Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site mtgzz.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtgzz!leeper From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Message-ID: <1177@mtgzz.UUCP> Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 13:16:54 EDT Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1177 Posted: Tue Sep 17 13:16:54 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 18-Sep-85 05:25:25 EDT Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Lines: 65 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (and PLAYOFF NIGHT) A film review by Mark R. Leeper Capsule review: Basically a mad slasher film but one with an interesting premise and some imaginative horror. A cut above the standard PLAYOFF NIGHT-style of psycho-horror film. At this point I think there have been about 839 films made that are minor variations on a film I have in my mind called PLAYOFF NIGHT: The members of the Gooberton High School basketball team are being mysteriously murdered. One is strangled with hoop netting, one is found hanging from a hoop, one is found with a basketball shoved...well, you get the idea. The players are being picked off real easy because they only know how to screw and play basketball (at least that is all we ever see them do). Gooberton's star basketball player, Lank Albumin (played by someone you may have seen in another film) agonizes about the loss of his lifetime basketball buddies with his Homecoming Queen girlfriend (played by the incomparable Linda Blair). He tells Blair about how as kids they once all played basketball using Lank's baby brother Egland as the ball. Egland never recovered from having his head dribbled and was sent to the State Mental Hospital in Patuga where he was recently reported as missing. Comes the night of the playoffs. Lank looks around the locker room and realizes his is the only face on the team that isn't new. He goes to tell Coach Wheatstak that he's scared and thinks Egland has returned for revenge. When he comes back the locker room is awash with blood. Sitting in the middle is Egland, but Egland's dribble-destroyed brain gives him only enough motor function to jibber and stick his fingers up his nose. Then Lank sees her. It's Lank's mother, Thelma Albumin, who has committed these ghastly crimes! She's standing there with a basketball pump in one hand and a struggling Linda Blair in the other. Lank wrestles the pump from his mother's hand and, disarmed, she breaks down and cries for the first time since Egland was committed. As I say, there are an awful lot of psycho-killer films that vary in only small details from PLAYOFF NIGHT. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one that does. The killer in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is already dead, but inhabits the dreams of the living. Night after night, he stalks the teenagers in their dreams. When he catches them, he kills them, not just in their dreams but in real life too. This is a fairly original concept for a horror film, though in some ways related to the premise of DREAMSCAPE. Fred Kruger, the killer, behaves pretty much in standard psycho-killer fashion for this sort of film but for a few special powers that being a nightmare give him. Some of the nightmare sequences are reasonably effective. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is a cut or two above the PLAYOFF NIGHT-style of film, but it is basically the same sub-genre. Give it a low +1 (on the -4 to +4 scale), because it does show some originality and occasionally has some startling surprises. Director Wes Craven is improving over his days of making dull horror films like DEADLY BLESSING. This may even be up to his more recent SWAMP THING. Mark R. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com