Horror Actressing: Ronee Blakley in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"
Monday, January 27, 2020 at 3:00PM by Jason Adams
Marge Thompson is such a weirdo. Less than ten years after her Oscar nomination for Robert Altman's classic Nashville the singer turned actress Ronee Blakley was playing the Mom in a slasher flick. Some might disparage that turn of events -- say she was "reduced to" playing the Mom in a slasher flick. I am not one of those people. Especially when you see the gloriously strange performance that Blakley turned in. There's nothing unmemorable about the final girl Nancy Thompson's momma -- she'll haunt your dreams!
A Nightmare on Elm Street is about the sins of the parents being visited, rather traumatically, upon their children, a symbiotic theme that Craven would come to visit time and again with his horror films...
Last House on the Left turned its a suburban home and the parental figures therein into revenging butchers raging over their daughter's murder, while Scream has the sexual peccadilloes of some spouse-swapping Moms and Dads snowballing into a teenaged bloodbath. Marge Thompson might've made great friends with Maureen Prescott and the Collingwoods -- they all could've bonded over cocktail weenies with their whispered trespasses.
Marge though... maybe not. Marge is always a beat or two off -- even in Craven's weird suburban enclaves she totters weirdly along her own path. Marge is a one of a kind, especially as Blakley plays her -- her daughter accuses her of self-medicating at one point which is plainly true, as we watch her pull liquor bottles out of the linen closet and from beneath the blankets beside her, to high humorous effect. But Blakley makes Marge more than camp -- she speaks low, soft, as if always existing in a dream herself. Marge never feels of this world, and once her outrageous secrets start spilling out you understand why.
The film speeds towards a showdown where Nancy tells the killer Freddy Krueger he holds no power over her, that he's merely a bad dream she can blink off, but Nancy, for all of her foresight, should've kept her eyes on her Mom. Her mother makes plain from her very first frame, dulled wits about her, that there's no escaping this thin scrim of a home tossed nonchalantly over a bottomless abyss. This all comes to a head in the film's final twist, as Marge beams brightly and Blakley greets the strange sun with near histrionics -- 'They say you've bottomed out when you can't remember the night before," she proudly announces. A smile for the ages as the soundtrack shrieks and the full black tonnage of their poisoned heredity takes fully hold.
Reader Comments (10)
OMG! How could I not have noticed that was her? Her performance in NASHVILLE is indelible, and I've seen NIGHTMARE twice, once recently, and never noticed it was her.
I love her in this. I think it's often read as a bad performance, or a confused one, but she's so watchable.
How was she not on Twin Peaks?
TBH I think Ronee was brilliant in Nashville but not so good in ANOES. I think Craven didn't quite give her the right direction or something.
Then again, she is certainly memorable, which is more than you can say about most actresses playing the Mom in a teen slasher flick.
They need to reboot this franchise and return Ronee like Jamie Lee Curtis in the recent Halloween update.
TOM: Eh, that doesn't really make sense. First: Nightmare, as a franchise, wasn't really defined by The Thompsons in the same way as Halloween was by Laurie Strode. Second: Laurie died in a...kinda bad movie, so I can get why a good filmmaker would want to give her a death/final victory in an actual good movie. But The Thompsons? They ALL died in GOOD movies. The mom died in Nightmare 1, the father and Nancy in Nightmare 3. Don't spit on good movies. Who they'd actually be justifiable bringing back for that kind of Nightmare continuation, though, is Patricia Arquette. At least there, you'd be spitting on Nightmare 4-6 and would look...not unspeakably tasteless.
I really don't like this trend of doing sequels that pretend previous sequels don't exist. It's nothing more than a money grab and everyone knows it.
Maybe my favorite trainwreck performance of all time. Olivia Wilde in RICHARD JEWELL is coming for that title though. Love Blakley in NASHVILLE too.
I'll admit... sometimes you have to stretch the definition of "good" when it comes to horror movies. I just know that every time I watch this film I am absolutely captivated and entertained by Blakley. I think it's stealthily Marge's movie, and would totally watch a prequel about Young Marge killing the child murderer Freddy Krueger. Although I'd need Blakley to come back and do it with The Irishman CG de-aging effects because she's Marge, only her.
Daniella Isaacs: As I think I said: So long as it's not unspeakably tasteless to ignore them? I don't think you should care. "Oh, dammit, the new Halloween is ignoring every Michael Myers movie except Halloween 1&2! Trick or treat, mother******!" Does that quote sound VERY "Straw Idiot"? Yeah, that's why you shouldn't care. If a filmmaker felt they COULD build something on the prior continuity? Sure, congratulate them for trying. But MOST dead franchises have stuff that you maybe SHOULD toss out in the revival. The Creed films (which are better at being built on the prior continuity than most) still aren't ever going to call back to Rocky V, if you feel me?