Friday, October 14, 2011

The Horror Movie Darwin Awards # 18: Glenn in A Nightmare on Elm Street

Ah, Nightmare on Elm Street. Not only did it create one of the most recognizable and marketable horror characters ever in Freddy Krueger, but it introduced us to a future Hollywood A-lister, and Tim Burton’s muse, Johnny Depp. Long before he was Captain Jack, he was Glenn, Nancy’s boyfriend. These kids have been through a lot. Their friends are dying at the hands of an evil maniac who stalks their dreams, and now he’s coming for them. Nancy has a plan though. She’s going to go sleep, grab Freddy, and drag him into the real world. All she needs Glenn to to is stay awake and clobber him when she drags him into the real world. Simple enough right? Apparently not.

The two have split up, going to their respective houses. Nancy leaves him with the legendary instructions “Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.” They’re planning to kill the man who has slaughtered their friends and is trying to off them too, so this is, oh I dunno, kind of a big deal. They have both been up for days, so it’s going to take some work to stay up. Pop quiz hotshot, what do you do? Drink some coffee? Stay moving? Not put yourself in a situation where it’s easy to doze off? The answer is D, none of the above. Our hero decides to lay down in bed, get nice and comfy, put on the headphones, listen to some tunes, and watch a little TV. Great idea. No one falls asleep that way. The music might have been a good idea depending on what it was, but by the looks of this guy (that half shirt kills me every time), there’s no Slayer blaring through those headphones. Surprise, surprise, he nods off. His mother then wakes him up. Obviously this course of action isn’t working. You’d think that he would get up and do something else to stay awake, right? Wrong. He just lays there.

Inevitably, he falls back asleep, screwing up the whole plan and forcing Nancy to face Freddy by herself. You just lost some serious brownie points there buddy. Any second base plans you had are history. So, how did your ridiculous strategy for staying awake work out for you?

Damn. I do believe pissing off your girlfriend is the least of your worries. Congratulations Glenn, you are today’s winner by virtue of your inability to figure out even the easiest ways of fighting off sleep. Way to go dumbass!

3 comments:

ilovethatfilm said...

One of the best deaths in the whole franchise (along with the guy in number 3 that gets his insides torn out so Freddy can play puppeteer with him!)

Cash Wampum said...

Agreed. As implausible as this whole sequence is, its ultimate coolness and that great droning score just makes it epic to a point where we don't care how silly it might seem. However, if they had kept in the whole 'Glen floats out of the bed a bloody mess' gimmick it would have COMPLETELY destroyed any effect it had on audiences. Thank Christ for good editing choices.

Fred [The Wolf] said...

I guess Glenn was just too tired to care. lol Still an awesome scene from an awesome movie.

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