Glenn, answer the phone.
Hello?
Just a minute. It's her.
She wants to talk to Glenn. About what?
What's this about, Nancy?
Just a minute. She says it's private.
Very private and very important. Give me that.
Glenn's asleep. You'll have to talk to him tomorrow. You've just got to be
firm with. These kids, that's all. Let's go. As a matter of fact,
Glenn, don't fall asleep.
Sleep.
Oh, brilliant.
What if Ben tries to call?
It's 2Dad's 1 movie Shocktoberfest.
A celebration of the spookiest movies of the 80s and
90s. Now here are your hosts. Scary Steve
Paulo and Nightmare Nic. Briana.
Hello, everybody. It's another episode of 2Dads. One movie. I'm Steve.
And I'm Nic. And today we are talking about the slasher horror classic
A Nightmare on Elm street from 1984. Spooky.
This is the debut episode of our Shocktoberfest
experience. We're doing a theme month all October. We're gonna do
scary horror theme thriller, nightmarish type movies.
And. And this is the first one. A Nightmare on Elm Street. A literal nightmare.
And this is. This is a great way to kick it off. This is a
really fun one. Well, Steve. Yeah? Why'd you. Why'd you pick
this one? So I did not. So obviously this came out when I. We were
four years old. I didn't see this movie for quite a while until, you know,
it had been out for a long time. Your parents would be in jail.
Yeah, this was. This was pretty brutal. When we talk about hard R,
any of the slashers of the era would definitely earned their
R ratings. This is no different. But this was a movie I probably originally saw
in high school. I was into horror as a kid. Like, I mean,
my. My mom took me to see Gremlins because I begged her when I was
4. Actually, I think it was the same year this came out, actually. I went
and saw Gremlins and was terrified, but still, you know, ended up being a formative
type memory. I remember watching movies like Poltergeist from a young age
and, you know, the Gate and things like that. And then at some point
in middle school, I think I borrowed the Amityville Horror, the book from the library
and kept myself up for, like, three weeks. Couldn't sleep almost at all.
And that was pretty much it at that point. I loved horror. And so by.
Yeah, by 14 or 15, I think I was like, you know, trying to go
back and watch all the classic horror movies at that Point either friends
houses or, you know, renting a couple of things and hiding it underneath the pile
and hoping my folks don't notice or whatever. So, you know, I went back and
watched a bunch of the Friday the 13th movies and Halloween and the Texas Chainsaw
Massacre and this and yeah, 14, 15 might have been a little young to
watch A Nightmare on Elm street maybe, but that, you know, it's. I'm just.
I'm a huge horror fan now. I don't have nightmares that have anything
to do with movies anymore. That was, you know, something. Nowadays my nightmares are all,
you know, something horrible happens to my kids or. Right. You know, whenever I lose
my job or some shit. That's. That's nightmares today. Yeah. So. So now I can
watch horror movies and be just fine. But, yeah, like, I've just, you know,
there's something even more than like, the movie itself. I think any discussion
of 80s 90s horror scary movies, this whole Shocktoberfest thing, this just made perfect
sense to me as like, the first movie to do in this theme. Freddy Krueger
is such an iconic movie monster. And these movies, obviously, you know,
this spawned so many sequels and crossovers with Friday the 13th and all kinds of
stuff. And it's, you know, one of the major elements that made Wes Craven
recognized as the master of horror, that he is right alongside folks like John
Carpenter, you know, and others of the era. So, yeah, just real excited to
chat about it because it's just one of the classics. Yeah. And like, when I
was a kid, I mean, really my whole life, I was never like a horror
person for. For a long time. So I didn't get into a lot of these
until much later, I think. When I was about 10,
we had rented My Aunt Let my brother and I rent Pet Cemetery, which absolutely
horrified me. That's terrifying for life. So I was kind of like,
not touching a lot of it. And then later in my teens, though, I started
reading a lot of like, the Stephen King books and stuff and got into his
stuff and his movies. But when it came to like, the slasher type stuff,
I kind of stayed away from that for a while. So I didn't probably see
this one until college and I had seen probably scattered
bits of like, the other sequels, you know, So I might have seen half a
Part eight at a sleepover or whatever. But, yeah, I mean,
this is just a character that you knew, you know, the imagery. It's a very
common, like, Halloween costume. Everyone knows what Freddy Krueger looks like. They know about
the. The look, with the hat and the sweater and the blades on the fingers.
But you don't necessarily know the backstory of,
like, how he became that, what he does, which just gets
so much darker. So I'm glad we got into this and like, kind of getting
into the origins of this character that's been, you know, horrible and.
And has haunted dreams, but also has said trick or treat in front of
my house many times. I know, right? That's the funny part is like, I think,
you know, we'll get into it, obviously, but like the Freddy counting jump rope song,
like, I knew that before I ever saw this movie. Obviously, kids had Freddy Krueger
masks and gloves for Halloween costumes back when, you know, when we
were kids. I think I even owned, you know, one of the plastic bladed sort
of gloves, you know, when I was like nine. Like, you know, like, whatever.
It's like it becomes. The character becomes so much more than the movie.
Yes, right. It becomes this thing that's synonymous with horror and with Halloween and with
darkness and all that stuff, which is wonderful and fun.
You know, not this movie is fun, per se, but it's, you know,
it's definitely. It wants to scare you. It wants to make
you afraid to go to sleep at night. And I think that it certainly,
at a certain age, it absolutely does that. Yeah, sure. Tasks,
right? Let's jump into the facts on A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The movie came out on November 9, 1984, with a well
earned R rating. Its running time is 91 minutes. Written and
directed by the master of horror, Wes Craven, starring Heather Langenkamp,
Johnny Depp in his acting debut, as far as I can
tell, literally no, no credits prior to this one. And Robert England as the
wonderful Freddy Krueger on rotten tomatoes,
94% fresh. The critics loved
this movie, which is not particularly surprising to me. Again, we take
for granted this concept of the monster in your dreams that can actually kill you.
It's been used or things like it have been done in lots of other movies.
There have been. So even like Inception in those kinds of movies has root in
this. Right. This concept. But at the time, it was wildly inventive and incredibly
creative and new. And we were probably on parts like at least two or three
for like, Halloween and Friday the 13th. So it's like we're
getting tired of the same horror stuff, like for something refreshing
to come along. That's like an original idea. Really pump those ratings,
I bet. And when you. Yeah, absolutely. When you look at the movie monsters of
the most recent past at this point you're looking at Leatherface. There have been maybe
two Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies at this point. You've got, you know, Jason, who wasn't
in the original Friday the but is starting in Part two. And I think by
the time this movie came out there have been, yeah, maybe four even of the
Friday the 13th movies. Michael Myers has had I think two Halloweens
because Halloween three, which we'll get into this month is a little different and the
return of Michael Myers wouldn't come until a few years later. But you know,
we've definitely had those killers, those monsters in several movies before this
comes out. So Freddy Krueger was just a breath of fresh air.
IMDb right around that, that we talk a lot about the good movie ranking
within IMDb at a 7.4 rating. It won seven awards
total. I think about six of around the time of its creation.
All kind of sci fi and horror, very specific niche type award
shows. But I did want to mention that in 2021 it was added to the
National Film Registry, which is an official record of sort of quote, the most important
movies made by Americans basically. And so that, that the movie does
appear there on a shockingly low budget of
$1.8 million. I don't know how, even in 1984, I don't
know how you make any movie, let alone this movie for $1.8 million.
It earned 57 million at the box office.
That is 31.7 times what it costs, which is like
for us it's astronomically higher multiplier than any movie we've
talked about for sure. And really I.
Unless we do like Blair Witch Project, like I don't know what can approach
this. Like this is an incredible, an incredible amount. Yeah. Which we actually probably
will do. Blair, which at some point. But yeah, it's just a ridiculous number.
