One of the rites of passage when you’re a teenager is to try and sneak into the cinema to see a film that has a rating older than your actual age. Â Once you can legally see a 15 certificate film you set your sights on getting into an 18 certificate, which generally means going to see a horror film. Â In the eighties, chances are said horror film would have been one from the Nightmare on Elm Street series.
Created by Wes Craven, the Nightmare on Elm Street films are about the hideously faced, stripey sweatered villain that is Freddy Krueger, portrayed so well by Robert Englund. Â Topped off with a fedora hat and the famous long bladed glove, even if you’ve never seen one of the films you surely must know who Freddy Krueger is.
The first film in the series tells the story of how the teenagers of Elm Street start to suffer nightmares where a shadowy figure stalks them. Â When they awake they find these bad dreams may have been more than just nightmares, as they find cuts in their clothing and even on their bodies.
One of the first to be affected is a young woman called Tina, who is so petrified about going to sleep she convinces her friend Nancy and Nancy’s boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp’s first movie role!) to sleep over to calm her down. Â Tina’s boyfriend Rod also comes along, and as the evening progresses he convinces Tina to go to bed with him, something which he regrets later when he awakes to find her being gored to death and pulled across the ceiling of the bedroom.