Nightmare On Elm Street: Tina’s Death Was Changed After VHS

Here’s why Tina’ haunting demise in A Nightmare On Elm Street was trimmed for every release post-VHS. Wes Craven spent years developing the script for A Nightmare On Elm Street, which was inspired by a series of articles he’d read about people dying in their sleep. He infused the screenplay with a lot of personal elements, with Freddy getting his name from the director’s childhood bully and his look being inspired by a man who frightened Craven one night when he was a boy. The story is also steeped in subtext, from the sins of the parents being revisited on their children to Freddy literally destroying their dreams.

Despite the originality of the concept, no major studios would touch A Nightmare On Elm Street and felt it was too silly. New Line eventually produced it on a tiny budget and it became a word of mouth success. It also announced the arrival of Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger as a new horror icon, who would return for six sequels, crossover Freddy Vs Jason, a short-lived TV series, comics, games and much more. There was also a poorly-received remake in 2010 that starred Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy.

A Nightmare On Elm Street pulls a Psycho-inspired twist in its first act, initially setting up Tina (Amanda Wyss) as the main character before she’s shockingly killed off and Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) becomes the heroine. Tina’s demise is one of the film’s most harrowing visuals, as Freddy attacks her on her bed, slicing her chest with his razor-finger glove and dragging her across the ceiling all while screaming for her boyfriend Rod to help. What some fans may not realize is that every DVD and Blu-ray version trim one shot from this scene.

When Tina finally dies, the scene originally saw her drop from the ceiling and land on the blood-soaked bed. This led to a slow-motion shot of Tina hitting the bed and causing a small eruption of blood across the room, which splashes Rod. A Nightmare On Elm Street retains the shot of Rod being splashed, but the impact of Tina hitting the bed is gone. The full version of this scene has never been released in the U.S., with the R-rated cut shown in cinemas and subsequent home release versions using this same edit.

The full, uncut version of Tina’s A Nightmare On Elm Street death was made available on VHS in a few places though, including Germany and the UK but when it came to later DVD and Blu-ray releases, the R-rated version was used again. This missing shot does little to lessen the overall impact of the scene, but it’s a shame most versions cut it out. The same thing happened with Nightmare On Elm Street: The Dream Child years later, with the R-rated version making substantial trims to the deaths of Dan and Greta. Some foreign VHS copies featured the uncut sequences, but every release since has used the cut version.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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