phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm’lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.

Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

For this installment, we’ll be looking at late actor John Saxon’s treatment for his proposed prequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Written in 1987 and featuring Saxon’s Nightmare character Springwood Police Lieutenant Donald Thompson in the lead, How the Nightmare on Elm Street All Began charts the fateful events leading up to Thompson and the parents of Springwood turning vigilante and executing accused child killer Fred Krueger, leading to his ultimate resurrection as the dream demon who stalks his killers’ children in their nightmares.

As you’ll soon learn, Saxon’s take on the franchise was fascinating and quite bold, taking big swings with the mythology set forth in the original film.

John Saxon as Donald Thompson in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984)

It’s 1969.

Patchouli and musk are in the air.

Political and social turmoil, violence on campus, a President who refused to run again; the anthem of the young: “make Love not War”, are recent memories and conversation pieces.

So begins Saxon’s treatment, setting the stage for the tale of Donald Thompson, here a young rookie detective in the Springwood Police Department fifteen years before the events of Wes Craven’s 1984 horror classic. As the tale opens, we find Thompson seeking out Betsy, his missing fifteen year old daughter. He manages to find her in a hippy commune, having run away from home and fallen under the sway of “Jimmy”, a Pied Piper-esque cult leader heading up a “homeless bunch of kids playing house” (strong shades of Charlie Manson here). Betsy insists that her father stay and meet the absent Jimmy, but Thompson simply drags her away from the commune, all scored to the mad laughter of her new adopted family.

Back at the Thompson residence, Donald and Betsy return, only to find a scornful Marge, Donald’s wife and Betsy’s stepmother, unhappy that the household’s runaway has come home. There’s no love lost between Marge and her stepdaughter, especially given that Marge focuses much of her attention and love on Nancy, her and Donald’s five year old daughter. Mention is made of Marge’s drinking here, which will become worse by the time the events of the first Nightmare roll around. Betsy seems to enjoy the rift she’s creating between her father and stepmother, which leads Marge to storm out with Nancy, leaving to stay with relatives until “things straighten out”.

Thompson, exasperated and certain that his oldest daughter needs help, quietly looks for a therapist for Betsy, scouring the local Yellow Pages for a possibility. He eventually runs across the number for a child therapist just south of his home on Elm Street. One “F. Krueger”.

He secretly visits Mr. Krueger, a young, sensitive, bookish intellectual, who wears a red and green sweater, and limps. Krueger seems dedicated to his work with adolescents. Krueger suggests Thompson explain what the problem is.

Thompson convinces his daughter to meet with Krueger, even as she receives secret phone calls from her “pals”. She stays combative with Krueger during their sessions, even showing up to his office under the influence of LSD. It’s during one of their talks that she admits to having “feelings” for her father, before she begins rambling about committing violent acts. Krueger grows increasingly concerned with Betsy’s behavior, eventually attempting to call Thompson, only to find out the detective is now “too busy” with his current investigation.

A “grizzly, seemingly motiveless murder” now dominates Thompson’s time. A young boy has been killed – stabbed to death, with “some kind of object that produces multiple stab wounds simultaneously”. Thompson, eager to prove himself as a solid detective, buries himself in his work even as he ignores the warning signs surrounding his daughter and Krueger’s growing concerns.

In one wild sequence, Betsy spikes her father’s coffee with LSD before he meets with Krueger. Disturbed by both the case he’s working and Krueger’s revelations regarding his own daughter’s fantasies, Thompson finds the LSD in his system taking hold of his subconscious. In this way, Saxon’s treatment still allows for there to be “nightmares” present in this Nightmare prequel.

The worlds converge in Thompson’s mind…with L.S.D. heightened images of the mutilated corpse he has actually seen.… The synergistic influence of the drug on what he is being told, on his unconscious conflicts, obliterate his grasp of reality altogether.… A temporary “nightmare” psychosis occurs. “Did I harm these people?”

Krueger, concerned by Thompson’s state, takes him home, only to be met by Betsy…and a series of accusations. She tells her father that Krueger had drugged her, that she had all of these terrible “nightmares”. Krueger defends himself, but it does no good. Thompson becomes convinced by Betsy’s lies. “Daddy, you know why he gave me that stuff? So he could fuck me! And he tried, Daddy!”

Thompson attacks Krueger, nearly killing him in the process. The therapist races away, barely managing to escape with his life. Thompson collapses under the weight of his hallucinations, tended to by his daughter, who tries to talk him through his trip. He has vivid nightmares of young women being assaulted by a faceless man, of himself examining the corpse of one of these victims, only to find that it’s his own daughter. She springs to life, “…sticking her tongue down his throat.”

Thompson starts awake, finding himself in his daughter’s bed, sweaty and clad only in his underwear. His daughter is there, wrapped in a kimono, keeping a close eye on him. Thompson questions her about his being nearly naked, to which Betsy responds that she only brought him into her room to keep an eye on him.

