leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (09/17/85)
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