A Nightmare on Elm Street

Tina Gray wakes up from a nightmare in which a burned man in a boiler room comes after her with a glove fitted with blades. Her mother points out four slashes in her nightgown. The next morning Tina learns that her best friend Nancy Thompson and Nancy's boyfriend Glen Lantz have been dreaming about the same man.

Nancy and Glen stay over at Tina's house because Tina is scared to be alone. Tina's boyfriend Rod Lane shows up, and the two sleep together. When Tina falls asleep, the man chases her through an alley. Rod wakes up to see Tina cut open by something he cannot see and dragged up the wall and across the ceiling. He runs. Nancy and Glen find her body.

Nancy's father, police Lt. Don Thompson, arrests Rod, who swears he did not do it. Nancy dozes off in class and follows Tina's body bag into the school basement and down into a boiler room, where the man is waiting. She presses her arm against a hot pipe to wake herself up and comes to in class with a real burn on her arm. Rod tells her from his cell that he has been having the same dreams.

Nancy nearly drowns when the glove comes up through the water while she dozes in the bathtub. She starts drinking coffee to stay awake and asks Glen to watch over her while she sleeps. In her dream she sees the man about to kill Rod in his cell. He turns on her instead, and her alarm clock wakes her. By the time she and Glen get to the police station, Rod is dead, hanging from his bedsheet in a way that looks like suicide.

At Rod's funeral Nancy's parents grow worried. Her mother Marge takes her to a sleep clinic. Nancy has a violent nightmare while wired to the machines and wakes up holding the man's dirty fedora, with the name Fred Krueger written inside. Marge bars the windows of the house. Drunk, she finally tells Nancy the truth. Fred Krueger killed 20 children and walked free on a technicality. The parents of Elm Street tracked him down and burned him alive. Marge kept his bladed glove hidden in the furnace.

Nancy now knows Krueger is killing the children of the people who killed him. Glen promises to stay awake but falls asleep in front of the TV. Krueger pulls him down into his bed, and a flood of blood shoots up out of it onto the ceiling. Nancy calls her father, who is across the street at the murder scene, and tells him to break into the house in 20 minutes.

Nancy sets booby traps around the house, falls asleep, and grabs Krueger as her alarm goes off, pulling him into the real world. He runs through her traps, and she sets him on fire and locks him in the basement. Her father arrives with the police, but Krueger has already gotten upstairs. They find him, still burning, on top of Marge in her bed. Don puts out the flames, and Krueger and Marge sink into the mattress.

Krueger rises up behind Nancy. She realizes he only has power because she is afraid of him. She takes back the energy she gave him, turns her back, and he disappears.

Nancy walks out the front door into a bright, foggy morning. Her mother is alive, and Tina, Rod and Glen pull up in Glen's convertible. Once Nancy is in the car, the top slams down in red and green stripes and locks them in, and the car speeds off down the street. Three little girls in white jump rope and sing Krueger's rhyme, and Krueger's arm smashes through the window in the front door and pulls Marge inside.

Story notes

• Teenager Nancy Thompson discovers that she and her friends are being hunted in their dreams by Freddy Krueger, a burned killer with a bladed glove.
• Injuries suffered in dreams become real, forcing Nancy to confront him without falling asleep.

Release facts

• Runtime: 91 minutes (the Nightmare on Elm Street Companion lists 92)
• Budget: $1,800,000 (estimated; other reports run from $1.1 million to $2.5 million)

New Line opened the film on November 9, 1984, in 165 theaters. It made $1,271,000 its first weekend and had the best per-screen average of any film that week. The Numbers lists a peak of 274 theaters. The AFI Catalog cites a first three days of $1,769,638 on 377 screens. Palace Pictures released it in the UK on August 30, 1985.

Box Office Mojo lists $25,504,513 for the original domestic run, with later re-releases in 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025 adding a little more. Worldwide numbers vary. Wikipedia gives $57.1 million, the AFI Catalog cites $57 million by 1992, and The Numbers lists $59,240,066. Either way the film made many times its cost and saved New Line.

