The third Nightmare On Elm Street movie almost featured one of the franchise’s scariest effects so far, but the reason that the movie’s director opted to cut the scene was understandable. When writer/director Wes Craven created the dream demon Freddy Krueger for 1984’s supernatural slasher A Nightmare On Elm Street, it is unlikely that the horror legend knew how long the character’s screen history would eventually become. Since his first appearance, Freddy has starred in six movies, a reboot, a remake, and a face-off film where he fought Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees.
With a massive fandom, the debate over which Nightmare On Elm Street movie is the best in the franchise has raged for decades. One sequel often considered one of the best in the series is 1986’s A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, whose troubled production did not stop the movie from being well-received. However, what some may not know is that the outing cut its best scare at the behest of its director.
Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was the first movie in the franchise to truly take advantage of Freddy’s ability to distort the dreamworlds of his victims, and the sequel featured some ambitiously weird dream sequences as a result. However, the most disturbing effects shot was cut because director Chuck Russell was too unsettled by the artist’s creation: According to a BloodyDigusting article on the topic, Russell felt that the emaciated dream child was reminiscent of a Holocaust victim, and was too disturbed by this to consider its inclusion in the movie. He faced some pushback, with franchise producer and later Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare helmer Rachel Talalay saying the creation needed to be in the finished film. Eventually, Russell won out due to his conviction that the sequence could easily cause unintended offense.
The shot would have cropped up early on in Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, during a scene that did still make it into the finished movie. The dream-child was intended to be the figure that appears in Kristen’s arms when the movie’s heroine is running from Freddy in the opening scene, but the shot was replaced by a charred, skeletal body that is technically gorier, but less haunting and surreal. On her way out of Freddy’s grasp, Kristen picks up a small child to save them from Krueger, only for the kid to transform offscreen into this haunted monstrosity. The dream-child was not the only element of the sequel that never made it into the movie, though.
A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’ early drafts included a wild plot that saw Freddy framed by real-life murderer Charles Manson, among other surreal storylines that were never used. Speaking of ideas that were never used, according to special effects artist Mark Shostrom, the dream child was never repurposed for another movie and has since been lost or destroyed. In an interview, the artist, who also worked on Evil Dead II, admitted that he was shocked when the movie didn’t use the prop since it was exactly what the production had requested. Unfortunately for Shostrom, sometimes movie magic can be a little too good at disturbing people, as proven by his lost A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors creation.
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