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There's no doubt that Robert Englund owes his career to the ongoing Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. That includes his small but memorable role on Netflix's Stranger Things. The original 1984 horror film not only launched Robert's career but made Wes Craven one of the most sought-after directors in the business. It also spawned countless sequels, spin-offs, and remakes, resulting in a boatload of cash.
And yet, nobody wanted to make it.
In an oral history of A Nightmare on Elm Street by Vulture, Wes Craven explained why it was so insanely hard to make his horror masterpiece.
Is Nightmare On Elm Street Based On A True Story?
There appears to be a lot of curiosity about whether or not Nightmare On Elm Street is based on a true story. This is the case with a number of horror movies. They spark a morbid fascination that sometimes morphs into a desire for realism. In a somewhat opposite way, this is how Wes Craven was inspired to write A Nightmare On Elm Street.
Wes Craven had already directed Last House On The Left, which was based on his experiences being raised in a religious fundamentalist household, as well as The Hills Have Eyes when he began thinking about A Nightmare On Elm Street. But making the TV movie Swamp Thing tanked his career. So for three years, he didn't earn a single paycheck.
"I lost my house. I had to borrow money from [a colleague] to pay my taxes," Wes Craven said to Vulture. "Also, my first marriage had failed, and I was smoking a lot of grass, then graduated to c*caine. Finally, I walked away from the drugs. And I had this one idea, so I set off to write a script."
While living in Venice, Wes read an article in the L.A. Times that sparked the idea for A Nightmare On Elm Street. While the movie isn't directly based on a real story (obviously), it was almost certainly inspired by one.
"[The article was] about a family who had escaped the Killing Fields in Cambodia and managed to get to the U.S. Things were fine, and then suddenly the young son was having very disturbing nightmares. He told his parents he was afraid that if he slept, the thing chasing him would get him, so he tried to stay awake for days at a time," Wes explained.
"When he finally fell asleep, his parents thought this crisis was over. 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."
Why A Nightmare On Elm Street Was Insanely Hard To Make
Producer Bob Shaye is undoubtedly the reason why A Nightmare on Elm Street was made. He is also the man who founded New Line Cinema, the studio that eventually took a shot on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Like the Middle-Earth adventure film, backing A Nightmare On Elm Street has paid off in dividends. And it was its first major mainstream success.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, New Line Cinema produced a bunch of cult classics, such as Reefer Madness and some of the John Waters movies. Eventually, they moved to horror movies. But their first attempt, a film called Alone in the Dark, wasn't successful.
"A friend introduced me to Bob Shaye. He was one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met," Wes Craven said to Vulture. "He was a Fulbright scholar, an excellent chef, and very knowledgeable about the arts."
He was also the only guy who wanted to take a shot on Wes' latest idea.
"I went to L.A. for a fact-finding trip and contacted Wes," Bob Shaye explained. "He told me the story — I thought it was a fantastic, because everybody has nightmares. I got pretty excited, but he wouldn’t send me the script. Little did I know, everybody else in Hollywood had already passed."
"Every studio rejected it. I have the rejection letter from Universal framed on my office wall," Wes said.
According to Wes' friend, Friday The 13th director Sean S. Cunningham, nobody, including himself, wanted to make the film because of its concept.
"I cautioned Wes, 'I don’t know if an audience is going to buy into this. Yeah, dreams are real. But at some point, you wake up,'" Sean explained.
On top of this, Wes' budget became really bloated.
"The budget started off at $700,000, and we went over budget," Bob Shaye explained. "It ended up at $1.1 million. All the investors, at one time or another, backed out during pre-production. Half the funding came from a Yugoslavian guy who had a girlfriend he wanted in movies."
A cult film producer and a random wealthy Yugoslavian man are ultimately to thank for the creation of one of the most successful horror franchises.
"I think Nightmare ranks very high in New Line’s hierarchy, in terms of originality and economy," Bob stated. "It’s not Lord of the Rings, and it’s not Wedding Crashers. It has an indie, low-budget vibe, but it still holds together."
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