Tasha 0:00

1984, the year of Yacht Rock Big Hair, the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and a little movie that could about a child predator with knives for fingers and a wicked sense of humor back for the kids that got away slipping in through their very own dreams. But where did the idea of a nightmare on Elm Street come from? I'm Tasha and this is Matt. Grab a coffee because this is one story that is real twisty. New Line Cinema started as a distribution company in 1968 out of the back of a car. Bob Shea was a copyright lawyer who discovered that the copyright to an old film, Reefer Madness, had lapsed. So he bought it up and then he picked up John Waters' Pink Flamingos. He'd keep the films on 16 millimeter in the trunk of his car and go to army bases, prisons, and universities to sell them for showings. He said he didn't get into the business to make money, but to entertain people. But that formula really wasn't working for him. Newline was just a handful of employees working out of a storefront when they bought the rights to Freddie. Wes Craven had left his teaching job in New York for his dreams of working in film, and he had a few films under his belt by this time. He'd been trying to shop the Elm Street script around Hollywood, but after three years, no one would touch it. They told him it would never work. The bad guy was just a dream. There were no real stakes, and that can never really be scary until West met Bob. Who said connection that was just a dream come true? Because Bob saw it differently. Bob saw Freddie Krueger as a universal boogeyman. He said, This is wholly relatable. We've all had nightmares. Everybody sleeps. And it just so happened that Bob Shea was in the market for a low-budget horror film from a first timer that he wouldn't have to pay much, that would draw in the youth audience and help make him some quick cash. Because things were in trouble at Newline. They were literally writing checks they couldn't cash, and paychecks were not clearing the bank. And they saw what the youth of America could do to pocketbooks when you gave them a horror film. In the 60s and 70s, Hollywood had really looked down on the genre, but in the 80s, horrors started to take the lead at the box office. The special effects got more advanced, even to the point that in 1981, the Academy Awards created the first category for special effects and presented its very first special effects award to the horror film at American Werewolf in London, which is a big deal. Yeah. Stuart Gordon, the writer and director of the movie Reanimator, chalks it up to the times. You're gonna love this. He said in a documentary by Shudder called In Search of Darkness that horror thrives in repressive government. That you'll see the real life things that scare us about our society reflected back to us on the screen. I may have noticed an uptick in horror movies of late. Just out. Just a few. In the 1980s, we've got Ronald Reagan and the new right in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, of course. Major conservatism. That word is very hard for me. An oppressive era built around materialism, consumerism, excess, and taking back control for the younger from the gen from the younger generations, because they just made a muck of things in the 60s and 70s with like the free love and the hippies, and that apparently was like a mess. Those are the adults in the yes, but you know, they can't blame themselves, they gotta blame the kids. Yeah. So CNN goes on the air in 1980, launching the start of the 24-hour news cycle and more awareness and focus on worldwide news. Before you had like your six o'clock local news, and everything was really kept close to home. But now everyone had access to the nation's and the greater world's fears right in their living room, anytime they turn on the TV, right in time for the height of serial killers. So fun.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Oh yeah.

Tasha 4:48

And if that wasn't scary enough, one year later in 1981, parents could turn the channel over just one or two, and MTV would show them what might be happening under their own roof in their teenager's bedroom. Scandal.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

Wow.

Tasha 5:05

MTV launched the music video, which really changed the landscape of music, kicking off some artists' career and killing off others who weren't so pretty on screen, and it helped push the influx of 80s metal, big hair, and fashion into homes faster. Meanwhile, back on the hill, Reagan and his good pal Margaret Thatcher were pushing industrial deregulations, reduced government spending, and tax cuts for corporations. He called it supply side economics and promised that the benefits would trickle down to the little guy. Now, George H.W. Bush called it voodoo economics when he was running against Reagan for the nomination.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Yeah.

Tasha 5:52

Okay. Fellow Ferris Bueller fans like me will remember the classroom lesson and maybe like me only know these terms because of the classroom lesson in Ferris Bueller. Um, but later George Bush like pretended that he never said anything bad about these economic plans of Reagan's. Uh whenever Reagan was like, Hey, be my VP.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Really?

Tasha 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Politicians forget things they said in the past.

Tasha 6:23

Right. That's crazy. I I think I once heard about a recent vice president who maybe said something about somebody who was running for the Republican nomination, and he really like thought he was a bad guy. But then as soon as the guy was like, Hey, come be my VP, he was like, Oh no, he's great. And and then he became his VP.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

I don't yeah, I don't know that I've I felt like that was recent. I feel it was recent in the last four years.

Tasha 6:52

It's really funny how history repeats itself a lot. It's it's so weird, but anyway, uh Reagan's idea that trickle-down economics, it didn't work, mind blown. What he never balanced the budget, and military spending alone reached as high as $34 million an hour. That's a that's a lot, that's a lot, and the money going out was never offset by spending cuts or tax increases. So by 1982, the U.S. was in its worst recession since the Great Depression. Nine million people were unemployed in November of that year. Businesses were closing, farmers were losing land, banks were defaulting on homes. Later, the stock market crashed in 1987. Sound familiar? During Reagan's eight years in office, the federal government accumulated more debt in his eight years than it had in its entire history to date. His eight years, the entire history of the United States federal government, Matthew.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

That's cutting, cutting spending.

Tasha 8:04

Um, yeah. And to top it all off, he managed to create the Iran Contra affair when he bypassed Congress. I don't know of any president that recently has bypassed Congress, uh, negotiated with terrorists. That also I've never heard of, broke a trade in arms embargo, and secretly sold 1,500 American missiles and other weapons to Iran in their war against Iraq for $48 million and three U.S. hostages. Although Iran took three new hostages after, so it ended up being more of like a tradesies deal. And then Reagan used the money from that secret dalliance with Iran to continue funding and training the anti-communist Nicaraguan rebel group, the Contras, which he had been doing secretly through the CIA since he had taken office. So why was he doing that, you may ask? Why? Well, he was trying to help the Contras fight a Cuban-backed communist group in Central America because Reagan really hated Cuba and he really hated the communists. Reagan called the Contras, quote, freedom fighters, who were, quote, the moral equivalent of our founding fathers since they were fighting communism. Uh, but what he was voluntarily, knowingly turning a blind eye to was that the Contras were using a bunch of the money and weapons that Reagan had been supplying them with all those years to support their drug trafficking operation in the U.S. They had been bringing in a ton of cocaine, uh, which was, you know, having its heyday in the U.S. in the 80s. I don't know if you ever heard of that, but that was like a really big thing. And then they took that money and put it into their war and political assassinations. He knew about the Coke, which is like super scandalous when you put that up against Nancy's Dare program.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

I remember that program.

Tasha 10:08

Mm-hmm. Yeah, me too. But he decided it was a price worth paying in the fight against communism. Communism is a big thing in this episode. If you look at the timeline technically, Americans didn't learn about any of this. They had no idea that their government had been funding and arming Iran terrorists and drug traffickers, drug traffickers bringing coke into the US until 1986, which is like a couple years after the release of Elm Street. So you're probably thinking, what the hell does this have to do with the movie?

SPEAKER_02 10:43

I'm interested. I'm interested. This is a very interesting history lesson.

Tasha 10:47

Well, the coke was already in the streets because the Contras had picked up trafficking in the US in 1981 to fund their anti-communist battle. So the problem was powder cocaine was really expensive. And unless you were selling to like really high-profile neighborhoods, your clientele was pretty limited. So they developed the more affordable crack cocaine to target lower-income urban communities. These communities were already suffering because of Reagan's aforementioned economic brilliancies. Businesses were closing, manufacturing industries were shutting their doors or moving out of the cities, people were losing their jobs, becoming homeless. They were looking for an escape and looking for ways to make money. The euphoria was immediate, but it was also a very short high. The low after it is as low as the high is high. So you have like a five to 10 minute high that is extremely high. And then as soon as they crash, they come down hard. So the user is craving the next hit immediately. If you sold it, you were sure to rake in the cash. One article said that a small-time dealer could easily make two grand a month just on the side. So urban areas became for the 80s. Yes, that's really good for the 80s. So urban areas became the target for traffickers like the Contras and the groups out of South America. Between 82 and 85, the numbers of users in the US increased by 1.6 million people. So that's why Elm Street is being written, filmed, made.

SPEAKER_04 12:54

Yeah.

