20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
2. A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Was Originally Super Dark
While Craven did return to write A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, his original script is far different than what was eventually put to screen. In fact, it has been said that the finished version is more the work of screenwriter Bruce Wagner than Wes Craven himself.
Craven’s original version centred around children all going to a particular location to commit suicide, and it's discovered that they were all lead there by Freddy. The movie would follow Nancy looking for her father, who had disappeared in search of Freddy’s birth home. That house would turn out to be the place where all of the kids were committing suicide.
Along the way, Nancy comes across a psychiatric hospital where she would be hired as an assistant, as she was so easily able to connect with what patients were experiencing. This element become the primary focus of the final film, but everything involving the suicidal kids was cut. There were also some other extremely dark elements removed like Nancy’s father cutting off his own eyelids in front of her and Freddy threatening to defecate on Nancy's corpse at one point.
Yeah, maybe it was best that they decided to tone it down.