Critics were mostly kind. Paul Attanasio of The Washington Post praised the witty script and Jacques Haitkin's camera work and called Freddy the scariest horror figure since Halloween's Shape. Variety called it highly imaginative but said the themes were not tied up at the end, and it singled out the scenes between Nancy and her alcoholic mother as the weakest. Kim Newman in the Monthly Film Bulletin called Freddy a fine, perhaps definitive bogeyman and said the film pulled Craven out of a career slump.

Rotten Tomatoes lists 93 percent approval from 71 reviews, with an average of 7.8 out of 10.

Awards: at the 1985 Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, Craven won the Critics Award and Langenkamp got a special mention for acting. The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films nominated it for Best Horror Film and nominated Nick Corri for Best Performance by a Young Actor. The 2006 DVD was nominated for Best DVD Classic Film Release.

AFI put Freddy Krueger at number 40 among villains on its 100 Years, 100 Heroes and Villains list. Bravo ranked the film 17th on The 100 Scariest Movie Moments in 2004. Empire ranked it 162nd on its 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies. The Independent Film and Television Alliance named it one of the 30 most significant independent films of the past 30 years in 2010.

The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2021.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: A Nightmare on Elm Street US one-sheet — originalfilmart.com.

Posters and print

Cast

Crew

Production

Wes Craven started writing the script around 1981, after finishing Swamp Thing. The idea came from a series of Los Angeles Times articles about young men from Southeast Asian refugee families who had terrible nightmares, tried not to sleep, and died in their sleep. The AFI Catalog cites a 1981 report saying the story drew on news reports of Laotians who died after having the same nightmare. Craven also researched at UCLA's dream clinic during the film's four years of development. It was his first spec script as a writer and director.

Craven built Freddy out of his own life. He named him after a boy who bullied him at school, and he based the look on an old man who stared at him from the sidewalk outside his home when he was a kid. Krueger was first written as a child molester. Craven changed him to a child killer so the film would not look like it was cashing in on child abuse cases in the California news at the time. He picked red and green for the sweater after reading a 1982 Scientific American article that said those two colors clash hardest for the human eye. He wanted a villain who wore something like a mask but could still talk and taunt.

The script was turned down across town. Disney wanted a tamer film. Paramount passed because it seemed too close to Dreamscape. Universal sent a rejection letter dated December 14, 1982. New Line Cinema, then a small distributor, took it on, and the film became the company's first big hit. New Line is still called The House That Freddy Built.

Money was hard to find. The first budget was $700,000, split among English investors, a producer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Media Home Entertainment. Four weeks before shooting, the English investor putting in 40 percent pulled out, and Media Home Entertainment covered it. Heron Communications and Smart Egg Pictures also came in. Robert Shaye later said the film ended up at $1.1 million and that half the money came from a Yugoslavian backer, Djordje Zecevic of Smart Egg Pictures. The AFI Catalog lists the co-production partners as London's VTC Productions and Smart Egg Pictures.

David Warner was Craven's first choice for Freddy and did makeup tests, but he had to drop out over scheduling. Kane Hodder, later known as Jason Voorhees, met with Craven about the part. Casting director Annette Benson talked Craven into seeing Robert Englund, who had auditioned for her before. Englund had rubbed cigarette ash under his eyes and slicked back his hair for the audition. He took the role because it was the only job that fit the break between the V miniseries and the V TV series.

Heather Langenkamp beat more than 200 actresses at an open audition. Craven wanted someone who did not seem like Hollywood. Casting director Annette Benson knew her from earlier auditions for Night of the Comet and The Last Starfighter, both of which she lost to Catherine Mary Stewart. Benson later said Demi Moore and Courteney Cox did not audition, despite rumors, and she was not sure about Tracey Gold or Jennifer Grey.

Johnny Depp came to the audition with his friend Jackie Earle Haley. Glen was written as a big blond jock, and Depp was turned down at first, but Craven's daughters liked his photo too. Nicolas Cage's agent had introduced Depp to Benson. Charlie Sheen was offered the part and turned it down. Benson says his asking price was double the $1,142 weekly wage New Line could pay. Sheen says he just did not believe in the movie. Mark Patton, who later starred in Part 2, said it came down to him and Depp.

Principal photography began June 11, 1984, and ran 32 days in and around Los Angeles, wrapping at the end of July. The AFI Catalog says the start was first planned for mid-March 1984 as a 30-day shoot. Sean S. Cunningham, Craven's partner from The Last House on the Left, helped near the end of the shoot by running a second unit on some of Nancy's dream scenes.

