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This Nightmare on Elm Street effect was so creepy it got cut

A Nightmare on Elm Street is full of scary stunts and effects but did you know one puppet was so creepy that it was cut from the horror franchise completely

This Nightmare on Elm Street effect was so creepy it got cut

A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the best horror movie franchises in history. Telling the story of the slasher icon Freddy Krueger’s exploits, each film in the horror series is scary in its own right. However, during the 1987 movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, there was one scene that went above expectations and was to terrifying even for the infamous IP.

In the 80s movie, the opening scene involving a young girl and a dream sequence was deemed to creepy that it ultimately got cut from the flick. The opening scene of the movie that we all know shows the final girl Kristen (Patricia Arquette), going to sleep while crafting Freddy Krueger’s dilapidated house. In a dream sequence, Kristen tries to save the young girl from Freddy, but as she enters the house carrying the child, she looks down to see that the kid has been turned into a charred skeleton.

While the skeleton is a bit spooky, originally, the plan was for the girl to be a mechanical puppet that looked like an emaciated corpse that would grab at Kristen. Special makeup effects artist Mark Shostrom revealed to Bloody Disgusting that once the puppet was finished director, Chuck Russell ultimately decided to change the approach to the above skeleton scene instead.

“I made this mechanical corpse of this little girl that could move and open its eyes and grab at her shirt and everything. Chuck Russell‘s instructions were ‘Think Auschwitz.’ I went to the Simon Wiesenthal museum, and I got research, and I made this corpse,” Shostrom said. “The ribcage looked very emaciated, and it was a little heart-wrenching, this poor little girl puppet.”

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“He looked and said ‘Oh my God, everybody who’s Jewish in the audience is going to look at this and hate me. We can’t film this.’,” he recalled. “I spent ten weeks making it, we need to film it. And Rachel Talalay, the production line producer, said, ‘we need to film this.” However, Russell refused to go ahead with the creepy puppet. Instead, someone in props threw together the charred skeleton.

Unfortunately, we never got to see Shostrom’s creation and never will, as the filmmaker revealed that the puppet had now “rotted away.” It is a pity that the creepy scene never saw the light of day, but we are happy that Dream Warriors’ filming wasn’t severally delayed or cancelled due to the incident.

For more screams here are our guides to the best zombie movies and best monster movies of all time.