Both numbers are ridiculous. One, when you think about the effects in this
movie, the makeup effects, the special effects, all the practical stuff, the,
the way that you know how exactly they did some of the effects even there's
lots of ways to do some of these things, but very creative, whatever. And to
have that come out to just 1.8 million. Now I don't think any of the
actors here got anything over scale. Right. This is. There's John Saxon has been in
a few things and is in this. But like most of these actors are like
brand new to the world of active of Hollywood. So they probably all got
paid scale. That's great. You know, I don't think Craven earned a ton of Money
on the front end on this. So. Okay. But still, like, you got to pay
the effects people and all this. I mean, it's really impressive. So to do that
and then to have a movie that is this brutal and this really
rated R even at that time, which, you know,
horror was a very popular genre in the, in the early to mid-80s. But to
earn over 50 million at the box office strictly from our R rated going audiences
is really impressive. Probably didn't hurt that it came out basically right after Halloween.
It was that sort of, you know, that time of the year, you know,
like before the Christmas season and everything. So people were still in the spooky season
mood when the movie came out. But yeah, just real impressive, obviously at the box
office. And, you know, it's a phenomenon. And, you know, we all know that Nightmare
on Elm street became one of the big phenomenons of the 80s. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. So let's dive in. Yeah. We start
off with this sort of very ominous, very menacing close
ups of things happening. There's a man grabbing glove and
like the knives, basically it's Freddy creating his glove. He's breathing very heavy. Everything's very
labored. He's in this like boiler room maintenance
area. Right. We don't know exactly where, but it's like definitely like an industrial,
you know, typ place. Very dark, very, very. There's like a lot of fire.
There's like this kind of steamy, it's drippy. Seems very hell on
earth, like. Right. And so. And he is creating this glove and. And we get
this, you know, this menacing sort of silhouette of him. We don't see Freddy
real clearly very much in this movie. We see him drenched in shadow most often.
And I think that's partly maybe because the makeup, you know, could only be so
good and so many times, whatever, I don't know. But like, we definitely get just
a lot of very menacing shadow figure Freddy in this.
And then almost immediately, we see a girl kind of running through the hallways of
what looks like a school initially or something. Something like that. This is Tina.
Tina's one of the sort of four main teenage characters in the movie.
And she's running around and she is, you know, basically attacked by
Freddy. And we realize then she is in a dream. Yeah. And she is
able to wake up from her dream and not get actually hurt. But her
mom kind of comes in. It's like, oh, you know, Tina, you were dreaming.
You're having a nightmare. And by the looks of it, you know, it was pretty
bad. And she's got Slash in her nightgown, so it didn't get her,
but he absolutely was able to like, actually affect the real world. I mean,
within the first two minutes of this movie. We've been made clear here that
this is a thing that a nightmare is being had about that is making effects
in the real world. Yeah. And it's like such a clean introduction to that.
Yeah. Really, really important to do that. Right.
And then the. The main struggle in this movie is kind of
the characters trying to convince other people that this is real. Mostly the
adults. These are high school students. And none of the adults, like, believe them.
Even as we find out as we go on like that they know some things
that they probably should have been a little more open about. The adults in this
town, you know, they just don't believe this is possible. And so, you know,
they're just like, yeah, no, you're just. You just need some sleep. Right? That's all
these kids here through the whole movie is like, just get some. Sleep, go to
sleep. I know these, these parents are not very engaged, so. And then
now we get kind of a taste of like the. The low level scale actors
that we're getting here because. Because we're not Johnny Depp.
He's fine in this. Heather Langenkamp's okay. Besides Nancy, she's all right.
Rod. Not good. Little rough. Little rough. But we get
some of the good dialogue here where Tina's explaining to everybody. She's like, you know,
and I woke up and my. My pajamas were slashed or whatever. And then Rod's
like, yeah, I woke up with a hard on this morning with your name on
it. Hard on, right. We've retired that.
Right. Like, I don't think anyone says that unless you're talking about like, oh,
the chief's got a real hard on for me. I think you'd be more likely
to call somebody a hot on. Like they're giving you a hard time, you know,
kind of thing. But. But she does have kind of a funny joke about how,
hey, Rod, there's four let my name. How could there possibly be enough room on
there to write my name? Pretty good. And it took him a while to get
it. Yeah, it was good. So now we know, like, okay, Rod is the kind
of jerky, aggressive dudes here. This is also the scene because as
they're sort of driving to school, Glenn has a convertible. That Glenn
is Heather, not Heather, Nancy. I want to make sure I don't mix up the
characters and actors names here, but Johnny Depp plays Glenn, who is
Nancy? That's Heather Langham's character. Kind of the main character in a lot of ways.
Heather is. Nancy is. I'm going to do that over and over again. So Glenn
and Nancy are dating. Rod and Tina are dating. And the four of them are
like, driving to school, basically in Glenn's. In his sick Cadillac convertible.
Amazing convertible. This is like. It's kind of like a John Hughes neighborhood. Like,
the level of wealth in this area, it seems like an affluent area. Right.
They all have these nice big houses and stuff. But, yeah, unlike John Hughes,
which is always. His stuff is always in, like, Shermer, Illinois, in the outskirts of
Chicago. It becomes pretty clear early that we're in Southern California here. A the palm
trees be the reference to, like, oh, maybe an earthquake's coming. They always say,
like, weird things happens. Earthquake. And I don't know, listener, if this is something you're
aware of, but, Nic, living in California is a long. You have. I'm sure you've
heard the term earthquake weather before, which is sort of a. Yeah. Jokey kind of
thing we say because earthquakes are not predictable people. But we kind of joke about,
like, certain kinds of. It's kind of earthquake weather. And it's like. It made me
think of that when they're like, oh, maybe an earthquake's coming because everybody's dreaming.
Weird. It's like, if only it were so simple. It is one of those things
where someone says earthquake, whether you're like, yeah, that's not how it works. And then
the second you walk away from there, you're like, shit. It kind of is.
Right. It's like a little muggy. It's warm, but overcast.
It's a kind of earthquake weather. Like. Yeah. So. So the four friends now.
So we got Tina and Rod. They're a couple. And we got N. And Glenn.
Glenn is Johnny Depp. And they're. They're a couple. And everyone,
Tina, Nancy are together. And Tina's basically like,
stay with me. Like, I had these nightmares like, can you just be with
me? I'm scared. Right. Yeah. And Glenn. Johnny Depp is there and whatever.
And Rod shows up. Right, Right. So they're hanging out at Tina's house. So Tina's
mom is out of town. Tina's mom is single. A single
mother, but she's got a boyfriend. And her boyfriend her. Went to Vegas is what
we're told. And so Tina's home alone, but she doesn't want to be alone.
She's had these nightmares. She's kind of Scared. So she just invites Nancy and Glenn
to come over and kind of just stay with her, right? Yeah. But then they
start hearing, you know, some sounds actually really, really quick. There's a really funny scene
where Glenn's got to make an excuse for where he is, right? Because these are
like kids. These are like 15 and 16 year old kids. And so he's got
to make an excuse. So he calls his mom and he's got like a tape
of sound effects. He's like, oh, my cousin lives out by the airport. And so
I'll just call my mom with the sound of the, of the, of the plane,
you know, and that way she'll know I'm there, it'll be okay, and I'll be
fine till the night or until the morning. So he calls her and he starts
doing that. But the, the audio clips on the little tape keep going and
it's like scream gunshots, like all kinds of psychotic stuff. It's very set
of like random sound effects. It's very funny, but he does that. And then,
but then they hear a noise outside and it sounds a little like the scraping
sound that Tina described from her, from her nightmare where
Freddy's, you know, blade fingers were scraping against pipes and things. And so, you know,
Glenn and you know, kind of Glenn, good kid, you know, he's a brave kid.