Nick Corri was using heroin during the shoot while dealing with depression after a stretch of homelessness. Langenkamp later said he was high during their jail cell scene and that she thought he was giving the best performance of his life.

Craven's ending, where Nancy walks out into a dreamlike morning with her friends, did not satisfy Shaye, who wanted a twist with Freddy driving the car. Craven refused to put Freddy behind the wheel. They came up with about five endings and used the one with Freddy pulling Marge through the door. The planned fog would not hold in the wind even with about 20 people running fog machines. The fight over the ending is one reason Craven did not work on Freddy's Revenge.

Filming locations

• 1428 North Genesee Avenue, Los Angeles: Exterior of Nancy's house, 1428 Elm Street. Interiors were built as sets.
• 1419 North Genesee Avenue, Los Angeles: The Lantz house
• John Marshall High School, Los Angeles: Springwood High School exteriors
• Lincoln Heights Jail, Los Angeles: Boiler room and police station interiors. The jail had been closed since 1965.
• Cahuenga Branch Library, Los Angeles: Police station exterior
• Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles: Rod's burial
• American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive: The sleep disorders clinic
• TVC Studios, Los Angeles: Stage work, per the AFI Catalog
• The Thompson house exterior is the well-known Los Angeles residence used as 1428 Elm Street; location records are being separated from studio-set records.
• The 32-day Los Angeles shoot used 1428 North Genesee Avenue for Nancy's exterior, 1419 North Genesee for Glen's house, 620 Milwood Avenue for Tina's house, Lincoln Heights Jail for the boiler-room/police-station interiors, and John Marshall High School for exterior school photography.

Effects and makeup

David B. Miller designed Freddy's burned face from photos of burn victims he got from the UCLA Medical Center.

Jim Doyle designed a full rotating room for Tina's death. The camera operator and Craven sat in bucket seats taken from a Datsun B-210 while the set turned, so Amanda Wyss appears to be dragged up the wall and across the ceiling. The same rig was used for Glen's death. The set was turned upside down and red-dyed water was poured through the bed, because stage blood did not look right as a geyser. The room once spun the wrong way and soaked Craven and Langenkamp.

More than 500 gallons of fake blood were used on the film, according to Wikipedia. The DVD box set booklet says thousands of gallons ran through conduits in the rotating bedroom.

The bathtub scene used a bottomless tub built over a pool. A stuntwoman doubled Langenkamp underwater. The box set booklet quotes Englund saying the hand coming out of the water was Jim Doyle's, from inside a 450-gallon tank.

The staircase that turns to goo under Nancy's feet was Shaye's idea, taken from his own nightmares. Wikipedia says it was done with pancake mix. The booklet describes it as Bisquick and chopped carpet.

When Freddy leans out of the wall over Nancy's bed, that is Jim Doyle pushing through a wall made of spandex.

For Freddy walking through the bars of Rod's cell, Craven measured the exact camera height and angle, shot the empty set, shot Englund walking through the same space, and had a rotoscope artist matte out the bars.

The centipede coming out of Tina's mouth first used a rubber centipede Wyss tried to push out. The final shot is a real centipede crawling out of a clay head of Wyss sculpted by Miller. The centipede got loose on set for a while before it was found.

David B. Miller's Freddy makeup and the film's physical dream effects receive separate practical-effects records from optical/post-production effects.

The bathtub attack used a special deep/bottomless tub arrangement over water, allowing the glove and performer/stunt work to appear beneath Nancy.

More than 500 gallons of artificial blood/red water were used across the production's effects work.

Tina's ceiling death and Glen's blood-geyser sequence used the same rotating-room rig; the bathtub attack was staged with a bottomless tub over a pool, and Freddy pressing through Nancy's wall used a stretchable spandex wall rather than a digital effect.

Props and costumes

Freddy's glove was designed and built by Jim Doyle. Craven asked for something like long fingernails, made by someone with boilermaker skills. Production designer Greg Fonseca brought knife samples. They picked a steak knife, turned it upside down, removed the back edge and ground a new edge on the face. Doyle used copper tubing, tinner's rivets and other boiler room hardware.

