Original subtitles

In the mid 1980's

one film franchise changed the face of horror.

Nightmare on Elm Street took the genre to a new level.

With a totally twisted concept.

It took the slasher film

and made it psychological.

And one of the most terrifying villains

in cinematic history.

Some of you may know me as Freddy Krueger.

He's not just gonna kill you, he's going to enjoy killing you.

Freddy figured it out and he kind of knew where you slept.

A nightmare on Elm Street

and its creator, Wes Craven, pushed horror to new heights.

All you need is a great idea and a lot of vision.

You go out there and make something

that scares the pants off people.

But the original film

almost never became reality.

Wes Craven pitched it everywhere

and he was being rejected all the time.

Nobody believed in this movie

and it went on to be a blockbuster.

We'll take you behind the scenes.

They started making me try these different hats on.

I said, "You guys we're getting desperate here, "this is wrong."

Go deep into the director's mind.

The man himself was based on a man

who frightened me as a child.

And relive some of the most

intense moments ever.

They actually used like 500 gallons

of fake blood for that scene.

Plus, the ultimate casting coupe.

Wes Craven's daughter saw Johnny Depp,

thought he was adorable, said, "That's the guy "for this movie"

I do have really fond memories, I mean,

it was really exciting.

Learn how Nightmare went from

a low-budget indie flick...

It was actually a really

independently-financed film.

To a pop- culture phenomenon.

Turning a tiny movie studio into an industry powerhouse.

New Line Cinema became known as the house

that Freddy built.

Every nightmare must come to an end.

♪ 1, 2, Freddy's coming for you ♪

Or does it?

People love him.

Freddy is still as popular as he ever was.

In late 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street

creeped into theaters and going to bed at night

would never be the same.

I think it was one of the most universal films I've made.

Horror fanatics and movie goers in general

embrace Wes Craven's genre-defining film

while being introduced to one of the most

terrifying villains in cinematic history.

Freddy Krueger.

Freddy Krueger right here.

Nightmare on Elm Street.

And I wanted to see if it's really as ghastly as people say.

Over the next four decades,

the legacy of the franchise and the iconic status

of Freddy himself would only continue to grow.

But the story of how Elm Street even happened

is one for the ages because it almost never happened at all.

Wes Craven started out

with the Last House on the Left,

that was his directorial debut in 1972.

Which is a really gritty, difficult-to-watch

horror movie.

And from there, he did Hills Have Eyes in 1977.

They were both successful, groundbreaking films.

My feeling, which is very strong,

that movies about violence are entirely justified

and in fact need to be made so long

as they treat it accurately. It's not made to look glamorous,

it's not made to look cute, but it's treated as what it is,

a terrifying reality of our lives

that must be confronted and dealt with.

Fast forward to early-1982

when Craven's latest creation, in conjunction

with DC Comics, descends upon theaters.

He had done an adaptation of the comic book Swamp Thing.

Comic book films are related to the horror genre,

which is what he was known for,

but they have a slightly broader reach

so it was a chance to break out to a wider audience.

But the ambitious film

is poorly received and throws Craven's career

into flux.

When you're a filmmaker, the cliche is

"you're only as good as your last picture".

And when you're not a success,

it's much more difficult to get a project of yours

off the ground. That was a really stressful period.

After struggling

for more than two years to sell a script

and with mounting financial problems,

Craven's luck finally changes in 1984

when an upstart company, New Line Cinema,

agrees to produce the writer director's next film.

And the concept is a beautifully twisted one.

So, the original Nightmare on Elm Street,

it's about a group of teens who all seem to be

having the same nightmare about this boogie man.

And if he kills you in your dreams,

then you actually die.

Here's what's great about this movie,

kids never want to go to sleep, right?

But can you imagine not wanting to go to sleep

because you think you're going to die? God!

No matter who you are, there's something

you can relate to here.

If you're old, all you want to do is go to sleep

and if you're young, staying awake

is supposed to be fun, not survival.

Yeah, Wes Craven doesn't play around

when it comes to horror.

All you need is a great idea and a lot of vision.

You go out there and make something

that scares the pants off people.

The best horror movies strike us

when we're most vulnerable.

It's Marian in the shower in psycho.

It's what's under the water in Jaws.

When are you more vulnerable than when you're asleep?

It taps into a fear that something's

going to happen to us when we least expect it.

But the film is far from a guaranteed success.

And Craven's reputation in Hollywood is still very much

on the line.

Yet in November 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street

opens to enthusiastic audiences

and perhaps more surprisingly,

positive reviews.

Horror movies always struggle

to get good reviews from mainstream critics,

but I think Nightmare on Elm Street was recognized

for being a good horror movie.

