New Line Cinema was saved from bankruptcy by the success of the film, and was jokingly nicknamed "The House that Freddy Built."
In the original script, Freddy was a child molester. However, the decision was made to change him into being a child murderer to avoid accusations of exploiting a series of child molestations in California around the time of production. He was re-written as a child molester in the 2010 remake starring Jackie Earle Haley.
Heather Langenkamp beat over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy Thompson, among them Jennifer Grey, Demi Moore, Courteney Cox, Tracey Gold, and Claudia Wells.
Wes Craven first came up with the basic idea for the movie from a series of articles in the "Los Angeles Times" over a three-year period, about a group of Southeast Asian refugees from the Hmong tribe, several of whom died in the throes of horrific nightmares. The group had come to the U.S. to escape the murderous reign of Pol Pot, and within a year of arriving, three men had died all in similar situations, the young, otherwise healthy man would have a nightmare, then refuse to sleep for as long as he could. When he finally fell asleep from exhaustion, he awoke screaming, then died. Autopsy results revealed that they had not died from heart failure, but had simply died. It was this inability to find a cause of death that intrigued Craven so much. Medical authorities have since called the phenomenon Asian Death Syndrome, a variant of Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome (SUDS), and Brugada Syndrome.
All of the boiler room footage in the film was shot in the basement of the Lincoln Heights Jail in Los Angeles, which was condemned shortly after production wrapped, due to high levels of asbestos.
Robert Shaye: The voice of film's producer and owner of New Line Cinema, can be heard twice in the film, as the newsreader reporting on Tina's death, and as the station announcer saying "It is now twelve mid, and this is station KRGR leaving the air."
Wes Craven: [The title plays into Craven's suburban horror theme] The film is a play on pictures of suburban 1950s wholesomeness with an undercurrent of evil, as in The Last House on the Left (1972).
Wes Craven: [the main character experiences traumatizing nightmares that reflect reality or affect reality] In this film, Nancy Thompson and her friends experience horrifying nightmares about an otherworldly and malevolent figure named Fred Krueger. Other Craven films such as The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), and Cursed (2005), respectively, also explore the theme of nightmares being linked to reality through trauma.