10 Films That Had To Be Altered Because Of Real Life Tragedies

Wes Craven's iconic horror A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) was produced on an estimated budget of $1.8 million, a sum it had recouped within one week of its release. Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Springwood, Ohio, the film follows the plight of a group of teenagers who find themselves being hunted in their dreams by a scarred madman known as Freddy Krueger.

Freddy's arrival made a huge impact on the genre, with his debut film turning out to be the first of many. A man with a mit full of razors that can kill you in real life by doing so in your dreams is enough to give most sleepless nights, though the truth is that Freddy was almost so much worse.

Craven initially wanted his villain to be a child molester as well as a vicious killer, as it was the "worst thing" he could think of. Unfortunately for the late, great horror guru, a spate of child molestation cases began to grip California while the film was still in pre-production, forcing him to can the idea out of respect for the many victims.

One of the more highly publicised cases was that of the Country Walk Babysitting Service, whose owner Frank Fuster was found guilty of 14 acts of abuse and sentenced to a minimum term of 165 in prison. Fuster's victims described how he subjected them to Satanic rituals and scared them into silence by mutilating birds in front of them.