It didn't open huge, but people kept going to see it

and the movie was very successful at the box office.

The sleeper- hit rakes in

more than $25 million domestically,

resurrecting Craven's career and inspiring 7 more films

plus a remake.

This movie was shot on a tiny budget.

Nobody believed in this movie

and it went on to be a blockbuster.

In order to understand the true roots

of this monster franchise, we must jump back

to 1981 when Craven, a former humanities professor

with a master's degree in writing and philosophy,

reads something peculiar and the spark is lit.

There was a series of newspaper articles

in the LA Times that occurred over a year and a half.

There were cases of young men

that had had severe nightmares

and had told their families about that

and the next time they fell asleep,

they died inexplicably.

They're very sober articles

about this mysterious phenomenon,

which is refugees from Laos who were dying

at an unusually-high percentage.

In the newspaper accounts, there was at least one man

who was having such horrible nightmares

he did not want to go back to sleep.

He kept himself awake and he stayed up

for nearly a week. Finally he fell asleep on the couch

and everybody thought, "Oh, thank God "that's passed."

And they took him up to his bedroom.

And in the middle of the night

they heard screams and scuffling.

They ran into his room and he fell silent on his bed

and he was dead when they got to him.

And there was no explanation for it.

No one could really figure out exactly what he died from.

There was absolutely nothing wrong physically

with this young man.

And this made Craven think,

"Well, what if it was the dream that killed him?"

The article in the LA Times

has a very ordinary kind of title,

but just above it in quotation marks,

it says "Nightmare Syndrome?"

And that, I think, is really the start.

Craven's idea for A Nightmare

on Elm Street is born and he doesn't have to look far

for inspiration when dreaming up the story's

viciously-delicious villain.

Wes Craven dug into his own childhood

to create Freddy Krueger.

He was just Fred Krueger in the first film.

The name "Fred" came from a bully

who terrorized Wes Craven as a child.

And the name "Krueger", he adapted that

from the character "Krug", who was the villain

in his first movie, Last House on the Left.

The man himself was based on a man

who frightened me as a, as a child.

Woke me from my sleep one night

shining down the sidewalk in Cleveland.

And I got out of bed to see what it was and I looked

and there was this guy dressed very much

like I made Freddy dressed like.

He just stopped and then he just looked right up at me.

And I fell back and sat on the edge of the bed in the dark.

I went back to the window and he was waiting and just.

And then the man, according to Wes,

came to the apartment, opened the door

and Wes' brother, who was older,

got a baseball bat.

And they went out into the hallway

to look for this guy and they never saw him again.

I'd love to give that guy credit for changing horror.

If we could ever find him.

The essence of that man was that he enjoyed

terrifying a child and enjoyed

sort of destroying the comfort of innocence.

So that became Freddy.

With a killer- concept in place

and a brutal baddie to do Craven's bidding,

the writer director begins to shop his script,

but no one bites.

He pitched it everywhere

and he rewrote the script and he did all kinds of stuff

and he couldn't get any takers for months

and months and months.

He was being rejected all the time.

Craven was friends with Sean Cunningham,

who produced and directed the first Friday the 13th.

Cunningham told Craven, "It's not gonna work,

"it won't be suspenseful because everyone knows "it's a dream."

But Wes Craven persevered.

He knew it was a great concept,

but he was really fighting an uphill battle for this.

That will all soon change

when Craven fortuitously crosses paths

with someone who decides to take the nightmare leap

with him and together they will create horror history.

It's 1983 and writer director

Wes Craven is continuing to shop his script

for A Nightmare on Elm Street,

perverse plot and all.

A man who had been actually murdered

by a group of parents because he was

a child molester and the law had let him go.

He turns up in the nightmares of their children.

But the pile of rejection letters

from film studios cast serious doubt

on whether Craven's brain child will ever become reality.

The Nightmare on Elm Street script went around

town for three years before it found backing.

And that's when a man named

Robert Shea and something called New Line Cinema

enters the picture.

New Line Cinema was such a small company

that it was actually just based out of the founder,

Bob Shay's apartment in New York City.

He would take films like the public domain

Reefer Madness and show it at colleges.

He was not really a feature- film distributor

or someone who made films either,

but he liked Nightmare on Elm Street

and he decided to get into the production end of it.

Robert Chase saw the potential in it.

And went about raising the money to get it done.

Shay green lights the film,

giving it a budget of $700,000.

It was a really independently-financed film

and they cast mostly unknown actors.

The budget at the time was extremely low

for a film of its scale and size.

But Craven is determined

to make it work, as the remaining details

of his main character, Fred Krueger,

continued to get fleshed out.

