UTG's 31 Days Of Halloween: 'A Nightmare On Elm Street'

Of all the holidays celebrated worldwide, no single day is more loved by the UTG staff than Halloween. With the arrival of October, the time has finally come to begin rolling out a plethora of features and special announcements we have prepared in celebration of our favorite day, including the one you're about to read.



31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN is a recurring daily feature that will run throughout the month of October. The hope and goal of this column is to supply every UTG reader with a daily horror (or Halloween themed) movie recommendation that is guaranteed to amplify your All Hallows' Eve festivities. We'll be watching every film the day it's featured, and we hope you'll follow along at home. If you have a suggestion, contact us and we may include your favorite scarefest in an upcoming column!




DAY 31: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)



There is something about the way a horror film impacts you as a child that is lost as you grow older. This is likely due to the eventual realization that things in movies are fake, but whatever the case there is a part of me that will forever long for those days of being truly frightened by scary movies, and today I am honored to close out this year's 31 Days feature by telling you about the movie that scared me more than any other film to date: A Nightmare On Elm Street.



Decades before A Nightmare On Elm Street opens there is a man by the name of Freddy Krueger residing in the sleepy town of Springwood, Ohio. He's a pedophile, and once the parents of the town learn of his horrific obsession with the neighborhood children they ban together to kill the local evil doer. They believe they've done what had to be done to save their children, and for the next twenty years no one mentions or even thinks about the man they burned alive in the name of justice. Of course, as all dirty secrets do, the past this town tries to hide refuses to stay a secret forever.



Enter Nancy Thompson. A high schooler living on Elm Street in Springwood, Nancy cannot stop having nightmares about a strange man wearing a glove with knives for fingers. She believes her imagination has begun to get the best of her, but she soon learns the threat in her sleep is more real than she ever imagined. Freddy is alive, in a way, and through the dreams of his victims, he stalks the children of the members of the lynch mob that killed him all those years ago.



I don't remember how old I was when I first encountered Freddy Krueger, but I have a feeling if you asked either of my parents they would admit it was probably 'too soon' for my young eyes. For many years I would wake at night screaming for my parents to save me from Freddy, and even though I knew the effect his character had on me I continued to seek new additions to the franchise as they were released. There was something about this spectral monster that I simply couldn't resist, and now that I'm an adult it's still Freddy that comes to mind when people start discussing iconic figures in horror. He terrifies me as much as he intrigues me, which is exactly what makes the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise such a success, and I cannot imagine a better way to spend this Halloween than with this classic film.



EDITORIAL WRITTEN BY: JAMES SHOTWELL - Follow him on

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