The 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street was a misfire, but the original opening was almost even worse than what viewers got. Released in 1984, director Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street was a rare sight for horror fans in the mid-‘80s; a slasher movie with a genuinely original and intriguing hook. Ever since the outsized success of John Carpenter’s sleeper hit Halloween in 1978 and the solid box office receipts earned by its many clones, mute madman clogged the cineplexes of the early ‘80s.

However, despite these movies featuring slight variations in the specifics of the formula, the vast majority of early ‘80s slashers followed a very familiar path. Craven’s original Nightmare On Elm Street, like his hit Scream, revised the standard rules of the sub-genre by making its villain Freddy Krueger a talkative, supernatural killer-turned-dream-demon who used his paranormal powers to kill teens in their dreams. The movie's comparatively verbose villain and ingenious “you can’t escape sleep” premise spelled a huge hit for Craven, and soon the series became one of horror cinema’s most enduringly popular staples.

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However, when production company Platinum Dunes opted to remake it in the late 2000s after a slew of slasher re-dos did big business, the new Nightmare On Elm Street remake got everything wrong, earning the ire of both critics and fans alike. However, the remake's original opening scene, which would have seen a dying Freddy slowly flatline alone in a hospital, managed to be even more misguided than what viewers eventually saw.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 Remake - Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy

As it stands, the Nightmare On Elm Street remake’s opening is one of its few strong moments. It opens on an empty diner where a doomed teen wanders through the premises before eventually encountering Jackie Earle Haley’s new Freddy. This surprisingly effective sequence then cross-cuts between Freddy killing the unfortunate teen (played by Twilight’s Emmett Cullen, Kellan Lutz) as horrified onlookers watch him slit his own throat. However, this solid scare was originally not the opening, with the remake’s vetoed pre-credits scene being more maudlin and morose than scary or shocking.

Originally, the Samuel Bayer-helmed A Nightmare On Elm Street remake opened on a comatose Freddy Krueger slowly dying in a hospital bed after being burned by an angry mob of parents. Like a lot of the remake’s action, this dark, sad scene made Freddy seem more sympathetic and tragic than Robert Englund’s theatrically cruel, evil iteration. Originally, in a twist that nodded to the ‘80s obsession with Satanic panic and the McMartin preschool trials specifically, this Nightmare On Elm Street revealed Freddy was innocent. This might explain why Haley plays the character as a humorless, vengeance-fueled monster, but eventually, the remake cut this revelation and added an exploitative twist the proved this Freddy was even more monstrous. Removing the sympathetic twist about Freddy made this grim, un-scary prologue pointless, so the Nightmare On Elm Street remake cutting this scene was a smart choice.

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