Episode 001: A Nightmare on Elm Street
Episode 001: A Nightmare on Elm Street
In this episode Alex and Raz reboot the show and begin their new format with a review of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Is it still scary? How does Wes Craven handle the dream world when compared to Christopher Nolan’s Inception? And what early 2000’s era Disney Channel film is better than it?
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The Whiteboard Podcast 
Hey, just listened.
Once again I had a lot of fun, I liked the format. There’s not actually a lot of structured internet conversations about “movies everyone knows”. {If you ever need to liven it up find a college student from another culture who has no introduction to a movie and get their comments.}
Regarding the caricatures in horror movies (the innocent good girl, or the wild party kids, etc) I agree that it is a shortcut used to introduce them; but there is also a sense that horror movies are modernized dark fairy tales.
In their old forms many well known fairy tales had both harrowing situations for the heroes and grisly consequences for flawed characters. The stories as collected by the Grimm brothers feature things like dismemberment and cannibalism. Many stories are focused around a central peril at the time of girls entering sexual maturity.
Literary interpretation suggests that these ancient stories are rooted in generational tension; youths wanting to push forward and an adult world pushing back. As well as a reinforcing of community standards.
Thanks for the compliments!
I agree that there’s a fairy tale nature to these kinds of movies. As a fan of fairy tales I really get into these movies. And I like that they go back to the way those stories used to be instead of the more sanitized versions we get as children. Freddy Kruger is a lot closer to the Big Bad Wolf than we like to think.
Alex.