31 Days of the Best Halloween Movies — Countdown Day 4

A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984

So many of us have had a sleepover where we sneaked (snuck?  whatever.)  our boyfriends or girlfriends into our homes and bedrooms unbeknownst to our parents — or we did so when our parents were dumb enough to trust us while they were gone.  Yeah, that would be all of us troublemakers.  This movie not only capitalizes on that, but also takes a shot at our dreams — that time of night when we are all vulnerable whether we like it or not.  The truth is that we are all, at least on a subconscious level, very afraid of the serial killers we hear about on the nightly news and that fear manifests in our dreams.

The wonderfully frightening thing about this film is that it uses not only our fear of wanting to make our friends happy no matter what, but we are also able to put the idea of the crazed killer out of our minds — until he/she comes for us in our nightmares.  Add an alcoholic mother and a domineering cop father and we have quite the set up for really, really bad dreams of a pedophile lunatic with knives for fingers who wants to kill us for our parents doing the right thing — no matter how flawed they are.  Because let’s face it, the parents did the right thing — they just didn’t know how it would affect their children.  Wait?  Isn’t this how it all started?

If you are like me and have a nightmare pretty much every time you close your eyes, this film will certainly stay with you and perhaps make you drink just a bit more coffee…