American Nightmare

A Nightmare on Elm Street is an American horror franchise that consists of nine slasher films, a television show, novels, and comic books. The franchise began with the film series created by Wes Craven. The franchise is based on the fictional character Freddy Krueger, introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), who stalks and kills teenagers in their dreams. If Freddy kills the teenager in the dream world then they are killed in the real world. His motives were to seek revenge on their parents, who had burned him alive. The original film was written and directed by Craven, who returned to co-script the second sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), and to write and direct New Nightmare (1994). The films collectively grossed over $455 million at the box-office worldwide.

Madhouse, funny farm, psychiatric hospital, loony bin, nuthouse, mental institution: no matter what you call it, the asylum has a powerful hold on the American imagination. Stark and foreboding, they symbolize mistreatment, fear, and imprisonment, standing as castles of despair and tyranny across the countryside. In the "asylum" of American fiction and film, treatments are torture, attendants are thugs, and psychiatrists are despots.

Nightmare Alley is a 2021 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Guillermo del Toro with a screenplay by del Toro and Kim Morgan, based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham. The film features an ensemble cast including Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn. It is the second feature film adaptation of Gresham's novel, following the 1947 version. The film focuses on Stan Carlisle (Cooper), an ambitious carny, who hooks up with a corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett), who proves to be more dangerous than he is.