Horror villains at that time

were supposed to have masks.

I want a mask, everybody's using masks,

but I want him to be able to talk.

What about a scar?

That gave him an intimidating appearance,

kind of covered the human features,

but he could still emote.

What's going on with his skin? Is he a burn victim?

You're like, "What is happening with this dude?"

And that led into the fact that the parents

had burned him alive.

So as bad a guy as he is,

he does have a certain justification

in seeking revenge.

Freddy is going after the children of the parents

who murdered him.

Wes Craven has said when he dreamed up

the villain for this film, he wanted him to be

the most despisable thing on earth.

And what's more despisable than someone

who kills children and actually takes

gleeful pleasure in it?

It's beyond serial killer, it's psychopath.

It's a cogent, articulate, devious, clever,

resourceful villain.

Freddy figured it out, you know,

and he kind of knew where you slept.

And that kind of villain, I think,

is always more frightening.

And then he had this glove with knives.

Were they supposed to be fingers? Were they fingernails?

I don't know. All I know is it was terrifying.

Pre-spear, pre-knife, pre-sharpened stone,

to the claws that nature gives to its predators.

He had that weird fedora- style hat

and he always wore the same thing,

which was a striped, like, rugby sweater.

There might be a scientific reason

that we're so uncomfortable looking at that sweater,

red and green.

I read an article on the two the most difficult colors

for the retina to see next to each other

were those two colors.

It was kind of just a smart hodgepodge of stuff.

And then finding an actor who was brilliant

and who could bring it to life.

And that actor would be...

Robert Englund here.

Some of you may know me as Freddy Krueger.

Robert Englund was a character actor,

you had seen him around here and there in supporting roles.

During this whole Freddy thing,

I had a big hit series called V that was like

a number-one mini-series in ratings.

He played a friendly alien named Willie.

Oh wait, here's the dude from V!

Oh my God, who knew?

I went in a general audition,

was just your basic general audition.

Wanted to work for Wes Craven.

But Wes Craven isn't exactly looking

for Englund's type.

Craven had expected to cast a taller actor,

someone more imposing like David Warner

who had been Jack the Ripper, a very terrifying character.

I think he wanted a big guy,

I think he wanted a stuntman originally.

It's really a totally unexpected piece of casting.

He just impressed Craven with his ability to bring

that character to life.

Maybe he just knew that if he piled

all that crap on me that I still would look normal with my...

Because I got broad shoulders for a guy my size

and you can put the prosthetics on me

and it's still the right ratio.

I think that might have been one of the gifts I bring.

I have a little skinny neck too.

How can you see anyone else as that character?

He took it and made it his own.

When I put the glove on the first time,

the first prototype glove was so heavy. It literally...

You kind of drop your shoulder.

But I did that in front of a mirror, I was, you know,

in a dressing room, getting stuff fitted to me.

And I went, "Oh, I can use that."

Freddy Krueger was supposed to just be

a figure in the dark, something that goes

bump in the night and then you end up slashed and dead.

But Englund had such an energy about him

that the minute you see him in that movie

you're like, "Oh, this is real."

For every horror film

with an utterly wicked villain, there's usually

a female lead who spends much of it

trying to avoid his clutches.

♪

That role of Nancy Thompson

will be played by 19-year- old Heather Langenkamp.

Heather Langenkamp was early in her career,

she had done some small parts, some TV roles.

She seemed like someone you could have gone

to high school with.

And she just had this girl- nextdoor quality.

I pulled out of college and got an apartment.

And just started going on auditions like,

basically, every other, you know 18 year old in LA at the time.

So I was able to make, you know, pretty modest living,

did some commercials.

And then, um, I got an audition

for Nightmare on Elm Street.

There were a ton of people that auditioned.

Some fairly well-known actors,

but she's the one that got it.

Another perfect casting choice,

in hindsight, is for the role of Nancy's boyfriend,

Glen, which will go to a 20-year-old,

complete unknown named Johnny Depp.

Johnny Depp, pre-21 Jump Street,

makes his film debut in Nightmare on Elm Street

and you can tell pretty quickly that he's going to be a star.

I do have really fond memories.

I mean, it was really exciting.

Johnny Depp before he was like a dirty pirate.

He was a cute teenager getting killed.

He's got an onscreen charisma, he's got a presence that works.

Johnny Depp had something special and different.

Depp had moved to Los Angeles

to pursue music, but then he met

an up-and-coming star named Nicholas Cage

who encouraged him to give acting a shot,

as he told Entertainment Tonight in 1988.

I was selling pens over the phone,

making about $50-a-week maybe, something like that.

