Night 19 of "The 31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest"

I've joined in the fun over at Domestic Witch's October Blog Party. You can find a list of participating blogs that are having fun celebrating the season of Halloween. When you're done here take a broom ride over to her site and you'll see the list of blogs on the right side bar.

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Here at The Lounge we will have a "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest". Check back each day to see which movie is featured and some days you may get more than one. They will be a random selection of my favorites. You can see all past selections on the sidebar.

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Make sure to leave a comment for each movie as one lucky person will win their choice of pendant from Laughing Vixen Lounge at the end of the film fest. Please see rules at end of post.

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Night 19...."A Nightmare on Elm Street"

Written and directed by Wes Craven (Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes and Scream) and released on November 16, 1984 by New Line Cinema. The kids on Elm Street are having some unpleasant dreams. Funny thing is their dreams all have the same psychopath Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in them. Oops! Now they are starting to die! Can Nancy (Heather Langencamp) and her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) convince an adult that the man in their dreams is the killer. Hmmm...probably not. It's up to Nancy to find Freddy in her dreams and drag him out into her reality for a big bad show down.

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This movie was like nothing else I had seen when it was new. Some of the images were just bizarre and freaky and the movie scared the beejeebies out of me! It became one of my favorite movies and I saw it way too many times. Plus there was that cute boy in it...Johnny something??

When my nephews wanted to see Freddy vs. Jason, when it came out in the theater, I insisted that it was only right they see the originals first. I was very sad when they laughed at both Elm St. and Friday 13th. They thought they were silly and not scary at all and just kinda stupid. I think this just goes to show what happens to a child when they have no parental control over what they watch. They grow up so desensitised from watching adult material all their young life that people getting brutally murdered is just boring. Friday the 13th was the first real horror film I saw and it still bothers me to this day (But more on that when we get to that movie!) I know the effects are a bit outdated and yes, Elm Street is a little on the cheesy side, but they still maintain their scare factor.

Best scene is Mr. Depp getting sucked in and spit out of the bed. Priceless!

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Some trivia about the movie...

1. Director Wes Craven claims to have named Freddy Krueger after a kid who bullied him in school and to have based his appearance on a disfigured hobo who scared him as a youth.

2. Johnny Depp accompanied friend Jackie Earle Haley to the auditions, where he was spotted by director Wes Craven, who asked him if he'd like to read for the part. Interestingly enough, Haley will be playing Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010).

3. Wes Craven cast Joseph Whipp, who plays the inept sidekick of John Saxon's Lt. Thompson in this film, as the sheriff who endures David Arquette's inept Deputy Dewey in Scream (1996/I).

4. This was the first real movie by New Line Cinema. Before that, they were just a distribution company for college campuses.

5. Freddy Kruger was designed by Wes Craven to be the typical "silent" serial killer such as Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. But in the sequels Freddy developed a cheeky persona that enabled him to be the black humored villain.

6. New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "the house that Freddy built".

7. Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.

8. For the famous blood geyser sequence, the film makers used the same revolving room set that was used for Tina's death. They put the set so that it was upside down and attached the camera so that it looked like the room was right side up, then they poured gallons of red water into the room. (The normal movie blood wasn't able to create the right effect for the geyser.)

9. This was Johnny Depp's first film.

10. In a deleted scene featured on the Laser Disc and VHS from Anchor Bay we learn that Nancy and many of her friends from the neighborhood weren't always only children, but had a brother or sister before they were killed by Freddy (during the scene in the basement just before Nancy's mother reveals she has Freddy's glove.)

11. Heather Langenkamp beat over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy Thompson, some of the other actresses who auditioned for the role of Nancy were Jennifer Grey, Demi Moore, Courteney Cox and Tracey Gold.

12. Wes Craven claimed to have drawn inspiration for this movie from 3 separate incidents involving young Cambodians, survivors of Pol Pot's genocidal "purges," all of whom died while apparently in the throes of a horrific nightmare. The story goes that first these young, otherwise healthy people would have a horrible nightmare, then refuse to sleep for as long as possible; when they finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion they awoke with screaming and writhing, then died from a heart attack. In the last incident, the young man used a variety methods to try and stay awake that were incorporated into the film, including a hidden coffee pot. Some of the dialog between Nancy and her parents is based on this young man's attempts to convince his unbelieving parents that going to sleep would kill him.

13. Jack Nicholson and Robin Williams were both seriously considered for the role of Freddy Kruger.

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Rules for pendant giveaway...

(1) comment about a movie per movie.

(1) extra entry by following this Blog and (1) extra for following on Twitter (You can only take the blog and twitter entries once for the whole contest).

(1) extra entry for Tweeting about this. Please use this message -Check out the "31 Nights of Halloween Film Fest" to win your choice of pendant from @LaughingVixen http://bit.ly/265YA1 -- 3 Tweets a day max and no more than 1 an hour.

(1) extra entry for guessing the next film. I will tweet hints on Twitter about the next days movie and you can post your guess as a comment. Doesn't have to be right just your best guess.

Make sure to post each entry as an individual comment on any of the movies comment pages. You can comment on past movies. Make sure you can be contacted from your post.