Tasha 12:54

So the crack epidemic, the crack epidemic in the US brings a dramatic rise in addiction, overdoses, and crime. Reagan, who did everything but roll out a red carpet for the traffickers, launches the war on drugs next. And one of the key elements of the war was stricter and longer sentences for crack cocaine possession, which was more common in lower income minority urban populations than the sentences for powdered cocaine possession, which was more common among predominantly ridiculously rich white people. So now he's issued mass incarcerations in minority populations. In 1983, they launched the 1-800 Cocaine National Hotline, and they were taking more than 1,400 emergency calls a day. Just people overdosing. If that wasn't devastating enough, 1981 also brought the AIDS epidemic to the U.S. In 1999, researchers found that a form of simian immunodeficiency virus, SIV CPZ, nearly identical to HIV, um, can jump from chimps to humans. And scientists believe they tracked the start of the HIV global pandemic to the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, starting all the way back in 1920. It's believed that SIV, CPZ, right? That SIV CPZ jumped to human hunters in 1920 in the Congo when the hunters ate infected chimps, or the chimps infected blood got into an open wound of the hunters. From there, it started to spread person to person through the Congo, through migrants and sex trade. In the 1960s, they found the first case of HIV spreading to Haiti when Haitian professionals traveled and returned back home from the Congo. It then entered New York, the first case around 1970, through travel to the Caribbean and San Francisco later in the 1970s. So it's believed that it took 50 years before it reached the U.S. But then it just spread like wildfire. And then international travel from the US helped it spread very quickly throughout the rest of the world. 1981, the CDC published a report about five previously healthy homosexual men who became ill with pneumonia that was unknown to affect healthy people. The next year, the New York Times wrote an article stating that this new immune disorder had already affected 335 people. So we went from five to three hundred-five within a year. Of those 335 people, 136 had already lost their lives. Oh. Yes. They believed that it affected mostly homosexual men. And so they started calling it gay-related immune deficiency, even though the CDC already knew that anyone could be infected. They knew all the ways that it could be transmitted, but still they were calling it a gay disease. And the gay plague, they called it that for years, which just meant that now we've got another group of people that are being unjustly persecuted in the public alongside the minorities that are being wrongly incarcerated at huge astronomically long sentenced times. The term AIDS was first coined by the CDC for the disease in September of 82. So this is happening while we're making Elm Street. The first cases were reported in European countries by the end of 82, but the HIV virus wasn't discovered and identified as the cause of AIDS until 84, the year Elm Street releases. And they didn't license a blood test for it until the following year. So this is a definite rising fear in the public. And back on the hill, the president is closed lips. There's one persistent reporter asking about it at the White House. And when he does, the press secretary makes jokes about it, implying that the reporter's asking because he's gay and he has it. I've read the transcripts from the press briefing. It's disgusting. And the press secretary, every time, he just keeps brushing it off and saying that the president isn't aware of it. By 85, more than 5,000 people had died from the disease. And Reagan finally publicly acknowledged the existence of AIDS because he was asked about it directly by a reporter in public in September of 1985. But he changed the subject very quickly. He didn't order any research on it from his general surgeon until 1986. And then he didn't read the research that his general surgeon did with Anthony Fauci. We know that name. He gets called in a lot when our presidents don't know how to handle public health crises. In fact, Reagan refused all meetings with his general surgeon to discuss the findings. And he just kept his head in the sand until he was asked to give a speech in 87 by his wife's pal, Elizabeth Taylor. Then he was like, oh, brief me on this report. And he found out that the report that had been made in 86 projected that 270,000 Americans would contract HIV AIDS by 1991, with 179,000 of them dead by that same year due to an action. He was setting on the report and he was doing nothing. So these are all themes that you see woven throughout the film. Inaction by adults, bad decisions by authority figures, and a lack of leaders are major factors in a nightmare on Elm Street. Another theme of the 80s that we see is death before your time. Our victims are very young. Even the victims that are happening off stage before the film starts, they're kids. Sex leading to death, that's a big thing. Substance abuse, loss of innocence. It's all there. So let's leave reality and get into it.

unknown 19:39

You ready?

SPEAKER_02 19:39

I'm so lighthearted.

Tasha 19:40

I know. I know it just gets better.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Get that other second, that second cup of coffee or right? Irish cream coffee.

Tasha 19:48

I know. Have you taken your antidepressants today?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Bailey. Any Bailey.

Tasha 19:53

So a nightmare on Elm Street released in 1984, but it takes place in 1981, the year we were born.

SPEAKER_04 20:01

Yeah.

Tasha 20:01

It was written and directed by Wes Craven and was 91 minutes of pure nightmare fuel filmed on 35 millimeter. I remember the first time that I saw clips of this movie. I was in a back bedroom in my grandmother's house. And my cousins, who were older than me, um, some of them were teenagers by this point. They were playing um like little pieces of it on the TV. I don't know if it was commercials or like parts of a music video on MTV or what, but I just remember seeing Freddie Krueger and being scared out of my mind. He was so frightening to me. Like his little I no, I like his stance, I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Um yeah, my first time watching that, uh-huh. Yeah, uh, and I've told you this was we were at a babysitter's for like a summer get-together for all the families.

Tasha 20:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

And all the kids were down in the basement watching something, and I was like getting ready to start first grade, and um I went down to go watch whatever movie they're watching, and I plopped right down in the middle of the couch in the middle of the dark, and then I watched that whole movie, and I did not want to leave it because I was not going down the dark hallway by yourself, yeah. And so I had um uh saw things the next two years, uh, and it was hard to sleep, it was great.

Tasha 21:30

That's like whenever we watched Ring, yeah, Ring, and we were like, Yeah, uh for the next seven days, I'm gonna need you to sit in the bathroom while I take a shower just stand watch.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Well, we have it when we watched that, we had the curtain open to watch next door neighbors like mow their lawn in the middle of the daylight, yeah. And we'd pause it and all that stuff.

Tasha 21:52

Put it on pause for a second. I need a breather.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah, correct.

Tasha 21:55

Freddie Kruger's a child murderer, turned boogeyman, but he's not the only one. Who transforms in this movie? Wes Craven gives us Nancy Thompson, a basic teen girl who becomes a warrior. Freddie's played in all of the original Elm Street movies by Robert England. They tried to replace him in the second film with a stunt actor so that they could save money, but they quickly realized that was a huge mistake. And they called Robert and they were like, please come back. This was such a bad mistake and started shooting again. Freddy's really different from the other 80s horror movie villains because he breaks up the horror with humor and he doesn't hide behind a mask. And boy, does he have a face to hide. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Like he's beautiful. I had a crush on him after my two-year nightmare.

Tasha 22:50

His uh the uh I think the makeup artist, I want to say the makeup designer was David Miller. I may have that wrong. I've got it written down somewhere. Um, but he said that he got the idea for the makeup um from uh pepperoni pizza, uh, which is just really kind of brilliant. Um yeah, David Miller Miller. And he had just finished doing all of the makeup effects for Thriller when he got hired for this film.

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Thriller is after that or before that. Yeah. Oh, that was that was really good.

Tasha 23:28

Yeah. Um, so he uh he's the star of the show, right? He's he's really not about being anything other than who he is. He feeds every kill with a snarky quip. He kind of reminds me of our son in that way. Like he's he's got him.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Our son was a whore.

Tasha 23:47

If David was a horror monster, it would be uh he and Freddie would be hanging out with even if you never see any of the movies, you still know Freddie Krueger because he is an icon. And when you do see the movies, you're probably gonna find yourself rooting for him a little bit over the characters at times because he's iconic and the kids can be ridiculously pathetic. Um, the the other things that really make him interesting is what almost kept him from getting to the screen in the first place. He exists in a dream realm. So his rules bend with dream logic or the lack thereof. Wes and Bob wanted to make a surrealist playground for Freddy, and they really did. And because of this, Nightmare is very different from every other 80s slasher horror franchise. The weirder it gets, the almost more normal it is. If he just like stalked around like Michael Myers, you wouldn't believe it. But because he's in your dream, you need the fantastical to happen, or it just doesn't work.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

It explains why he can pop from one place to another. Exactly.

Tasha 25:01

Exactly. So back to the beginning of the film, we watched Freddie make his knife glove and put it on, and he starts chasing Tina, a cute little blonde in a nightgown that I last saw snub John Cusack on the ski slopes and better off dead. Tina's running through this dirty boiler room, basement place, and and Freddie is just taking his time and laughing. He is in no rush. He scrapes his glove on metal, and the sound of people like scraping their fingernails on chalkboards, and like there's that whole like people can't handle that sound. That sound doesn't bother me. But the sound of Freddie Krueger's knives nails on things, that sound makes my eardrums bleed. Like I that sound gets me. So my ears are bleeding now, and Tina's like half running, half jogging, all bouncing to this turn in the boiler room, and she turns and finds herself stuck. She like, why would you turn? Look before you turn. Didn't you ever like look before crossing the street? I think you should look before you turn down.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

I think if you're running for your life or gently jogging, uh, I don't think you're trying to. I mean, yeah, you'll look. I mean, but I think sometimes there's that moment of you're just gonna run because you're trying to get out of here, but I don't know.

