A Nightmare on Elm Street/Fun Facts

• Robert Englund cut himself the first time that he tried on the infamous Freddy glove.

• The film was shot in 30 days.

• Freddy Krueger has under 7 minutes of screen time.

• Johnny Depp's first film

• Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.

• New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "the house that Freddy built".

• The idea behind the glove was a practical one on Wes Craven's part, as he wanted to give the character a unique weapon, but also something that could be made cheaply and wouldn't be difficult to use or transport. At the time, he was studying primal fears embedded in the subconscious of people of all cultures and discovered that one of those fears is attack by animal claws. Around the same time, he saw his cat unsheathe its claws, and the two concepts merged, although in the original script the blades were fishing knives, not steak knives as in the finished film.

• It would take about 3 hours to get Robert Englund into his Freddy make-up.

• The little girl skipping rope was the daughter of the couple whose home was used as Tina's house.

• All of the boiler room footage in the film was shot in the basement of the Lincoln Heights Jail, which was condemned shortly after production wrapped, due to the high levels of asbestos.

• Nancy mentions taking a drug so she won't dream. This drug (Hypnocil) ends up being a major plot point in later Freddy movies.

• Johnny Depp accompanied his friend Jackie Earle Haley to auditions for the film. Instead of Haley being chosen for a role, it was Depp who was spotted by director Wes Craven, who asked him if he would like to read for a part. Depp got a part in the film, Haley didn't, but Haley would go on to play Freddy in the remake 26 years later (A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)).

• According to Wes Craven, Robert Englund was not the first choice for the role of Fred Krueger; he had initially wanted a stunt man to play the part, but upon testing several stunt men, he realized he needed an actor.

• The original glove was used in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985), and was also seen in Evil Dead II (1987). However, when Wes Craven loaned the glove to the A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) set, it was lost, and has never been located since.

• Wes Craven first came up with the basic idea for the movie from several newspaper articles printed in the LA Times over a three year period about a group of Southeast Asian refugees from the Hmong tribe, several of whom died in the throes of horrific nightmares. The group had come to America to escape the reign of Pol Pot, and within a year of arriving, three men had died, with the situation the same in each cases; the young, otherwise healthy, man would have a nightmare, then refuse to sleep for as long as possible. Upon finally falling asleep from exhaustion, the man awoke screaming, then died. Autopsy results revealed that they had not died because of heart failure, they had simply died. It was this lack of cause which intrigued Craven so much. Medical authorities have since called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome, a variant of Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS) and Brugada Syndrome.

• (at around 34 mins) The film playing on Nancy's TV when she drifts off to sleep in her bedroom is Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981).

• The very first time we see Freddy in the movie, he isn't being played by Robert Englund, but by special-effects man Charles Belardinelli, as Belardinelli was the only one who knew exactly how to cut the glove and insert the blades.

• Heather Langenkamp beat over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy Thompson, some of the other actresses who auditioned for the role of Nancy were Jennifer Grey, Demi Moore, Courteney Cox and Tracey Gold.

• The film cost roughly $1.8 million to produce, a figure it made back in its opening weekend.

• One of the main reasons Johnny Depp was chosen was because the director's daughter thought he was "beautiful".

• (at around 40 mins) During the scene where Nancy is running towards her house with Freddy right behind her, Heather Langenkamp cut her foot and required stitches. When viewing this scene you can clearly see her limping as she enters her house. This wasn't acting, but rather a genuine reaction to her injury. If you look closely you can see the bandage she's wearing in the last shot of the "goo stairs" sequence, which takes place just moments later.

• (at around 16 mins) The scene were Freddy's arms elongate were achieved by having men with fishing poles on each side of the alley marionetting a set of puppet arms attached to actor Robert Englund.

• On the DVD audio commentary, Wes Craven says he was told that this was the first film to use a breakaway mirror.

• (at around 53 mins) In an interview with Heather Langenkamp, she mentioned that Ronee Blakley really did slap her during the kitchen scene. However, if you watch the scene carefully, you can see that she must be referring to a previous take. It's obvious that the slap seen in the final take is artificial.

• The inspiration for the character of Freddy came from several sources in Wes Craven's childhood. Fred Krueger was a schoolmate of Craven with whom he had shared a paper route, and who had bullied him for several years. In The Last House on the Left (1972), Craven also used this experience as inspiration, calling the villain Krug. Freddy's appearance (especially the dirty clothes and hat) was inspired by a hobo who Craven saw staring at him through his window one day when he was ten.