He leads the way out there like, I'm going to punch you. I'm gonna punch
whoever's out of here. Like I'm gonna get, you know, kind of thing. But of
course it's Rod. Rod jumps out of the bushes to tackle him. And then they
kind of like, you know, whatever, play fight for a minute. And he of like
a little, what was a little hand rake, I don't. Know what you call it.
Yeah, there you go. That kind of thing. And he was scraping it against God.
Knows what and then he just carelessly threw it onto the lawn when he was
done. He didn't place it anywhere nice. Someone's gonna Sideshow Bob themselves.
Exactly. Yeah. So now the four of them are all kind of hanging at the
house and everyone goes off to bed. Rod and Tina go
into her room. And then Glenn and Nancy are together. Well, no, actually, Glenn is
sleeping on the couch. Nancy is in Tina's room, and Tina
and Rod are in Tina's mom's room. Because that's where every kid, every teenager likes
to bang is in their par. Nothing gets you going. Like I wouldn't.
I don't even open that door when. My parents are out of town.
Yeah, so. So they have. Rod and Tina are having
some. Some very loud sex, which show that Johnny Depp. Glenn can
clearly hear it. He's not conducting it. Michael J. Fox and Secret of My Success.
He doesn't. Wasn't invited until a couple years later.
But, yeah, we get. We get this kind of, you know, we know
that they're humping. They're the teenagers, and they're getting into it. And if we know
from these kind of films, you don't want to be the teenager that's sexually active.
No, that's true. It's definitely. Definitely does not end well. There's a very big morality
play in a lot of these movies, especially 13th and Nightmare on Elm street,
which is. Why I was safe and sound. Right.
Never had to worry about it. That was. That was. That was the bright thinking
on my part. Yeah. So. So Nancy is asleep
at one point at. When they're at the house, and it
shows really creepy effect. They use a few times of kind of him
pushing through the wall as if the wall is just made of, like, cheating.
Yeah. So Freddy is like. Or something is pushing through the wall above her bed.
And then somebody walks in and wakes her up. But it's like, it's coming.
It's here, right? Well, she actually. I don't know. I remember. I don't think he
walks in, but she, like, wakes up because she even sort of, like, sensed that
something was. And she, like, touches the wall behind her, and it feels solid.
She kind of knocks on it, and it is solid. She's like, okay, I was
just dreaming or whatever. But, yeah, there's definitely this element of, like, he's there,
partly, it seems, because she's there in some ways. Like, there's a connection between
Nancy and Freddy. Right. That we're not really clear on yet. And so
we now go to. Tina is sleeping, and Tina is in her dream
and she's having a nightmare, and Freddy is there. She's, like, walking through some alleyways
or whatever. And Freddy appears and has a great line where she's like,
you know, like, oh. Oh, please, God. Please, God, save me. And he goes.
And he kind of, you know, flashes the blades up and goes, this is God.
And it's just very scary and terrifying. And so he goes making
his body distorted. Yeah, he likes his arms stretch out, very arms along.
He's like a Wario version of Inspector Gadget. An evil.
Like. It just makes it so much creepier when they have
him move in these distorted ways or they add, like, an extra length
or just he. Yeah. Mr. Very. Not fantastic,
but yeah. So he, he, you know, chases Tina and attacks her. And then at
one point, as they are fighting and sort of like wrestling and he's, you know,
whatever. We cut back to waking reality where Rod
is in bed next door and he is woken up by her thrashing around.
But he gets up and pulls the COVID off and. And, you know, she's there
alone, but she's clearly struggling with someone. Right. But there's nobody visible.
She ends up being slashed numerous times,
like the chest and the stomach and stuff, and pulled up into the corner of
the room. She is up against the ceiling, she is being slashed and blood is
dripping everywhere. And Rod just has no idea what the hell is going on.
He starts screaming about like, tina, Tina, wake up or whatever, you know, but he
is just watching her be just shredded, basically. Horrifying thing,
you know, I can't imagine what it's like. And of course, her screaming and his
screaming have woken both Nancy and Glenn. So they're trying to get in, the door's
locked, so Glenn's trying to, you know, bash his way in or whatever. By the
time he gets in, Tina has, you know, fallen back to the bed, just covered
in blood, like absolutely dead for sure. And there's an open window and no Rod.
Yeah. So it is not unreasonable that. No.
That the kids think Rod killed her and ran In a world where we.
Don'T know that Freddy Krueger is like. It's pretty realistic.
Yeah. And this is the first instance of them using, using this revolving room
effect, which was really good. I mean, a great way
to be able to show Tina getting like yanked up to the ceiling and everything.
Really brutal, though. Yeah. I mean, and early. I mean,
we are 15ish minutes into this movie and we get a really brutal kill
early on. I mean, really from, from Jump street because, oh,
Johnny Depp, like, really from right at the
very beginning, they. They dial up just ominous and menacing on this movie.
Real high. I think a few weeks ago we did a. We. We talked about
the movie Cape Fear and I felt like the same way where it, like from
the very first moments of the movie, we get tension, we get menace,
we get ominous. You know, and the same thing with this movie. Like, it,
it is, it is scary from the beginning. It is tense and scary from the
beginning. And to get this sort of like horrific murder early on just
completely sets the stage. It shows us just how powerful Freddy is, you know,
the way he is able to, you know, enact change and take
action in the real world from dreams is just terrifying because how do you,
you, how do you beat that? Right? How do you stop that? What do you
do? It's crazy. And then even as a viewer, knowing that he can exist in
the dream world and the real world simultaneously, you're kind of on edge in
every scene because you don't necessarily know if this is like, is this the real
world or is this some dream that, you know, Freddy's gonna pop out in any
minute, foreshadowing God. So, so Rod.
Rod has been blamed. Rod has been blamed for this. And now we're introduced
to Donald, who is Nancy's dad, played by John Saxon, who is.
I liked him in Enter the Dragon with. He was kind of the, the Johnny
Cage character of the Mortal Kombat competition they had there.
And I remembered him because I was trying to place him when I was watching
it. But he's also the, the park manager doing the counterfeiting of money in
Beverly Hills Cop 3. All right. And that was where I remember John Saxon from.
So he's all. He's sprinkled throughout. So Nancy
decides, like, despite this brutal murder of her friend happening like the day before,
she's like, I'm going to school. What am I going to do? I need to
distract myself. And here's the thing too. We, we hear in the morning, she's waking
up and we hear like a. The murder. And they refer to Tina's by her
full name, Christina, but they mentioned she's 15, which I'm like,
I did not get the vibe that they were that young. Right. Like, Glenn's driving
Rod does seem older. Like it's kind of shocking to me that, that the characters
are as young as they are. But I mean, we know they're in high school,
so it's not that crazy. But it just like felt jarring to. Be like,
makes it worse. We just seen some reason it makes it worse than like 17.
It does. There's something about it. We just watched her like, have sex with her
boyfriend and they get brutally murdered. And it's like for that to happen to a
15 year old is just like horrific and heartbreaking and awful. Not that it,
not that it would have been better, I guess, if she was 17. It does
seem worse. It elevates the, the stakes of the whole thing. As she's walking to
school, she's grabbed from the bushes. That's right. And, and you
know, she's grabbed by who we can see is robbed. Rod. And he is,
he's wearing. Because he Just jumped out the window to escape. So he's
in jeans, a leather jacket and no shirt. Yeah, that's all you have. That character
might have chose to wear that on a given day anyway. So I don't know
if that's like. Like really an emergency outfit. But he basically is trying
to tell Nancy like, look, I didn't do this, I didn't do. And then immediately
after that, Nancy's dad pops out of the bushes like, haha, the plan worked.
We got you. Yeah, I don't think we mentioned. Actually Nancy's father is a local
sheriff. Basically he's like the local law enforcement. And yeah, apparently they were following
Nancy, hoping Rod would show up or something or try to reach her
out. Reach out to her and contact her. And frankly, smart move because he's
a dumb kid. So of course he's gonna go right back to his friends and
try to figure out, you know, what to do. So they get him. So now
Rod is going off the jail jail and Nancy is continuing on to school.
