House of Horror (Archive)

Tag: Springwood

  • A Nightmare on Elm Street (Infinifilm Edition)


    A Nightmare on Elm Street (Infinifilm Edition)
    Tagline: If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all
    Released: 1984
    Starring Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, Johnny Depp, Ronee Blakley, Amanda Wyss, and Robert Englund
    Directed by Wes Craven
    Written by Wes Craven

    Format: DVD
    Distributed by New Line Cinema
    DVD Release Date: September 26, 2006

    Features:
    Remastered Picture – Restored from the original film negative
    Dolby Digital 5.1-EX Surround sound and DTS-ES 6.1 surround sound

    All-Access Pass:
    “Never Sleep Again” – The making of A Nightmare on Elm Street

    Beyond the Movie:
    “The House That Freddy Built: The Legacy of New Line Horror”
    “Night Terrors: The Origin of Wes Craven’s Nightmares”

    Infinifilm Interactive Features:
    Pop-up prompts, Nightmare Fact Track and video clips
    Exclusive Infinifilm ROM content

    Additional Features:
    Feature length commentary with Wes Craven, Bob Shaye (Producer/New Line Founder), Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Ronee Blakley, Sara Risher (New Line Co-Producer)
    Archived audio commentary with Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, and cinematographer Jacques Haitkin
    Alternative Endings
    Trivia Challenge
    Theatrical Trailer

    Premise: Dig your claws into the chilling masterpiece that spawned the greatest horror franchise in film history – now remastered and featuring hours of new Infinifilm extras. Starring Robert Englund as infamous horror icon Freddy Krueger, this “insomnia-inducing” (Kirk Ellis, The Hollywood Reporter) original from director Wes Craven “goes straight to the heart of terror” (Jim Emerson, Seattle Times).

    When her best friend Tina is brutally murdered, teenager Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) suspects the killer isn’t Tina’s boyfriend but rather a much more horrifying figure from her dreams. Convinced that this vicious murderer is stalking her friends and killing them as they sleep, Nancy enters a desperate race against time to bring him out of dream world and stop the bloodbath… before she falls asleep and becomes his next victim!

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): Fifteen-year-old girl Tina Grey (Amanda Wyss) has a disturbing nightmare in which she is being stalked through a dark boiler room by a figure with distinctive razor-sharp knives for fingers on his right hand. Just as he catches her however, she wakes up screaming, only to discover four razor cuts in her nightdress identical to the cuts in her dream. The next day, she finds out that her friend Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) experienced the same dream. That night, Tina, Nancy and Nancy’s boyfriend Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) have a sleep-over to make a distraught Tina feel better. Tina’s rebellious boyfriend, Rod Lane, crashes the party and goes to bed with Tina in her mother’s bedroom. Later that night, Tina has another nightmare, and this time the killer catches her and brutally murders her. Rod wakes up to find Tina being cut open by invisible knives and then dragged across the ceiling. Rod, being the only other person in the room at the time, is suspected of the killing, and is arrested the next day by Nancy’s father Donald Thompson (John Saxon), a police lieutenant.

    Later, Nancy has three sadistically violent nightmares where she is viciously stalked, then attacked by the same terrifying figure that attacked Tina. These nightmares lead her to talk to Rod in prison, who tells her what he saw in Tina’s mother’s bedroom. Much to the dismay of her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley), Nancy becomes increasingly convinced that the figure appearing in her dreams is the same person who killed Tina. After having a prophetic dream in which the horrific figure visits Rod in jail, Nancy, and a skeptical Glen, rush to the police station in the middle of the night to check on him, only to find that he’s been strangled by his own bed sheets. To everyone except Nancy, it appears to be a suicide.

    In an effort to help her daughter, Nancy’s mother takes her to a dream therapy clinic to ensure she gets some sleep. Once again, she has a horrendous nightmare. This time, her arm is badly cut, but she finds that she has brought something out from her dream: the killer’s battered hat. It arouses concern, but also other feelings in Nancy’s mother, who is clearly hiding a secret. Eventually, Marge, increasingly drink-sodden, reveals to Nancy that the owner of the hat, and the killer, was a man named Fred Krueger (Robert Englund), a child murderer who killed at least twenty children over a decade earlier. Furious, vengeful parents burned him alive in his boiler room hideout when he was released from prison on a technicality. Now, it appears he is manipulating the dreams of their children to exact his revenge from beyond the grave. Nancy’s mother reassures her that Krueger can’t hurt anyone, pulling Krueger’s knife-fingered glove from a hiding place in the furnace, reinforcing this supposed fact.

