A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

An American supernatural slasher film, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), was written and directed by Wes Craven and produced by Robert Shaye. After waking from a terrifying nightmare in which she is attacked by a disfigured man with a blade-fixed glove in a boiler room, teenager Tina Gray discovers mysterious slashes on her nightgown. The next day, her best friend Nancy Thompson and Nancy’s boyfriend, Glen Lantz, offer comfort as they reveal their own nightmares from the previous night. While staying at Tina’s house when her mother is away, Nancy also admits to dreaming about the disfigured man. Tina’s boyfriend, Rod Lane, joins them during their sleepover and when Tina falls asleep again, she is once more pursued by the disfigured man.

Rod awakens to the sound of thrashing and finds Tina being dragged and fatally slashed by an unseen force. This forces him to quickly flee, as Nancy and Glen also wake up to discover Tina’s lifeless body. The following day, Nancy’s father, Don Thompson, who is a policeman, arrests Rod despite his pleas of innocence. During school, Nancy nods off in class and dreams that the same man is chasing her, eventually cornering her in the boiler room. In order to wake herself up from this nightmare, she purposely burns her arm on a pipe. As she wakes up in class, she notices a burn mark on her arm. Concerned about these recurring nightmares and strange events surrounding Tina’s death, Nancy visits Rod at the police station where he shares his own recent nightmares about the same man haunting him in their dreams. This leads Nancy to suspect that this mysterious man may have played a role in Tina’s tragic end.