. But what ultimately makes The Prey a rather daring variation on the slasher formula is the film's sting in the tail/tale following the final chase. Nancy suffers a terrible fate; one that is explained only with sound effects. I won't say any more about this coda, only that I had never seen (or heard...) this ending in a slasher film before, and that is told efficiently: a baby's cries linger over further images of the immortal forest. Yes, it's sort of sick, but also rather ingenious.

At times, The Prey reminded me strongly of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (though it is nowhere near that good). It's one of those modest, mostly forgotten low-budget 1980s horror films (like 1980's The Children) that is probably better than the film's reputation suggests. Yes, there's too much "wild kingdom" footage in The Prey, but somehow that seems entirely appropriate, given how the film uses it.

...thank God they're somebody else's!

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Children (1980)

"Expendable as it is, The Children may serve as a useful audition film...Every so often, an inventive, eerie shot betrays the presence of a fitfully effective visual imagination..."

-Gary Arnold, The Washington Post: "Have You Hugged Your Ghoul Today?" (July 9, 1980, page B6)

The China Syndrome (1979) -- an A-budget Hollywood thriller starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas -- premiered in U.S. theaters on March 16, 1979. The film involved a meltdown at a nuclear power installation. A scientist in the film ominously warned that such a disaster would render an area "the size of Pennsylvania" uninhabitable for centuries.

A mere twelve days later, life imitated art...

On March 28, 1979, a partial nuclear meltdown occurred at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station (Unit 2)...in Pennsylvania.

The entire country -- perhaps the world -- was transfixed for days as the nightmarish, fictional scenario presented in the film became a very real threat. Fortunately, disaster was averted and there were no casualties (save for the future of the nuclear power industry). The prescient China Syndrome became a blockbuster film, a generational touchstone, and the fourth highest-grossing movie of 1979.

As a result of the accident and the film's popularity, the anti-nuclear movement in the United States...err...mushroomed. In May of 1979 (just a month-and-a-half after the incident and the film), over 70,000 dedicated Americans marched on Washington D.C. to protest "unsafe" nuclear power.

Since horror films often deliberately mirror the fears and anxieties of their real life epochs, it was only a matter of time before a canny genre filmmaker picked up the gauntlet and crafted a nuclear-power themed horror movie. One of the earliest of the bunch was a low-budget effort entitled The Children (1980).

If you were a kid when this relatively-obscure film was released (as I was...), the TV commercials likely have resonated in your psyche ever since. The film's horror imagery seemed...indelible (at least in short bursts). The advertisements for The Children were so terrifying that I didn't actual see the film itself for years...until I was an adult.

Regarding specifics, The Children opens with a Three-Mile-Island-like crisis. An accident (caused by employee negligence...) occurs at the Yankee Power Company's nuclear generating facility located near the quiet town of Ravensback, Mass. The reactor leaks a poisonous black substance, and in no time, a school bus filled with innocent children drives through a thick radiation cloud.

Because of this horrible exposure, the children are transformed into black-finger nailed zombie-like monsters. Their very touch causes the immediate incineration of human flesh. After disembarking from their bus, the affected children return home...exchanging hugs from their parents for - as I wrote in my book, Horror Films of the 1980s - "crispy, acrid death."

Ravensback's Sheriff Hart (Gil Rogers) teams with a local parent, John Freemont (Martin Shakar), to battle the monstrous children. The only way to stop the radioactive ghouls is to...chop off their hands, the source of their ungodly energy. The children lay siege to the Freemont home, and Mr. Freemont worries about his pregnant wife's impending birth. Could the same contamination that changed the children, change the fetus in her belly?

In horror movies, children always represent tomorrow; the future. Sacrifice the children and you are killing hope, innocence and the potential for a better day, a happier future. That's one reason why the demonic possession of Regan in The Exorcist remains so terrifying. If we cannot prevent our sacred children from becoming obscenity-spewing, crucifix-masturbating monsters, what's to live for, right? The Children works some of the same territory. Here, the sins of the father (unsafe nuclear power plants) are visited upon the children, and the entire future is compromised. As you might guess from my synopsis above, the film concludes with a "sting" that imperils not just a few kids, but the next generation itself, and by extension, the very existence of the human race.

In my aforementioned book, I commended The Children for the gung-ho attitude it consistently evidences; for the courage to remain dedicated to its wacky and admittedly-insane convictions. In other words, the cast and crew really commits to the transgressive nature of the material, even if the first half of the film is undeniably rambling, goofy, dull and virtually incoherent.

Yet by the time of the film's climax -- wherein our "heroes" utilize broad swords and shotguns to chop-up and blow away primary-school-age tykes -- such reservations about quality are likely rendered moot. In some important sense, The Children achieves that rarefied horror movie goal: it shatters accepted movie decorum. Audiences just don't walk into the average horror movie expecting to see children dismembered, or taking shotgun blasts to the gut at point-blank range. So this horror film is not merely idiosyncratic, but deliciously freakish.

Again, you're not going to see great make-up or special effects in The Children. The acting is pretty terrible. Ditto the editing. The movie lacks the veneer of professionalism you might expect; what you might term "polish." But that's all okay, because the movie's ruggedly haphazard nature permits it to unfold like an unnatural dream; a bizarre nightmare. Harry Manfredini's score aids in forging a pervasive atmosphere of dread, and there are some good "shaky camera" shots on display as the infected children creep behind tombstones in a local cemetery.

The Children's finest moment, however, is one of surprising power, delicacy and subtlety. It occurs near the film's denouement, when the sheriff and Mr. Freemont have the offending children (off-screen...) trapped in a barn. A tire-swing (hanging from a tree) is visible in the frame...and it is still swaying ever so gently. The fact that tire-swing was just recently in use indicates some important fact here: that the monstrous children, for all their destructive power....are still children.

Even as zombified, murderous monsters, the ghoulish children were engaged in the act of play and still obsessed with childish things (like swinging on a swing). It's a moment of sentiment and realization; a grace note in an otherwise violent horror film. Night of the Living Dead (1968) shocked audiences by shattering many a movie convention (a lead character lapses into catatonia and stays there for the duration of the picture; the hero is not rewarded for his intelligence and resourcefulness...but rather shot in the head; and an innocent child cuts up her mother with a garden trowel). The Children is nowhere close to being in the same class as Romero's seminal film, but it occasionally rises to that same plateau of hysteria: shocking viewers with not merely the violence the children cause, but the violence carried out against the children in the name of survival.

A superior person may be able to hold in his head two contradictory thoughts simultaneously and still continue to function. The Children holds two contradictory thoughts in its head and continues to scare...thus proving itself superior. Specifically, in The Children, the audience must countenance the idea of the contaminated children both as innocents and as rampaging monsters. That's a pretty nifty accomplishment for a low-budget, drecky, semi-incompetent movie.

The Children gives the term "nuclear family" a whole new meaning.