A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Film That Made Me.

A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Film That Made Me. By Raven Digitalis

Truth be told, I probably shouldn’t have been watching it in the first place. Not in fifth grade. Nonetheless, my friend Morgan’s mother couldn’t have cared less; it was the early 90s, scary movies were a thing, and as long as it wasn’t X-rated, so what?

Well, I sure am glad she didn’t care.

My own parents, on the other hand, wouldn’t have allowed ten-year-olds to screen something like A Nightmare on Elm Street. Luckily, the sleepover was at his apartment, and his mom was busying herself with who-knows-what in the kitchen. As she grabbed a fresh pack of menthols from the freezer and set herself up in the kitchen (talking on the phone? reading the newspaper?), Morgan and I opened the VHS we rented from Blockbuster that afternoon, anxious and curious to see what in the world it was all about.

The cover of the box bore a painting of a woman clearly in bed, wide-eyed with razor sharp finger-claws splayed above her head. It looked more like the cover of a book. At least the backside of the box displayed an image from the film: a man on fire, seemingly hunched atop someone fast asleep. (What in the heck?)

Before sticking the tape in the VCR, I noticed that it came out nine years earlier, back in 1984. Must have been a good year! That meant it was in production the year I was born. (Must be a good sign.) Time to give it a shot and keep the volume down.

A Nightmare on Elm Street opened with a man crafting a glove out of knives.

Woah. Immediately cutting to the blonde protagonist (figuratively speaking), my friend and I witnessed her being haunted by an enigmatic stalker. (Why? What’d she do?)

This first character, Tina, awoke from her opening dream, revealing that there were two worlds at hand: the waking and the dreaming. (Tina’s blonde, disinterested mother was so much like Morgan’s mom, almost identical.)

I knew people were gonna get killed, but it turned out not to be the normal shooting or stabbing I had seen here and there on the Showtime network when my parents were asleep. No, this was creative and weird.

Eighteen minutes in, blonde Tina was dead as a doornail.

Blood everywhere. Thrown around the room like a sadist’s living ragdoll. That was intense. (She’s clearly dead. But I thought she was the main character!)

Wes Craven’s cinematic “bait-and-switch” tactic would later be revived in Scream with Drew Barrymore’s character Casey. But dang it, Casey only got 13 minutes and Tina got 18! Oh well.

And it gets more interesting. Get this: I only realized this year that the Nightmare opening itself was clearly inspired by the opening of When a Stranger Calls. And, even “stranger,” and come to think of it, perhaps Janet Leigh’s role in 1960’s Psycho was the opening sequence prototype Wes Craven used for Nightmare and Scream.

Audiences were shocked when Marion’s character in Psycho was “offed” only one-third of the way into the film (47 minutes) with infamous shower scene. The first of many opening blonde antagonists gone too soon. But that’s art.

They just didn’t have what it took to be final girls.

In the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy would become the final girl, and would thankfully make a number of reappearances throughout the franchise. My friend Morgan and I had to watch the sequels which, at that point, went all the way up to Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. We had some catching up to do, and I was so happy we did. A number of sleepovers ensued, as did experiencing a plethora of incredibly inventive, creative horror. (Who came up with this stuff?!)

Every murder was a work of art and precision, drawing on each character’s fears, serving to directly situate us in the mind of the dream demon himself. I was old enough to differentiate make-believe from real-life, as is evident in my current addiction to well-crafted horror and my sternly pacifistic aversion to real-life violence.

Nightmare was also my first time seeing a woman topless. (Her boobs look so beautiful, but why am I more into boys?) Turns out that, at least in horror, sex and death have an uncanny connection; two of life’s extremes.

And that rhyme, that haunting, unnerving nursery rhyme…

“One, two, Freddy’s coming for you,

Three, four, better lock your door,

Five, six, grab a crucifix,

Seven, eight, gonna stay up late,

Nine, ten, never sleep again…”

I wasn’t raised anything religious, but damn; that tune carried something demonic in its wake. Clearly something devised by the antagonist; something threatening and alluring, like a razor wrapped in lace. (Normal kids don’t sing that shit in school.)

Although my friend was relatively unaffected, I was struck by this first experience of dark art.

The only other thing remotely close to this film, in terms of affect and in terms of dark art, was the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series written by Alvin Schwartz and originally illustrated by Stephen Gammell. Oh, those sketches; those dreadful, soul-shaking illustrations. And the stories, deeply grim and alluring. (I need more of this!)

As it turns out that, only this year (2024), the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) changed A Nightmare on Elm Street’s rating from an 18 to a 15. This is similar to a US rating system changing something from R to PG-13. The reason cited is that, although there’s plenty of blood, deeper gore and terror are implied offscreen, leaving much to the viewer’s imagination. A BBFC representative also stated that the film’s violence occurs in a fantastical context, separating it from more disturbingly realistic violence. I think this very fact is part of the reason it lives up to it’s genuinely scary reputation to this day.