One of my favorite character actresses is her teacher, Lynn Shea. She is wonderful.
The landlord from Kingpin. Oh yeah, exactly. Well, she's that. And she was in the
insidious movies. We saw her as a political reporter in Brewster's Millions. Very briefly.
All kinds of fun stuff. Lynch is fantastic. We like Lynch. Absolutely. Fans. And so
she is. This seems like it's like English class or they're talking about Shakespeare and
stuff. But you know, predictably, because she's been under such stress and now she can
relax. Like. Like Nancy falls asleep and finds herself just like
Tina did, sort of in the hallways of the school, wandering around. She kind of
gets up from. Oh no, that's right. She sees Tina in a body bag.
Right. And then. And then Tina's gone. So she follows her out. She just gets.
It's like she's in the classroom, she gets up, walks out the door, there's a
trail of blood and like all this stuff. And there's a person she runs into
who like is like the hall monitor. But it's one of the fun things about
this movie that they do this a few times. Right. The hall monitor looks normal,
but she's wearing a striped red and green sweater. Yeah, she's got the Freddy.
Freddy's Gang colors on. Exactly. And so, yeah, it actually is Freddy. Right.
So we know he can completely appear as anything he wants to within a dream.
Which makes a lot of sense. It's a dream. But basically like, you know,
the. He was dragging the body of Tina through You know, Tina, no running
in the halls and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. But Nancy, no running the
halls. So Nancy follows Tina's body down to the boiler room, basically. And the
body bag, it had shown when, I think when she walked into the. The kitchen
and her mom was watching the report on tv, it was showing the body bag
basically, like, going into the ambulance. Into the ambulance. But it had her arm,
like, kind of fall out of it, and it was, like, just really disturbing.
And how covered in blood. So this body bag imagery is really, like,
you know, that that's something that's burnt into Nancy's mind,
was, like, her best friend, and that's the last way she would have seen her.
Yeah. So they're dragged into the boiler room now and the basement. Yeah. And so
she goes. She heads into the boiler room and is confronted there by Freddy.
But she has this sort of epiphany moment where she throws
her arm onto a super hot pipe. Right. They're down the boiler room, so there's
all these, like, pipes and stuff. And, you know, they're almost always hot. They're made
of metal. So she throws her forearm onto it. And, of course, that actually wakes
her up. Right. She. She's. It's. It's almost like, okay, since Freddy's in
the nightmare with you, no matter what happens to you in the nightmare will translate
to reality. Yeah. Right. So it's like. Because that doesn't obviously happen with every dream
you have, but once Freddy has, like, appeared, sort of makes everything real. So by
doing that, she was able to force herself awake and sure enough, has a burn
on her forearm from the dream, which is, like, really crazy. And a really.
And again, a really great reminder that. You know, I can bring
stuff into this world. Things that you do in the dream, you know, that's the
thing. It seems like it's the first indication that not only does what Freddy
does in a dream translate to the real world, but also the person dreaming
can. Can affect change in the real world. And this is what comes into play
big time. Later. Later. So. So she wakes up in class, and she's,
like, freaking out, screaming, clearly, you know, you. You got to go home.
Like, you're. You're done here today. You got to take care of yourself.
Nancy then goes to jail where Rod is being held.
And she's kind of talking to him in jail, and he's describing,
like, all the same elements of the dream that she had. Yep.
And sweater, the blended nose. She's like, what the hell's going
on? Nancy, then she's home, she's taking a bath, she's relaxing,
and man singing the Freddy chant out loud.
But she's obviously. I mean, throughout the movie, they do a good job of just
showing the effect of not sleeping on a person. And she's just getting harder
and harder to keep her eyes open. So she falls asleep in the tub.
And I see Freddy's gloved hand, like, appear between her legs from the
water, which is very creepy. One of the most classic visual images from this movie
is this scene of Nancy sort of. You know, everything's covered by the suds
in the water, but her knees are. Are up, her head's just barely above water
with the little pillow behind her. And sure enough, you know, there's the gloved hand,
you know, coming up. I think even in some versions of, like,
you know, the DVD or whatever that might have been, like, not the COVID cover,
but, like, on the box. Like, it was a very, like, you know, classic image
from the movie. And her mom is like.
Before that actually happens, her mom is like, oh, Nancy, don't fall asleep in there.
You know that people die that way. You know, they drown. People drown
all the time doing that. And she's like, mom. Like, leave me alone. And then
her mom. Mom goes, I'll make you some warm milk. And it's like. And then
she even says, warm milk. Gross. Like, and I. It was so funny because I
literally was just having a conversation with my son, who's 11, like, the other day,
and he said something about, like, dad, is it true that people drink warm milk
to go to sleep? I'm like, dude, I've. I mean, yes, that's a thing.
Like, I've never done it. I've never had warm milk in my life. It sounds
awful. I don't think I have, but, like, there's cocoa powder. Well, there you go.
Yeah, of course. Yes, but. But I was like, yeah, that's a thing. Like,
people did. Maybe people like Grandma when Grandma was young, you know, whatever. And he's
like, oh, because I like milk. That sounds gross. I'm like,
yeah, warm milk does not sound good. Milk's got to be ice cold. She doesn't
want the warm milk, but, you know, her mother's already sort of like, you know,
set the stage of, like, be careful. Don't fall asleep in there.
Oh, man. Yeah. So. So she falls asleep again.
Like, she kind of woke up and then falls asleep. It drifts off again,
right? And now Freddy fully, like, pulls her under the tub. And now this is
Not a bathtub. This is a. A bottomless, like, dreamless world. It can be whatever.
Yeah. She's. So he pulls her all the way under, and there's this. This great
struggle, but she ends up being able to. She wakes out of it. She able
to wake up, and then. And her mom is able to, like, bust into the
room, and she sort of, like, you know, tells like, no, no, I'm okay.
I'm okay. I just, like, you know, I slipped or whatever. She really downplays it,
but, yeah, that's. Yeah, she really gives no indication to her mom. I mean,
she could have given her some info. And then Nancy looks in the medicine
cabinet and finds a bottle of, like. Pep pills,
whatever they were. But this is pre Jesse Spano, so kids
didn't know that. That it was bad for you at this time. That's true.
That's true. Yeah. Jesse saved us all. She. She comments,
I think in the next scene, she's talking to Glenn just
about how she's not been able to sleep. And she's like, oh, God, I look
20 years old. That made me want to kill myself.
Oh, you mean great and youthful and spry with tight skin
and, like, the. Best you'll ever feel? Exactly. Right. No aches and pains.
God damn it. Goddamn kids. But yeah, basically, she is.
She talks to Glenn, and she's like, look, I need you to do me a
favor. Like, I'm gonna go to sleep. You need to stay awake so
that you can wake me up if it looks like there's a problem. Just wake
me up. And he's like, okay, cool. Because he's climbed in her window, right.
Because she decides she's gonna go kind of like try to confront Freddy or something.
Like, I mean, she's already thinking about meeting. She's brave. Really brave. Really bold.
She's a bad bitch. And so she goes and she ends up kind of walking
through the town because, again, it seems like almost every time this happens, people start
from where they're actually sleeping. Yeah. You know, and she, like, gets up and she
leaves her house, and it's all foggy. That's one of the other indicators a lot
of times that we're in the dream state, right. Is that it's extra foggy around
because it almost never is normally. But, you know,
it's like that fog comes. So it's very foggy. She wanders and she goes to
the police station where her dad works and where Rod is being held, and she
can kind of see down. You know, it's the like of one of those,
like below ground level sort of basement, you know, rooms. And so she
can see through a window that's down on the ground, that rods down there sleeping.
