A Nightmare on Elm Street

This is the ultimate in slasher-horror that thrives on the basis that it is, at times, genuinely quite scary, and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Robert Englund is super as the legendary "Freddie Krueger" who, complete with his razor sharp right hand, takes over the dreams of the teenage children of parents who had been responsible for his gruesome death many years earlier. When a terrorised "Nancy" (Heather Langenkamp) begins to put two and two together she sets out with cute boyfriend "Glen" (a first outing for Johnny Depp ) to trap him in her world - and that means drinking enough coffee to sink the Titanic and staying awake! Ronee Blakely does a mean impersonation of Faye Dunaway - as the girl's almost permanently drunk mother (whose battles seem to get larger as the film progresses) too. It doesn't hang about - Wes Craven keeps the pace almost frantic, and there is plenty of humour to keep it's tongue in it's cheek. The effects are limited, but fun, and the whole thing raises more smiles than goosebumps but it's still an entertaining watch 35 year later.