Tasha 26:25

She turns, she's she's cornered, so she screams. And then we hear a baby cry in the background, and I'm like, Why is a baby crying? But we see Freddie's shadow up ahead, and she sees it and she's like, Wait a minute, he he went past me, and so she's like, Am I safe? Is this right? Can I can I leave this? And so she walks forward and he jumps up from behind her with like this glee, and she screams, and that wakes her up from her dream. And her mom and her mom's sleepover guest come in, and Tina's just like, it's just a dream, mom. And her mom's like, Well, uh, look what you did to your nightgown. Cut your damn fingernails and stop dreaming like that. And then she goes off with her nighttime friend, and Tina looks down, and the front of her gown is like sliced from Freddy's glove. So now we've got these like little girls in white jumping rope in the grass. Which first, why are you in white? Why are you in the grass? Grass stains, and that grass is gonna make it difficult to jump rope because the rope's gonna get caught in the grass.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

You're so pessimistic. Those girls were adorable. No, their song was so catchy.

Tasha 27:40

I've got so fun fact Wes wrote the lyrics for that, but he didn't know how it was gonna play out. Nancy, uh, who's played by Heather Lang Langen Camp, Heather Langkamp's boyfriend at the time was a musician, and he created the tune for that on his keyboard, and they kept it. And then the composer for the film was like, Oh, well, I'll just loop it into the actual music for the film off and on for continuity. So that's kind of fun. That's perfect. I wonder, like, did the boyfriend get any royalties for that like later? Because that's like in all the movies.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Shea, is that his name?

Tasha 28:25

He was yeah, he was a cheapo.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Yeah.

Tasha 28:29

So the other thing about this jump roping thing is that if you look at it, and maybe this is just because I spent a lot of time jumping rope, it looks really unnatural, and it looks like the film is in reverse. It it looks like they're jumping rope in reverse, and the sky is like this white, cloudy, dreamlike thing, and there's just something is very wrong here, and they're singing their Freddy rhyme, and so we see Nancy, Tina, and Glenn arrive at school in Glenn's car, and they're talking about nightmares, and Tina's convinced something wild is going on. We meet her boyfriend Rod, who's quite literally the biggest dickhead in the world, and Nancy's like, Oh, he's crazy about you. And I want to shake some people because how can we have a movie where there's supposed to be a badass teenage girl as our hero, but also they're supposed to be okay with being talked to that way and accepting that shit in a relationship. And Wes said he wanted young heroines who didn't trip and fall down and could fight if they had to, but I guess that rule didn't apply to Tina, like just Nancy. So this is our first time seeing all four of our main characters together, and they remind me of the four main characters of Scream, which is also a Wes Craven stamped. I just love that movie. I love it. It's also the first time anyone has ever seen Johnny Depp on screen.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Yeah, and Johnny Depp as the cleanest he's ever gonna be, as a jock. I have never thought of Johnny Depp as a jock.

Tasha 30:12

This was his big break. So Bob Shea said Charlie Sheen wanted the part, but he was asking for like $3,000 a week. And Bob Shea was like, We don't have that money, we're broke. Yeah, so they're looking for actors that they can get for next to nothing. Wes Craven said it got down to Johnny Depp and one other unknown guy, and he was leaning towards the other, and his daughter was like, Dad, it has to be Johnny. And Wes said, That guy, he's kind of sickly and pale. And she was like, Dad, he's beautiful. And that was it. Johnny Depp was Glenn.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Yeah.

Tasha 30:48

So Nancy, Tina, and Glenn are having a sleepover at Tina's because she's too scared to sleep alone. And they realize they're all dreaming about the same weird ass guy. Um, even Glenn, though he's like playing it off, like he's all clear.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

There's denial in some of and from the guys.

Tasha 31:05

The guys are like, I'm too cool to admit anything.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Yeah.

Tasha 31:08

Um, Rod crashes the party because of course he does, but not before scaring the shit out of everyone, because of course he does. And then he and Tina disappear to have sex because of course they do. And Glenn tries to get friendly with his girlfriend Nancy, and she's like, Glenn, we're here for Tina, not for ourselves. And poor Glenn. I mean, like, I get it. At this point, Tina's not even here for Tina anymore. Why should Nancy and Glenn be? And Tina and Rod are loud because of course they are.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Glenn is C blocked by his own girlfriend.

Tasha 31:38

Yes, and Glenn says, I feel so bad for this guy, but he goes, Morality sucks.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

But once again, Johnny Depp, this is this is unlike Johnny Depp.

Tasha 31:52

But to Nancy's credit, Glenn, don't you know the rules? Tina and Rod's days are numbered now.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Yeah.

Tasha 31:59

Uh Tina's more than Rod's.

SPEAKER_02 32:01

They've not seen Scream. Scream is way ahead, so they don't know the rules.

Tasha 32:05

But well, they should have been watching Halloween. That would have told him too. But not before he tells her that he's having nightmares. So Rod tells Tina, I'm having nightmares too. Yep. And then we cut to Nancy, and the crucifix that's hanging above the wall falls on her. And you're like, oh shit. Because as we know from Veronica, crucifixes falling off walls is not a good sign.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah, no, yeah. Again, still ahead from Yes.

Tasha 32:34

Tina and Rod are sleeping, and Tina hears pebbles hitting the window. And so she tries to wake Rod, but he's worthless. She puts on her shirt and she goes to the window and a pebble breaks the glass. And Freddie calls her name and she's like, Who do you think you are? And then we see Freddie like push through the wall above Nancy. We've cut back to her room, and he looks like the ghost in Frighteners, which is like my favorite scene in that movie. And so I like I have like I love this part. Nancy wakes up and Freddie like goes back into the wall, and um she hangs the crucifix back up.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

I have to say, for 1980s, that's pretty cool on a film. That was really cool.

Tasha 33:20

So Tina turns on the backyard light and she goes outside to see who is out there in her underwear and a shirt because these are all smart choices. And then she goes all the way to the alley again. Why? So we see Freddy Silhouette and his arms stretch out to the width of the alley.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

Yeah.

Tasha 33:43

And like the cheat cheesiest thing I've ever seen. But at the time, you know, go for it, 84. And so his arms are stretched all the way to the width of the alley, and his fingernails are like scraping the walls. His and in the documentary Never Sleep Again, they talk about how the nails, the the blades on his um on his glove are meant to be like a physical extension of his evil. And I just think that's so cool. So, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:14

I have to tell you real fast that um his that whole scene with his arm stretched out. I don't know why. I can't tell you, but that reminds me of a munchkin. I don't know why. It somehow reminds me of a munchkin. Because it's like a weird proportion.

Tasha 34:33

All I can think of is stretch Armstrong.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Yeah. But he just looks shorter in that scene because his arms are so big.

Tasha 34:40

He does. Well, he's they make it back to Tina's backyard and he's like, Hey Tina, watch this. And he uses the claws to like cut off his own fingers, and green blood is spurting out. Yeah. And there's this documentary called The Making of a Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven talked about how Freddy's disregard and lack of concern for his own body made it like even more horrifying because it made you realize like you can never really harm him. No, he he doesn't care what happens to his body, he's doing shit to himself.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Like two seconds later, his fingers are back.

Tasha 35:18

Yes, right? So the green blood, we need to talk about that for a second. So the green blood was how they got around the motion picture association picture, the MPAA, yes, which is what rated all of the films. Um, if there was too much red blood, uh they would give a movie an X rating, which meant that their target audience of teens who's going to be coming in to watch the movie paying all the money wouldn't even be allowed in the door.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Not even considered.

Tasha 35:49

Yeah. So at least with an R rating, they could get in if they had an adult with them. So a nightmare on Elm Street released November.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

If it's just a friend that's over 18, that's all it is.

Tasha 36:00

That's all it is. So A Nightmare on Elm Street released November 9th, 1984, with an R rating after a ton of cuts to the film and making changes like Green Blood. Um, and remarkably, 1984, when it released, that was also the year that they created PG 13.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

Oh wow.

Tasha 36:21

Yep. Before that, you had a big jump between PG and R. And so if you look like a lot of movies that came out in the early 80s, some of them are rated PG and they are very questionable.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Yeah, I was just gonna say that.

Tasha 36:35

Um, yeah, like uh I think weird science is one of them. Yeah. Where like you watch it and you're like, how the hell did this get a PG? This is not okay. So Tina tackles Freddie um in the backyard and she rips his face off, and he just like giggles with delight. Yeah, he likes it thinks it's great, and she's screaming in terror. And now we're in the bedroom, and poor Rod is like, this girl has lost his lost her mind. Yeah, and Tina's kicking and screaming under the blanket, and he tries to wake her from what he assumes is just a nightmare, but instead, Tina starts wilding and he gets up and he pulls off the blanket and watches these deep like scrapes appear across her body, and blood is everywhere, and then she levitates and her body goes up the wall on the ceiling and just starts like she she is just moving around the thing. Sh and she's screaming for Rod, and he's screaming for her, and blood is everywhere, and Nancy and Glenn are trying to get in the room, and when they finally do, Rod has gone out the window, and Tina is dead on the floor. And that is just one of the coolest things.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Well, so okay, so I think something about that scene he gets knocked down. And I I thought, wasn't it um right before she got slashed that he that she kind of like did like this weird turn thing and knocked him down? And then and then she got slashed because I thought he just didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Well, she's already like isn't she levitating before she gets slashed? Whatever it is, it was very But I know he gets knocked down and then something happens.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

I think she gets slashed after he gets knocked down, and then he comes to and he sees her on the ceiling, and it's like the whole heredity thing.

