A Nightmare on Elm Street review – jauntily outrageous slasher is still cheerfully crass

With his hat, claw glove and dodgy knitwear, Freddy Krueger gifted the world’s children an easy costume for Halloween and – given the novelisations – for World Book Day. Now Wes Craven’s original movie from 1984 is rereleased for its 40th anniversary; it is an ingenious and jauntily outrageous shocker which upends the idea of being kept awake by fear.

Robert Englund plays the unspeakable Krueger, who once upon a time killed 20 children but apparently walked free owing to an incorrectly signed search warrant. “The lawyers got fat and the judge got famous,” says one character, and, well, it certainly does sound like the victims’ parents are entitled to be miffed. (Perhaps Mr Krueger’s resourceful lawyer deserves a more prominent position in the ANOES franchise.)

Vigilante justice meant the killer was chased down and burned alive, but the molten-faced Krueger has now returned to haunt the dreams of local teenagers: you’re OK, so long as you don’t fall asleep. One of the young people involved is Glen, the movie debut for the 21-year-old Johnny Depp, who six years later played the Dr Jekyll version of Krueger: Edward Scissorhands.

Glen’s girlfriend Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is deeply disturbed by her friend Tina (Amanda Wyss) having eerily real nightmares concerning a murderous creep in a jumper and a hat with a lethal hand-claw accessory: she’s been awakening to find claw-shaped rips in her pyjamas. Nancy’s having the same dreams – and she’s got a problematic home life as well; her cop dad (John Saxon) neglects the family and her mom (Ronee Blakley) has issues with alcohol. Nancy figures she might be able to kill Krueger because he can be brought into the waking world if you have your hands on him when you wake up – but how do you manage that? The answer, according to Glen, is by cultivating the Balinese art of lucid dreaming, although there’s nothing particularly lucid or controlled about Nancy’s dreams.

Maybe this film didn’t exactly deserve its interminable later franchise, but Craven gives us cheerfully crass black-comic energy and there’s a real laugh when Glen, on whom Nancy has imposed celibacy for the evening, has to listen to Tina and her badass boyfriend Rod (Jsu Garcia) having noisy sex in the next room. “Morality sucks!” he mutters. It certainly does.