So she then sees Freddy like come through and phase through the bars,
basically. Which was another liquid metals through the bars. Cool effect that again,
$1.8 million Wes Craven. What are you doing? It's amazing, but yeah,
great. I want like a pop up video where it says the cost of each
individual effect. I would love. We need
some forensic accounting to done on this film so we can. Seriously, really impressive.
But basically she. She, you know, sees Freddy, but.
But Freddy sees her, right? And basically leaves rod and comes after her.
Yeah. And at this point she starts screaming for Glenn because like,
you know, the whole point is she's thrashing, whatever. And we see Glenn back in
reality in her room, fast asleep, ass fell asleep.
Wake up Glenn like, oh my God. So crazy her. So. So she's being
chased home by Freddy. And this effect is so
good and so terrifying where she's running up her stairs,
but each step is kind of like quicksand. And that's such like an
in your dream sensation that you can have where your feet are just,
you know, unexplainably heavy and you just can't take your steps.
And I thought that was just a really cool idea. The number of things.
Like there's a combination this movie of. Of the inventive newness of
Freddy Krueger himself, specifically. Right. And that character being, you know, this monster
we'd never seen before in a lot of ways. But so much of what happens
in people's nightmares in this movie really feel like universal
experiences, if not explicitly of this happening to you kind of thing.
Like you said, your legs just don't work as well. You're yelling for someone and
they can't hear you. You know, you're in a somewhat familiar place that suddenly turns
very not familiar. Right. Or you turn a corner and what should have been there
isn't. And it's a complete completely. All these things are happening in these nightmares and
these dreams and it's just so relatable, you know, in from as the audience
to look at that and go like, yeah, like, yeah, like you said when she
was like, you know, struggling up the stairs, I'm like, oh yeah, good old quicksand
feat. Never happens in real life, but sure as hell happens, man. Is that.
It's relatable though, that feeling. Yeah, yeah. So. So she's
able to, you know, get away from Freddy for a Bit. And then the alarm
goes off and her and Glenn both wake up. Yeah, she's able to be like,
you piece of. You had one job. What's wrong with you?
Her mom. This is. I want to shout out the makeup and special effects
for a non horror feature. Oh, her mom's bed head is unbelievable.
It was really. Her mom has the best bed head I've ever
seen on somebody. When she comes in to. To check on them, it's clearly
all lopsided. She must sleep on her.
Oh, man. Okay, so. So now we're. We're kind of back to
Rod. Well, so, yeah, so now Nancy's like, rod's in trouble. Like she's. She equates
the fact that she saw Freddy in her dream approaching Rod is meaning like,
Rod's also in trouble. Right. And so she and Glenn race down to
the police station. You know, they go and they, they talk to one of the
officers there. And then her dad kind of comes out and is like, what are
you doing? You should be home asleep. And she's like, you got to check on
Rod. He's in danger. He's in danger. And they're just like, what are you talking.
He's in a jail cell. Like, what can happen to him? Yeah, we know things
that can happen in jail cells. So Freddie is epsteining Rod,
right? Missing a couple minutes of this footage, guys. There's guards asleep,
know, but God damn it. I mean, it shows,
you know, the sheet like creeping its way around his neck and all and you
know what's going to happen. And it's just like, listen to your kid.
Like you want to scream at the cops, like, what are you guys doing?
And how brilliant as you know, Freddy is sort of even thinking ahead
here, right. If he kills Rod in a way that looks self inflicted,
it's going to continue to like, so doubt that anything
really weird is happening. Right. If he went and like slashed him up
the way he did Tina, people would be like, well, now wait a minute.
Nobody else was here. There's no KN. Down here in the basement. Like, what the
hell happened? But the fact that it looks like he sort of just strung himself
up with his bed sheet. Yeah. It's like, well, I guess the kid really did
kill his girlfriend. And then, you know, didn't want to face the consequences. We killed
himself. It's like, yeah, that does happen sometimes. So, okay, Rod didn't kill
himself, but no, that's right. Hashtag. Yeah. And yeah,
good point about that. He's not going to have anyone after him. Like, Freddy is
able to kind of keep the game going longer by. By using this restraint
or fucking up people's lives more by killing him in this way.
Rod. So, you know, Rod was an accused
murderer for a couple days and then immediately. A couple days. Yes,
exactly right. It was only a couple days. A day, probably. And then.
So then we're at Rod's funeral and the priest is like, well,
you live by the sword, you die by the sword. The most brutal yet,
the berries. It's like, what the fuck? I mean, they did say something about Rod
had a. A small rap sheet history, some like, you know,
assault charge and like, drug possession. He did pull out a knife pretty quickly.
Right. He had the switchblade going, you know, kind of thing. But yeah,
the brutal eulogy from the priest of like, you know, he was a piece of
shit. Like, you live by the sword, die by the sort kind of thing.
It's like, God damn, dude, his mother is right there. I didn't know that Catholic
church was that harsh on people or themselves. I know,
but it was like, how about a couple of nice words? Because he hasn't had
a trial in. I don't even know if he was. I mean,
they were treating him like an adult. So let's say he was 18. Right.
But he wasn't older than that. It wasn't like an adult. An adult adult.
Right. This is still basically an undeveloped brainchild. Right. So.
And then. So was this a budget issue or a intentional
issue? Is that if he's a character who's a accused murderer? Because Normally,
like, at 18 or a high school student dies, like, there's a million people at
the funeral. Right. But because. Because he's an accused murderer, there's like almost nobody
there. But also, conveniently, we didn't have the money to pay a whole bunch of
extras to sit at a funeral. So that worked out as well. Yeah, it's probably
a fun happy. We're funeral out. We got kids getting killed here all the time.
It's a happy coincidence, I think. But yes, I think the intimation there is that.
Yeah, like, Rod was a not well liked sort of bad guy. So when he
dies, there's not a ton of sympathy. I mean, there's a lot of that in
this movie of, like, sort of constantly judging people and, you know,
not having sympathy and empathy for. For. For what people are going through. It kind
of runs through this whole move that way. The parents especially the whole thing.
Yeah. So, yeah, so now Nancy's parents
were like, we were her mom really more than anybody's. Like, we need. You need
help. Yeah. So they take her, you know, she takes her to the Katja Institute
for the Study of Sleep Disorders. So basically, you know, just like a sleep clinic
kind of thing. The sleep doctor. The guy there, of course,
is one Charles Fleischman, who is the voice of Roger Rabbit.
Yeah. So that's a fun little, nice little by him.
That doesn't sound anything like Roger in this one, but. But that is who that
was. And so she gets all hooked up to the little diodes and little,
like, monitors and this stuff. And he's got this huge. Looks like a seismograph.
Like a, like, tracking earthquake stuff. It is crazy. You know, big, big ream of
paper coming through and the little, like, needles bouncing back and forth, like, track,
you know, it was like brainwaves or, you know, whatever it is. And he mentions,
like, the rapid eye movement. And she starts to see, oh, she'll be dreaming any
moment now. And of course, then he says something about, like, oh, you know,
another night. Like these. These numbers are normal. And it said, like, twos and threes
on his screen. And he's like, if it's a nightmare, it'll be like five to
eight. That's, like, pretty normal. And so the numbers start going to 15, 20,
40. And he is just like, what the hell is going on? So they race
in there to try to wake her up because she starts thrashing around and they
wake her, and she kind of. From underneath her. Her sheet,
she's got something in her hand. She's got Freddy's hat.
She brought it with her from the dream, which is.
Whoa. Like, crazy. Whole new thing. Bring an object. Like.
Yeah. Even the tearing on her pajamas could have been explained by.
By the. On Tina's pajamas, right? Could have been explained by,
like, you did that yourself or whatever. Long fingernails, Bringing an object. Like when you
had somebody only in, like, a hospital gown. Right. And then all of a sudden
they produced this hat. Like, they were just handed it like a young Indiana Jones,
you know? Yeah. She's like, in the most controlled possible situation, like. Yeah.