And I met his agent, she sent me to read

for Elm Street and meet the people

and I, uh, just got very lucky and got the role.

It's actually something more

than just luck, which seals the deal for Depp.

Wes Craven's daughter saw Johnny Depp,

thought he was adorable and said,

"That's the guy for this movie."

I was shocked at Wes Craven

and Annette Benson, the casting director

and the director, for, you know,

for taking such a chance on this guy

who was totally green.

I mean I had no idea, I didn't know lights

and, like, marks, you know, camera position,

you know, I was clueless.

He was obviously such a looker.

There's even a scene in the film

where johnny Depp wears a crop top.

Hi, how you doing?

And bares his midriff and it really kind of gave signs

for his future sex appeal in Hollywood.

Rounding out the main characters

are Nancy's parents, Donald and March Thompson.

John Saxon played Nancy's father

and he was an accomplished genre veteran at the time.

So he was the big name for the project.

And Ronnie Blakely was an Academy-Award nominee

for her performance in Nashville in 1975

and really brought a lot of warmth to the role

of Nancy's mother.

And it's the fragile relationship

between the adults and their teenagers

that is key to the film's dynamic

and one that will become a Craven staple

for years to come.

You come away from Nightmare on Elm Street

realizing the adults in this are just not very good

or very helpful.

The kids have to help each other.

There's tremendously profound things going on

during the teen years.

So they are kind of like a, a boiled down version

of the human journey.

And I think if you understand the journey,

then you understand teenagers and you can write about them.

With casting locked up

and principal photography set to kick off

in just weeks, Craven and his team prepare

to greet a fear fest like no other.

But achieving their goal will be far trickier

than anyone could have dreamed.

It's the spring of 1984

and shooting for Wes Craven's reality-bending

horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street

is about to begin.

But there are some unexpected

last-minute concerns about Fred Krueger's look,

specifically that iconic hat.

I was in a room with Bob Shaye,

head of New Line Cinema, and Wes,

and they panicked about the hat.

And they started making me try these different hats on.

I said, "You guys, we're getting desperate here, "this is wrong."

I said, "Wes, that hat is from your imagination,

"the fedora." And I got the DP in there and I said,

"Look what can happen here with the light on me."

And I stood and I said, "Look at my shadow

"on the wall, look at this silhouette."

Craven's original vision of the hat

stays, but transforming Robert Englund's actual face

into the horrid villain day in and day out

will prove to be a bigger challenge.

To make Robert Englund into Freddy Krueger

does not come fast.

It took hours of hair and makeup to make him

that terrifying.

That's the rough part for me.

I mean, once I get the makeup on, I love playing him.

And in about four hours there's nothing left

of Robert Englund, it's just this cantankerous cuss

named Fred Krueger.

Set in the fictitious town

of Springwood Ohio, but shot in and around

the Los Angeles area, production kicks off in June

and from the start it's clear that Wes Craven's baby

is a rather unique beast.

In the 80s, we were in the middle of the slasher genre.

The villains were faceless killers, usually with a knife.

Robert Englund told me, "We're not allowed to use

"the word slasher on set."

Because it was something else, it was surreal,

it was taking you into this dream world.

We're getting into what I have coined as

"rubber reality", which is films that deal

with the way that reality can be distorted

and permeated, going into dream states,

all sorts of strange illusions.

As an audience member, you never really know

if you're in a nightmare or not.

Now this happens very quickly

in Nightmare on Elm Street with Amanda Wyss'

character, Tina.

She's in her high school hallway

then all of a sudden here's a goat.

When you see that very early scene,

you know that something is happening here

that is different.

From the first moments

Freddy slithers onto the screen,

it is also evident that we are being treated

to a very different kind of villain.

His first appearance when he cuts off his own fingers.

Tina!

Watch this.

And just starts laughing and smiling,

there's a malevolence to it that's different

from other horror villains.

He's not just gonna kill you, he's going to enjoy killing you.

And spoiler alert, that's exactly

what's going to happen to Tina,

who becomes Kruger's first victim in the film.

Tina's death scene in the original

Nightmare on Elm Street, is incredible.

She gets killed about 20 minutes in in this horrific,

brutal way.

She's at her most vulnerable, she's in a nightgown.

Then all of a sudden there's an unseen entity.

Freddy Krueger essentially sticks those knife-nail

finger claws right into her.

Tina goes rolling up the wall onto the ceiling.

Tina!

It's meant to be spectacular and it is.

You don't expect to see this kind of stuff

in a low-budget horror movie.

So here's what's really scary,

she's dead, boyfriend's looking at her,

slash marks on her. Where did that come from?

