Cinema history is filled with tantalizing ‘what ifs,’ ranging from the weird to the fascinating. What if Kubrick had been able to make his epic Napoleon? What if Bill Murray had been cast as Batman in the 1989 film? What would David Lynch’s Return of the Jedi have looked like? Now, we can chalk another one up on the board, because in an interview with Cinema Blend, Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, revealed that he lobbied to make A Nightmare on Elm Street 3.
Elm Street scholars will of course know that the third film in the franchise is Dream Warriors. Set in a mental hospital, we find ‘final girl’ Nancy Thompson training her patients to control their dreams in order to combat Freddy. Needless to say, it doesn’t end well for most of them (I seem to remember Freddy injecting one person with a buttload of heroin).
Englund says his threequel would have been completely different, however, revolving around Tina Gray – the first and arguably most memorable of Freddy’s on-screen kills. In the film, we’d see Tina’s sister attempting to solve her murder, no doubt being drawn into a surreal and nightmarish world of stabbings and cruelly cheesy one-liners.
Who can say whether Englund’s version would have been better than Dream Warriors, which is widely considered to be a high point for the franchise (as well as giving us the kickass Dokken song of the same name). Either way, it doesn’t look like you can keep Freddy down for long – though Englund is getting a little old for the striped top and glove, persistent rumors link Kevin Bacon (inspired casting) to a rebooted version of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Meanwhile, you can see Englund again in Nightworld, his latest movie that’s playing in select theatres and on-demand from October 20th.
