The 1984 nightmare on Elm Street, created by renowned slasher master Wes Craven, made a splash in his time, immediately becoming a classic of the horror genre. Several sequels were shot, books and comics were written based on franchise films, and in 2010 Samuel Breyer made a remake of Wes Craven. Thanks to the film "A Nightmare on Elm Street", actors Johnny Depp, Robert Inglund and other stars have gained worldwide fame.
The creators of the picture
Wes Craven planned that David Warner, who had previously starred in the horror films "From the Grave" and "Omen," would embody the image of Freddy Krueger on the screen. But Warner dropped out of the project, and Craven had to look for a replacement for him. As the director later said, it was not easy. Robert Inglund was not so tall and not as thin as Craven would have liked, but he won over the director with his willingness to turn to the dark half of his personality to play a maniac. He is the only one of many candidates who understood the psychology of his character, and therefore the role went to him. After the premiere, it became clear that the director was not mistaken with the leading actor.
Wes Craven for a long time could not find a suitable candidate for the embodiment of the character Nancy Thompson. About 200 actresses were auditioned for this role, including Courtney Cox and Demi Moore, but none of them liked the director. His choice fell on Heather Lanzhenkamp, who was studying at Stanford at that time. For the sake of filming in the film, she temporarily interrupted her studies.
Thanks to the film “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, actors Johnny Depp and Amanda Weiss, previously unknown to anyone, became real stars. Johnny Depp got the role of Glen Lanz, and Amanda Weiss - the role of Tina, Nancy's girlfriend.
The role of police officer Donald Thompson, Nancy's father, went to John Saxon, known for the film "Beyond the Evil" and the series "She wrote the murder."
After a long casting of the project “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, the actors were selected, the roles were distributed, and the active filming process began.
Plot
Several teenagers from a small American town have a nightmare - they are chased by a man with a burned face and sharp-edged gloves. This man watches them, and then mercilessly shreds. And the one whom the mutilated stranger kills with his blades in a dream will die in reality. The first to die is Tina Gray. Trying to find out what is happening to them, and who is hunting them, Nancy, Rod, is the guy of the deceased girl, and Glen Lantz begins an investigation. It turns out that the person chasing them is Freddy Krueger, who many years ago killed small children in the city. Since the police could not stop him, some residents decided to take their own trial and burned Kruger alive. These were the parents of Tina, Glan, Nancy and Rod. Now Freddy Krueger has found a way to take revenge on his killers by depriving them of the dearest: the children whom they so wanted to protect.
Box office and sequels
With a small budget even for 1984 ($ 1.8 million), the film collected more than 25 million at the box office, received positive reviews from critics and enthusiastic reviews from viewers.
A year after the premiere of the first film, the sequel was released - "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge". In total, until 1995 the franchise consisted of seven films, in each of which Robert Englund played.
In 1987, the novelization of the film series “A Nightmare on Elm Street” began. The author was Jeffrey Cooper.
Remake
In 2010, a remake of the same name was released. In the new film "A Nightmare on Elm Street", the actors Rooney Mara and Jackie Earl Haley played the roles of Nancy and Freddy Krueger, respectively. Jackie Earl Haley gained some fame thanks to roles in the thrillers Guardians and Island of the Damned, and Rooney Maru is known to the public through the films Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Social Network. The role of Quentin Smith was given to Kyle Gallner, the star of the series “Smallville Secrets”.
Critics did not like the remake, and viewers rated it below the original.