• The words "Elm Street" are not spoken at all during the movie.

• The scene where Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is attacked by Freddy in her bathtub was shot using a bottomless tub, which was put in a bathroom set that had been built over a swimming pool. During the underwater sequence, Langenkamp was replaced with stuntwoman Christina Johnson. Langenkamp spent 12 hours in the bath during filming.

• According to Robert Englund, he based the physicality of Freddy on Klaus Kinski's performance in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). Englund also says on his DVD commentary that in his mind, the back-story for Freddy was based on something from his own childhood. On Valentine's Day when Englund was in school, everyone in the class made Valentine cards for one another, but there was one boy who received no cards from anyone. Englund theorized that this boy went on to become Freddy.

• In the original script, Freddy was a child molester, however the decision was made to change him into being a child murderer to avoid accusations of exploiting a series of child molestations in California around the time of production.

• (at around 35 mins) 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." Many viewers find this humorous, thinking that Heather Langenkamp was 20 years old at the time of the movie. However, on the DVD audio commentary, she's quoted as saying, "I was 18 or I was 19. I can't remember."

• Wes Craven's original concept for Freddy Krueger was considerably more gruesome, with teeth showing through the flesh over the jaw, pus 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.

• Wes Craven wrote the script and presented it in 1981 to try to sell it to a major studio, but no one wanted it. He said that "It just flew around" for three years until New Line Cinema picked it up.

• Charlie Sheen, John Cusack, Brad Pitt, Kiefer Sutherland, Nicolas Cage and C. Thomas Howell were considered for the role of Glen.

• (at around 1h 7 mins) There is a scene where Nancy attempts to warn Glen that Freddy is coming after him. She looks down to discover Freddy's mouth and tongue have taken form of the bottom half of the phone. The effect was made with cheap rubber and prosthetic. The effects team also reportedly stated Heather Langenkamp wanted to take the prop home after shooting, which they thought was unusual.

• Freddy Krueger 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.

• Heather Langenkamp's boyfriend at the time of the shooting is credited for creating Freddy's nursery rhyme.

• (at around 50 mins) When Nancy's dreams are "examined", when her hair turns white, the nurse is played by Wes Craven's ex-wife, Mimi Craven.

• The fictional address of the house in the film is 1428 Elm Street. The actual house where filming took place is located in Los Angeles, California, on 1428 North Genesee Avenue. The numbers "1428" on the side of the house were stolen and never returned, according to present real-life Elm Street House owner Angie Hill, who was quite upset over it. This is shown on the 2nd disc of the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010).

• (at around 14 mins) The scene where Freddy presses through the wall above Nancy was shot by stretching a sheet of spandex across a hole in the wall and pressing against it. In the shot, Freddy is played by special effects designer Jim Doyle.

• Charlie Sheen was interested in the role of Glen, but according to producer Robert Shaye, he wanted more money than the production could afford.

• Heather Langenkamp's favorite performance of her own.

• (at around 1h 29 mins) Although he is credited as Freddy Krueger in the sequels, Freddy is credited as Fred Krueger in this film.

• The sparking glove effect seen throughout the movie was achieved by attaching the glove to a car battery. The famous scraping noise was created by scratching a steak knife on the underside of a metal chair.

• The first A Nightmare on Elm Street was originally supposed to be set in Los Angeles, California. The script mentions the San Fernando Valley, a filmed-but-cut line from the film has a teenager say "California is the most high and palmy state, man!" in the classroom scene, and palm trees are visible in the background of some scenes. This detail was changed for the final cut of the film to make it vague in which city the movie was set - the town's name or possible location is never stated at any point. The second movie establishes the town's name as Springwood, and later movies confirm the new location as Springwood, Ohio.

• A Jason hockey mask can be seen on the shelf in the room Nancy is trying to sleep in.

• Cinematographer Jacques Haitkin wore an eye patch during filming so as not to be distracted by anything else on set.

• The movie almost folded before production had even begun. Initially, Smart Egg productions were supposed to put $1 million into the movie, but they dropped out several days before filming began, and producer Robert Shaye had to try to raise money elsewhere. Two weeks into shooting, the production had no money left to pay the crew, so line producer John H. Burrows used his credit card. Eventually, Shaye brokered a deal with a European company called Media Home Entertainment and subsequently persuaded Smart Egg to put up the final $200,000 needed to complete the film.

• Special makeup effects artist David B. Miller based Freddy's disfigurement on photographs of burn victims he saw in UCLA Medical Centre.

