This document is a compare and contrast essay analyzing the horror movies A Nightmare on Elm Street and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It summarizes the plots of both films. A Nightmare on Elm Street features the character Freddy Krueger who kills teenagers in their dreams. Texas Chainsaw Massacre involves the serial killer Leatherface who skins his victims alive. While the movies have similarities like events and characters, they differ in their settings and how the killers torture and kill their victims. In conclusion, these differences keep audiences engaged in the horror genre.

1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
THE DESIGN SCHOOL
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT
NAME: HARWINDER SINGH
STUDENT ID NO: 0319881
FILMS SELECTED: HORROR MOVIE
WORD COUNT:
ENGLISH 2 (ELG 30605)
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1: COMPARE – CONTRAST ESSAY
LECTURER: CASSANDRA WIJESURIA
SUBMISSION DATE: 5TH DECEMBER 2014

2. People nowadays are always looking forward to watching horror based film
genres. Horror film is a genre that aims to scare or create a sense of panic to
audience by including mythical creatures such as ghosts, vampires, zombies or
anything else. It also incorporates a lot of gore and violence. Why do they like doing
that? One of the reasons are that they want to prove to themselves that they are
brave and that they fear nothing. Even though people scream, shout or even cry
during some scary movies they end up feeling better about themselves because of
realizing that some people suffer more than them even the characters in the movie
were imaginary. So the people whom watch this types of films will get a self- esteem
boost because he or she believes that they are very much safe while all the innocent
main characters in the movie are in danger! The main purpose of this essay is to
compare the differences of two chosen horror movies. The two movies that I will be
comparing are A Nightmare On Elm Street and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The movie Nightmare On Elm Street was directed by Samuel Bayer and was
written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer. In the horror film, "A Nightmare On Elm
Street", takes place in a town called Elm Street where teenagers are paying the price
for actions their parents made, by burning a man to death, when they were young.
His face is disfigured from being burned, he wears a red and black sweater, and has
razor knives on his hand. His name was Freddy Kreuger, and he would kidnap
young children and burn them in a furnace. Although the parents killed him when
they found out what he did, his spirit didn't erase and he had the ability to enter the
teen agers dreams where he can get back his revenge. The most horrific thing about
the movie is that he brings the teens to an old abandoned building in their dream and
stabs them with a glove that has razor knives. The teens that we brought there tried
to escape but eventually he catches them. Except for one of the teenagers named
Nancy Thompson, who manages to escape him every time.
The second horror movie is Texas Chainsaw Massacre, in this horror movie a
serial killer named Thomas Hewitt, also known as Leatherface, murderd people who
would pass by their small Texas town. However in the film "A Nightmare On Elm
Street", the town is stranded and not a lot of people live there. Thomas Hewitt, who
was abandoned as a baby turns into a murderer. Unlike Freddy Krueger, Thomas
first sometimes tortured his victims in horrific ways by skinning them alive. He makes
a mask with the skin he took off to make a mask for his face, because when he was
born his face was disfigured. He takes the people that he finds brings them into his
house which was the basement of his relatives house and does the killings in there
with a chainsaw, which people soon thought he was in love with. There were no
survivors. The only people that he doesn’t kill are the people he trusts and knows
whom are his family members.

3. In conclusion, even though horror movies have many things in common including
events, settings, and the type of characters, but they still have many differences that
are used to keep the people watching this types of movies more interesting.
References
1. A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 film). (n.d.). Retrieved December 5,
2014, from
http://nightmareonelmstreet.wikia.com/wiki/A_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street
_(2010_film)
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179056/
3. Plot Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1572315/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl
4. The Girl Who Loves Horror. (n.d.). Retrieved December 5, 2014, from
http://thegirlwholoveshorror.blogspot.com/2013/06/movie-review-texas-
chainsaw-2013.html