A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie Review

Warner Brothers and Best Buy have collaborated on a store exclusive SteelBook release for the 1984 Horror franchise starter 'A Nightmare on Elm Street.' The disc is identical to that found in the 2010 wide release. See the 'Special Features and Extras' section of the review below for more on the SteelBook's look and feel.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For a full Blu-ray video review, please click here.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For a full Blu-ray audio review, please click here.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The SteelBook is fairly smooth and slick, but the light coloring on the front won't display handling fingerprints (a few of the darker parts of the rear, however, will). The front cover depicts the razor ends of Freddy's glove scraping along a worn, once white surface, now littered with scratches and gouges where the blades are digging into it. The film's title appears top right in between two of the blades in red type. Wes Craven's name is attached in smaller black letters. Some debossing work on the title would have added some flair, but c'est la vie. The rear panel shows the same worn surface, this time with a head-and-shoulders shot of Freddy, face bathed in red, hat and sweater mostly black, as he looks sinisterly off to the left (thanks to F13BluRay for pointing out this this image is of Freddy from Freddy vs. Jason rather than Freddy in this film). A small billing block appears at the bottom. The spine holds that same background color. The film's title runs along much of its length in red. A Warner Brothers logo has been placed at the bottom.

Inside, the lone Blu-ray disc can be found on the right-hand side. The inner print is a two-panel spread that features Freddy in quasi-silhouette -- more bathed in shadow, really -- in an iconic pose standing tall with his razor blade glove out at his side at about hip level. He's inside a spooky looking boiler room and fully on the left-hand side. The right is a dark continuation of the same location.

For full coverage of the on-disc supplemental content, please click here.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As fans wait for the original A Nightmare on Elm Street -- and so many of the more iconic 80s Horror films -- to make their way to the UHD format, Warner Brothers has used this occasion to simply repurpose a perfectly good, but aging, VC-1 Blu-ray in new packaging. Granted the SteelBook is really nice but there's absolutely no new content here, not even a digital copy. Supposedly Warner Brothers doesn't believe anyone wants to watch Freddy on the go. Recommended only to new buyers and hardcore SteelBook collectors.