Elm Street Almanac

Five things to know about the Nightmare neighborhood

The Nightmare on Elm Street reboot opens tomorrow, but before you go stand in line for Freddy 2.0, here are some things to know about the franchise:

No. 1 The original idea for the films came when Nightmare creator Wes Craven read newspaper articles about three unrelated young boys who died while having bad dreams.

No. 2 The original Freddy, Robert Englund, was once detained by airport security when he tried to take his claws onto an airplane.

No. 3 Craven named his villain Freddy, after a bully who used to beat him up in school. Meanwhile, Krueger was an extension of “Krug,” the name of the killer in Craven’s first film The Last House on the Left.

No. 4 Freddy’s iconic red and green sweater was chosen because Craven had read that red and green were the two most difficult colors for the eye to process when they appear next to each other.

No. 5 The first Nightmare’s $1.2 million budget was so tight that, two weeks before its opening, a lab refused to release the film negatives because they hadn’t been paid. Similar financial concerns were in no way a problem for tomorrow’s reboot.

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