Have they made. I haven't seen all the Frank Freddy sequels. Did they ever do
a Frosty the Snowman style situation with his hat? Oh, where the hat, like,
put the. Hat on a snowman, he becomes, like an evil Freddy guy.
Think so, but. Copyright 2Dads1
Movie 2025. Don't steal that. Reach out to us, Wes, at the show.
We know you're listening, Wes. Yeah.
So when she takes the hat out and like her mom is kind of
given indication of a little bit of being like,
that sounds like familiar, like she's withholding something. Yeah,
she's definitely. There's a lot of. There's a lot of skittishness from the adults that
doesn't make a ton of sense given that they continuously talk about how they don't
believe anything weird is happening. Yeah, right. You just need some sleep. You're just freaking
out, like. But yet then, yeah, there is like they're holding something back or there's
something that they're not saying or whatever. And so when she says Nancy tells her
mom, like, his name's in the hat. It says Fred Kruger. Do you know who
that is? Yeah. And at first her mom's like, no.
But then she. Nancy is reading a book. Yes, Nancy is reading.
Looked for at the Livermore Library. They do not have it without flagging my
account. Booby Traps and Improvised Anti Personnel Devices, I think is
what it was called or something like that. It reminds me of. I think it
was a play on the Anarchist Cookbook, I think is the idea. Right. That was
because we all remember. I don't know if people claim. Claim to have copies or
did or whatever, but the Anarchist Cookbook, right, was the famous like 80s 90s,
you know, this is how you make napalm from gasoline
and Styrofoam or some crap or whatever, you know, all the kind of things and
how to make like how to pick locks and all this kind of stuff.
So she's now studying like how to make booby traps now that she knows she's
gotten Freddy's hat. If she can take things out, then maybe she could bring stuff
in or affect things the other direction. And so a very smart girl. Super smart.
And yeah. And she. She comes home now
and she's been gone for a couple hours. And her mom has had very nicely
decorated bars, like, put on the way. It's not like a whip up. Like,
let's just board these things up. Like, it fits with the theme of the house.
Like, they're kind of stylish. She had a trellis with like roses growing on it
that Glenn had climbed up to get to her. But that's went down all.
Every window has bars on it now. And it's like. Yeah, it took maybe a
few hours. Which is, yeah, amazing to be able to call the bar guy.
I mean, to me make a decision on what style of bars you wanted.
That's where the $1.8 million went. Was the rush child that's right. Yeah. We got
to get those bars up. Yeah. So when she's.
Then when Nancy comes home is where she has the conversation
with her mom about, like, the origin. And he's like, who is this guy Fred
Krueger? Like, do you know who this is? And she's like, yeah, I do.
And she. She takes her down to their basement, like, their. Where their furnace is.
And she's got the glove, the bladed glove, hidden inside.
Inside the furnace. Right. Is that what it was? Wouldn't that have just burned up
over time? I don't know how long ago this event was supposed to occur,
because she tells Nancy there was this man, Fred Krueger, who lived here in town.
And I wrote it down. He killed at least 20
kids in the neighborhood. Insane. How big is the neighborhood?
How is this not, like, well known? Just, like, why. Like, why would
Nancy and Glenn and Rod and Tina and their friends not know this occurred?
Because her mom is talking about it as if we parents did this.
Yeah. So what was it, like 10 years ago? Yeah. I mean, it must be
one of those things where, like, the town decides collectively that we're never going to
talk about this again. Right. Which always comes back. That works
out great. No, that works out great. And never, never is a problem. Yeah.
So Fred Krueger, all these horrific crimes, Right. And then apparently
is, like, freed on a technicality. The parents all come and,
like, surround his. His, like, boiler room. He's in
an old, kind of, like, industrial style, I guess, really. He's in the kind
of building that's great for a final showdown, you know, that kind of building.
But they basically, you know, surround the building and cover
it in gas and burn it down. Fire. Yeah. And they all stand there watching,
make sure he doesn't leave. Whatever. So he's dead. You can't blame him. And she.
Oh, no, no. Obviously this person, you know, horrific things. But. Yeah, but I love
the line that she gives Nancy. She's like, nancy, Freddy can't hurt Fred. Can't hurt
you. He's dead, honey. Because Mommy killed him. Yeah.
Which is just the most, like, unhinged. Way to put, yeah,
Mommy killed him. I even took his knives. Right, Right.
Oh, my God. Which I guess is why we the. The montage of him making
new ones at the beginning. Was that because. Because Nancy's mom stole
them from him. So bizarre. Jesus. I mean.
Yeah. So. So then, like, there's this incredible darkness
beneath, like, the already dark concept of a guy that can murder you in
your sleep is a town that Basically, like had this horrific series of events happen
and then kind of covered it up. I mean, not in a way that they're
protecting the criminal, but they're not protecting the kids by like hiding
this from them. Hiding it. That like this is a thing that happened or.
And they did. And they did. You know, it was vigilante justice,
which has, you know, is. Has its downsides. It's not like a great way to
do, you know, I mean, I get that she's saying, oh, we all knew he
did it and he got off on a technicality. But it's like. But was that
the only reason? Like, are we sure, you know, the justice system is not perfect?
Like, are we sure you've got the right guy? I mean, look, in retrospect,
you probably do because he wouldn't be coming back and killing all these kids in
their dreams. But still. Did you know that vigilantes of Elm street movies.
Movies make vigilante justice so black and white. They always make it seem like the
best idea. So Glenn is coming again to meet Nancy,
right? Nancy basically called Glenn and was like, hey, you know, at midnight, meet me
in front of my house. You know, we're gonna. I'm going after him. I'm going
in there, I'm going after him. And so she's like booby trapping part of her
house and you know, all this stuff. Her mom is so funny. Her mom
like puts her to bed and collects like a coffee pot and a bunch of
coffee mugs and all this stuff. And after she leave, Nancy wakes up and she's
got a whole ass plugged in coffee maker under her bed. Pulls the whole.
The whole Mr. Coffee up onto the thing to have more coffee again. We've talked
about this before in different movies. In the Cape Fear episode where Nic Nolte is
like hiding 30ft away, but he's smoking a cigarette. Like you
smell a pot of coffee brewing and it was like. Or you hear it percolating
and it. Wasn'T even like, let me take this out and plug it in.
It was like this has been brewing under my nightstand the entire time. The little
red lights on and everything. That was perfect. It was amazing.
Yeah, I like that part. Yeah. And we. So we see. So we see.
Glenn is talking. And I do love too. Glenn's got the classic like 1980s guy
in the half T shirt, the whole bare midriff on a man that's just not
been a style intense. Woo. But yeah, so he's. He's basically like,
agrees. He's like yeah, okay, I'll stay up, you know, like, no problem, whatever.
And I love like Nancy gives him this line before she ends up like,
don't fall asleep. Like, she's super like hardcore
about it. Because he's already kind of failed her on a very important task earlier.
Yes. And Glenn's parents too are not. So she's trying to
call Glenn, basically. And Glenn's parents are like, that girl's crazy. And for
measure, I'm taking the phone off the hook. Off the hook. No call waiting,
no, no nothing. So yeah, like that's, that's that. But she tries to leave and
the door's locked. And you realize it's an interior key lock, which is diabolical,
terrifying, just horrific idea. Like, like fire alone is the
reason not to do that. But Nancy's mom is just like blotto drunk,
passed out on the couch, basically, or half passed out and says like, it's locked,
you can't leave all this stuff. It's like, that's, that's awful.
Yeah. And. And you know, she's trying to call. She gets
a call basically. And it's Freddie on her phone. That's right. That says like,
I'm your boyfriend. She ripped her phone out of the wall like that.
