10 Alternate Endings That Almost Ruined Classic Horror Movies
9. A Nightmare On Elm Street
The Proper Ending: After
apparently vanquishing Springwood’s resident spectral child murderer Freddy
Krueger by telling him he’s sh*t, heroine Nancy Thompson skips off outside to a
seemingly normal day with her mother no longer a raging wino and her friends
still alive waiting to drive her to school in her boyfriend’s convertible. How
sweet, a happy ending!
But wait, there’s a twist! It turns out that Nancy is still asleep and it’s all a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream. The convertible, controlled by Krueger, speeds off as Nancy’s mother is dragged through the door by Freddy to an inevitably gruesome death.
The Awful Alternate Ending: If director Wes Craven had his way, the movie would’ve ended after Nancy woke up and met with her friends. Basically, A Nightmare on Elm Street would’ve ended with the ultimate cop out – the ‘it was all a dream’ trope, which is quite possibly one of the laziest moves in fiction.
Although the proper, twist ending did leave the movie open to some crappy sequels and spin-offs (cough cough, Final Nightmare and Freddy vs. Jason, cough cough) it also gave us better sequels like Dream Warriors and Wes Craven’s A New Nightmare so in this case we’re going to say the director was wrong. Sorry, Mr. Craven.