SCREAM OF THE DAY: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

A Nightmare on Elm Street is the story of Freddy Krueger, a child murderer. Killed by a lynch mob, he now stalks the dreams of their children, killing them in their sleep.

Trivia:

*This was Johnny Depp's first film.

*Wes Craven's original concept for Freddy Krueger was considerably more gruesome, with teeth showing through the flesh over the jaw, pus running from the sores, and a part of the skull showing through the head. Make-up artist David B. Miller argued that an actor couldn't be convincingly made up that way and a puppet would be hard to film and wouldn't blend well with live actors, so these ideas were eventually abandoned.

*Wes Craven wrote the script and presented it in 1981, but no one wanted it. He said that "It just flew around" until New Line Cinema picked it up.

*This was the first real movie by New Line Cinema. Before that, they were just a distribution company for college campuses.

*This movie was almost never made. About halfway through filming, New Line lost its deal with the distribution company. As a direct result, they couldn't pay the cast or crew for two whole weeks until they found another distribution company. They didn't lose one crew member.

*New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "the house that Freddy built".

*Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.

*Wes Craven claimed to have drawn inspiration for this movie from 3 separate incidents involving young Cambodians, survivors of Pol Pot's genocidal "purges," all of whom died while apparently in the throes of a horrific nightmare. The story goes that first these young, otherwise healthy people would have a horrible nightmare, then refuse to sleep for as long as possible; when they finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion they awoke with screaming and writhing, then died from a heart attack. In the last incident, the young man used a variety methods to try and stay awake that were incorporated into the film, including a hidden coffee pot. Some of the dialog between Nancy and her parents is based on this young man's attempts to convince his unbelieving parents that going to sleep would kill him.

*Freddie Kruger was named after a bully who beat up Wes Craven as a child.

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