Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare promised an end to the Springwood Slasher’s reign of terror, but the Nightmare On Elm Street sequel originally killed off Dream Master Alice in its opening scene. Released in 1984 the original A Nightmare on Elm Street saw Scream helmer and horror legend Wes Craven reinvent the slasher, changing the formula of “masked mute murderer cuts bloody swathe through faceless teens” by introducing both a more verbal killer and a supernatural angle. With Robert England’s terrifying incarnation of dream demon Freddy Krueger haunting the dreams of teenagers worldwide, A Nightmare on Elm Street made slashers scary again, thus prompting a slew of sequels and wannabes.
While Nancy and Kristen are two of the most popular A Nightmare On Elm Street heroines, "Dream Master" Alice ranks quite high too. The character is played by Lisa Wilcox and was introduced in A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Alice soon returned for A Nightmare On Elm Street: The Dream Child in 1989 and is the only heroine in the series not to be killed in a sequel following a previous encounter with Freddy.
A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 saw Alice give birth to son Jacob and an early draft of Freddy's Dead featured the latter as the main protagonist, but what’s surprising is it also saw Alice herself appear too. The first ten pages of this unused draft - which was simply dubbed A Nightmare On Elm Street 6 - saw Jacob wake from a trippy plane crash dream to find himself safe at home with mother Alice. That's until his entire house comes crashing down to Earth and the entire town of Springwood is consumed by looming darkness. It’s Freddy, of course, who is now swallowing up the town itself and has grown powerful enough to take on Alice one more time. She isn’t so lucky this time around, as Freddy makes short work of Jacob’s formerly resilient mum and stabs her with his claw glove in front of the poor kid.
It’s a shocking, grim scene that sets up a darker Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, even though the script does specify viewers don’t see enough of the gruesome sight “to barf.” This abrupt demise would have been an ignoble end to one of the franchise's best characters though, but director Rachel Talalay wisely opted not to use Alice's death due to a combination of disliking this early draft and wanting to focus on Freddy to move away from past entries. However, despite there being many valid criticisms of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare relying too much on goofy humor and featuring an overly complex storyline, it was a good call to avoid opening the sequel by killing off a fan-favorite survivor.
After all, this sort of tired trope is the type of slasher convention series creator Craven spoofed in meta-slashers like Scream and his own sequel New Nightmare. Following the events of the fifth movie, Alice and Jacob presumably moved on and lived happy, healthy lives without Freddy stalking their dreams. While it would have made for a suitably shocking opening to Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, having Alice go down without a fight would have no doubt infuriated loyal viewers.
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