An Intro to the Nightmare on Elm Street Movie Franchise
With a gloved hand comprised of knives, Freddy became the unwanted visitor of dreams in the town of Springfield, where it wasn’t safe to go to sleep after nightmare. In this article, you will encounter facts surrounding one of the most popular horror movies series of the 80s and 90s.
The Main Character
Nicknamed the Springwood Slasher, Freddy Krueger was known as a psychopath who plagued on the innocence of young children during the early 1980s. After taking the lives of several children by using a glove equipped with razor blades attached at the fingers, Krueger is finally caught. However, a judge sets him free , enraging the local parents who have lived in fear of the killer. They hatch a plan to get rid of Freddy by burning him alive in the boiler room where he resided.
Unfortunately, the legacy of Freddy lives on , in the dreams of the offspring of his murderers. In the first movie, you meet Nancy Thompson, who is the daughter of the police officer who arrested Krueger. The rest of the movies that follow show Krueger taking the lives of local teens by invading their dreams when they fall asleep. While he is constantly defeated, his spirit still manages to live on.
Facts About A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street first debuted in 1984 , written and directed by horror master, Wes Craven. The heroine in the film was played by Heather Langencamp as Nancy with John Saxon taking on the role of her father. The movie also showed a young Johnny Depp playing one of the teens who makes the mistake of falling asleep at night. This was the first time that Depp had appeared in a movie.
More than 200 actresses wanted the role of the protagonist in the film (Nancy), but Heather Langenkamp was chosen over the likes of Jennifer Grey (from Dirty Dancing), Courtney Cox, Tracey Gold (from Growing Pains), and Demi Moore.
If you purchase the DVD of the first Freddy movie, Wes Craven states in the audio commentary that he was told that Nightmare on Elm Street was the first film to use a breakaway mirror.
The director of the film, Wes Craven named Freddy Krueger after a bully that terrorized him in school and constructed his appearance to match a homeless man with a disfigured face who used to scare him when he was younger.
Interestingly, Wes Craven completed the script to the film and shopped it around in 1981. However, no one expressed any interest in the plot. The script was passed on from studio to studio until New Line Cinema decided to give it a try. For the budding company, which only distributed products to college campuses, this was the first real movie that the production company undertook. In the end, the film actually saved New Line Cinema from going bankrupt.
When making the first Nightmare on Elm Street film, more than 500 gallons of fake blood were used.