The whole "rubber reality" notion,

that is the backbone of this picture,

you can see in that shot.

Freddy kills you in your dreams,

but it it's still happening in real life.

Just how did the filmmakers create

such an intense visual effect?

They actually had to create this revolving bedroom

in order for the victim to appear like

she was on the ceiling and walking on all the walls.

So when she's on the ceiling,

the actress or stuntwoman was actually on the floor.

There's another actor in the room

that was basically glued down,

so he wouldn't fall up to the ceiling.

They had to strap in the furniture

and everything in the room to make it appear as if

the room was stationary.

But nothing comes cheap in Hollywood

and complex set pieces like the rotating room

are part of why the film's original budget of $700,000

will actually run out right in the middle of production.

Thankfully, at the last minute,

New Line Cinema is able to secure at least $300,000

more in order to help execute the special effects

that will give the film its visual identity.

The first time you really get a good look at Freddy,

he's got these huge outstretched arms.

You have nancy sinking through the stairs.

You have Freddy pushing through a wall.

What they did very cleverly was put in

enough effects at appropriate moments

that made a big impression that gave the idea

that, "Wow, this is a really huge special effects movie."

But they were very judiciously used.

So judiciously in fact, that the effects crew

reused the revolving room for another

infamous death scene.

Johnny Depp's character is on his bed,

he's fallen asleep listening to music on his headphones

and suddenly this claw reaches up

from the mattress and pulls him in.

Poor beautiful Johnny Depp.

He just gets sucked into the bed

and you're like, "Oh my God, what happened?"

Then again, what bed wouldn't want to eat Johnny Depp?

What happens next is even more horrifying.

All of this blood just like comes back up,

gushes through the bed.

It's a geyser of blood that erupts

and it's way over the top.

What they actually did was that they just moved

the revolving room upside down

so that all the blood could come down from the ceiling

but make it appear as if it was actually coming up

from under the bed.

They actually used like 500 gallons

of fake blood for that scene and it was so much blood

that it shorted the electrical equipment on the set.

It actually left Wes craven and the cameraman

trapped upside down for half an hour.

There's a famous bathtub scene

in the first Elm Street, Nancy is taking a bath.

Not surprisingly, she nods off.

And Freddy's glove emerges from the water

with the claws.

They cut out the bottom of the tub

and place it on top of a waterproof wooden box

where a man could be under the water

in a scuba suit, that was Jim Doyle.

And when Wes basically, like, banged on the side

of the tub, he would stick the glove out

because he couldn't hear well in a scuba suit.

So it was a lot of banging on the side of the tub

and then, you know, Jim Doyle would.

And then Wes would be like, "A little to the left."

And then he would do it again. "A little to the right."

And so it was just endless, like, getting that shot perfect.

Once Nancy falls asleep for real,

that's when Freddy makes his move.

It's a very safe place for most people

and it's a place they've, like, enjoyed

since they were kids. You know, taking a bath.

And Wes decides to just like ruin it for everybody

in that scene.

There was of course, that famous rhyme

that we hear like a Children's nursery rhyme.

♪ 1, 2, Freddy's coming for you ♪

♪ 3,4, better lock your door ♪

♪ 5,6, Hey, you're gonna die!

7, 8, gonna stay up late.

I don't even want to say the rest of it

because it's so scary!

It's time for the cast and crew

to shoot the film's grand finale,

where our young hero faces off with her nemesis.

Nancy comes up with this plan

that if she's holding him in her dream

when she wakes up, she can pull him out

of the dream world into the real world

and she can fight him and potentially kill him.

So she sets up this whole trap.

She shaves off a light bulb and she puts

gunpowder in one of the light bulbs

and she runs a wire to the on-off switch

so that you can trip it and cause an explosion.

Wes Craven wanted Nightmare on Elm Street

to end when Nancy finally turns her back on Freddy

and realizes that without her giving him life

he's negated, he's powerless.

I take back every bit of energy I gave you.

You're nothing.

What was supposed to be the ending

was: Nancy walks outside into the sunshine.

It's bright.

And she was gonna walk away into the fog.

So it would be a dreamlike.

The ending was a little bit ambiguous

and no one's quite sure if Nancy is still in her dream.

But the ending that makes it

to the big screen will have an added twist to it.

The classic horror movie "jump scare"

due to producer Robert Shay's insistence.

A lot of movies at that time ended

with a last minute shock. You thought the movie was over,

suddenly the villain popped up out of the ground

or out of the water and cut to black.

Wes Craven did not want a jump scare at the end.

He wanted it to be left open and mysterious.