• In relation to the famous red and green sweater, in the script, the sweater was red and yellow (based on the colors worn by Plastic Man, who, like Freddy, could change his form; the idea was that whatever Freddy changed into would be yellow and red). However, when Craven read an article in Scientific American in 1982 that said the two most contrasting colors to the human retina were red and green, he decided to alter the colors.

• Ranked at 17 on Bravo's The 100 Scariest Movie Moments (2004). Freddy Krueger was ranked at number 40 on the AFI 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains list.

• Prior to making the film, Amanda Wyss had never seen a horror movie and Heather Langenkamp had only ever seen Burnt Offerings (1976).

• The 2006 Infinifilm release fixes a continuity error in the original film. In the scene where Glen watches over Nancy as she sleeps, she turns her light off before sleeping, but it's on when she wakes up. The Infinifilm release fixes this mistake by digitally darkening the room when she wakes up, until Nancy's mother enters the room and turns it on.

• According to Heather Langenkamp, the melting staircase scene was shot using pancake mix. According to Wes Craven however, it was oatmeal and glue. According to the fact track on the DVD, it was Bisquick. The scene was directed by Robert Shaye who was on set pressuring for the film to wrap, and Craven told Shaye he could direct it, as it was based on a dream Shaye himself had once had. In another interview, Heather Langenkamp added that mushroom soup was also one of the ingredients in the staircase mixture.

• (at around 11 mins) The scene where Glen (Johnny Depp) lies on the couch and can hear Tina (Amanda Wyss) and Rod (Jsu Garcia) having sex was based on an incident from Wes Craven's own life where he lay on a couch listening to a couple having sex next door.

• Actress Ronee Blakley played a country superstar in Nashville (1975) several years before playing Nancy's mother. Connie Britton, who played the same role (though the character's name was altered) in A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), later went to play a country superstar in the unrelated TV series Nashville (2012).

• A few days before the film was to go on general release, the processing lab which had the negative informed New Line that they wouldn't be releasing it as they hadn't been paid. At the last minute however, producer Robert Shaye was able to negotiate a deal.

• This was the second movie produced by New Line Cinema. The first was Alone in the Dark (1982), directed by Jack Sholder and starring Jack Palance. However the film was given a very limited theatrical release, and when it performed poorly and received bad reviews, it was released straight to video. As such, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) was New Line's first genuine mainstream cinematic venture.

• Wes Craven had helped Sean S. Cunningham by working on a few shots for Friday The 13th. In turn, near the end of the production of this movie, Cunningham directed a few shots when several units were working at once.

• Many extended scenes, which were lifted from the work print, appeared on the 1996 Anchor Bay Special Edition release. Charles Bernstein had not yet composed the iconic score for the film, so these scenes include preexisting temporary music taken from other sources. Some of the music heard is from Final Exam (1981) by composer Gary S. Scott. Scott later went on to score many episodes of the Elm Street spin-off TV series Freddy's Nightmares (1988).

• David Warner was originally slated to play Freddy Krueger. Make-up tests were done, but Warner had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Robert Englund was cast instead.

• The film takes place in 1981.

• Another source for the film is a 1968 short film made by students of Wes Craven's at Clarkson University. The film parodied contemporary horror movies, and was filmed along Elm Street in Potsdam, New York (the town in the movie was named Madstop - Potsdam spelled backwards).

• Loosely based on a true story of soldiers in Cambodia dying in their sleep after bouts of insomnia and hallucinations.

• (at around 47 mins) According to the nurse's name tag, Nancy's sleep is monitored at the "University School of Medicine."

• In one draft of the script, Tina's age is listed as 15.

• During the production, Wes Craven stayed in a small apartment that belonged to Wim Wenders, the former husband of Ronee Blakley.

• Tina's name is mentioned 39 times throughout the course of the film.

• The original script portrayed Freddy Krueger as a child molester. The idea was abandoned for this film, but it was used in A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010).

• Nancy's house has a blue door in this movie. In all other sequels the same house has the iconic red door.

• Elm street was named after Elm Street in Wheaton Illinois, where Wes Craven went to college.

• This film was shot in 90 days.

• The sound of Freddy's knife-fingers scraping across metal was actually produced by scraping a steak knife across the underside of a metal chair.

• Wes Craven was a professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam NY which has the actual Elm Street situated between SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson University. The house it was based on is now owned by a Fraternity and is listed at the address 20 US 11 Potsdam, NY 13676 (this stretch of Elm Street becomes US 11 in Potsdam)

• Added to the National Film Registry in 2021.