    After days of not sleeping, Nancy devises a plan with Glen to catch Krueger. However, Glen succumbs to sleep and is viciously killed by being sucked into his bed and shot back up in a fountain of blood. Later that same night, Nancy, convinced she can carry Krueger out of her nightmare like she did the hat, sets various booby traps throughout her house, all while her mother sleeps from her consistent drinking. When ready, Nancy falls asleep and confronts Krueger, successfully holding onto him as she awakens. Nancy is then left alone with Freddy after pulling him into the real world. She runs through her house and forces him into the booby traps she had set earlier, effectively battering the supernatural killer. After setting Freddy on fire, Nancy locks him in the basement, and finally gets her skeptical father and the police to help. When arriving on the scene, they find Freddy has escaped and follow his fiery footsteps that lead upstairs. As Nancy and her father find the footsteps’ endpoint, they witness Freddy smothering Marge with his flaming body, disappearing to leave her corpse to sink into the bed and fade away. After sending her father out of the room, Nancy turns her back on the horrific scene and calls to Krueger, knowing he’s still there and that she is still dreaming. Freddy rises back up from the bed and threatens to kill her. In response, Nancy faces down Krueger and turns her back on him, draining him of all energy and destroying him. She then leaves her mother’s bedroom and appears outside her house, unaffected from the events of the last few weeks. Marge soon joins her daughter at the front door and sends her off to school with her seemingly alive friends, who had just driven up in Glen’s car. When Nancy gets into the car, the doors lock, trapping her inside. Freddy possesses Glen’s car and makes him and the gang drive away, with Nancy screaming for help at her indifferent mother. As Marge watches the car drive off, Freddy’s gloved hand bursts through the door’s window and pulls her through.
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  • A Nightmare on Elm Street (Special) #1

    A Nightmare on Elm Street (Special) #1
    Written by Brian Pulido
    Art by Juan Jose Ryp
    Released: 2005
    Publisher: Avatar Press

    Premise: In 2005, Avatar Press began releasing titles from New Line Cinema’s “House of Horror” license, which includes A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Platinum Dune’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To kick off their titles, Avatar released one-shot “special” issues serving as an introduction to the New Line characters and premises.

    After the events of Freddy vs. Jason, the adults of Springwood have turned the town into a police state, out to suppress any knowledge of Freddy so their kids don’t keep dying. If teens are afraid of Freddy he can invade their dreams and murder them, but as a lost secret, he is powerless. Emily, a rebellious teen and aspiring journalist wants to blow the lid off Springwood’s secret and tell it to the world. When her best friend Lindsay is abducted by police, Emily enlists aid from Alex and Sandy that leads them to Westin Hills Psychiatric Center. As Freddy hunts them one by one, Emily comes closer to the truth. Will she survive to tell it? This is bleeding-edge horror as only Lady Death creator Brian Pulido can deliver it with art by detail master, super-star Juan Jose Ryp.

    Plot Breakdown (spoilers): At Springwood High School, Lindsay awakens from a Freddy influenced nightmare in class, frightening the other classmates and her friend, Emily. Before anyone can react however, two men in black suits escort Lindsay out of class. Emily, worried for her friend, finds Lindsay’s brother Alex and tells him of Lindsay’s “episode.” Joined by mutual friend Sandy, the three friends witness an unmarked van leaving the school in haste, the passengers recognized by Emily as the men who were last seen with Lindsay. Emily coerces Alex into taking in his car, insistent that they follow them. The trio covertly follows and watches the unmarked van drive to Westin Hills, where Alex and Emily later sneak inside, leaving Sandy to watch over Alex’s car. After nightfall, Sandy falls asleep waiting for her two friends to return. While dreaming, she is confronted by Krueger, who uses her love of food against her by making her balloon and popping her, resulting in a gore-filled bloodbath. Meanwhile, Emily and Alex search the institution for Lindsay and find her sedated with the other comatose patients from Freddy vs. Jason. Emily, horrified, takes pictures of the scene, just as Lindsay is killed in her sleep. While Emily takes the pictures, Alex panics and tries to find pills to calm him in the next room. In his rush, he begins swallowing whatever pills he can find, which causes him to lose consciousness and die at Freddy’s hands. Emily, trying to elude the Westin Hills staff, quickly finds a computer terminal where she tries to upload her pictures to the internet and warn others about what is happening in Springwood. The Westin Hills staff cut the power however, and confronts Emily about what she knows. An attendant explains that her actions could have unleashed Freddy upon the world and that it is Springwood’s responsibility to keep him contained, their actions justified. While the attendant talks with Emily, one of the nurses injects her with a drug that forces her to fall asleep, and subsequently die in her nightmare. The Westin Hills attendant destroys Emily’s camera, commenting that “she brought this on herself.” In the dreamworld, Freddy gloats and remarks he’s been away from his kids for far too long.
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