And so they sort of made this compromise

that she'll, she'll drive off in this car

and the foot of the convertible will come down

and it's got Freddy stripes.

What's going on?!

- Hey, I'm not doing this. - Glen, let us out!

I'm not doing this!

What's going on with the window?!

No!

And then as her mother is waving goodbye to her,

Freddy reaches through the window of the front door

and pulls her inside.

I believe Wes craven didn't like that

because it negated everything that went before.

He had built the picture to end with Nancy triumphing.

It was all structured toward that revelation

that if you don't feed your fears, they won't get you.

And yet Robert Shay packs on an ending

and the fears get 'em. Well, hell yes, I'd be upset by it.

Regardless of the revised ending,

audiences are sure to be shocked.

And with shooting now wrapped,

it won't be long before Craven unleashes Elm Street

upon the unsuspecting masses.

But will it be too much for them to handle?

November 9th 1984,

opening day for New Line Cinema's new horror

mind bender, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Made on a shoe-string budget with a cast

of mostly unknown actors, and writer director

Wes Craven's career essentially on the line,

it's time to see if this indie film will be able

to find an audience.

Expectations were not that high

for this film to translate into huge box office numbers.

But what happened was that there was

word of mouth, there was a great poster,

a great trailer out for the film.

The kids of Elm Street

don't know it yet, but something is coming to get them.

There's something out there, isn't there?

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep.

The concept was so original.

The character of Freddy Krueger was so tantalizing

and terrifying that people just started to talk about

this movie.

Fangoria was a magazine dedicated to gore.

Cinefantastique was a magazine

that was dedicated to taking the genre seriously.

They both loved it.

Even the mainstream reviews were better

for a horror film than most.

The film grosses 25 and a half

million dollars domestically, making Elm Street

a bona fide hit.

When we talk about success in Hollywood,

we've got to talk about return on investment.

Nightmare was made for around a million dollars.

In terms of that, it was wildly successful.

Nightmare on Elm Street was New Line Cinema's first big hit.

New Line Cinema became known

as the house that Freddy built.

He's the one that gave them their financial foundation

to go on and make bigger budgeted films

and become even more successful.

New Line is now in the Freddy Krueger business.

But before the first film is even completed,

its creator would make a deal

that he would ultimately regret by signing away

all of his rights to the film and its characters.

Keep in mind, Wes Craven had not really made

a picture for years.

He was in pretty bad financial shape.

Craven had to sign the rights

for sequels over to Shay.

So, Robert Shay was able then to go on

and do subsequent Elm Street movies

with or without Craven's approval or input.

Fans certainly are hungry for more

as they rushed back into theaters

less than a year later to experience

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part Two: Freddy's Revenge.

Nightmare on Elm Street Two,

there's some really interesting inventive special effects.

Some using animals, like there's sort of

these demonic creatures that live in

Freddy's boiler room.

And it dealt with the concept of Freddy

trying to inhabit someone's body

and turning the main character into Freddy.

Part two kind of abandoned the whole nightmare concept

and it just, it wasn't that interesting.

You want to call it the Craven touch,

whatever you want to call it, didn't quite have that feeling.

Still, the sequel earned $30 million

at the US box office, surpassing the original.

Keeping the momentum going in 1987,

part three, Dream Warriors is unleashed.

Nightmare on Elm Street Three takes

what's great about the original Nightmare

on Elm Street and makes it bigger,

it takes it to the next level.

Dream Warriors is considered one of the stronger sequels.

Wes Craven was involved, he wrote an early draft,

they brought back Nancy. She's a therapist.

I used to be like them, Neil.

I know what they're going through.

And she's a good therapist for these kids

because she had the same problem they did.

Playing one of the Teens,

Kristen is an 18-year-old Patricia Arquette

in her film debut.

♪

Nancy!

Nightmare on Elm Street Three was a huge hit.

It was more successful than the first two.

Freddy was known before that,

but I think that's what made him huge in,

in pop culture.

One night I opened up my door on Halloween night and there was

a little Freddy Krueger in a costume.

And I thought to myself, "Okay, he's got

"a Halloween costume now, that's pretty iconic."

On Halloween you see little kids walking around

with Freddy costumes, it was really quiet,

quite remarkable.

The only person you wanted to be on Halloween

was Freddy.

This is my Fred Krueger mask, I made it myself

from the sculpting on up. This is my claw.

It was a lot of fun, you know,

to play with the phenomenon of it all.

And so, I kind of owe Mr. Krueger.

Freddy Krueger is indeed

now a household name and while he's busy

slashing through theaters, another merging medium

brings him literally into our living rooms.

