THE NIGHTMARE THAT WASN’T

When I was a young pre-teen in the 1980s, NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET part 3, the DREAM WARRIORS, sort of changed my conception of horror.. it became campy, silly and fun.. Yes, Freddy was a menacing creature, whose background was that of a child molester and killer, but somehow Robert Englund turned Wes Craven’s character into a charming and almost likeable trickster in the in the third NIGHTMARE installment. After the oddness of part 2, that was a dream come true for NEW LINE..

The movie, however, was much different than the script Craven originally wrote.. Freddy had more of a disturbing part in the film. What made it was very different than what was almost..

The AV CLUB website reminded me of this story in a post this weekend. It is by Mike Vanderbilt and it’s worth the read.. Vanderbilt correctly points out this:

The script certainly has a darker tone than what eventually made it to screen. Freddy Krueger isn’t chock-full of one-liners as in the final film; his dialogue is perverse and menacing. Craven’s script plays up the original concept of Freddy as a child molester particularly in the sequence in which Freddy takes out Phillip the sleepwalker. “Why me?” Phillip pleads to which Freddy responds “Because I like you.” as Krueger licks the boys face. It’s hard to imagine Toys “R” Us stocking that talking Freddy doll on store shelves. Wes Craven ended up taking an executive producing credit on the film but was not necessarily happy with the changes made to his script stating, “A lot of the reasons I had agreed to do the picture were taken away.”

And now it’s all history.

Wes Craven’s recent death is bringing out all of these old articles that horror fans have kept in the crevices of their minds..

What could have been in NIGHTMARE part 3 never was.. But I would agree that the legend of Freddy, the pop culture icon who became as popular in the 1980s as Max Headroom and ALF, would certainly not have been created would the element of sickness and perversion had been played up.  New Line made a decision to reject the overall Craven premise. Perhaps that led to less than stellar horror, but it also gave them a burst of cash with insane marketing.

I remember as a kid walking around TOYS-R-US and KB TOYS, searching for the plastic Freddy glove. And it wasn’t just sold on Halloween, it was all year. Right behind BARBIE.

Right where Wes Craven’s FREDDY should never had been.