The Disgusting Nightmare On Elm Street 4 Effect Cut To Avoid An X

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master originally featured a “disgusting” special effect that was cut to avoid an X rating – but this was all part of the studio’s plan. Freddy Krueger evolved over the course of the Nightmare On Elm Street series from a menacing boogeyman to something of a comical prankster, especially after the runaway success of the third movie. When A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 went into production, director Renny Harlin felt Robert Englund’s dream demon had become a cultural icon and wanted to put him front and center.

While followers of the series have mixed feelings on the direction A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 took, it clearly struck a chord with viewers as it was the highest-grossing entry to date upon release in 1988. The movie somewhat controversially ended up killing the surviving Dream Warriors from the previous movie, including Kristen, who was played by Patricia Arquette in part 3 and Tuesday Knight in The Dream Master.

A Nightmare On Elm Street 4 isn’t the goriest entry in the franchise, though it has its share of gross moments. The first three entries had a hard time with the MPAA, who by the late 1980s had taken a hard stance on slasher movie violence. New Line head Robert Shaye decided to get ahead of the game with the fourth movie and instructed make-up effects artist R. Christopher Biggs to create two really disgusting effects so that when the MPAA flagged them, they could be cut easily and draw attention away from other gruesome scenes. One particularly “disgusting” gag involved Kristen’s famous beach scene.

Biggs and Nightmare On Elm Street 4 actress Tuesday Knight recalled during deleted scenes from the documentary Never Sleep Again that she was fitted with fake, prosthetic breasts during the beach scene where Kristen is attacked by Freddy. For this effect, Krueger would slash her chest with his glove, causing “bits and pieces” to fall out of these fake breasts with Biggs recalling the shot was quite nasty.

Since this Nightmare On Elm Street 4 gag was designed specially to annoy the MPAA, it was quickly removed and hasn’t resurfaced since. Sadly, Biggs didn’t provide details on what the other MPAA baiting effects gag was. This ploy appears to have worked for the fourth movie, but the MPAA famously came down much harder on A Nightmare On Elm Street 5, which saw significant cuts to the deaths of two characters. While these scenes were restored on some VHS versions, this deleted footage is largely absent from later DVD or Blu-ray edits of The Dream Child.

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Padraig Cotter
(3486 Articles Published)

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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