Originally Posted by
The Shoeless Hobo
Trivia:
* Director Wes Craven claims to have named Freddy Krueger after a kid who bullied him in school and to have based his appearance on a disfigured hobo who scared him as a youth.
* When Freddy Krueger is chasing Nancy and she runs up the stairs only to find that its all gross "muck", what she steps in is pancake mix.
* The movie that Nancy watches to stay awake is The Evil Dead.
* There is a ripped poster of The Evil Dead.
* Wes Craven's original concept for Freddy Krueger was considerably more gruesome, with teeth showing through the flesh over the jaw, puss 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.
* The poster above Johnny Depp's bed in the scene where he is killed is the Grace Under Pressure album cover by Canadian rock trio Rush.
* Johnny Depp accompanied friend Jackie Earle Haley to the auditions, where he was spotted by director Wes Craven, who asked him if he'd like to read for the part.
* In the end scene, the top to the convertible came down faster and harder than expected. The expression from the actors is real.
* Nancy's bathtub was constructed over a tank built into the floor of the set with a cutout bathtub sealed down to it. Actress Heather Langenkamp spent 12 hours in it during filming, accompanied at least some of the time by special effects man Jim Doyle who was wearing the Freddy glove.
* 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.
* Freddy Kruger was designed by Wes Craven to be the typical "silent" serial killer such as Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. But in the sequels Freddy developed a cheeky persona that enabled him to be the black humored villain
* New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "the house that Freddy built".
* In her room after almost getting killed in the tub, Nancy looks at herself in a mirror and says, "Oh God, I look 20 years old." Heather Langenkamp was 20 years old at the time of the movie.
* Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.
* The only times you see the words "Elm Street" are during the opening and closing credits. The word "Elm Street" is not mentioned at all during the movie.
* Craven choose the colors red and green for Freddy's sweater because he read that those two colors are the hardest for the eye to process together
* Johnny Depp's first film
* In a deleted scene featured on the Laser Disc and VHS from Anchor Bay we learn that Nancy and many of her friends from the neighborhood weren't always only children, but had a brother or sister before they were killed by Freddy (during the scene in the basement just before Nancy's mother reveals she has Freddy's glove.)
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