Tomorrow is Halloween and that means I will be doing
several things:
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Handing out candy
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Playing spooky music all day
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Dressing up
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Watching A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
I’ve
written about A Nightmare on Elm Street before and how much I love this
film. At the risk of repeating myself, I want to discuss the original Nightmare
on Elm Street again if only because of how important this film was to me as a
young teenager and now, as an adult feminist.
It may seem strange for a feminist to love a film in
which a deformed child murderer stalks and kills teenagers, most famously after
sex. When I first saw this film as a fourteen year old, however, I was
astonished by the originality of the premise. I had already seen a masked and
typically silent killer slash his way through sexually promiscuous teenagers
but I had never seen a killer with a personality. And I had never seen any
death scenes as unsettling as the disquieting dreamscapes in which Freddy Krueger
tormented and killed his victims.