Tasha 38:36

Well, he watches the whole thing happen, he doesn't pass out or anything.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

No, but he gets knocked, but I think he gets knocked right before the slashing. We have to go back and look at it, but I thought he got knocked before the slashing because he I thought he didn't see the slashing, and so that's why he thought it was a real person.

Tasha 38:56

No, he he never thought that it was a real person. He because he tells Nancy later there was someone there, but I couldn't see him. And he tells her um the scrape, the the they're not scratches, they're not scrapes, they're like cuts that they came across her body all together in one motion. And that's how Nancy puts together that it's Freddy that did it because it would have been the knives all together. Yeah. Um, so we were now out of there. We're at the police station, we meet Nancy's parents, Donald, the lieutenant, and Marge, and Timps are frigid in the room. Donald's like, what the hell was she doing there?

SPEAKER_02 39:38

They're divorced.

Tasha 39:39

Yes. And he's asking Nancy, what were you doing? Shacking up, but he's looking directly at Marge, like, way to go, parent of the freaking year. And Tina's mom, we learn, is in Vegas with her boyfriend. And Nancy says, Listen, Tina dreamed she was going to die. That's why we were there. She didn't want to sleep alone. I think it's interesting that we have a couple of similar plot lines between Nightmare and Veronica. So, first, there's the idea of this haunting figure coming after our characters through their dreams, right? So Veronica experienced that before anything external happened.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yeah.

Tasha 40:17

And then in both dreams, the adults fail to, or in both films, the adults fail to protect their kids. In Nightmare, though, they are so completely helpless, they have to even be protected by their kids most of the time. We'll see Nancy's police lieutenant father can't do his job right, and her mother is too drunk to be concerned with like anything going on with her daughter. She seems to take care of her almost out of obligation sometimes, and she's quick to let her know how put out she is by all of it, which again is like Anna from Veronica. It's the next morning now, and Nancy's going to school, and Marge is like, What the fuck? Go back to sleep. And Nancy says, I'll sleep in study hall. And as she walks to school, she realizes she's being watched by like a man in black. But then Rod jumps out and he grabs her and he pulls her into a bush and he says, I didn't do it. But then he goes, Don't look at me like I'm a lunatic. I'm warning you.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Like, yeah, like threatening her life.

Tasha 41:20

Uh and that's when Nancy's dad arrives with a gun, and Nancy jumps in front of the gun to like help Rod run away. But alas, there are a bazillion cop cars on the other side of the bushes, and they get Rod anyway. And she's like, Daddy, you used me. And he's like, What are you doing going to school anyway? And so she goes to school, Rod screaming, he didn't kill Nance or Tina, and Donald's just yelling for his kid. It's all a very normal day and suburbia. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Um, so 80s.

Tasha 41:55

Yeah, so 80s, suburbia, everything you always expected. So now we're in school, and Nancy, and this is not study hall, okay? This is Bob Shea's sister, Lynn, teaching about Shakespeare, Hamlet's mother's lies, and the rot in human nature.

SPEAKER_02 42:15

And say that's Bob Shea's sister.

Tasha 42:17

That is Bob Shea's sister. Lynn Shea is the teacher.

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Oh my gosh.

Tasha 42:22

Um, and she's teaching Hamlet's Mother's Lies, Rot in Nature of Humans. And there's the theme of our film, y'all. Always listen to the teachers, especially when she is the queen medium from the insidious films. This boy Charlie starts reading about the fall of Julius Caesar, and Nancy falls asleep, and Tina's in the hallway covered in blood, zipped up in a clear body bag saying Nancy's name. And Nancy's like, Is no one else seeing the shit? And so she goes out to the hallway and starts following this long trail of blood after Tina's body has been dragged away until she runs into a hall monitor version of Freddie who scolds her for not having a hall pass and running in the hallway.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

What are from Spencer's?

Tasha 43:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

She Spencer's would be the only one that would have that would have sold that thing.

Tasha 43:20

Yes. So she goes down to the to the basement. She's calling for Tina and like, look, I don't, I I don't know. I know she's I know she's your friend, but I don't know that I'd be following that version of my friend Into the Dark. You know, like this is not a deathcap for cutie song. This is a horror film, Nancy. Tina is not here for good things. Instead of finding Tina, she finds Freddy and he steps out. And we get to really see his shootout at high noon stance for the first time. Robert England said that the actual glove was so freaking heavy that he pulled his arm down. That's why he stands like that. So he decided to just use it to his advantage and mirrored his walk after the old cowboy films. Oh, really? Yeah, with the men walking out with their, you know, all their swagger hand at the ready to pull and shoot. And I think it's highly effective. When I think Freddie Krueger, I get two images in my head. The one from the posters with like his glove up by his face showing the, you know, the freaky nails. Um, and then this stance, this is Freddie for me. This is the icon. So, like Tina, Nancy asks who he is, and his response is to cut open his chest and reveal like a green, slimy pit of maggots, which and then gross, yeah, I'm not down with it. And then he starts scraping his nails on the rails. So my ears are bleeding again. And I realize at this point, this is where he had Tina at the beginning of the film. Nancy starts screaming, This is only a dream. And Freddie does that disgusting tongue thing that gross ass guys do to women when they're being predators because oh yeah, this is what it's about for Freddie, right? He's the ultimate violator, he's in these kids' beds, he's in their dreams, in their innermost thoughts. You know, you could say he's raping their innermost thoughts. Yeah, and so Nancy's like, peace out, and burns her arm on a hot pipe to wake herself up. She's screaming in the classroom, and Mrs. Insidious is like, let me call your mom. And Nancy says, No, I'll go straight home. And Mrs. Insidious mumbles something about needing a hall pass, and all the kids are like WTF.

SPEAKER_04 45:36

Yeah.

Tasha 45:38

So, like Veronica, we see that Nancy has brought her injury out of the dream into the real world, and she has a massive burn on her arm. So she goes to see Rod at the jail, and he tells her someone else was there that he couldn't see. This is that scene, and he tells her he could see the cuts happening, and he's looking rough because the kid who played Rod is at this very moment of filming coming down from an extremely big high. Yeah, he said in an interview that he brought his drugs to set and he had to film that scene while coming down. And so his crying wasn't acting, it was real. He was in a major, major low at that point, and he was literally flipping out about his life. Wow. And so when you look at the close-up of him, there's like beads of sweat coming down his face.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Oh, yeah, he looks terrible.

Tasha 46:42

Drugs. Thank you, cocaine. So then we get the bathroom scene. Freddie is so pervy, and Nancy falls asleep in the tub, and he pulls her under the water. Her mom hears her screaming and breaks in and tries to help her. And Nancy's like, I'm fine, mother. Just slipped. And I'm like, Why the hostility, Nancy? So she takes a bottle of no dos and goes to her room, and Glenn sneaks into her room, her window like Billy Loomis.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Out of screen.

Tasha 47:21

I love it. So he's checking on her, and she goes, It's like one of my favorite Nancy moments. She's like, Ugh, I look like I'm 20 years old, like it's a bad thing. I'm like Nancy. And you know, perceptions are just crazy. So she asks Glenn to stand guard while she goes to look for someone. And she's like, You cannot mess this up. So now she's like walking out the front door. It's all hazy and the creepy, the creepy theme music's going, and you know she's in dreamland. And she turns around and she's like, Glenn, are you still watching? And he jumps out from like behind this dream and he's like, Yeah, I don't know how they're doing this, but okay, maybe like lucid dreaming.

SPEAKER_02 48:10

Well, it's gotta be something that is like playing in her mind, right?

Tasha 48:13

Right, because like he's supposed to be awake.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Yeah.