Wikipedia says two versions were made, a hero glove for cutting scenes and a safer stunt glove. The Nightmare on Elm Street Companion says four were made in all: a prototype, two stunt gloves with plastic and wooden parts, and one hero glove of copper and stainless steel for close-ups.

The original hero glove went to Wes Craven, who lent it to Freddy's Revenge, where it was stolen. Effects crew member Charles Belardinelli has said it might be at a Hard Rock Cafe. Doyle says the original is easy to spot because its index-finger blade broke and was soldered back, leaving a seam.

The red and green striped sweater came from Craven's reading of a 1982 Scientific American article on clashing colors. The fedora carries the name Fred Krueger inside, which Nancy finds after pulling it out of her dream.

Freddy's bladed glove and burned makeup are tracked as separate prop/effects lineages, including hero/stunt variants and licensed replica history.

Jim Doyle's original glove was conceived as a rough boilermaker-built weapon: a work glove with copper hardware, rivets and inverted knife blades. One hero metal-blade glove and two safer stunt duplicates established the prop lineage followed by later films.

Design

Production artifacts

Art and design

• The IMP Awards primary one-sheet credits illustration to Matthew Joseph Peak.

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Charles Bernstein wrote the score, a mix of synthesizers and orchestral cues. Varese Sarabande released the soundtrack in 1984. The album runs 33 minutes 32 seconds. Craven said Gary Wright's song Dream Weaver helped shape the film and gave it a synthesizer idea.

The jump rope rhyme was already in the script, modeled on One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. The melody was written by Alan Pasqua, Langenkamp's boyfriend and later husband, and Bernstein worked it into the score. One of the three girls who sang it was Robert Shaye's 14-year-old daughter.

Song: 'Nightmare' performed by 213, written and produced by Martin Kent, Steve Karshner and Michael Schurig.

Varese Sarabande reissued the score on CD in October 2005, and put tracks on Freddy's Favorites: Best of A Nightmare on Elm Street (October 12, 1993) and A Nightmare on Elm Street I and II (November 22, 1995).

The score is in Varese Sarabande's 8-CD Nightmare box set (October 16, 2015) and the 12-CD Little Box of Horror (2016).

Death Waltz Recording Co. put it in the 8-LP Box of Souls set in 2017. Its 180-gram LP with Mike Saputo artwork came in Pizza Face, Freddy's Sweater, black and Texas Frightmare Weekend exclusive colors. A 2021 vinyl edition has 29 tracks.

Death Waltz, Mondo and WaterTower Music released a 40th anniversary expanded 2-LP in November 2024 on 140-gram vinyl with extra cues and sketches, liner notes by Bernstein and design by Mike Saputo.

