A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of my all-time favorite horror movies.  The original movie had Freddy Krueger in all his terrifying glory, before he became a murderous comedian in later sequels.  I love psychotic, funny Freddy just as much as the next person, but scary Freddy is my favorite.  Well, as much as a burned-to-death child molester can be.

These are my top 5 scariest scenes of A Nightmare on Elm Street:

5.  The Takedown

Nancy was the original Kevin McAllister, Home-Alone-ing the bad guy way before little Kevin even knew the word ‘booby-trap.’  She comes up with a plan to intentionally fall asleep and set an alarm to wake herself up so that she can grab Freddy to bring him to her world.  At first, it seems like her plan didn’t work, but Freddy pops up behind her in jump-scare fashion and then chases her through her booby-trapped home.

4.  Nancy’s School Dream

Nancy falls asleep in school while a classmate recites a scene from Hamlet.  This nightmare starts off slowly but so creepily as the classmate quotes in a whisper, “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”  Nancy walks outside and sees Tina’s bloody corpse wrapped in a sheet and being dragged down the hallway.

3.  Bathtub Hand

Yeesh!  Nancy falls asleep in her bathtub while reciting the famous Nightmare rhyme, and of course, Freddy makes an appearance.  Knees spread to either side of the tub, Nancy passes out, and Freddy’s knife hand slowly emerges.  The sight of those sharp fingers close to such a tender area always made me cringe.  And it still does.

2.  Glen’s Death

Poor, poor Glen.  Cute, baby-faced Johnny Depp.  He just didn’t take this whole thing seriously enough.  I don’t know what exactly happened to him when he was pulled into and under his bed, but it certainly wasn’t pretty and it left his parents with a hell of a mess to clean up in his room.  Even when I just have this movie playing in the background while I’m doing something else, I always take a second to watch this scene.  His mother just walks in to a fountain of blood exploding from her son’s bed.  So much blood, so much gore.  Always a fan.

1.  Tina’s Death (and Long-Armed Freddy)

Poor Tina. You just had to do it with your boyfriend, didn’t you?  Don’t you know that’s forbidden in a horror movie?

After she and Rod have some (unnecessarily loud) sex in her mother’s bedroom, Tina falls asleep and has one of the creepiest nightmares of the whole series in my humble opinion.  I don’t know what it is about Freddy with his long-ass arms scraping down the alleyway, but it’s the scene that has stuck with me ever since I was a little kid.  Creepy. As. Hell.

Tina’s death is also arguably one of the most iconic scenes of the series when she’s dragged screaming and bloody from her post-coital bed, up the wall, and across the ceiling.

Bonus Scary Scene:  The End. What was up with that damn mommy mannequin?

What about you?  What do you think was the scariest scene?