Tasha 48:16

So so now she's at the jail and she goes to the window and she watches Freddie walk into Rod's cell, but he just like goes straight through the bars and she's yelling for Glenn, and now Glenn's nowhere to be seen. But Tina's back in her favorite body bag, and Freddie is chasing Nancy now, but she's like back at the house trying to go upstairs. Because why are we running up the stairs when you should be going out the front door? Um, but the stairs are filled with this oatmeal concoction that they've made in the props department. And so her feet, thank you, Bob Shea. Her feet are that was his thing. He asked for that. Her feet are stuck in the stairs. They can't, she can't get her feet out of the stairs. Um, and she finally gets upstairs, she gets to her room, and Glenn is asleep in the chair like a slacker. So she's screaming and fighting with Freddie, who has broken through the mirror on her door, and he slices a feather pillow open and an alarm goes off, waking her up, and then she starts freaking out on Glenn and she's like, You bastard. And I was just like, dude, there are stronger, more appropriate words at this point because your boyfriend just left you to die. Yeah, like he couldn't keep his eyes open. And she, you know, he's like, What? Nothing, you know, nothing happened. And so she starts saying, Okay, maybe I'm crazy, maybe nothing happened. But then she sees a feather fall in the air, and she knows that what happened was real. She knows that that fight with Freddie was real, and so she's like, Oh shit. So she and Glenn run to the jail and demand to see Rod. Her dad's working, and he's like, WTF, go home. Yeah, it's the middle of the night. But meanwhile, meanwhile, in the cell, they're too late, and Freddie is choking out Rod. So now it's the next day. We're at Rod's funeral.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

So that scene though, you want to are you explaining any scene stuff they did? They filmed his uh that rope going or the sheet or something going around his neck in reverse.

Tasha 50:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

That was kind of cool.

Tasha 50:34

I have so much information that I left out some of that stuff. So if you want to talk about some of that stuff, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

I won't remember it all, I promise you that. But that was kind of cool.

Tasha 50:43

Yeah. I like how they did that with just these like practical effects. I do talk about like one of my all-time favorite practical effects is in this movie.

SPEAKER_02 50:55

Yeah.

Tasha 50:56

And I do talk about it because it's fantastic and it's wild in.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

Yes, it is a great I know I've seen it.

Tasha 51:03

Yeah. So it's the next day they're at Rod's funeral and they're leaving, and she tells her parents, first of all, before I do, before I talk about this, this freaking pastor makes me so mad because he's like, live by the sword, die by the sword. But also, may Rod rest in peace. And I'm like, Oh, you're such a douche. At Rod's funeral, she tells her parents, the real killer's still out there. He's burned, he's got a weird hat, a red and green sweater, knives for fingers, and her parents look at each other like, oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 51:34

Yeah.

Tasha 51:35

And Donald's like, maybe you should keep her home for a few days. And Marge is like, No, I'm taking her for a sleep study.

SPEAKER_03 51:43

Yeah.

Tasha 51:44

You know, uh, and truly, there are not enough wires on that child's head. I've had a sleep study, you've had a sleep study. There should be like 300 more wires and tons of glue on her head. Yes. Um, but the magic of movies. So she is in this sleep study and she starts having like this violent dream. The sleep techs are completely confused, and Marge runs into the room to wake her up. And Nancy has like this deep cut on her arm. Her hair has a gray streak. Um, and and she's got an ugly brown hat in her hand, and she's all, I brought something out from my dream. And her mom's like, what the? So they're back home, and Marge is on the phone saying she had it in her hand. No, I'm not crazy. I don't know where she really found the damn thing. And Nancy's coming down the stairs and she's hearing all this. Yeah, she hears Nancy, she gets off the phone really fast, she hides her alcohol, and then she starts fighting with Nancy. Like, what are you trying to prove? And Nancy's like, exactly what I've been trying to prove the whole damn time. Um, there's a guy hunting me in my dreams, yeah. And during this whole scene, she starts calling her mom mama, and it really throws me off because she's called her mother through the whole movie. And in every other scene, she calls her mother. But this scene, it's mama, and I I don't I don't understand the change.

SPEAKER_02 53:27

And maybe they didn't catch it in post.

Tasha 53:30

I don't know, but she's like, Mama, his name is written in the hat. Fred Krueger. Do you know who that is? If you do, tell me because he's after me now.

SPEAKER_04 53:41

Yeah.

Tasha 53:42

And she says that, like, she knows that Marge was once I don't know, like, she knows something.

SPEAKER_02 53:50

Marge says, Maybe she caught up on the whole cemetery like look between the parents. Maybe I mean they looked fishy, like, oh my goodness, this this is not gonna be they did look fishy.

Tasha 54:00

So Marge says he can't get you because he's dead. You're sick, you need sleep. So Nancy's pissed. She leaves and she meets up with Glenn with her booby trap book that fun fact was actually based on an actual military booby trap book that Wes Craven had.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

And nice, yeah.

Tasha 54:23

Glenn tells her to be like the Balinese and create dream skills. Um, the Balinese imagine beautiful worlds and turn their back on monsters to take away their power. So we leave this pretty bridge in California, and Nancy goes back home to find bars on the window because she's only been gone an afternoon, but bar Marge was getting shit done.

SPEAKER_04 54:46

Yeah.

Tasha 54:47

Uh, not only did she manage to get bars on all the windows, she tore down um the rose trellis and got wasted. I mean, that's a productive afternoon, you know? She takes Nancy to the basement that she calls a cellar. I was like, that's not a cellar, but okay. And um, maybe she maybe it is in California. I don't know, but in Missouri, that was not a cellar. And she tells her Freddie was a filthy child murderer who killed at least 20 kids from the neighborhood. And I'm like, how many kids live in this neighborhood? Um, he got caught and went to court, but because a warrant wasn't signed in the right place, he got off and the big cats got fat. So neighborhood parents took justice into their own hands, they found him hiding in a boiler room, set it on fire, and let him burn to death. Marge has his glove hidden in the furnace because souvenirs, am I right? I mean, whenever I go somewhere, I get a souvenir.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

I'm just gonna say this as an engineer that works in like food processing and manual, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 55:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:55

Where is this boiler room? What is this boiler room a part of? It's gotta have a is this the school boiler room? Is this the boiler room of like some local Tyson Foods? Or you know, like a boiler room is just not by itself in the middle of nowhere, right? Or whatever. That just cracks me up.

Tasha 56:14

Well, they caught it on fire, so I guess it's gone now. Yeah, we'll never know.

SPEAKER_02 56:18

Yeah.

Tasha 56:19

Uh Freddie Krueger has an interesting creation story, and this is where our real life story comes in. Yeah. West Craven came up for um, he came up with his idea for a nightmare on Elm Street after reading a series of stories in the Los Angeles Times about perfectly healthy young refugee men from Southeast Asia who were dying in their sleep. And never sleep again, Craven said. A young man had a severe nightmare and told his parents, I can't go back to sleep. I'm gonna die. I just know it. And the father said, Let me give you some sleeping pills. The kid didn't sleep the first night or the second night, and it became clear he was trying to stay awake. Finally, the kid fell asleep, and they took him upstairs and put him to bed, thinking, Thank God, that crisis is over. In the middle of the night, they heard screams and ran into the room, and he was thrashing on the bed horribly. Literally, before they could get to him, he still he fell still and was dead. The parents found all the sleeping pills hidden in the bed and a Mr. Coffee machine in the closet with a hidden extension cord that went to the nearest plug. Craven said, To me, it was just so out of a movie. What if there was somebody in his dream? Who killed him? What killed him? The stories he's referencing were about healthy Hmong refugees from Laos who were dying in their sleep. Between July 77 and October 81, there were 38 reported deaths of this kind among the refugees. In December 81, the CDC declared this a completely new syndrome named SunS or sudden unexpected nocturnal deaths among Southeast Asian refugees. Dr. Roy Barron, an epidemiologist, described the syndrome as a death in young, healthy people that occurs at night in minutes and lacks explanation after autopsy. The numbers, when I say them, especially after hearing the AIDS numbers earlier, seem low, but the CDC gave a really good comparison for the rate of death. For the number of Hmong men in the US and the number dying, the rate of deaths were 87 per 100,000 at the time. I think I read somewhere that it got up to 97 per 100,000 at its height, which was comparable at the time to the combined rates of death of American men for cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, and fatty liver, or how I'm gonna this word gets me, cerebrovascular disease and pneumonia.

SPEAKER_02 58:50

None of them correctly.

