Every town has an Elm Street — even Twin Peaks.
When the characters of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare roll into Springwood and meet a peculiar couple played by Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold, Breckin Meyer’s Spencer remarks “We’re in Twin Peaks here.”
It was more than a passing reference to a contemporary pop culture phenomenon; director Rachel Talalay and screenwriter Michael De Luca drew direct influence from the series for their take on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
“Twin Peaks was playing while we were writing it,” Talalay tells Bloody Disgusting. “Michael De Luca, the writer, and Aron Warner, the producer, and I were all big Twin Peaks fans. We had watched it before we started writing it. It was continuing through prep, so it was a big influence.”
Talalay explains that they were drawn to the show’s tone. “We just liked the fact that it felt brave and unique and different, and the characterizations were strong.”
She adds, “We sometimes looked at the specific, interesting framing that David Lynch would do, but I never really was good enough to replicate that. At that point, I was too busy just trying to get the movie on the screen.”
In Freddy’s Dead, the town of Springwood decides to forever end Freddy Krueger’s deadly hold on their dreams. Freddy finally confronts the one person he has never been able to defeat, a psychologist who discovers the source of her lifelong nightmares.
