A Nightmare on Elm Street Rotating Room – TV Special
These days, film makers need little excuse to create creative bloody death sequences, but it was A Nightmare on Elm Street that really started the trend. Before Wes Craven introduced us to Freddy Kruger, the likes of Micheal Myers and Jason Voorheers were stabbing and hacking their way through young teens. Craven broke this monotony by dragging Amanda Wyss across the ceiling, turning Johnny Depp into a fountain of visceral and hanging Nick Corri with an invisible hand on the rope. Both bedroom death scenes were creating using the very same set, which a perfectly balanced rotating room.
Jim Doyle, the film’s Mechanical Special Effects designer, who also created Freddy Krueger’s glove, just recently released some never before seen footage which takes us behind the scenes on this special effects wizardry that brought the rotating room to life. Bloody Disgusting were keen to point out that …
The room didn’t come without its challenges. Wyss experienced intense vertigo and it’s well-known that while shooting the blood geyser scene, the “blood” aka red water caused a little bit of a real nightmare for everyone on set. Once the liquid hit the light, the guy pouring the light was electrocuted, and then the water began to slosh around, throwing the room off-balance. It spun around as wires and sparks flew and the room became covered in the red water. Terrifying in the moment, to be sure, but the “fortuitous mistake” (as Rachel Talalay, the film’s assistant production manager, refers to it in Never Sleep Again) resulted in eerie and gruesome visuals for the final film.
You can watch this new footage below, from Elm Street Radio. Enjoy…
Never before seen footage of the rotating room set from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Includes behind the scenes footage of movement, a TV special aired during the film’s production and some news coverage and footage of the piece’s use in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. All footage courtesy of Jim Doyle.
