Every Nightmare On Elm Street Film Ranked Worst To Best

Once again, there's just no topping the original. Regardless of how Freddy's status as a pop culture icon may have reduced him to an inoffensive clown by the late 1980s, in Wes Craven's original A Nightmare On Elm Street, Krueger is genuinely one of the most terrifying villains ever to grace the big screen, in what remains one of the most inventive and unnerving horror movies of that decade, or any other.

Few filmmakers have ever been able to match Craven for the build-up of suspense and dread, paid off with real jump-out-of-your-skin scares, and A Nightmare on Elm Street is a masterclass in this. While its imagery - the dark and steamy boiler room, the slo-mo jump rope children - may have been heavily imitated and lampooned over the years (again, thinking of Rick & Morty's Scary Terry), it still makes for a chilling spectacle.

Plus, given how OTT the FX got as the series went on, it's in this first film that Freddy really makes use of that dreaded claw. The initial death of Tina, her stomach slashed upon by the unseen blades, remains a truly shocking moment; and while Englund may already have the gift of the gab, the emphasis remains on making Freddy as scary as possible. And boy, does it work.

33 years on, the original A Nightmare on Elm Street has never lost its power, and it's hard to imagine it ever will, regardless of how many sequels, remakes or facsimiles get thrown our way.