Beware The Spaceman

Tag: Halloween

  • It’s real to her, that’s all that matters

    a spaceship above the world with title

    This one feels like an Off World post because it’s an interpretation, and my interpretations can be wrong. Off a Halloween retro reaction, I rewatched A Nightmare on Elm Street.

    The film is layered. I always knew that. But watching it on my tenner Blu-ray player, a film I must have seen countless times, one of the scenes changed the context of the whole film for me.

    It’s the scene before that last confrontation. Nancy calls her Dad Donald over to the house. Freddy melts into the bed and Nancy begs her police chief dad to get him.

    I always thought that this scene confirmed Freddy’s existence. We see a close-up of Donald’s face. But what my brain never registered before is that he never confirms seeing the boogeyman.

    His only reaction is to hug his daughter.

    Chronologically, the sequels confirm he did indeed see Freddy. But take those out of the equation for a moment. What he sees is a house fire and his troubled daughter.

    The hug, in my estimation, confirms that his character accepts that the situation is real to his daughter, and that actually is all that matters.

    It reframes the whole film.

    I have seen the calls to cancel films like Nightmare, and I get it. They’re not the nicest of films. They’re not designed to be for everyone.

    But I think there’s another reading worth considering.

    We all face our Elm Street at some point or another and when we do that situation can be very urgent and very real. Sometimes our house fire is invisible to others.

    “Daddy” couldn’t fix this. It took the character’s inner strength to do that.

    I think the overall message there is actually very relevant and very positive in today’s world.

  • A Few Metres in the Dark

    Retro Reaction in ZX Spectrum colours

    We go back to the 90s now. Barry’s video shop. The back wall was dedicated to what we now know as horror icons. You know the faces: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Chucky, Ghostface — and the one that both fascinated and scared me the most, Freddy Krueger.

    Of course, I couldn’t rent these movies. I was still watching Adam West’s Batman because the new films were fifteen‑plus. So for a while, Freddy remained an oversized VHS box. Older friends had seen the films, though. They were more than happy to fill me in on all the details — and the scare factor.

    “Freddy 3 is my favourite, but if you think that’s scary don’t watch Freddy 1,” was something I remember. So in my head, these films became much more frightening than they really were.

    What scared me at the time was this: unlike the other boogeymen, Freddy came for you when you were sleeping. Sooner or later, everyone has to sleep. Freddy also almost exclusively killed teenagers, and I had just become a teenager. Sad as it is, that’s where your mind goes at a young age. Being able to separate fact from fiction came later.

    Then, one night in the mid‑1990s, an older friend was “babysitting” another friend in my year. This friend had Sky Movies and wanted everyone over at his. Because it was time to meet Freddy.

    As a group of friends we laughed and talked through most of it. I remember friends who had seen that particular film jumping at various moments. Another used mock knives to make the claw sound. It was all good fun. The film that night was Part 3. It blended horror with dark fantasy and is still one of my favourites.

    Then came time to leave. My house was only a small walk — a few metres, in fact, from my friend’s. A few metres in the dark, that is.

    The babysitter looked at me, then out at the night, and sighed. “I’ll walk you home,” he said. Thankfully he didn’t add a phrase like I’ll be right back into that conversation.

    Thanks, Anthony.

    It’s October… it’s the dark month. It’s time to finally revisit Elm Street.

    Number 8: Freddy’s Revenge