A Classic that was nearly not made

Rating: Null/10 (19 August 2004)

I had the pleasure of looking after Mr Craven back in 1984 for a week long UK PR campain on this movie. Amoungst the many anecdotes that he told to journalists....was how the film took a long time to get financed. As usual Hollywood failed to recognise a good idea when they saw it....and of course the rest is history. I believe the opening scene has been planned to take place in an old theatre with lots of flapping drapes. Lots of very ingenious special effects were achieved on a low budget (including the shooting of the Nancy bathtub scene, which includes a POV shot, realised in somoene's swimming pool on the last day of the shoot) When Craven was in the UK for this publicity trip he was working on the script for his next film which was to be called AI (The journalist with me, quiped that in the UK that stood for "Artificial Insemination" which could have prompted the title change to "Deadly Friend". To my mind "Nightmare" is still one of Craven's best films, because it is dead serious and played straight (Without the knowingness of the later "Scream") This was a time when American films took their horror seriously (As Japanese cinema does now)