Finally, A Nightmare on MY Street!

For some reason - I'm thinking that a Special Edition DVD is in the making - certain movie theaters across the nation are screening the first installment of the 'Nighmare on Elm Street' series (last night and tonight only, mind you), and tonight is my night.

I'm extremely pumped, and for good reason. It's not very often that Hollywood thinks outside the box and gives fans an opportunity to be more than consumption maggots, picking the leavings from a hastily thrown-together edition of a DVD that's already been released twice.

Anyway, I can't be depressed on this issue, despite my intense hatred for the behemoth that is the movie industry. Even though, I must admit, I am being a little bit disingenuous right now. While Nightmare was a small success, it was hardly a 'Hollywood' picture. It was a borderline indie picture, and the quality shows through as such. It was a low budget picture at the very least - made for a measly 1.8 mil - and grossed around $25 million at the box office.

It is also pertinent for a few reasons other than its place as a cornerstone in the eighties 'slasher picture' genre. It featured a previously unknown Johnny Depp, but most of you know that, so I should say other things about this movie, right?

* The look of Freddy Krueger is derived from a homeless man director Wes Craven saw as a child. The man stumbled up to the Craven's front door and scared a young Wes. He had a horribly burned face and apparently Wes never forgot it.

* He later combined that with some newspaper articles he read, about students dying while under surveillance at a sleep deprivation center. They'd go to sleep and just never wake up. Strange, but mix with a little creepy guy from your childhood and !Voila! you have a horror story.

* New Line was not doing so well at the time of production; in fact, it was more or less going under, becoming a haven for low-budget, low-quality films. 'Nightmare' saved it, of course, and now New Line is a major player in the film industry.

* At one point, the Sam Raimi directed Evil Dead is playing on a television, and that is no coincidence. The story starts with The Hills Have Eyes, which had been released a few years earlier. Craven has one of the characters rip a Jaws poster in two, and, being a practical joker, Raimi thought it would be funny to place a Hills Have Eyes poster in the basement of his movie. Hence, the reason that Evil Dead plays a small part in Nightmare.