Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Review, BTS Secrets & Freddy Krueger Lore

So what I love about this film is Wes Craven, where he drew his inspiration to kind of start this story off.

And you think it was a dream demon of pure fiction, but it actually came from a really terrifying real life event.

So Wes Wes Craven had read an article in the LA Times about a young group of men who were dying in their sleep.

Now, back in the 70s, the Hmong refugees were fleeing war and genocide from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

And these guys were dying in their sleep all of a sudden from something that they kind of put down to sudden and expected nocturnal death syndrome.

And they were a group known for apparently if they had dreams, they would write them down once they woke up and it would be a way of purging them, especially I suppose if it was a nightmare.

But some of them weren't waking up and I suppose being so young, it's hard to kind of decide why is it happening and they never really got a proper answer.

So I think they just put it down to like stress, nightmares and cardiac arrhythmia.

And to be fair, all the stuff they've been through, you can kind of like, you know, explain that away.

Next, we have the name Freddy Krueger.

Now, that came from a childhood bully of Wes Craven.

And I'll be honest with you, I would love to know, which I haven't Googled for some reason, but I would love to know what this guy thinks about this.

You know, he was a kid.

He was probably an asshole.

Hopefully grew out of it, as you should when you get older or just not do it in the first place.

And then we have something about Freddie that's very recognisable.

And that is, of course, his face, his clothes and his glove.

Now his face was modeled after a homeless man.

So Wes Craven one night saw this guy looking through his window and that scared him.

And he obviously wears a hat and he has nicer fingers.

The glove itself was designed by a Jim Doyle.

But the one thing that really does stand out here is his jumper and it's got colors that we all know and they were picked for a reason.

So he read an article in Scientific America that showed you that the human eyes apparently have difficulty processing bright red and green next to each other.

And the color combination, you know, it was engineered to make people feel psychological discomfort.

So that's what it was for the viewer.