It’s no secret that the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is our favorite horror property here at MovieWeb. What can we say? Freddy is the man of our dreams.

Here we’ll take a look at 10 Killer Facts About A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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ART IMITATES LIFE

Wes Craven was inspired by an article in the LA Times about a young boy, whose family had escaped to the United States from the killing fields of Cambodia. The kid tried to stay awake for days on end, deathly afraid of something that chased him in dreams. “When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought the crisis was over,” the late writer-director and horror legend explained in Vulture’s 2014 oral history. “Then they heard screams in the middle of the night. By the time they got to him, he was dead. He died in the middle of a nightmare. Here was a youngster having a vision of a horror that everyone older was denying. That became the central line of Nightmare on Elm Street.” Part of the look of Freddy, including his hat, was partly inspired by an old man a young Craven once saw hanging around outside his house.

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EVERY STUDIO REJECTED IT

Wes Craven kept the rejection letter from Universal Pictures framed on his office wall. Even Sean S. Cunningham, his friend who’d produced his Last House on the Left and directed Friday the 13th, wasn’t sure the nightmare concept would work. “Yeah dreams are real,” Cunningham told him. “But at some point, you wake up.”

THE FIRST FREDDY

The filmmakers knew that the role of the Springwood Slasher would require a bit more than the workmanlike stoicism required of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. As difficult as it is to imagine anyone but Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger (we don’t talk about that remake), he actually wasn’t the first choice. English actor David Warner was the first Freddy cast. He even underwent makeup tests as Krueger, before scheduling conflicts forced him to drop out. His resume since then is a genre fan’s delight, filled with Star Trek, Tales from the Crypt, Penny Dreadful, and Doctor Who. He eventually did work with Wes Craven, in a small role in 1997’s Scream 2.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/03/heres-david-warner-as-the-original-freddy-krueger

SOUL PIZZA

Years before the infamous “soul pizza” appeared in a sequel, the delicious food that’s subject of so many memes and Instagram posts played a behind-the-scenes role in the creation of Freddy. As Freddy lore has it, makeup artist David Miller created the look of Freddy’s burned face while using a pepperoni pizza as his muse.

SWEATER SCIENCE

Wes Craven read an article in a science magazine about how the human eye has trouble seeing the colors red and green when they are positioned side-by-side. Thus Freddy’s red-and-green sweater that quietly made audiences uncomfortable.

CHARLIE SHEEN WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

Charlie Sheen was originally cast to play Glen, Nancy’s boyfriend across the street. However, the production had already spent on experienced actors Ronee Blakley and John Saxon, who played Nancy’s parents. The rest of the cast, relative unknowns, were paid scale. Sheen wanted $3000 per week, which was too much.

GLEN AND TINA SHARED A ROOM

To save money, the production used the same set for Tina’s bedroom and Glen’s bedroom, first as a rotating room to simulate Tina being dragged across the walls and ceiling, and next as the place where 300 gallons of blood shot out of a waterbed.

FREDDY VS. JASON

Years before the two iconic movie killers faced off against each other, there was a crossover of another kind. Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham actually directed a single scene in his pal Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street - specifically, the bit where Freddy throws a trashcan as he’s chasing Nancy down an alleyway.

WES CRAVEN HATED THE ENDING

As Robert Englund pointed out, Nancy defeats Freddy. It was always Craven’s intention to see Freddy vanquished, for the film to end when Nancy turns her back on him, robbing him of his power. Producer Bob Shaye wanted a Friday the 13th style “zinger” at the end, to setup potential sequels. Craven suggested the tacked on bit with the convertible as a bit of a compromise and always regretted adding it in.

CRAVEN EVENTUALLY GOT HIS DUE

The filmmaker who created Freddy didn’t get any financial share of the sequels (save for the work he did on the third movie) or the considerable merchandising revenue generated by the character. A decade later, when New Line approached him about making a seventh installment (despite “killing” Freddy in the sixth movie), they offered Craven a cut of the merchandising and sequel money retroactively.