Soundtrack releases

Home Media

• 1985 VHS, Media Home Entertainment. Pan and scan. Video sales earned about $8 million.
• 1985 Betamax, Media Home Entertainment. Pan and scan.
• 1986 LaserDisc, Media Home Entertainment. Pan and scan.
• 1986 VHD, Victor Company of Japan. Pan and scan, Japan only.
• 1987 VHS, Media Home Entertainment. Pan and scan reissue and a Spanish-subtitled edition.
• 1993 VHS, Video Treasures. Pan and scan.
• 1995 VHS, Video Treasures. Double the Horror set with Freddy's Revenge.
• 1996 LaserDisc, Elite Entertainment. Special Collector's Edition with deleted scenes, outtakes and three alternate endings. This was the first US release of the uncut version. A widescreen Elite disc also came out that year.
• 1996 VHS, Anchor Bay Entertainment. Two-tape Collector's Edition with the same deleted scenes and outtakes as the LaserDisc.
• 1997 VHS, New Line Home Video. Mastered in high definition.
• 1999 VHS, New Line Home Video. Remastered pan and scan and widescreen editions with the trailer and a Wes Craven interview. Also a seven-tape box set.
• 1999 DVD, New Line Home Video. Nightmare on Elm Street Collection box set with all six sequels.
• 2000 DVD, New Line Home Video. Digitally remastered, with the screenplay included.
• 2006 DVD, New Line Infinifilm two-disc edition. Restored picture, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 and original mono. Two audio commentaries, alternate and extended scenes (including Marge revealing she had another child Freddy killed), the Freddy-driving-the-car ending, and scares from the sequels and Freddy vs. Jason.
• 2008 DVD, New Line Home Video. 4 Film Favorites with Parts 2 to 4.
• 2010 Blu-ray, New Line and Warner Home Video, April 13, 2010. Carries the 2006 extras: Focus Points, two commentaries, three featurettes, alternate endings and a trivia track.
• 2014 DVD, Warner Home Video. Walmart exclusive double feature with Freddy's Revenge.
• 2017 DVD, Warner Home Video. 4-Film Collection: Monster Mayhem. New Line also put out a double feature with Part 2.
• 2018 DVD, Warner Home Video. Double feature with Freddy's Revenge.
• 2020 Blu-ray, Best Buy exclusive SteelBook with digital code and the 2010 extras.
• 2024 4K Ultra HD, Warner Bros. 40th anniversary. Digital October 1, disc October 15, 2024. Standard, SteelBook and a SteelBook limited to 4,400 copies. New 4K restoration with HDR and Dolby Atmos. Both the theatrical cut and the uncut version, which adds 8 seconds; both run 91 minutes. Extras: Ready Freddy Focus Points, two audio commentaries, the alternate endings, The House That Freddy Built, Never Sleep Again: A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Night Terrors: The Origins of Wes Craven's Nightmares.
• 2025 4K Ultra HD, Warner Bros. A Nightmare on Elm Street 7-Film Collection. US street date September 30, 2025. UK release October 27, 2025, in standard and Collector's SteelBook editions, with the uncut versions of this film and The Dream Child.
• 2025 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, Warner Bros. Japan Collector's Box, 11 discs, December 3, 2025. This film's disc has English Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD MA 2.0 and a Japanese mono dub.

Home video history

• The Nightmares on Elm Street Parts 1, 2 and 3, novelization by Jeffrey Cooper, St. Martin's, 1987, 216 pages.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street, young readers adaptation by E.L. Flood, Crestwood House (Macmillan), May 1991, 48 pages, Tales of Terror series.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street, young adult adaptation by Bob Italia, Abdo and Daughters, September 1992, 64 pages, with color photos and profanity removed.
• A Nightmare on Elm Street video game for the NES, developed by Rare and published by LJN, October 1990.
• An eight-issue 3D comic adaptation written by Andy Mangels for Blackthorne Publishing was commissioned in early 1989 but never published after Blackthorne went bankrupt.
• McFarlane Toys Movie Maniacs Series 1 Freddy Krueger, 1998, with hat, glove, Freddy puppet and mini poster stand.
• McFarlane Toys Movie Maniacs 3 18-inch Freddy Krueger, 2000, with removable hat and motion-activated sound.
• McFarlane Toys Movie Maniacs Series 4 Freddy Krueger, October 2001.
• NECA Ultimate Freddy 7-inch figure, 30th anniversary, 2014 (item 39759). Three heads, damaged hand, dead-skin mask, tongue phone and fedora.
• NECA Freddy accessory set with Freddy worm, Freddy TV and normal and nightmare Elm Street signs.
• Trick or Treat Studios Deluxe Freddy Krueger Glove by Anders Eriksen (SKU MAAEWB100), 14.5 by 4.5 inches, copper armature, stainless steel blades, leather glove.
• Trick or Treat Studios Freddy Krueger mask sculpted by Russ Lukich, a Deluxe mask with fedora, and the '84 Freddy Mask reissued from the original Don Post Studios master.
• BoxLunch Freddy Krueger T-shirt.
• Death Waltz Recording Co. and Mondo soundtrack LPs (see Music).
• NECA Ultimate Freddy 7-inch figure based on the 1984 film, with multiple heads, alternate hand, dead-skin mask, tongue phone and fedora.
• Trick or Treat Studios officially licensed 1984-style Freddy latex mask sculpted by Russ Lukich from screen and behind-the-scenes reference.
• Trick or Treat Studios '84 Freddy Mask reissue based on the original Don Post Studios master.

Books and publishing

Replica props and masks

The catalog

Trailers & clips

Gallery

Posters & Key Art

Film Stills

Behind the Scenes

Press & Promo

Effects

Props

Production Art

Home Media

Merchandise