A Nightmare on Elm Street is a
1984 American horror film directed and written by
Wes Craven, and the first film in the
Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film features
John Saxon,
Heather Langenkamp,
Ronee Blakley,
Amanda Wyss,
Jsu Garcia,
Robert Englund and
Johnny Depp in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of
Springwood,
Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers being terrorized in their
nightmares by the ghost of a serial child murderer named
Freddy Krueger.
Craven produced
Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1.8 million,
[John Kenneth Muir, "Career Overview" in Wes Craven: The Art of Horror (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 1998), p. 18, ISBN 0786419237.] a sum the film earned back during its first week.
Grossing $25.5 million at the
United States box office,
[ Nightmare on Elm Street at Box Office Mojo; last accessed August 30, 2006.] Nightmare on Elm Street has become one of the most popular entries in the horror genre and the film's villain "Freddy Krueger" has become one of the most well recognized villains in cinema history. Both critics and Craven have mentioned that the film owes some of its success to
John Carpenter's
Halloween (1978), which was hugely influential in spawning a long line of
slasher films and originating many clichés found in low-budget horror films of the 1980s and 1990s.
[Jim Harper, Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (Manchester, Eng.: Headpress, 2004), p. 126, ISBN 1900486393.][Rick Worland, The Horror Film: A Brief Introduction (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), p. 106, ISBN 1405139021.]