Tasha 58:52

Yes, none of the men had any symptoms before going to bed. They just had a bout of abnormal breathing or a brief groan right before dying. In a 2023 mental floss article, reporter April Snellings wrote that the CDC was wrong. It wasn't a new syndrome. They just didn't have access to all the information that we do now. Today we know the first documented case was by a Filipina doctor in a 1917 Spanish medical journal. The Journal of American Heart Association called Sons the Hundred Years Enigma in 2018. It's been called different names across the world and reported in China, the Philippines, Thailand, Hawaii, Japan, and England. In the Philippines, it's called Bengangut, a word that's translated to mean to rise and moan during sleep. In Hawaii, it's called dream disease. China calls it the sudden manhood death syndrome. The specific U.S. cases that inspired Craven claimed at least 117 lives in the 80s. All but one of those were men and mostly Hmong men who had been recruited and trained by the CIA to help U.S. troops fight a secret war in Laos, while America knowingly had troops fighting the Vietnam War in neighboring Vietnam. The Hmong people fought on the side of America. They spied on communists, they rescued American pilots who had been shot down, and they protected the American radars. In return, they lost 10% of the Hmong population during the Secret War and its aftermath. Between 30 and 40,000 Hmong soldiers died in combat during the Secret War. And one fourth of the Hmong men and boys died fighting the North Vietnamese army with America. A quarter of their men and boys. On top, of the 30 to 40,000 Hmong soldiers that died in the Secret War, a quarter of their men and boys died in Vietnam fighting with America. When the US were defeated and withdrew from Laos and the communists took power, the Hmong were hunted and put in concentration camps and forced into hard labor. The Hmong American Center in Wisconsin says that the Hmong villages were sprayed with chemical weapons and bombed with napalm when they were left behind by the Americans. Those who survived still suffer physically, emotionally, and mentally today. The Hmong were political refugees who had to flee their homes to escape persecution after the communists won and America and the CIA withdrew. First, they took their families to refugee camps in Thailand. Then 90% of them made their way to America, where through church sponsorships, they were given political refugee status and they created tightness communities in places like Montana, Rhode Island, Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, California, and Minnesota. While the CDC could never find a cause for the deaths, they had ruled out accidents, foul play, and suicide, and everyone seemed to be in good health. The Hmong elders had a theory though. They believed the deaths were caused by the Da Cho, which is a malevolent nightmare spirit that would attack and kill the men by sitting on their chest and taking their breath while they slept. April Snelling's article led me to some really interesting research by Dr. Shelly Adler, who studied the son's death for 15 years. Dr. Adler argued that while she didn't believe that a dacho actually killed the men, their belief and the lack of structural support to deal with a dacho did. So it kind of mirrored like Hollywood's early image of Freddy 2, right? So they wouldn't buy the script because they were like, it's just a dream. That's not scary. But nightmares are scary. To the person having them, they're very scary. And for the men experiencing dacho, the men experiencing it, it didn't matter if there was or was not actually an evil spirit. They thought there was, they were experiencing something very real.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Your stress and anxiety will still go up.

Tasha 1:03:25

Exactly. It's also very much like the horror trope of believing gives the thing power, which we see Glenn tell Nancy about on that bridge, right? Dr. Alder found through research that dacho attacks were common in their homeland, but in their homeland, dacho attacks didn't lead to deaths. The deaths didn't start until after the exodus to the United States. In Laos, the people could share what they were experiencing without stigma or shame. They'd visit with shamans and complete rituals to rid themselves of the dacho, but in America, shamans were not as easily found. And the rituals involved things like animal sacrifices and other practices that were against the law or were looked down on here. A New York Times article from May in uh 1981 talks about how very few of the refugees could speak English and says that their own language had actually just become a written language just a few years before they started their Exodus.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:35

Oh wow.

Tasha 1:04:36

So not only that, but their lives had been so very different in their homeland, where they had been farmers living in small mountain villages that only had two seasons, rainy and dry, and was warm year-round. They had no electricity, no machines, and no roads in their villages. Everything was done by hand, and every family grew and made what they needed to be sustained. They were independent, self-sufficient. So adjusting to this new way of living in America was overwhelming. Dr. Adler talks in her research about how men were experiencing extreme emotional stress here. And as they had been taught, very strict gender and generational hierarchy that was being dismantled in America. Here, many of the Hmong men couldn't find work, they weren't trusted. But women were trusted because, you know, there's something tender there, there's something softer there. So the men couldn't provide for their families the way that they had been taught was their duty, but their wives could find jobs.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

Yeah.

Tasha 1:05:47

So the wives were now providing for their families, and the men weren't. And that was adding to that emotional stress of nothing is the way that we've ever lived before. Yeah, correct. And then to top right. All off, they couldn't practice their Hmong religion. And so, in fact, some of them converted to Christianity because they felt like an obligation to the church sponsors who had taken them in when they had nowhere to go, which ended up resulting in further ostracization from their Hmong clans for turning their back on their home religion. So these men were going through the damn thing. They had agreed to help the Americans back in their homeland, and it had cost them everything. And now they were refugees in America and they were dying at insane rates from no known causes in their sleep. It was a literal nightmare. And Wes Craven read about it and saw the horror and he put a face to it. He named him Freddie after a boy in his elementary school that used to beat him up. And he got Freddie's look from a frightening childhood experience. One night, as a boy laying in bed, he heard mumbling outside and he went to his window. And he, when he looked down to the street, he saw a man walking on the sidewalk. The man sensed that he was being watched. He turned and he looked up and he looked directly at Wes right in his eyes. Wes freaked out, jumped back to his bed, and he sat there for a while and he thought, surely the man is gone now. But when he went back to the window, the man still stood there in the dark, waiting. Wes said with malice in his face and a sort of sick sense of humor and delight about frightening a child. And he kind of like grunted and lunged at Wes. And then he just turned and walked away. And he said, that's the image that he made Freddie in all those years later. A Dacho twisted with a childhood bully and a menacing stranger in the dark.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:58

Oh, that's crazy.

Tasha 1:07:59

So then we get the story of Freddie from Marge, and she says, Hey, he's a child killer. But here's the truth. Originally, Freddy was a child molester, but during the filming, the McMartin trial was happening in LA, where the staff of a preschool were being prosecuted for alleged child abuse, sexual child abuse claims against the children in the school. It was a huge story. It was all over the national news. So Wes backed off the child molester story and made him a lowly child killer instead. When they did the 2010 remake, they finally let the original Molester story play out. So back to our plot. Nancy calls Glenn and she's like, don't go to sleep. Also, meet me at midnight so that you can jock out on Freddie when I bring him back from my nightmares. But then dun, dun, dun, Glenn goes to sleep. FYL, that's all he does.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

She asked him to be there at midnight, but her mom locked everything up. Like, what was he gonna do? Like, where is he gonna get in?

Tasha 1:09:07

So, well, and also I'm like, where are the parents? Like, I I mean, I guess if you're used to like your parents not ever being there.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

Well, her mom's drunk.

Tasha 1:09:16

Her mom is always drunk, but I don't know. Glenn goes to sleep, and his dad, who was just per watching Nancy get dressed through the window because all of the adults suck here.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

Yeah.

Tasha 1:09:29

Okay. Ugh, he takes the phone off the hook so that Nancy can't talk to Glenn.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:34

Yeah. That's just how do you have to treat these kids?

Tasha 1:09:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:39

That line. Oh my gosh.

Tasha 1:09:41

So pissed off, Nancy like rips the phone out of the wall. Man, I miss home phones.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

Yeah.

Tasha 1:09:49

And she throws it on the bed.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:51

But Glenn didn't have his own line. No, he didn't. Parents had to say poor Glenn.

Tasha 1:09:56

Glenn kind of freaks me out. Sometimes I'm like, oh, he's such a good guy. And then he says things like to his mom about watching the nude.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

The nude America. I don't know if that was uh Glenn.

Tasha 1:10:08

Do better.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:09

Is that really what he said, or was that just a bad caption?

Tasha 1:10:12

That is really what he said. And his mom was like, How are you gonna be able to hear what they're saying? And he was like, Who needs to hear what they're saying? And she just like oh, you're so funny. And I'm such a boy. Oh, he's such a perv. He's learning from his dad. So Nancy's ripped the phone out of the wall, throws it on the bed, but then the phone rings.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:39

Yeah.

Tasha 1:10:40

And it's Freddy. They said it it cost like five dollars to make that phone. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:45

Really?

Tasha 1:10:45

Yeah. And at the end of it, uh, that was like the one thing Nancy wanted, or uh Heather Langencamp. That was the prop that she wanted to take off the set, and they were like, We found that very disturbing. Oh, that's kind of cool. So uh it's Freddie on the other end of the line, and he's let her know that he's her boyfriend now, and Nancy realizes shit, you got Glenn. Yep, and it's like The Walking Dead all over again, except there's no Lucille, you know? Like Glenn.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:19

She doesn't get to physically see it.

Tasha 1:11:21

No, but instead of Lucille, we've got a fountain of blood in one of my favorite practical effects of all time. They're using the same spinning room set from Tina's death scene. But this scene they had to get in one take because as soon as they filmed it, with the blood coming in, the set was just gonna be ruined.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

Yeah.

