A Nightmare on Elm Street is a 1984 American slasher film

Slasher film

A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...

 directed and written by Wes Craven

Wes Craven

Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American actor, film director, writer, producer, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the...

, and the first film of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

A Nightmare on Elm Street (franchise)

A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American horror franchise that consists of nine slasher films, a television show, novels, and comic books. The franchise began with the film series created by Wes Craven. The franchise is based on the fictional character Freddy Krueger, introduced in A Nightmare on...

. The film features Heather Langenkamp

Heather Langenkamp

Heather Langenkamp is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her role as Nancy Thompson from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films...

, John Saxon

John Saxon (actor)

John Saxon is an American actor who has worked on over 200 projects during the span of sixty years. Saxon is most known for his work in horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Black Christmas, both of which feature Saxon as a policeman in search of the killer...

, Ronee Blakley

Ronee Blakley

Ronee Blakley is an American entertainer. Though an accomplished singer, songwriter, composer, producer and director, she is perhaps best known as an actress...

, Amanda Wyss

Amanda Wyss

Amanda Wyss is an American film and television actress.-Movie career:Discovered by an agent as a teen while starring in the play The Bad Seed at a local Los Angeles theatre, she went on to work in commercials and landed her first television role, recurring on Universal's When the Whistle Blows as...

, Jsu Garcia

Jsu Garcia

Jsu Garcia is an American film and television actor, and film producer. In his earlier years, he was credited under the name Nick Corri. Together with author John-Roger, he runs the production company Scott J-R Productions....

, Robert Englund

Robert Englund

Robert Barton Englund is an American actor, voice-actor and director, best known for playing the fictional serial killer Freddy Krueger, in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in...

, and Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...

 in his feature film debut. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the plot revolves around several teenagers who, if they fall asleep, will be killed by Fred Krueger

Freddy Krueger

Frederick Charles "Freddy" Krueger is a fictional, horrifying character from the Nightmare on Elm Street series of horror films. He first appears in Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street as a disfigured dream stalker who uses a glove armed with razors to kill his victims in their dreams,...

 in their dreams, thus causing their deaths in reality. The teenagers are unaware of the cause of this strange phenomenon, but their parents hold a dark secret from long ago.

Craven produced A Nightmare on Elm Street on an estimated budget of just $1.8 million, a sum the film earned back during its first week.