She pulled it out of the wall. I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy. And she's
like, wait, wait, my boyfriend now? Oh crap. Glenn's in trouble, you know, so that's
when she tries to leave and everything. And I love. There's a couple things that
happen before Glenn sort of like meets his fate. He's got this like semi
portable, you know, bunny ears TV, like a little 13 inch TV, like in his
lap. And it's like, you know, it's now 12 midnight and we end our broadcast.
Love the concept of the broadcast day, which hasn't existed in so
long now with cable and everything else. Infomercial. Oh man. This like.
Yeah, exactly. At least, at least put on the. Give me some Ronco. Yeah,
so give me some. Or one of the Tony Robbins tapes or something. It's gotta
be something. But yeah, sure enough, like, basically Glenn
dies in one of the most impressive ways in the movie. But also like
probably didn't hurt that bad, to be totally honest. Like it was probably quick.
You know, the way Tina gets chased. Suffering a lot to immediately
get blended. Tina gets chased and scratch and beaten and slashed, all this stuff.
Rod gets hung and that's horrific. That's a horrible way to go. And it's not
even like neck breaking hung. It's like asphyxiation hung. I think his hyoid one
was broken, actually. Yeah, there you go. Glenn gets sucked
down into his bed, which is weird and crazy. And then
just the most monstrous volcanic eruption of blood. Right. And I
mean, and it is. I don't know how much blood is in the human body
exactly, but it's a lot less than that. Less than that. I mean, even if
you blended everything in the human body to get all the
liquid you could, it would probably be less than that. I like that he gets
sucked in along with his like, boom box. And his TV too. Yeah, that's right.
His headphones and everything. Cuz that actually shows up later, which is funny. But like
he. It's just this horrific thing. So his parents hear this, this noise
basically coming. Sounds like running water, I guess. I don't know. But they come in
and are just presented with this just horrific again,
just blood everywhere, like absolutely monstrous. Another rotating room thing.
So it's showing the blood, like it's supposed to be erupting up out of the
bed, but it's really. The bed is up and it's like landing on the ceiling
as if it were the floor. That's right. Cool effect there. And yeah, the only
way you could again do this, this effect without spending
many, many, many hundreds of thousands of dollars on just the effect alone actually like
launching it up by doing it that way it's. You get the whole effect.
There is a moment where it looks a little weird. It looks like it's moving
in reverse almost. Or like this, you know, there's a little trick of the camera
that you can kind of spot at one point, but. But again, just, just the,
the inventiveness and creativity to do that on the budget is amazing. Such a crazy
scene. And this scene kind of takes me back a little a couple movies ago
to Tommy Boy, where Tommy is doing the description of this,
like this car crash. And then the coroner shows up.
Oh my God. Because I thought about this here first.
We get the, the ambulance that everyone pulls up. There's a character, it doesn't show.
He says, you don't need a stretcher up there, you need a mop.
And then. No, but before they said that, I thought the same thing. As I'm
watching, they pull in the stretcher. I'm like, what the. Are they gonna stretch her
out of here? There's nobody stretching because her dad's the
cop. Yeah, yeah, he's there. Where's the corner? They're like, the corner's been in the
bathroom. Puking. Exactly. New guys in the corner puking his guts out.
The same thing. Tommy boy also references the puking coroner. It's good
stuff. And so Nancy calls her dad, is able to get a hold of her
dad over, over at you know, Glenn's parents house. Is this all happening?
And is basically just like dad, come over in 20 minutes.
Come over and, and you know, it doesn't matter. I kick
the door in like whatever, just be here 20 minutes. That's exactly 12:30, like be
here. And I think maybe this is when she's actually like booby trapping the house,
something around there. And but she's, she's going in after him. Like she's going in
after Freddy. She's going to fall asleep. She's going to try to time it so
that she can be holding on to him when she wakes up. Because she
believes probably, you know, I mean accurately based on what she's experienced, that if she
is holding him him when she wakes, it'll pull him into the real world.
Everything she's like touching has her hands is coming back with her.
Exactly. And so, so she tries to do that. So she sets her watch like
a little alarm for like 10 minutes, like a countdown. And the watch talks to
her. And I was like this seemed like. Was this a thing in 1984,
like the SPO watch? Right, exactly. But it was like, you know, like Countdown
mode, 10 minutes and counting. I'm like, that is a really advanced voice for
this watch. I feel like it might have been adr, but like it's pretty cool.
So she at one point is. So now she wakes up again. She's in,
doesn't wake up. Sorry. She's in her dream. And she gets up from bed,
she's in her home. She goes down to the
basement to look for the bladed glove, right.
But she pulls out the bundle that her mom had shown her out of the
furnace. And it's not there. And so that's a problem.
She had called her dad, her dad had told. Her dad's like the lieutenant or
whatever. Her dad had told one of his like subordinates like hey, keep an eye
on my house. If you see anything weird, there's anything that, that strikes
you as odd, come get me. Like I don't think it'll be a problem.
I think it's. My daughter just needs to get to sleep. If you see anything
out of the ordinary, just come get me right away. Don't delay. And this guy
is probably the worst at his job out of
anyone we've seen. So far. Because apparently within the brackets of
ordinary to this guy is the daughter screaming, get my father. Get my father.
Help get my dad, you asshole hole. Like, screaming from across. At which point,
after minutes, it felt like of her screaming to get his attention
because she has. Has been able to pull Freddy out into the real world.
And he's now chasing her around the house. Yeah. You know, getting hit by her
booby traps and everything else. But like, he's. She. He's chasing her around, she's screaming,
get my dad. Just finally the guy goes, maybe I better go tell the lieutenant.
It's like, yes, dude. Like that's what you were asked to do. You had one
job. All the while she's in this house that's locked. Right. Locked inside.
Another just terrifying dream scenario where you just.
You can't open a door that should by every other logic,
open. Yeah. God damn it. And her. Yeah. So her
dad is terrible. Right. Well, the dad. The dad wants. He gets a. It's the.
It's the other cop that really is screwed up. But the other. The dad does
run across. Like, you don't outsource the job of watching your daughter who
just sets two of her friends get murdered. That's absolutely. For three. Really.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So she has Freddy trapped
in the house and she's able to get this gasoline on him.
Right? Yeah. Basically like light him on fire. Light him on fire. Which, you know,
his worst nightmare, I'm sure. Right. Yeah. That's how he died. And so. But it's
really interesting to the. The. The Freddy. I'm sure this wasn't
Robert England time, this was a stuntman. But he's obviously in like a fire suit.
Right. Because he's running around burning. He's much larger. He's much thicker. He's much
thicker with a bigger head and everything, you know, as he's running, running around.
But, you know, you got to keep people safe. So again, I'm not gonna like.
But he can change his size. So that's true. Throughout the film we've shown he
could be different. That's right. So he's chasing around. He's basically lighting the house on
fire as he goes. Right. Like everywhere he steps. And she realizes that he has
run upstairs. The flaming footprints. His mom is up there.
And so he, you know, she busts in and her mom's being attacked
by, you know. And again, she's the one at least who claims mommy killed him
now. Yeah. She makes it sound like a lot of the parents throughout the Town
were in on it, but that maybe she lit the match. Culprit really
keep the hand. That's true. Exactly. So. So he is attacking her,
and they end up throwing, like, a blanket over them to, like.
To, like, put out the fire. And when they do, Freddy's gone, but the
mom's body is just burned to crisp and then sinks into
the bed somehow. Yeah. In the dream world, are we not at this point.
Right. That was a little weird. Or is it like Freddy has a hold of
the bed and the mom so he can still manipulate it in reality. But,
yeah, that was a very bizarre scene. And really quick for her
mom to. Just be that charred. And her dad. And mom
and dad are divorced. I don't know if we mentioned that earlier, but I guess
that's why, you know, he's not living there. And he's a little less distraught when
he sees what's happened. But basically, her dad goes into the room and she's just
like, now do you believe me? It's like, come on, man.
