ELM Treat: A Victim Or Villain

I think A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is so popular because of its inventive antagonist; A villain that terrorizes victims in an inescapable world where the victim has little to no power.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was inspired by reportedly true events. Wes Craven read and clipped articles from the L.A. Times about a young man who died during a nightmare. The young man and his family had come out of a relocation camp in Southeast Asia and were living in California. He would have these severe nightmares to the point of staying awake as much as possible; he would spit out prescription sleeping pills when his parents weren’t looking, and he kept a coffee pot in his bedroom closet. The article went on to say his dad brought him to his room after he fell asleep on the couch watching tv, thinking he was finally sleeping peacefully the family went to bed. Later that night they were awoken by him screaming and thrashing around and before they got him, he was dead. An autopsy later showed there was no sign of why he died. The inspiration from this event launched one of the most popular horror series and notorious movie slashers.
The essence of Freddy’s character was inspired by an experience Wes Craven had when he was a little boy. Wes heard a man walking outside of his bedroom window
and as he looked out, the man looked up and they locked eyes, Wes backed up into the shadows of his room waiting for the man to be on his way. When Wes returned to the window, the man was still there. The man then walked around Wes apartment building toward the entrance and opened the door, but by the time Wes woke his family, the man was gone. This man enjoying scaring young Wes was the way he imagined Freddy should be.
As the film begins, High school student Tina Gray is having a disturbing nightmare in which she is stalked through a boiler room by a severely burned man with the bladed glove on his right hand. When he finally catches her, she wakes up screaming in her own bed. However she has four slashes in her nightgown, identical to the ones given to her in the dream and is less than convinced it was just a nightmare. The next day, Tina tells her friend Nancy about her dream and Nancy admits she also had a bad dream but says tries to make her feel better by saying “…everybody has a bad dream once is a while, it’s no biggie”. Little did they know, she could not be more wrong.
Later that evening, Nancy and Tina have a sleep-over at Tina’s along with their boyfriends Glen and Rod.
Tina begins to describe the man in her dreams; it reminds Nancy of a dream she had and they realize the dreamt about the same man. While laying in bed that night Rod tells Tina he's also been having nightmares, but hints he doesn’t want to talk about it and they both go to sleep. While asleep, Tina is begins to dream and is stalked by the badly burned man. This time, he catches and kills her. Her struggles wake up Rod who watches Tina get viciously slashed by the four blades. Because Rod was the only one in the same room as Tina, he is suspected of the murder and is arrested the next
day.
While in school, Nancy has a terrifying dream after falling asleep in class where she is stalked by the same man that killed Tina. Nancy later goes to the jail to talk to Rod, who describes what he saw the night Tina was killed, which reminded him of his own nightmares where he was also stalked by the same man wearing the glove. Nancy realizes that Rod did not kill Tina and leaves. Later, she asks Glen to watch her while she sleeps so she can investigate her dreams further. When Nancy goes to sleep, she sees the killer enter Rod's jail cell and suspects that Rod is in danger. When she wakes up, she and Glen rush to the police station to find Rod dead, hung by his own bed sheets. Everybody, except Nancy, believes that he committed suicide.
At Rod's funeral, Nancy's mother, insists on getting her psychiatric help. But while at the clinic to evaluate her dreams, she has a violent encounter and wakes up with the killer’s hat in her hand. Her mom recognizes the hat and reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat and the burned figure from her nightmares is a man named Fred Kruger. Years ago, he was arrested for murdering children, but due to a technicality, he was released. Soon after, the enraged parents of the murdered children took the law into their hands by burning Freddy alive in a boiler room. It is realized that this is his motive. Getting revenge on the parents that killed him by terrorizing and murdering their children from within their dreams. Nancy tells this to Glen, who advises her to turn her back on her fear and to take the energy of the killer away from him, but she plans to pull Freddy from the dream world where she and Glen can gang up on him and surrender him to the authorities. However, both Glen and Nancy's parents lock them inside their respective houses, keeping them from meeting. Glen later falls asleep and is killed by Freddy.
Unable to get her father to believe her, she tells him to break down the door of her house in 20 minutes and then goes to sleep to hunt down Freddy. She finds him in her last few minutes of sleep and gets hold of him when her alarm goes off. When she doesn't see him at first, she thinks she's gone crazy, but Freddy eventually appears, and the two face-off. She traps him in the basement and calls her father. Don and his department arrive. He and Nancy find him smothering her mother. They knock him off but he disappears. Nancy sends her father from the room and turns her back as Freddy rises from the bed. She says she is no longer afraid of him, causing him to lose his powers. Freddy jumps forward as she walks out of the room and he vanishes.
There are a few reoccurring Themes. One of which is the scene setting in the boiler room. This is where the human Freddy was killed, and in a way it’s his home, his turf. He brings his victims there and terrorizes them. Another theme is the young jump roping girls. They are dressed in all white; symbolizing innocence that Freddy has taken. A third reoccurring theme is the character often not knowing they’re in a dream right away.
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is popular because of its inventions in the horror industry. Freddy is a timeless antagonist that keeps movie goers coming back for more.