Why A Nightmare On Elm St 5 Uncut Has Never Been Restored On DVD or Blu-Ray

A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child featured heavy trims to two major death scenes, but here's why an uncut version never arrived on DVD or Blu-ray. Freddy Krueger reached the apex of his popularity with 1988's A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which was the highest-grossing of the series at that point. The movie also put Freddy front and center, positioning him as the undisputed star of the franchise.

Sadly, production company New Line was in too big of a rush to capitalize on the sequel's success. They quickly pushed A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child into production, which started filming with a script that was basically stapled together from drafts by different writers. Director Stephen Hopkins gave the sequel some nice gothic visuals and attempted to restore Freddy's menace, but a flimsy storyline and lack of decent scares saw the fifth movie become a critical and financial letdown.

Related: How Stephen King Almost Took Control Of Nightmare on Elm Street

To reach an R-rating, A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 had to make some major trims to two scenes. The first involved the death of Dan, who is fused to his bike by Freddy during a nightmare, with the original version featuring more graphic moments of machinery being inserted into his body and his skin burning off. The second was Greta's demise, which revealed that Freddy is actually force-feeding her pieces of her own stomach - this detail is obscured in the theatrical cut. The uncut version made its way to some VHS tapes and LaserDisc, but it has never been restored for DVD or Blu-ray.

Sadly, it appears the reason A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 has never been properly remastered for DVD or Blu-ray is due to film master problems, with the original elements being in poor shape. If this is the case, it's unlikely a fully uncut version of The Dream Child will be released. Overall, the movie is missing about 30 seconds of footage between these two scenes, though the deaths of Dan and Greta feel badly truncated in the R-rated version due to abrupt edits.

Good quality versions of the uncut scenes taken from A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child's LaserDisc release can be found online, so at least fans can see what they originally looked like. The fifth movie is one of the weakest installments of the original series and features one of the lowest bodycounts. An uncut Blu-ray wouldn't suddenly make it a better film, but it would at least allow A Nightmare On Elm Street devotees to see the movie as it was intended.

Next: The Disgusting Nightmare On Elm Street 4 Effect Cut To Avoid An NC-17

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March 14, 2021 at 06:00AM