Tasha 1:11:44

So they pull Johnny Depp through the bed. Goodbye, Glenn, and then they reset the scene by turning the bedroom upside down. Um the camera is down on the bottom, everything's screwed into the room, you know. There's a hole in the bed, and there's a guy on top of the room, and he is pouring buckets, just gallons of quote unquote blood, which is red water through this hole. And the water is just pouring down. But what they didn't think about is that on the ceiling of the room is a light picture, because you know, you have to have bedroom lights and it's on. And so the water is coming through the hole, and the water hits the electric light, gets electrified, and electrifies all the water, and the prop guy pouring the blood into the set gets electrocuted, and all hell breaks loose because the water is still pouring in. The guy's getting electrocuted, and everybody's like, Oh shit, the water is now shifting the weight of the room because it's like it's a spinny thing, and they've got two guys on uh either side just holding it in place so that it doesn't spin. Because normally you would spin the sucker, yeah, but they don't want it to spin, they want it to stay in place. So water's coming down, the gallons of water are in the floor, the water kind of moves, it shifts the weight of the room, and the room starts to spin because it rips out of the hands of the guys on the side. So now the water's spinning, lights are flashing because you know everything's just like bursting, the blood is splashing everywhere, the windows on the side of the room bust open, and the water pours out on the crew guys who are trying to get the spinning room under control. Cords and ropes have ripped out of the walls. Um, all hell is broken loose. And is this a movie set or hellraiser? I don't know. But this is the shot that we see in the film. Yeah, because they only had time to do it once one shot because it was going to ruin the set. All the red dye was going to ruin the set, but it looks incredible because the way that the water, the liquid is moving on the floor is very unnatural, and you would not have that if it wasn't because of the room just getting ripped out of people's hands and spinning, yeah, you know. And so, you know, weird people got hurt, no one died, but no one died, so good news. And we got a kick-ass special effects scene.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:56

They probably did not get bonus.

Tasha 1:14:58

Probably not, because you know, Bob Shay wasn't paying anybody anything, and then his poor mother walks in, and that woman will never be the same again because there's like a lot of blood.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:11

She saw it in action, yeah.

Tasha 1:15:13

Um, the cops arrive. Nancy.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

I can just imagine what's happening in the hallway that she's in when it all starts. Like, what is that noise? What is Glenn doing?

Tasha 1:15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:26

Watching that Nude America thing again, night two.

Tasha 1:15:29

It's the same night. There is no night two.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:31

Oh, that's the same. Oh, okay.

Tasha 1:15:33

It's the same night. This movie takes place over like two days, which is insane to me. And I'm also like, why did we see Rod's funeral, but not Tina's? Probably because Tina's Vegas. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:47

If it was all if it was over a course of like two or three days, it did that funeral fast.

Tasha 1:15:52

Yeah. Well, the cops arrived.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

Yeah.

Tasha 1:15:55

Yeah. Cops are here. Nancy is locked away like Rapunzel.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:00

Yeah, I know.

Tasha 1:16:01

And she calls her dad on the phone. So she rings up the house and she's like, I know who, like, I know what happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:10

Yeah.

Tasha 1:16:11

He's dead. Freddie did it. I'm gonna get him. But when I do, you gotta arrest him, Daddy. When I come back, I need you to arrest him. And I'm like, I'm not sure what arresting a dream monster is really gonna do, you sweet, innocent little thing you. But her dad has this look on his face like my little girl has lost her mind. And she's like, I'm going to sleep and I'm going to pull him out of my dreams. And he goes, Yes, that's what I've been saying. Get some sleep.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:40

Well, she sounds crazy on the phone.

Tasha 1:16:42

Yeah, she does. But I think she also has this look on her face because she realizes he does he does not believe a word that she's saying and she is on her own. So he sends his dumbass deputy to watch his daughter's house while he goes to mop up Glenn. And meanwhile, Nancy starts setting up all of her booby traps, which Wes Craven said are all actual booby traps from the real booby trap book. Nice. Yes. And she puts her mom to bed like the child she is. And I've got to wonder like, are we supposed to understand that she's drinking to deal with her role in Freddie's death? Because if so, then she's been drunk for like the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

It doesn't matter. She just needs therapy.

Tasha 1:17:30

She does. But because of all that, it makes sense to me that Freddie haunting the kids because he doesn't have to haunt the people that actually killed him. They're doing a fine job of that themselves. Like she's they're messes. So Nancy sets her alarm, says the prayer that I said every night before going to sleep as a child, and then finally like goes to sleep with Glenn's voice in her head telling her to turn her back on Freddy or she won't wake up. She comes down the stairs, goes to the basement of her house, and his glove is gone from the furnace. And there's a door, she goes through it, and now she's in the basement of the high school. And Tina's voice is whispering, You dreamed about the same creep I did. And Glenn is screaming in the background, and Freddy's going, gonna get you. She finds Tina's crucifix and sees Rod's switchblade, and then we see Freddie creeping around like the creeper he is, and then she finds um Glenn's bloody headphones that are not bloody enough for the amount of blood that was in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:50

Oh, it's dark though, also, but I could tell that it was bloody.

Tasha 1:18:54

It was bloody, but it was only bloody on the part that goes on his ears. And I was like, there was way too much blood for that to just have like a little bit of blood.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:03

There was not enough blood.

Tasha 1:19:04

Um, Nancy's taunting Freddy to try and get him to come out, and he finally jumps out, and she's all follow me and jumps from a ledge. But now when she jumps, she's not in the basement anymore, she's in her front yard. Yeah, and her like watch is beeping. She's got 10 seconds left on her timer and it's counting down, and she's like, Where the F is Freddie? And he pops out of the rose trellis, like Marilyn from the birthday cake, and she leaps on him, and they're wrestling around, and the alarms are going off. But when she opens her eyes from her dream, there is no Freddy with her in bed. And she's like, Fuck, I am crazy. Yeah. And then surprise, Freddie was behind the bed the whole time. Yeah. So now we get to experience the original home alone.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:00

That's right.

Tasha 1:20:00

Right? Nancy takes off and kicks Freddy's ass. And she's breaking the windows, and she's calling for her dad. And the deputy's like, it's okay. Everything's going to be all right. Yeah, the first window breaking is like that. Under control. And Nancy's all, get my dad, you asshole.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:20

Yeah.

Tasha 1:20:20

And I'm watching it. I'm like, this is absolutely like that reporter going, is anyone going to do anything about the AIDS virus? Is anyone going to get the president involved? And the press secretary was like, everything's under control. We're all good.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:39

Yeah.

Tasha 1:20:41

Freddy can't decide what he wants because first he says he's going to split her in two, which feels like a really fast kill and also like way too sexual. And then he says he's going to kill her slow. Um, so I think he's still trying to decide. But the house is on fire. There's been homemade bombs exploding in the living room, and no one across the street is rushing over. And mom is still asleep upstairs. How do you sleep through bombs going off in the living room? I don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:12

She's passed out drunk. That's what she is.

Tasha 1:21:15

Up to this point, Freddy's been like this metaphysical being that has operated outside of the rules of time and space. Like he is the TARDIS, but now he's really not okay with his body getting hurt.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:30

Yeah.

Tasha 1:21:31

He's really not okay with being set on fire again. And that whole thing being lit on fire in the basement, going up the stairs, falling down the stairs, going back up the stairs. That stunt guy did all of that in one take. They were like the the filmmakers were totally awestruck because they said that they had never seen a scene of somebody being on fire for that long, go that long without taking breaks. But that stunt guy did that whole thing. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:03

Without taking breakfast, that was a good scene.

Tasha 1:22:05

Well, the deputies finally like, huh? Guess I should get her dad.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:09

Yeah.

Tasha 1:22:10

The cops finally break in, and Nancy is all the basement. But then she sees the fire that is going through, like fire footsteps going through the room behind her. And Kruger has gotten out of the basement and snuck past them upstairs to mother. And every time she says mother, all I can think of is Psycho. That's all I can think of. He's on top of her, rocking her like a hurricane.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:38

Still on fire, right?

Tasha 1:22:39

Still on fire. And Donald jumps on them with a blanket to put the fire out. Kruger disappears, and then Marge just sinks into a glowing blue bed tub. I'm calling it a bed tub. I don't know what else to call it. And now again, the parents are useless. Authorities are useless because the shit is banana B-A-N-A-N-A-S. And Nancy's like, I'm okay. Go on downstairs, Daddy. I'll be right down. And her father's like, Yep, I'm gonna do what my teenage daughter just told me to do. Even though I just watched a skeleton ex-wife sink into the beds of hell. Like in what world?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:26

So do you think he really saw that?

Tasha 1:23:28

Yes, because he was looking at it and he was like, What the hell just happened? And she's she's like, now do you believe me? And he's he's like anything, no, and she's like, It's all right, dad. You know, she's like, he's like the person patting, it's all right, it's okay, you can go lay down now. Like, I just but Nancy knows what's up, she knows Freddie isn't gone, and she says, I know you're here, I'm taking my power back. I'm turning my back on you. And Freddie's like, How very dare you! And he's not happy about any of this at all. And his like grimacing ahie tuna face is like, now you die. And she says, Nope. This is a dream. I want my mother and my friends back. I take back every bit of energy I gave you because you're nothing, you're shit. She opens the door and walks through, and it's the next day. She's dressed, not injured, and standing next to her very healthy mom, who says she must have bottomed out yesterday because she doesn't remember the night before, but she's never gonna drink again.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:41

Alterking it.

