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Podcast: Verbal Diorama
Episode: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Description: 40 years ago, slashers took a terrifying turn, when Wes Craven suggested that we could not only be haunted by our nightmares, but also die from the creatures within them.Craven's creation of Freddy Krueger stemmed from a haunting childhood memory that inspired the character - called Fred Krueger in this movie only - and the true unexplained deaths of Cambodian immigrants who randomly died in their sleep. While cinema was becoming saturated with cheap, clichéd knock-offs after Halloween and Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street would successfully reinvent the genre; blending supernatural slasher horror w...