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Wes Craven

Posted on April 15, 2025

Freddy on the Grassy Knoll – A Nightmare on Elm Street and the JFK Assassination

Guest Post

Adam Pasen

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: something horrific happens in the 1960s on a street called Elm. The murderer is subsequently killed in an act of vigilante justice, but that isn’t the end of it. In a series of bizarre “coincidences,” those involved start to die… gruesomely. Despite the mounting evidence that some sinister force is at play, any challenges to the official narrative are silenced. Those who investigate too deeply and try to warn others are labeled crazy or “conspiracy theorists.” And the deaths continue. 

Yes, this is the plot of A Nightmare on Elm Street… the story of homicidal maniac Freddy Krueger who murders twenty kids in the 60s and is killed by a vengeful mob before returning in dreams to continue wreaking havoc. However, it is also an exact description of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, who was shot while driving down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Although the Warren Commission concluded there was no conspiracy, independent researchers continue to fight the alleged cover-up to bring the truth to light (cough cough… Nancy Thompson).

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Posted on January 9, 2025

Brats vs. Splats: Who Really Defined the 1980s Teen Film?

Guest Post

Cullen Wade

Recently, I watched Andrew McCarthy’s 2024 documentary Brats (not to be confused with Bratz which is actually worth your time), in which a 60-year-old movie star grapples with the psychic toll of someone calling him a brat four decades ago, and it got me thinking about slasher movies. Let me explain.

“The Brat Pack” refers to a loosely-delineated group of young actors who starred in popular teen movies of the 1980s, generally in the orbit of John Hughes. In McCarthy’s documentary, authorities ranging from Malcolm Gladwell to Rob Lowe repeatedly argue for the Brat Pack’s breakout as a seismic shift in the Hollywood profile of the teen movie. Gladwell calls it a “generational transition,” and, as McCarthy puts it, “Hollywood discovered the box office potential of a young audience … In the history of Hollywood, it had never been like this.”

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Nancy is threatened by Freddy Kruegar, a monster with razors on his hand.
Posted on January 25, 2024

Born Bad?: Talking A Nightmare on Elm Street 1 & 3

Elizabeth Erwin/ Podcast

In today’s episode, “one, two, Freddy’s coming for you” in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Chuck  Russell’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). In the original 1984 release, a group of teens attempt to outsmart Freddy Krueger, a supernatural killer who stalks them in their dreams. In the 1987 sequel, a band of institutionalized teens attempt to defeat Krueger and save the life of an innocent by intentionally entering Dreamland together to dire consequences. Aided by one of the most famous monsters in horror film canon, the films are considered essential viewing for fans of the slasher film, but is there more to this franchise than gore and Freddy’s razor sharp wit? We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers so stay tuned.

 

Recommended Reading

Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s” A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47.

Gill, Pat. “The monstrous years: Teens, slasher films, and the family.” Journal of Film and Video 54.4 (2002): 16-30.

Heba, Gary. “Everyday Nightmares: The Rhetoric of Social Horror in the Nightmare on Elm Street Series.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 23.3 (1995): 106-115.

Kendrick, James. “Razors in the Dreamscape: Revisiting” A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the Slasher Film.” Film Criticism 33.3 (2009): 17-33.

Nowell, Richard. Blood money: A history of the first teen slasher film cycle. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2010.

Podoshen, Jeffrey Steven. “Home is Where the Horror Is: Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left and A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 35.7 (2018): 722-729.

Shimabukuro, Karra. “The Bogeyman of Your Nightmares: Freddy Krueger’s Folkloric Roots.” Studies in Popular Culture 36.2 (2014): 45-65.

Scream masked killer with bloody knife
Posted on October 26, 2021

How Scream (1996) Takes a Stab at White American Masculinity

Guest Post

Released in December 1996, Scream announced a redirection in horror filmmaking. A Hollywood staple ever since Dracula (1931) announced the stateside viability of a genre developed by German expressionists, horror had already gone through a succession of variations that nonetheless maintained an array of recognizable tropes and sub-genres. Much in the same way that Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) examined the medieval film genre, Scream introduced the concept of meta-horror to the mainstream, bolstered by director Wes Craven’s bona fides[1] in the genre. While the film’s meta-criticism focuses on horror, a related critique intrinsically linked with the genre emerges as the film progresses: white American masculinity.

Scream was not alone in this regard. The 1980s, particularly when it came to blockbuster action films at the front of popular culture, “remasculinized” male characters as “symbolic configuration[s] of hegemonic masculinity that restabilize[d] the centrality of men’s bodies” in response to the perceived de-masculinization of the nation’s loss in Vietnam. However, by the time we reached the 1990s, those extreme examples of hegemonic masculinity, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones of Hollywood were reevaluated, reaching a point where they were “frequently caricatured in popular culture” (Messner, 465).  While Scream sidesteps direct caricature, Kevin Williamson’s script and Craven’s direction present a dyad of white American masculinities that simultaneously assail the dangers of violent and toxic masculinity while presenting a healthier alternative, all within the framework of deconstructing horror. To demonstrate this, I will focus on two male characters from Scream: Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Dwight “Dewey” Riley (David Arquette). Read more

Posted on June 29, 2020

Scream, Queen! Review

Sara McCartney

Around this time last year, the Met Costume Institute was displaying its exhibit on camp, sparking explainers and podcast episodes and angry rants (the last one from me) about just what camp is exactly. I thought about it some more while watching Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen’s Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019), and here’s what I’ve got. Camp is the reclamation of something embarrassing or perceived by others as embarrassing. It is the amazing knack queer people have to transform shame into joy and survival. Scream, Queen! is the story of how Nightmare on Elm Street 2, once an embarrassment to its franchise and the career of its then-closeted gay star, Mark Patton, became beloved by fans and a launching pad for Patton’s activism.

The 1985 sequel to Wes Craven’s slasher smash hit, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is the rare slasher film with a Final Boy. The hapless Jesse, played by Mark Patton, is not merely Freddy’s intended victim but his entry point into the real world as he strives to take over Jesse’s body. More a possession film than a typical slasher, Nightmare on Elm Street 2‘s Freddy functions as an unlikely metaphor for repressed homosexuality. Read more

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