Top Trailers: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)
The year was 1984. The horror genre was riding high in the midst of its Fangoria era but it needed something new. The glut of slasher films had played itself out creatively and teens, the major consumers of horror fare, were looking for the next big scare. When it arrived, it would come from an indie film company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and a filmmaker who had spent the first part of the '80s navigating a bumpy path through Hollywood. As fate would have it, the professional fortunes of company and filmmaker would rise like phoenixes on the back of the film they created - A Nightmare On Elm Street. It infused standard slasher film elements with surrealistic imagery and a sense of mythology that helped it become the other major horror franchise of the '80s.
New Line knew their bread and butter was the teenageaudience so the trailer for A NightmareOn Elm Street is aimed directly at them. The first minute of this spot laysit out nicely: after a few shots that establish we are in idyllic suburbia,offset with the film's famously creepy nursery-rhyme musical motif, weestablish there is a killer on the loose. The teens are the targets and theywill clearly have to figure it out for themselves as the adults scratch theirheads and try to latch onto an easy scapegoat.
This section of the trailer also introduces the film'siconic villain Freddy Krueger and his abilities with subtlety. We don't get a clear glimpse of his face butwe see that he's no simple hack-'em-up horror villain. He can appear anywhere:materializing from the wall over your bed, shoving his arm up through the waterin your bathtub, even popping up under your bedsheets. He also has supernaturalabilities, demonstrated by him levitating victims in the air, pulling them downinto their beds and even walking through the bars of a jail cell as he makesthe bedsheets curl around the neck of its occupant.
The first minute of the trailer also introduces ourteenage heroine, Nancy: she makes the connection between the killer's strangeabilities and his murders as she warns another character with one of the film'siconic lines: "Whatever you do,don't fall asleep." The next twenty-odd seconds of the film establishthat she will be this film's version of the Final Girl... and a ratherresourceful one at that as she sets up the kind of Rube Goldberg-ian deathtraps that Craven loved to include in his films. We also see that the adultsremain hapless as Freddy aims his campaign of mayhem at her, threatening herwith a tongue extending from her telephone receiver and showing hisflame-scarred visage.
As the frenzy builds to a peak, the trailer cuts to itsclosing title graphic. The narrator tells us the film is from Wes Craven,making sure to name-check his past classics Last House On The Left and TheHills Have Eyes. The credits listhim but give top credit to producer Robert Shaye (New Line's head honcho) andgive New Line a distribution credit bigger than either of their names. In thelast moments, the narrator assures the film is "a new masterpiece in fantasy-terror."
That "fantasy-terror" distinction wasimportant because it let the target audience know that the film had somethingnew to add to horror cinema's repertoire of shock tactics - and it also let thecritics know that it was more than just another 'dead teenager' flick, althoughmost of them wouldn't really get hip to the series until its third film. In anyevent, this trailer does an excellent job of selling a potentially trickypremise and the excitement it generates takes you right back to that endorphinrush that A Nightmare On Elm Streetgave horror fans at the end of 1984.
To read Schlockmania's film review of A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984), click here.
To read Schlockmania's film review of A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010), click here.