From the Late Night Cable Movie Files: A Nightmare on Elm Street

I'm pretty sure my brothers used to try to scare me with stories about Freddy Krueger, even though I'd never seen this movie--an authentically 1980s childhood experience, I'd say.

So, because I grew up Mormon and also apparently thought I didn't like horror movies until relatively recently, I've never seen some classic films. One of these is A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)--nor have I seen any of the 92378598 sequels. It is Halloween night (at least still according to Mountain Time) and it is on TV right now. I will try to overcome my early Halloween partying to bring you all my important thoughts/insights/recapping abilities to this film.

Horror Movie Victim White Nightgowns 'R Us: $22.99.

A young blonde girl is wandering, frightened, though some kind of factory. If you'll notice, all horror movies feature a young girl in a long white nightgown, which no one has actually worn to bed since at least 1963. Freddy Krueger tears a sheet. There's a fire. And a cat? Blondie wakes up in her be-crucifixed room and her mom is like, "Why'd you tear your nightgown?" Her name is Tina. Tina tells her lady friend at school about her dream, who also had a nightmare last night. Johnny Depp is the friend's boyfriend, and he has very poofy hair. He's not even creepy yet.

I knew it! Tina is Beth from Better Off Dead. Now I'll just imagine her face on all of the hangers in Freddy's closet. But anyway, Tina and her friend and Johnny Depp are hanging out at Tina's. Tina's mom is conveniently out of town. Tina and the other girl had the same dream about Old Knife-y Hands. Sketchy Rod shows up to try to fuck Tina. She at least acts like she's not into it, but her friends let him drag her off to her mom's bed. Ew. But apparently she is into it? And Rod also had a nightmare last night. This is so stupid so far. All the sexing teenagers will die first. OBVS.

In another room, the other girl is lying in bed, asleep (SANS Johnny Depp). And somebody tries to break through the ceiling. Which is stretchy? And the girl puts a cross back up on that wall. Tina hears some shit outside and GOES OUT THERE with no pants on. Tina clearly deserves to die as a creepy whisper from the shed calls her name and she's like, "I should totally go over there." And now Freddy is there in the alley and his arms are super-long (like Stretch Armstrong) and he tells her his hand is god. And now he's chopping off the fingers on his non-knife hand with the knife hand. Which, you've got to admit, is kind of awesome. Now Rod wakes up because Tina is thrashing around in bed and he watches as an unseen force slices her open and throws her against the wall, and now she's on the ceiling and bleeding. Those sheets are NOT going to come clean. Johnny Depp and the other girl rush in and are like, "WTF?" Fucking Beth from BOD. This is punishment for getting with Stalin.

I'm seeing if a fresh drink perks me up at all. The cops think Tina was attacked by her boyfriend, a "musician type." TROUBLE. One of the cops is the other girl's dad. And she's like, "She was totes scared of her murder dreams." The local news claims that the girl was fifteen (maybe, like, twenty-one, at the youngest). On the way to school, the other girl gets grabbed by Rod, who is shirtless and shoeless and the subject of a city-wide manhunt. He can get arrested in that state, but not go into a 7-11. Oh, her name is Nancy. And her dad totally just used her as a lure for Rod so the cops could catch him. Some lady English teacher affectionately touches Nancy's shoulder for a bit too long. Nancy, who didn't sleep last night. As some douchey kid in a surf shirt reads some Shakespeare aloud, Nancy has a (dream?) vision of Tina in a body bag. She follows a trail of blood down the hallways of the school and the hall monitor girl is also Freddy maybe? Those are some pretty deadly bangs.

In her dreams, Nancy goes down into the school's basement, which is always a good idea. She thinks she'll find Tina there, I guess. Freddy is there, and when he slices his own chest, wild rice maggots come out! When Freddy corners her, she is like, "It's just a dream." She wakes herself up by laying her arm across a hot pipe and it is SO awkward in her English class when she wakes up screaming. Though she does really have a burn on her arm. Nancy goes to see be-leathered Rod in jail. Nancy gets freaked out when she realizes they're all nightmaring the same knife-hand guy. Oh man, I've had so much candy tonight. Delish.

Cut to: Nancy taking a bath, where she is laying on some weird blow-up pillow. Oh, and also she dozes off and Freddy's hand starts to come out of the water. Luckily, her mom interrupts. But now she dozes off again, and Freddy pulls her under. This is apparently a really deep tub. She screams a bunch, and her mom has to jimmy the lock to get into the bathroom, at which point, Nancy is all, "What no, I totally wasn't screaming for you." And then she takes some caffeine pills. Great idea Nancy, lay down in bed while watching a horror movie. That'll keep the deadly nightmares away. But don't worry, Johnny Depp has climbed up her house's trellis and comes in to secretly hang out. Wow, Captain Jack Sparrow's hair is poofy here. Even poofier than early X-Files Mulder. Okay, Nancy's wandering around outside in her pajamas (BAD IDEA, DIDN'T YOU SEE YOUR DEAD FRIEND'S DREAM EARLIER?), but Johnny (Glen?) is keeping an eye on her. Where the fuck is she? A sketchy alley on her way to the police station, apparently.