Now having seen a number of hit-or-miss sequels, along with unmentionable spinoffs and remakes, Nightmare on Elm Street was my body-horror fuel.

Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and other supernatural serial killers don’t even hold a candle to Freddy Krueger’s nightmarish methodologies.

The word occult means “hidden or obscured,” which I purport has connections to the realm of dreaming. Dreams, of course, are the terrifying terrain of Fred Krueger. Something about the film, and really the whole series, clearly played with my own inherent would-be Witchy and mystical callings. The film helped shape me, or, perhaps more accurately, helped me understand my draw to all things dark and mysterious.

Creative dark art profoundly fueled my adventure into writing spooky fiction for the first time.

It was begging to happen. Since 2007 I’ve written numerous nonfiction books and Oracle card decks ranging from Goth culture to living as an empath; from shadow work to spellcasting. Only now have I dipped my foot in the dark waters of horror writing, and boy do these waters feel good.

My new (and third) publishers, Moon Books/Collective Ink in London, went out on a limb with my disturbing anthology. Although Llewellyn (Minneapolis) and Crossed Crow (Chicago) published my other works, my spooky collection proved too much a stretch for their demographic. Thanks now to Moon Books, I eagerly welcome Black Magick: 13 Tales of Darkness, Horror & the Occult to worldwide retailers and e-readers in March of 2025!

I won’t mince words: please consider ordering or preordering my anthology and leaving a review wherever you please.

I need the feedback, and I’m quite sure you won’t be disappointed. Time is all we have on earth, and I hope to engage your time enjoyably.

Black Magick is a unique anthology that was years in the making, finally manifesting its final form only recently. Not only does the anthology include tales from renowned horror storytellers like Storm Constantine, Edgar Allan Poe, and Tracy Cross, but it includes my own first-ever published short story! Does it suck? You tell me!

As I continue to engage with horror fiction books aside from my own, the creative gears are turning and the creative juices are juicing. I look forward to writing more horror and compiling future volumes of Black Magick.

In many ways, my creative horror trajectory is only beginning, and is a full-circle wraparound to my times experiencing A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

Thanks for reading.

– Raven Digitalis, 2024

Black Magick: 13 Tales of Darkness, Horror & the Occult by Raven Digitalis

Darkness is interpretive. It’s in our nature to explore the shadows. Through the 13 stories presented in Black Magick, compiled and edited by award-winning occult author Raven Digitalis, the reader is transported into mysterious settings that blur the line between fiction and reality.

Each story uniquely integrates occultism and magick, deepening the mysteries of the shadow. By acknowledging darkness through the written medium, we can better come to terms with the darkness within ourselves.

Black Magick is a distinctive collection of modern occult fiction. Esoteric themes permeate 13 engrossing stories, invoking a sense of wonder and terror. The stories within this anthology explore occult themes across eras and cultures, proving to be both entertaining and educational. 

These haunting tales are finely crafted by a wide variety of writers, and each story is uniquely different from the other. When we bravely explore the darker aspects of life, we more accurately come to know what it means to be human.

Stories contained:

1. Candle Magic by Storm Constantine
2. Spanish Jones by Adele Cosgrove-Bray
3. 3:33 by Rhea Troutman
4. Entombed by Corvis Nocturnum
5. Fata Morgana by S.M. Lomas
6. Automatic Writing by Gabrielle Faust
7. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
8. Don’t Forget to Feed by Miranda S. Hewlett 
9. The Night Everything Changed by Raven Digitalis
10. ReBound by Tracy Cross
11. Captured by Jaclyn M. Ciminelli
12. Red Gifts by Daniel Adam Rosser
13. The Iconoclasts by Mona Fitzgerald-King

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Publisher: Moon Books, UK (a division of Collective Ink)

ISBN: 1803418257

Available: March 1, 2025

Raven Digitalis

Raven Digitalis (USA) is an award-winning author best known for his “empath’s trilogy,” consisting of The Empath’s Oracle, Esoteric Empathy, and The Everyday Empath, as well as the “shadow trilogy” of A Gothic Witch’s Oracle, A Witch’s Shadow Magick Compendium, and Goth Craft. Originally trained in Georgian Witchcraft, Raven has been an earth-based practitioner since 1999, a Priest since 2003, a Freemason since 2012, and an empath all of his life. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Montana, jointly operated a nonprofit Pagan temple for sixteen years, and is also a professional Tarot reader, editor, card-carrying magician, and animal rights advocate.

LINKS:

Black Magick on Amazon Black Magick on GoodReads My website Facebook Instagramm