Tasha 1:24:42

Yep, which is you know, totally healthy, definitely not contrary to anything that like any medical advice would ever give you. Glenn pulls up in his fancy ass car. I love that car so much, just a beautiful car.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:58

It's a beautiful, beautiful car. Eyes in red, yes.

Tasha 1:25:01

He pulls up in his fancy ass car with Tina and Rod in the back seat. They're alive! And Nancy runs out to get in. She's so excited. It's super bright out, but foggy fog moving in, like the opening scene, and everything looks so happy, but in like a very menacing way.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:21

Until it just looks awkward, yes.

Tasha 1:25:24

Until the green and red striped turtle top flies up on the car, the windows start rolling up of their own accord, and things start wilding. Nancy's yelling, Mother, and trying to get out of the car as it drives away. And Marge is just standing on the front porch in her very white dress, smiling and waving goodbye, until Freddie breaks through the window on the front door and sucks her body through it. And the camera watches the car drive off, and the little girls are jumping rope in their white dresses again, singing their Freddy song. And that is a nightmare on Elm Street. So Robert England believes that the whole movie was a dream, that Nancy was dreaming what was going to happen, and that she wakes up and now shit is going down as we're leaving the theater, and that we know that because the it's marked by the the girl's jumping rope at the beginning and the end. But I'm kind of wondering if she's stuck in a dream and Freddy's screwing with her that maybe the little girl's jumping rope are girls he killed before, and now Marge is in a white dress too because she's dead and Nancy's just stuck here. But regardless, her mom's still useless.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:48

Well, I mean, definitely that last scene. I she's definitely in a dream. That doesn't seem like real, especially like her mom saying she's cold turkey. Like now, that does not that does not happen to alcoholics.

Tasha 1:26:59

Right. So that is how Wes Craven took the true story of Hmong political refugees and used it to turn new line into the house that Freddie built. The film cost 1.6 million to make, brought in over six and a half million in the first 24 days with only seven cities. It was only released in seven cities.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:21

That was still considered an independent film, right?

Tasha 1:27:24

Six and a half million twenty-four days.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:27

That's really good. Um that six and a half million of that time or yes. That's that's wild.

Tasha 1:27:35

Um, worldwide at the box office, it made $57 million. It took 26 days to film, had over 80 special effects and sequences in 90 minutes. Just crazy. Bob and Wes were broke when they made it. So to get it made, Wes signed over all of his creative rights. To New Line for his collateral, which left him screwed later. And Bob mortgaged everything he owned. He mortgaged his business. He mortgaged his home.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:10

Didn't pay employees.

Tasha 1:28:12

Yeah, he didn't pay anybody. Um, Wes wanted it to be a standalone one out the door film. Um, but Bob turned it into a 42-year franchise with nine movies, including the six original films, the meta follow-up that brought Wes back into the fold, a crossover slasher with Jason, and the 2010 remake that didn't have Robert in it. That didn't have Robert. That's the only one that didn't have Robert. Um, they had a TV series that was short-lived, but it did have a TV series, countless documentaries. I've personally seen at least three video games, novels, comic books, cameos, van shoes, music videos, and albums, um, tons of merchandise. Freddy is a child molester, child murderer, but they literally turned him into dolls and kids' pajamas, and people just ate it up. Freddy lives outside of his own films, even. His glove is in Evil Dead 2, Jason Goes to Hell, Bride of Chucky. There's a poster for the dream child in the movie It Follows. Robert Englin plays Freddy in an episode of the Goldbergs, which I've not seen, but I I really want to see because I don't understand how they worked Freddie Krueger into that. Um, he's everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:34

Well, but Goldbergs isn't Goldbergs based out of the 80s.

Tasha 1:29:37

Yes. Yep. Um, New Line is now owned by Warner Brothers Discovery. So we'll see what happens with that whole merger thing that's currently on hold. Um, and if New Line is still a production label at the end of it. But regardless, it doesn't operate independently anymore. But I don't think it matters. I think Freddie will carry on long after the studios. Wes Craven likened this to a hostage situation. In the making of A Nightmare on Elm Street, he said, at a certain point, the person who is the hostage will flip and try to make friends with the captor. That's the best way to deal with it physically. And I think that's what kids have done with Freddie. He's so compellingly frightening that in order to contain him and deal with him, they've made friends with him. Uh yeah. And before we go, an extremely important update on the Hmong refugees, the real story of the whole damn thing. It was between 73 and 75 when Hmong refugees began fleeing Laos, where they were facing mass executions, forced labor, torture, and starvation in the Laos killing fields. Today, in 2026, it's still extremely dangerous for Hmong people with ties to anti-communist or U.S. and CIA alliances during the Secret War to return to their homeland. Laos does not recognize the indigenous state of the Hmong, and therefore they deny them basic human rights and protections. Between May and August of last year, escalation and military violence in Laos resulted in the death of at least 67 Hmong and the detain of an estimated 200 more. The Hmong, including Hmong children, are deprived of food, health care, and basic services in Laos. The atmosphere is categorized as the early stages of genocide, state-led ethnic cleansing, and cultural erasure with any absence of international accountability. Two weeks ago, the Laos ambassador to the United States said it had received more than 1,000 Hmong deportees from the U.S. through ICE. Immigration enforcement has obviously drastically increased under the direction of Donald Trump. ICE agents have been rounding up people regardless of why they're here and what documentation they have. One of the hotspots of ICE concentration in the last year has been Minnesota, which coincidentally is one of the states that welcomed some of the highest number of Hmong political refugees. Today, Minnesota is home to more than 95,000 Hmong people. These are individuals who risked the safety of their lives and their families for the American fight against communism. And when they had to flee to save those lives for siding with our country and fighting for our country, we welcomed and gave them safety. Today, most living Hmong people are U.S. born. Of those who immigrated here, 90% have lived here for over a decade and 85% are naturalized citizens. Now, as organized directly by Donald Trump with the Laos government, they're being kidnapped by ICE, forcibly sent to a country that sees them as an enemy, a race to eradicate, they are being sent to die. The first question people ask is why haven't they applied for citizenship? Well, remember that when the Hmong people arrived, very few spoke English. Their own language had just become a written language in the first few years, or in the last few years. Imagine moving to a country after narrowly escaping mass executions in the Laos killing fields, maybe not even knowing the written practice of your own language. And to apply for citizenship, you have to first learn a completely different language. Then comes the process. First, they have to apply for a green card and get approved. That can't happen until after they've lived in the US for a full year. And the current application processing time is 30 and a half months. You wait a year and then it takes 30 and a half months for them to process. After having that approved and living in the US for five consecutive years, they can apply for citizenship if they're at least 18, considered of good moral character, able to read, write, and speak English, can demonstrate an understanding of the U.S. Constitution, have a basic understanding of U.S. history and government, and can take an oath of allegiance to the U.S. I know U.S. born and bred Americans who cannot do some of those things. First, they apply for naturalization by submitting an application with supporting documents and $725. These people lost everything. The process can take up to 26 months. Then they have to complete a biometric screening, which includes getting fingerprinted, photographed, and having background checks done by the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security with an in-person interview with the U.S. citizenship and immigration services. Then applicants are interviewed by immigration officers about their applications, their backgrounds, their character, the U.S. Constitution, and their willingness to take an oath of allegiance. If they pass this step, they will then receive their civics test and an English test. If they pass the test, they then can take their oath of allegiance to the U.S. at a public ceremony before receiving their certificates of naturalization. They are now U.S. citizens. But if they make any mistakes in their paperwork, even a small is accidentally miscalculating their eligibility date and applying a few days too early, or getting the date that they moved from one apartment to another apartment incorrect. I don't remember the exact dates of months that I moved from one location to another location 10 years ago. But if they get those dates incorrect on their paperwork, or if they forget to list out a trip that they took from one state to another state and back again, their citizenship can be denied. And a denial can result in being deported to their homeland where the government is waiting to kill them. But if they wait, if they get their stuff ready, if they study just a little bit longer, that possibility of passing and getting citizenship is still open until a new government power comes in that does not care about what this refugee or their family sacrificed for our country at the risk of their own lives, that does not care what certain death awaits them on the other end of a plane trip and deports them. Unlike our movie, there is nothing quippy or funny that this tyrannical monster can say to make today any less of a living nightmare for the Hmong political refugees in America. If you are a Southeast Asian refugee facing deportation, there are resources available through the Asian Law Caucus, and I will link to that website in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today. Next time we'll be looking into the real twisty story of social network. See, I told you other genres, but maybe still a horror story. Until then, like, subscribe, share, um, support, comment, comment, uh, reach out to your congressman, and from Matt, our genius editor, David, and me, thanks for giving Real Twisty a listen. We'll see you next time.