Nancy creepily looks through the jail window and sees Freddy go after a sleeping Rod. Nancy keeps yelling for Glen, but I guess she must've fallen asleep or something? Freddy chases her home. And now her staircase is filled with marshmallow goo. Glen is sleeping in her bedroom as Nancy tries to convince herself to wake up. They both wake up to her alarm clock. She is not dead yet. She and Glen rush to the police station/jail to check on Rod. Her dad is unfortunately there, and is like, "My daughter is mixed up in an unsolved murder and other things cops say." Meanwhile, Rod's sheet is choking him. He is hanging in the jail window, and apparently dies even though he was only up there for like ten seconds before Nancy convinced her dad to go down and check on him.

I'm kind of digging Nancy's funeral dress. Dadcop looks freaked out when she starts describing Freddy and he orders his wife to take her home. But she's like, "I'm taking her to the hospital." Nancy submits to a sleep study or something? The mom's like, "What are dreams?" And the sleep doctor says something like, "the body's hocus-pocus." GOOD SCIENCE, SCIENCE GUY. Also, the mom is smoking in the clinic. The doctor is like, "She's totally normal," but then Nancy starts freaking the fuck out. They rush in and wake her up, and she's got a big gash on her arm and Freddy's hat. Bro, Freddy will be back for that shit. Way to go, Nancy.

Apparently the name "Fred Krueger" is in the hat. Also apparently, Nancy's over-tanned mom likes the pills. Her mom's like, "Sure, he's a real guy, but he's dead and also I'm hiding my vodka from you." Glen is a nervous eater and is trying to tell her about some sort of Balinese concept of dreaming. What is he, actually Mulder? Nancy comes home to find bars on all the windows and the trellis destroyed. Her mom is like, "Come in the basement so I can tell you about all the kids the real Fred murdered. We just lynched him a little bit because of that damn DUE PROCESS." Also, she says, "Mommy killed him." Why is she speaking to her teenage daughter in the third person like that? Also, why the FUCK would she keep his knife glove in her basement furnace oven thing? Talk about asking for a haunting. BTWs, there's a super-creepy commercial on for some online streaming porn shit that is full of exploding beverages and bursting hoses and fire hydrants. It is real gross because of sperm. Spike TV is so classy.

The '80s were a delightfully innocent time, were they not?

Johnny Depp lounges in sweats and a cropped football jersey. DREAMY. Seven days-non-sleeped Nancy claims she's going to bring Freddy out of her dreams like she did his hat and then they can re-kill him or something. Don't fall asleep before your nightmare-murdering appointment, Glen! But he is totes falling asleep. Meanwhile, Nancy's got a full-on coffee pot in her bedroom. She catches her mom taking slugs off a vodka bottle from the linen closet. She tries to call Glen, but his dad won't let her talk to him and actually takes the phone off the hook. Nancy gets a phone call from a squeaky mouse, apparently. Now the phone is ringing, even though Nancy broke it after the mouse called. I don't think she's awake anymore, you guys. She answers it and Freddy is like, "Girl, I wanna be with you. I know you've been hurting, girl, and I've been trying to kill you, but girl, I just wanna put my tongue in your mouth while I slash you open because of your parents' ill-advised vigilante violence."

Worst Livelinks chat EVAR.

Meanwhile, Glen has passed out, he gets sucked into his bed, and exorbitant amounts of blood spray out. One of the cops says to the EMTs, "You don't need a stretcher up there, you need a mop." BOOM! Haha, the blood is leaking out of the ceiling downstairs. Nancy tells her dad to show up in twenty minutes when she brings Freddy out of her dreams, and he's like, "Yeah, okay, little lady. Just go to sleep." He does not understand that SLEEP = DEATH. I do not think he will show up in twenty minutes to get Fred Krueger. She tries to set traps for Freddy. Apparently this will take less than twenty minutes. I find this hard to believe. Nancy also has time to talk to her drunk mom. Her mom tries to teach her to numb her pain and push down bad feelings. Her mom's not even going to cuddle with that 1.75 of Kamchatka tonight, that's how good she is at avoidance. Nancy sets an alarm and prepares herself for battle and says that creepy "If I die before I wake" prayer. FORESHADOWING MUCH?

This geyser of blood shall henceforth be known as Old Fredful.

Nancy dreams she is in her house. She goes down to the basement and looks for Freddy's glove. It's not there. She finds a door to a sub-basement (Freddy's boiler room murder lair, obvs) and goes down there. She taunts Freddy to follow her and tries to pull him through when she wakes up. It does not work. But is she REALLY awake? I do not know, but I guess he is actually there with her. Drunk mom has locked her in and her dad's not coming. The sledgehammer booby trap is ineffective, so she sets him on fire in the basement. Is she trying to trigger Freddy's PTSD? I mean, he got all burnt up before and all. Her dad finally comes home. They follow fiery footsteps upstairs where Freddy is trying to kill her mom. Then her mom sinks down into the bed, charred or something? Maybe her mom was the dream, all along. Freddy comes back out of the bed. She tells him she's "taking back" her energy and finds herself in the light of day, with her mom claiming she wants to get sober and Nancy is wearing some hideous high-waisted shorts. And her friends are still fine and pick her up in a car that is actually Freddy? Or something. Whatever. Everyone dies.