Daves Drive-In - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Plot

Teenager Tina Gray awakens from a terrifying nightmare in which a disfigured man wearing a bladed glove attacks her in a boiler room. Her mother points out the mysterious slashes on her nightgown. Tina's best friend Nancy Thompson and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen Lantz, reveal that they too had nightmares about the same disfigured man. During a sleepover at Tina's house, Tina's boyfriend, Rod Lane, arrives, and they have intercourse. When Tina falls asleep, she dreams of the disfigured man who attacks her; in real life, Rod sees her fatally slashed by an unseen force, forcing him to flee. Nancy and Glen find Tina bloodied and dead.

Nancy's policeman father, Don Thompson, arrests Rod despite his pleas of innocence. At school, Nancy falls asleep in class and dreams that the man chases her to the boiler room. She deliberately burns her arm on a pipe, which startles her awake in class, and notices a burn mark on her arm. Nancy visits Rod at the police station, where he describes Tina's death along with his own recent nightmares about the same man.

At home, Nancy falls asleep in the bathtub and is nearly drowned by the man. She then relies on caffeine to stay awake and invites Glen to watch over her as she sleeps. In her dream, she sees the man preparing to kill Rod in his cell, but he turns his attention toward her. Nancy wakes up when her alarm clock goes off. The man kills Rod, staging it as a suicide. At his funeral, Nancy's parents become worried when she describes her dreams. Her mother, Marge, takes her to a sleep disorder clinic where, in a dream, Nancy grabs the man's fedora with the name "Fred Krueger" written in it and pulls it into the real world.

After barricading the house, Marge explains that Krueger was an insane child murderer who killed 20 children but was released on a technicality. He was then burned alive by the victims' parents, who sought vigilante justice. Now a vengeful ghost, Krueger is killing Nancy and her friends out of revenge and to satiate his psychopathic needs.

Glen falls asleep and is killed by Krueger. Now alone, Nancy asks her father, who is across the street investigating Glen's death, to break into the house in 20 minutes. She rigs booby traps around the house and grabs Krueger out of her dream and into the real world. The booby traps allow her to light him on fire and lock him in the basement.

The police arrive to find that Krueger has escaped from the basement. Nancy and Don find a burning Krueger smothering Marge in her bedroom. After Don extinguishes the fire, Krueger and Marge vanish into the bed before Krueger rises behind Nancy. Realizing that Krueger is fueled by his victims' fear, she calmly turns her back to him, and Krueger evaporates.

Nancy steps outside into a foggy morning where all her friends and her mother are still alive. She gets into Glen's convertible to go to school when the top suddenly comes down (colored in green and red stripes) and locks them in as the car speeds down the street, while Marge waves them goodbye on the doorstep. Three girls in white dresses playing jump rope chant Krueger's nursery rhyme as Marge is grabbed by Krueger through the front door window.
Cast
Main articles: List of cast members of the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series and List of A Nightmare on Elm Street characters

The cast of A Nightmare on Elm Street included veteran actors such as Robert Englund and John Saxon and aspiring young actors like Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp.

Heather Langenkamp as Nancy Thompson
Robert Englund as Fred "Freddy" Krueger[N 1]
Johnny Depp as Glen Lantz
Ronee Blakley as Marge Thompson
John Saxon as Lt. Donald "Don" Thompson
Amanda Wyss as Christina "Tina" Gray
Nick Corri as Rod Lane
Leslie Hoffman as Hall Guard
Joseph Whipp as Sgt. Parker
Charles Fleischer as Dr. King
Lin Shaye as Teacher
Mimi Craven as Nurse
Jack Shea as Minister
Ed Call as Mr. Lantz
Sandy Lipton as Mrs. Lantz
David Andrews as Foreman
Jeff Levine as Coroner
Donna Woodrum as Mrs. Gray
Paul Grenier as Mrs. Gray's boyfriend
Ash Adams and Don Hannah as Surfers
Shashawnee Hall, Brian Reise and Carol Pritikin as Cops
Kathi Gibbs, John Richard Peterson, Chris Tashima and Antonia Yannouli as Kids (uncredited)

Robert Shaye has two uncredited roles as broadcasters for local television news and KRGR Radio station.

Make-up artist David B. Miller designed Krueger's disfigured face based on photographs of burn victims obtained from the UCLA Medical Center.[18][19]