The filmmaker Wes Craven battled brain cancer at the end of his 76 years, and his death Sunday brought forth a flurry of tributes to, among others, his most influential demon child.
Craven named Freddy Krueger, the dream-wrecker with the metal fingers and cinema’s least romantic-looking fedora, after a boy who bullied Craven as a child. Revenge is sweet, and sometimes extremely profitable. Although Craven’s screen monster became one of those quippy unkillable adversaries you’re supposed to love to hate, across various sequels, when “A Nightmare on Elm Street” came out in 1984 it took care of Job One.
It scared the hell out of millions with its inspired dream invasion scenario — simple, endlessly adaptable.
Watch it today, and you know what’s coming. Too many inferior, increasingly jokey franchise additions have a way of ruining a true original. But when you witness the scene in which the sleepy high school student looks past her classroom door and sees the splattered body bag upright, with someone beckoning inside, you’re really seeing something.