He hallucinates further as Betsy invites some of her friends into the house to party. After more drug-fueled visions of children playing in a park and being tied down by Lilliputian kids as though he were Gulliver, Thompson awakens the next morning to find Betsy gone and his house trashed. The department calls, wondering where in the hell their detective is. Thompson arrives at the morgue to find yet another child murdered, this one a young girl named “Alice”, the daughter of a friend. When Thompson discovers that Alice had been seeing Krueger for various problems, he launches into an investigation of the therapist, stalking Krueger and illegally searching his office after hours. Thompson soon discovers that Krueger is quite popular with the kids at the local high school. They’ve even nicknamed him “Dr. Deep”.

Robert Englund as a young Freddy Krueger in ‘Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare’ (1991)

Betsy plants various ideas in her father’s head about Krueger (“He’s weird, Dad. All he wanted to talk about was weird violent things, and killing. I betcha he killed Alice!”), even as Thompson notes how easily Krueger seems to ingratiate himself with the young students. Betsy eventually attends a strange ritual with her hippie commune, presided over by a “bearded, wiry young man with black hair and glowing eyes … His face has some ‘Shamanistic’ marking painted on it. This is Jimmy!” The cultist leads his followers in a ritual that sees them burning a wooden doll of “Dr. Deep” in effigy in the large bonfire roaring before them.

Meanwhile, Thompson visits Krueger under the pretense of offering an apology. Krueger takes the opportunity to warn Thompson about his daughter, noting that she seems to be a good kid who’s being led into trouble. When the therapist warns Thompson to keep a close eye on his daughter, the detective hears a threat, and makes one himself:  “If anything happens to her…I’ll kill you myself.”

At the next crime scene Thompson is called to, he discovers that the victim in question is Betsy, found in a pool of her own blood. Thompson, grief-stricken and enraged, notices a message painted on the apartment’s refrigerator in Betsy’s blood – “D E E P”. Soon Krueger is in handcuffs and Marge has returned home to Thompson, Nancy in tow. As Thompson and Marge fight, they each use Krueger’s name in anger. Their daughter hears this, imitating them. “Kroo-gah!” Little Nancy Thompson, even now already fearing the figure who will terrorize her several years down the line. Meanwhile…

Krueger is being questioned. He is stalwart and angry. Why does he hang around with kids? Because he likes kids and is writing a book about growing up in the sixties! The cops smirk and look at each other.… Can he prove his whereabouts at the specific times of the murders? Probably, yeah!

Ultimately realizing that they have nothing to hold him on, the cops release Krueger. However, as we all know from the backstory set forth in the first Nightmare, the parents of Springwood will not simply let this matter rest. A group of about ten meet in the basement of Thompson’s home, the detective and this collection of burgeoning vigilantes discussing what to do with Krueger. Torture and murder is suggested, before Thompson insists that they simply cannot take the law into their own hands. He then suggests that they simply get Krueger to confess what he’s done. The group reluctantly agrees on this course of action.

Thompson breaks into Krueger’s cabin, drugs him, and brings him back to the basement to stand trial before the parents of Springwood. They demand the truth, so Krueger gives it to them:

They have been unloving, uncaring Parents, just as their Parents before them were unloving. They need to accept that and forgive themselves, and start afresh … look for love in themselves, not look for him to confess to what he didn’t do … They have to accept that … :  they didn’t love their children!

A shovel cracks Krueger’s head. “You don’t know what you’re doing…” in mid-sentence: He falls, blood streaming across his face. “Don’t do this. I’m not guilty. You are! Forgive yourselves!”

Enraged at what they’ve heard and no longer caring to adhere to any law, the group lights up acetylene torches. “You don’t know what you’re doing!” Krueger screams.

The parents burn Krueger to death.

Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984)

Some time later, Thompson is called to hear the confession of a girl in custody at the police station. He listens to her account through the one way glass of the interrogation room. She admits to her involvement in a series of slayings, including Betsy’s murder, noting that there were others involved in the killings as well. She tells the police that they were all directed by Jimmy, who sees himself as “God”. So Fred Krueger was indeed innocent, just like he’d said.

The revelation tortures Thompson. He suffers nightmares, screaming out Krueger’s name at night. Marge does her best to comfort him, plying him with booze, the both of them sliding further into alcoholism to deal with their problems.

Meanwhile, little Nancy Thompson still has concerns about this “Ferdie Kroogah” she’s heard so much about in this household. Though her parents assure her that she’s safe and that they will protect her, she’s beginning to have nightmares of her own. As Saxon’s treatment ends, he gives us one single moment with the iconic slasher that the franchise is known for:

Back in their bedroom, the Thompsons take another drink and flop into bed. A blood curdling scream from Nancy’s room.

CUT TO: Nancy screams hysterically…as she envisions…

FREDDY KRUEGER…

As we all have come to know and love him!

Saxon’s take on Krueger’s origin story is an eye-opener, blending in Manson-like cultists and an uncomfortable incest subplot into the series’ mythology, along with the revelation that Freddy was indeed innocent before his untimely end and eventual resurrection as a wicked supernatural murderer (an idea that was briefly touched upon in Platinum Dunes’ 2010 remake). Even though Saxon’s story never made it before cameras, it still stands as an entertaining standalone story and an intriguing “What if?” bit of Hollywood horror history.

Sections in bold taken directly from John Saxon’s treatment.

A peek at the cover page of Saxon’s treatment