Like a. He should. I mean, you should make him feel bad about this a
lot in the future, but right now, maybe not the time.
So this then leads us to the final scene of the movie. One of the
most classic final scenes, in my opinion
of, like, any movie like this. It's wonderfully a
cliffhanger. It's wonderfully ambiguous. So she wakes up and she heads
out the front door, and her mom and her are together heading out the front
door, which is like, oh, wait, did her mom not really die? Like, that's weird.
But of course, it's all foggy. It's bright, though. Well, first, sorry. Freddie is encountering
her, and he's kind of behind her, right. And he appears,
and she's saying, you're not real. Oh, that's right. That's right. That's how she kind
of overtakes him. So. So he's like. It's like, all right, well, she's dead.
Freddy's behind her, and she's not turning to look at him. She's like, you're not
real. You're not real. It's just a dream. And she's able to do this enough.
And Freddy just kind of, like, dematerializes. Yeah, he goes to, like, he reaches for
her, like, to get her with the gloved hand, with the bladed glove or whatever.
And, yeah, just sort of. Yeah. Dissipates. And it's just gone. It's. You know,
she took his power away, basically by ignoring him. And that was the, you know,
which is really kind of how nightmares can be overcome. Right. You know,
in general. So. Yes. So then after that, it's. It's. She kind of goes through
the door and suddenly it's. She's outside up front. It's bright, you know, she makes
a comment about how bright it is and her mom says, oh, it's such a
nice day. I'm sure this will burn off soon. And you realize it's all foggy,
which is like, oh, to date in this movie that's only been in dream world
or whatever. Right. Car pulls up. It's Glenn's car, the convertible. The top is
down, or the top is up, rather. And it's him and Rod and Tina.
They're all alive. Oh, good. Everybody's alive. Let's get in the car and get going.
Well, she gets in the car and that ragtop comes down and, you know.
Without them not doing anything. Yeah. And it is the green and red stripes of
Freddy's sweater. And I. That is one of my favorite visuals in this movie
is that convertible ragtop being. Looking like that. And sure enough, so those doors
lock, the windows roll up and you know, it basically the car drives away
and you hear Freddie like, cackling. And it's. It's like, yeah,
what actually happened at the end? Are they. Is she safe? Is she dead?
Is she still dreaming? You know, what's going on? It just leaves everything open ended.
It's an ambiguous ending in the best way possible. And that's.
That's how the movie wraps, which is just really fantastic.
And then. And then we're treated to it to an awesome 80s song
here, Nightmare by 213. And it's basically the
song that they wrote for the movie. But it's a good, like butt rock and
like, you know, a song about what happens in this.
About don't fall asleep. That's right. So definitely check out that song.
But yeah, that's. That's Nightmare on Elm Street. It is,
yeah. What a ride. Do you want to do it
first? I'll give you mine. So. All right. As I've said, like, I'm a big
fan of horror movies. And, you know, this is one of those movies.
I mentioned it in the last episode and we kind of introduced that they would
be doing this movie. There's like a Mount Rushmore in my opinion of. And it's
not just my opinion, a lot of people agree. 80s and 90s movie monsters,
right. Chucky from the Child's Play movies. Michael Myers from Halloween, Jason Voorhees
From Friday the 13th and Freddy Krueger is like one of the just ultimate
movie monsters of our sort of childhood and young adulthood in that era.
And this movie gave it to us. The effects,
even before I recognize. Before I looked up what the budget was to
do the facts on this, I was impressed with the effects. Right. They're very impressive.
Impressive. But to then learn that Wes Craven did all this on the amount of
money he did on is just mind blowing. Absolutely amazing. The inventiveness
of the character, the uniqueness and originality of this monster and his and his
methods is all just so impressive. Yeah, the acting wasn't fantastic,
but both Heather Langenkamp and Johnny Depp are more than passable even at this stage
in their careers. You know, very, very. You know, they're good enough for sure for
the material. Robert England is terrifying in the best way. John Saxon is, you know,
the impression, impressively bungling dad or whatever, cop who wants to help but, like,
clearly is just in over his head with all this. I love everything about this
movie. I'll be totally honest with you. I am 5 out of 5 on a
nightmare on Elm Street. I think this is. This movie is important culturally.
It's important within the world of horror movies. It's important even, you know, more specifically
within the world of slashers. It's not like it's the first slasher like we talked
about Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A bunch of stuff had come out before
this did that really was, you know, driving the slasher genre
into creation. Yeah. But there's something about the arrival of Freddy
Krueger that solidifies the 80s as the decade of the slasher film.
And so, yeah, I. Five. Five stars for me on A Nightmare on Elm Street.
All right, well, good. And that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I mean, you give yourself so much more to work with
in subsequent films as well, with the Freddy character
versus the Jason Voorhees, which is like. It just becomes like,
what brutal ways can this guy kill people in? But Freddy
can become all these things and he can manipulate all this stuff, and it's really
cool. And I don't know, like, how. What the intentions of this movie
is, but it does seem like kind of a commentary on just like,
vigilante justice and how these things can go sideways. Like, if you're trying
to collectively cover up, you know, whatever the. This past evil
is, even if you're on the side of protecting the kids, it's gonna
come back if we're not upfront about this stuff. And if we don't communicate what
happened and deal with things the right way. His origin
story I thought was interesting. I think I might have not seen this until after
I saw Freddy versus Jason. Oh, interesting, because I really didn't
get into it until late, but I remember in that movie and that's like,
it's a not bad late horror movie, one. Of the later ones, but it does.
A really good, good demonstration of
like the Freddy origin story. It kind of retells it and it has like visuals
to it and stuff. Very short, but it's really effective and just being like,
oh, God. Like this Freddy Krueger is such beyond, like any level
of creep that you can even conceptualize pure evil.
Really, really rough, but a lot
of fun to watch. And he is kind of fun because he's kind of funny
and he does interesting things and. And he has gags and he seems
like he's having a good time killing everyone. I can't fault him for that.
Yeah, so it's not a horror guy. I'm. I did really
enjoy watching this and it's short. There's not a lot of fat on it.
It's. It's well done. It's really scary in parts.
I'm going to give this one a four out of five. Very nice. I thought
it was great. All right, well, that is a nine out of ten from the
two Dads on A Nightmare on Elm Street. Nic. Yes.
You get to pick the next movie. What are we going to watch next week?
Yeah, so staying with our Shocktoberfest theme,
going outside of maybe a traditional horror movie, but this is more one that
I really enjoyed that's a scary movie and is going to mess with your mind.
I haven't seen this in a long time, but I remember it having just a
lot of visuals that stuck with me and really cool film.
We're going back to 1990 and we are going to join Tim
Robbins and who is a former Vietnam vet
and his various struggles. Struggles that he's dealing with in Jacob's Ladder. Nice.
Great psychological thriller and I'm looking forward
to see how it holds up. I've never seen it, so I look forward to
watching it for the first time. That's very cool. And yeah, definitely. I mean,
what I know of it, it definitely fits the Shocktoberfest theme. So, you know,
stick with us audience if you're interested in more scary and. And sort of
mess with you movies. I mean, I think that's a lot of what we're picking
for this, for this theme. Is like stuff that really messes with. You and sticks
with you. Yeah. So very excited for that. We'll watch Jacob's Ladder next week.
That about wraps it up. So if you like what you hear, and we hope
you do, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a five
star review. It really helps new folks find the show. If you want to drop
us a line, share your thoughts on an episode, tell us what we got wrong,
or suggest a movie we should do next, you can do so at the showodadsonemovie.com
that's the number two and the number one. You can also follow us on Instagram
@2dads1movie. Once again, this has been a nightmare on Elm street. Another episode
of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve. And I'm Nic. Thank you so much for
listening. We'll catch you all next week. Thanks everyone.