Nightmare on Elm Street really took off

for the same reason a lot of horror franchises

at that time took off, and that's the advent of VHS.

Teenagers didn't have to ask their moms for ID

to go to the movie theater and they could rent

Nightmare on Elm Street.

And that helped Freddy come into everybody's house

in a way he never would have otherwise.

As the legacy and the terror grows

at home, the franchise continues to flourish.

Nightmare on Elm Street Four was huge

at the box office, it was even bigger

than Nightmare on Elm Street Three.

It was really an ascending kind of franchise.

I love playing Freddy once a year, it's fun.

As the sequels proceeded, Freddy was prone

to telling more and more jokes.

Basically you watch to see what is Freddy going to do next.

We had so much fan mail after the original

Nightmare on Elm Street where people liked the personality.

I do remember he had some great lines.

Like his tad's were amazing.

This is it, Jennifer, your big break in TV.

The prime time!

I want to draw some blood!

No!

Sorry kid, I don't believe in fairy tales.

It was kind of cute and funny and it made him more mainstream.

Listen, everybody enjoys watching someone

who's good at their job.

I'm not saying I like serial killers, but I do enjoy

someone who excels at what they do.

He became maybe a little too much of a prankster,

a little too much of a, of a wisecracker.

You could say we jumped the shark on it,

but it was intentional.

Capitalizing on Kruger's over-the-top

personality, the franchise even spawns

its own television series.

Freddy's Nightmares, which runs for two years

in syndication, starting in 1988,

with Englund running the show as Freddy.

No, no, no, don't touch that dial.

Here's what's on my mind tonight.

I feel like I've invented this guy

and we've made him a worldwide phenomenon,

now, you know, he's huge in Europe.

But back on the silver screen,

a surprise is in store.

Part five came out and it was a big drop off

and suddenly they realized this isn't gonna last forever.

So they did part six. - This is gonna be the last one,

we're going to put him to bed. Please put him to bed.

Freddy's Dead came out in the early '90's

and they decided to go out with a bang.

The end of the movie was filmed in 3-D.

They had some big cameos, Alice Cooper,

Roseanne and Tom Arnold, Johnny Depp came back

and did a cameo.

This is your brain.

This is your brain on drugs.

As the title implies,

Freddy actually does die in the sixth installment

of the franchise, which leaves fans wondering

"Is the Nightmare on Elm Street saga officially over?"

Not if Wes Craven has anything to do with it.

1994, it's been 10 years

since audiences were first introduced

to A Nightmare on Elm Street

and it's vile villain turned pop culture icon,

Freddy Krueger.

Five Sequels, one tv series,

and countless Halloween mask later,

the monster mega-franchise has been a juggernaut.

But when the film's producers killed off Freddy

in part six, it seemed that the nightmare

had officially ended.

Or did it?

I thought the series was over

when they released Freddy's Dead in 1991,

I believed them that, that that was it.

And then it was announced that Wes Craven was coming back.

Came shortly after Bob Shaye, who, you know,

is the head of New Line Cinema coming to me

and saying, "Would you be interested "in doing one more?"

New Line revived the Elm Street franchise,

but with a different title, it was Wes Craven's

New Nightmare.

And not only is Wes Craven coming back,

Heather Langenkamp is coming back

and John Saxon is coming back and obviously Robert Englund.

We'll do lunch.

♪

It was a meta-take, where the actors

were playing themselves.

You played that girl in that movie with the guy,

with the shhhk.

Robert Shay plays himself,

Wes Craven plays himself.

And cut. Print that, Gretchen.

And they were all playing people

who were making a horror movie.

I thought, you know, wouldn't it be fascinating

to do a film about us and about the fact that now

that the series were stopped and the character

was killed off, that whatever it was

that Freddy originally stood for was somehow released.

So it, it involved Freddy crossing over out of films

into our reality. - Wes Craven's New Nightmare

was critically loved, but it wasn't a huge success.

As the franchise goes dormant

for the rest of the 1990's, Craven reinvents

the horror genre once again,

this time by directing the first four Scream films

starting in 1996.

Let's do a slasher movie with characters

who have seen slasher movies,

they know all about it, they know the genre tropes,

they know who's likely to die and who's not

and "what are the things you shouldn't do

if you don't want to die?"

They're all the same.

Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl

who can't act, who's always running up the stairs

when she should be going out the front door. It's insulting.

Scream becomes an even larger

success than the nightmare films.

The Scream movies of the 90's

and the early 2000's was kind of a second chapter

for Wes Craven and his career.

And the director has his

Elm Street roots, in part, to thank for that.

Scream really built on a lot of the foundations

that Wes Craven developed in the Nightmare

on Elm Street franchise.

