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#038 Wes Craven: A Nightmare on Elm Street vs. The Hills Have Eyes Part II

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Download MP3 In today's episode Nate and Austin compare Wes Craven's best and worst rated films, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984), respectively. Nate isn't scared one bit, Austin loves how racist it is, and they both want to go on a Halloween horror marathon. Check back next Sunday at 7pm PST where we will compare Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) and Stoker (2013), his best and worst rated films.
Also check out this interview with Robert Englund about A Nightmare on Elm Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_csuTJl9lM

The Hills Have Eyes Part II Notes

Worst Rated

PLOT: A group of bikers, heading to a race, become stranded in the desert and find themselves fighting off a family of inbred cannibals who live off the land.
  • Ratings: IMDb 3.7 | RT 0% C / N/A % A
  • Released: 1984
  • Director: Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes)
  • Writer(s): Wes Craven
  • Cinematographer:
  • Notable actors: Robert Houston, Kevin Spirtas, John Laughlin, Willard E. Pugh, Peter Frechette, Penny Johnson Jerald, Janus Blythe, Michael Berryman
  • Budget: $700 thousand
  • Box office: N/A
  • Fun Facts:
    • Though it was released after A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 was shot before A Nightmare on Elm Street went into production. Writer-director Wes Craven has claimed that only about two thirds of the movie was shot before the studio halted production due to budget concerns. When A Nightmare on Elm Street became a box office success, the studio convinced Craven to finish Hills Have Eyes Part 2 using only the footage that had already been shot. Since there was not enough for a feature length film, footage from the first Hills Have Eyes was edited in to pad out the running time. Wes Craven has since disowned the movie.
    • Wes Craven claims that he did this film because he was in need of money and since then has disowned it.
    • Wes Craven thought John Bloom's voice wasn't strong enough for his role as The Reaper, so he had Nicholas Worth loop all of Bloom's lines in post-production.
    • Even Michael Berryman admitted that he thought this sequel was terrible.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Notes

Best Rated

PLOT: Several people are hunted by a cruel serial killer who kills his victims in their dreams. While the survivors are trying to find the reason for being chosen, the murderer won't lose any chance to kill them as soon as they fall asleep.
  • Ratings: IMDb 7.5 | RT 94% C / 83% A
  • Released: 1984
  • Director: Wes Craven (Scream, The Hills Have Eyes)
  • Writer(s): Wes Craven
  • Cinematographer: Jacques Haitkin (Fast 8, Captain American: Civil War)
  • Notable actors: John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Heather Langenkamp, Amanda Wyss, Jsu Garcia, Johnny Depp, Charles Fleischer, Robert Englund
  • Budget: $1.8 million
  • Box office: $25.5 million
  • Fun Facts:
    • Robert Englund cut himself the first time that he tried on the infamous Freddy glove.
    • Freddy Krueger has under 7 minutes of screen time.
    • New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "the house that Freddy built".
    • Over 500 gallons of fake blood were used during the making of the film.
    • This was Johnny Depp's first film.
    • The film was shot in 30 days.
    • The idea behind the glove was a practical one on Wes Craven's part, as he wanted to give the character a unique weapon, but also something that could be made cheaply and wouldn't be difficult to use or transport. At the time, he was studying primal fears embedded in the subconscious of people of all cultures and discovered that one of those fears is attack by animal claws. Around the same time, he saw his cat unsheathe its claws, and the two concepts merged, although in the original script the blades were fishing knives, not steak knives as in the finished film.
    • In the original script, Freddy was a child molester, however the decision was made to change him into being a child murderer to avoid accusations of exploiting a series of child molestations in California around the time of production. He was rewritten as a child molester in the 2010 remake starring Jackie Earle Haley.
  Intro music: Calm The Fuck Down - Broke For Free / CC BY 3.0  
 

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