John McNaughton earned a cult following and mass critical acclaim for his unflinching look into the heart of darkness, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990). With that film McNaughton garnered all kinds of controversy and single-handedly defined the serial killer genre. Henry and its follow-up, The Borrower (1991), led to McNaughton being strongly embraced by the horror community. But more than just a horror director, McNaughton is a true filmmaker through and through, and he worked outside of the genre until his “Masters of Horror” episode Haeckel’s Tale in 2006.
Now the revered filmmaker returns to the genre with The Harvest, a rural gothic tale that I really loved when I saw it at last year’s Fantastia Fest (review). It’s his first feature film in over a decade (in between he did a lot of theater and television work), but before The Harvest, McNaughton almost directed a prequel to Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street that at the time had the horror world buzzing, even if there wasn’t much information on which to speculate.
I recently had the chance to talk to McNaughton about The Harvest and during our conversation this defunct Nightmare prequel came up. What happened to it? Why did New Line back off? What dark secret caused one of the horror genre’s most beloved filmmakers from directing one of its most beloved franchises?
The answer is more disturbing than you can possibly imagine…
John McNaughton: “I started thinking about what we haven’t seen before and the idea came of well, where did Freddy [Krueger] come from before he returned in the first picture? Hell. Nothing could keep me from going to Hell and the idea of actually setting a story in Hell, that to me, I was just like a pig in shit.”
New Line had just made, what’s his name…the comedian that gets so little respect and makes so much money…”
Adam Sandler?
“Yeah and it was one of his goofy comedies…Little something or other…there was a number of scenes in Hell and it was his first comedy that didn’t do to well.”
Little Nicky?
“Right, and after that didn’t do too well, New Line didn’t want to go back to Hell. So I basically told them to go to Hell. Just the idea of being under the thumb of the studio and being called on to satisfy genre expectations, it’s not something that would make me happy. They were unwilling to go to Hell with me and it just came apart.”
Thanks a lot, Adam Sandler!!!
Check back later this week for our full interview with John McNaughton!