All those storylines that revolved around teenagers.

Why do you think you connect so well

with an adolescent or young audience?

Probably because I never grew up.

It's now 2003, 9 years

since Freddy Krueger last tore up the silver screen,

and his next outing will be his most intense

and lucrative yet.

Freddy VS Jason, it was something

that fans had been waiting for and asking for for years.

And I think the writers found a really smart way

to bring Freddy and Jason together.

Yo, that is fire right there.

It's Jay-Z and Kanye coming together

and putting down something decent man.

There's two fan bases who are going to be buying

tickets to this and you don't want to alienate either one.

So, there are really two battles in the film.

The first one takes place in the dreamworld

and Freddy is clearly the victor in that.

Ooh, tilt.

And they have one big fight sequence

where they're in the real world, they're at camp Crystal Lake.

And that's where Jason has the advantage.

♪

Kind of a tie. So both fan bases can go home

and argue about who won.

And Freddy VS Jason cemented

Freddy's status in pop culture history even more.

It elevated everyone.

It also elevated the franchise's

box office to new heights.

Freddy VS Jason was the highest grossing

in this series, it made over 80 million domestically

and 116 million worldwide.

Seven years later, in 2010,

a reboot of the original film is released

starring Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy

and Rooney Mara as Nancy.

And though it's a success, almost replicating

Freddy VS Jason's strong box office numbers,

many purists aren't sold.

I think with the reboot, people did their best.

Jackie Earle Haley gave it a good effort,

but I think it struggles with not having Robert Englund

as Freddy.

There's an over reliance on digital effects.

Craven is not involved in the reboot

but re enters the public eye after directing Scream Four

in 2011.

Sadly, it will be his final film as he succumbs

to brain cancer in 2015 at age 76.

When Wes Craven died, not just horror movies,

but the American cinema lost an innovator,

somebody who is consistently interesting

as a filmmaker and making horror

a deeper experience with filmgoers.

He could do anything he wanted to do, he really could.

But he was fascinated by what scares us.

Stories, it's an ancient device

that human beings use instinctively

to deal with scary things.

And if there's something terrifying in life,

if it's captured into a character

like Freddy Krueger, it's somehow more able

to be processed and that allows us to go, you know,

on to the next day.

I think a huge part of the success

of A Nightmare on Elm Street is because of the concept.

It was something that no one had really dreamed up

before in quite the way that he did.

Nightmare on Elm Street took the slasher film

and made it psychological.

Texas Chainsaw, Mike Myers, Friday the 13th,

we, we get it, you're a serial killer,

you're deranged.

Let's step it up a notch, let's kill you

inside your own head.

Yo, that's the next level, man.

You don't know whether the characters on the screen

are supposed to be in a real situation

or if they're in a dream situation.

That's brilliant to me and that brilliance still holds up.

And the character of Krueger was memorable.

Freddy Krueger gave you the creeps.

Just the outfit alone.

All of these little pieces really make him

who he was. He's an iconic character.

Some of the Freddy, so called Clint-Eastwood lines

or whatever you want to call them,

became things that kids would say in school

and you'd hear them on talk shows.

Even on Halloween Night, you still see people

dressed up as that horrible figure.

There's still, you know, bobbleheads and figurines

and t shirts. People love him.

Freddy is still as popular as he ever was.

Robert Englund was buried under a few inches

of prosthetics or whatever, but he creates an impression

that sticks with you after the films are gone.

That's the sign of a really great actor.

If I have to take credit for anything,

it would be that silhouette maybe,

and the body language.

You know, that's what I bring.

And the films continue to live on.

It has so many iconic phrases.

Not only do you have the character,

you have a signature theme song.

It changed the game forever.

You know, in those dark nights when you think,

"I just don't have it, I'm a fake or whatever."

No, I created something that's known

around the world, that's not bad.

As for the future of Freddy,

fans are clamoring for another installment

to the Elm Street series.

Though with Englund stating he's done playing

his classic role and without Wes Craven, of course,

it might be tricky to pull off.

If there is another Elm Street come along,

it's going to depend a great deal on the writing

because that was one of Craven's trademarks.

His films were character- driven,

fascinating characters.

And one of the keys to bringing back

a franchise is if there's a central character

that's real identifiable.

Well, who's going to be Fred Krueger?

And what are they gonna do with the glove?

And are the fingers going to be even longer and scarier?

And what kind of new dreams can they come up with?

So I think there's always going to be a potential there.

Even if they never make another sequel,

the character of Freddy Kruger will always live on

in everyone's nightmares.

And that's why Nightmare on Elm Street is classic

and timeless.