THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS
BY THE EARLY-’80S, FORMER Humanities professor-turned-filmmaker Wes Craven had bought himself time to think. He’d gone from the visceral shocks of his notorious debut at the age of 30, The Last House On The Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), to the rural community chills of Deadly Blessing (1981), and the comic-book capers of Swamp Thing (1981). “I had done two pictures back-to-back and I had some money in the bank,” said Craven. “I decided I could afford to write for six months. It was the first time in my life I had time for that. It was completely experimental work and it took me several years to find the money to get the film made. That became A Nightmare On Elm Street.”
His breakthrough film had its roots in real-life dreams. “There was a series of unrelated articles I’d clipped out of the in about 1981,” recalled Craven about the genesis of his dream killer. “Over a period of about a year and a half,
