Venice, CA. circa 1982. Wes Craven had gained some heat from cult thrill films Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, but the early ’80s didn’t have fanboys championing films on the internet. Critics Siskel and Ebert openly vilify certain slasher films, and the horror genre has yet to establish widespread, massive commercial appeal.

“I had enough money in the bank to not work for a bit and I wrote the script,” Craven tells EW. “It was based on a newspaper article about an immigrant family, and the youngest son began to say that he was having nightmares that were getting worse and worse. Something was chasing him. He wouldn’t go to sleep because he felt like he would die if he slept. The father, being a physician, gave him sleeping pills. He did fall asleep, and his big brother carried him upstairs and put him to bed. The family all went to sleep thinking, ‘Thank God this crisis is over.’ Suddenly they heard screams, raced to his room, and by the time they got there he had fallen still and was dead.

“There were two little details to this newspaper story that I swear to God could have been written by a great screenwriter,” he continues. “One was that after the son was dead, the mother went into his closet and there was a Mr. Coffee in there, filled with black coffee. The parents also found the stash of sleeping pills, of which he hadn’t taken any.”

Craven fleshed out a script, focusing on the resourceful Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) and her circle of friends—a representative group of teens (the rebel, the golden boy, the amorous best friend) that steadily got picked off one-by-one by the dream stalker Freddy. The script tapped into Craven’s fascination with the subconscious—in college, he minored in psychology and kept a dream journal. “The script went everywhere, and I received a stack of rejection letters,” says Craven. “There was one exception. I had met Bob Shaye, and he was distributing Reefer Madness and Pink Flamingos. It was low level, but obviously Bob had tremendous capabilities. After reading the script, he set off on a two-and-a-half year journey to find the money to produce it. Meanwhile, I went broke because I kept my office open.I was desperately in trouble; Sean [Cunningham, one of the producers on Last House on the Left] actually loaned me money to pay my taxes that year. Then I got a call from Bob saying that he had the money, and we started preproduction.”

Robert Englund, a gregarious 5’9” actor who played almost exclusively comic parts in stage productions, was not the first choice for the physically imposing menace that Craven envisioned Freddy to be. At the time, in 1984, Englund was experiencing his first bout of success with the TV series V, while Craven was looking at older character actors and, eventually, stuntmen to play his villain. But when Englund and Craven finally crossed paths, something clicked.

“I think they were considering making Freddy silent for a while,” says Englund. “Then Wes saw something in me, and it happened. Freddy was always a cruel clown. I remember using that phrase with Wes once—it’s a term from Roman theater. He cracks jokes, and takes the culture, and the fears, weaknesses and flaws of the kids, and throws it back in their face. That said, Wes is a little perturbed about the way we exploited Freddy’s sense of humor in the sequels.”

Freddy’s iconic glove, the invention of Craven and special effects artist Jim Doyle, played heavily into shaping and defining Freddy’s stunted movement and lumbering gait. “Once I found the right steak knives, I knew where to go with it,” says Doyle. “The actual glove weighs about a pound. It’s heavier than you think. And as soon as Robert felt the weight of it, he started playing with it.”

The casting of Nancy was obviously crucial, and Craven pored over hundreds of headshots to find the perfect person for the part. Without the luxury of time or budget, about 30-40 girls were called in to audition. One was Heather Langenkamp—not a classic Hollywood blonde, but an actress with long, bushy hair and tangible innocence.

“I grew up in Oklahoma until the age of 13,” says Langenkamp. “I had a great, normal childhood. I went to public school, walked the dog and played outside every day. It was that kind of time in America where kids had a lot of freedom. One of the most important aspects of my life is that I did grow up in an outdoor environment. I learned to be resourceful and tough. When I think about how I played Nancy, that definitely had something to do with it.”

For the role of Nancy’s boyfriend Glen, Craven’s daughter Jessica can take credit for casting Johnny Depp. “My daughter had a friend over and they were sitting in the kitchen when I came home from the office,” says Craven. “I was carrying three photographs, and two were the standard horror film-types; one looked like a football player and the other a model. I thought they were guys that girls would find interesting but I wasn’t sure, so I also brought a picture of this strange guy who had come into the casting session because his friend had been cast as a coroner.

“Johnny was an unusual looking guy because he had the long hair of a hippie but also a profound maturity about him. His fingers were yellow, and I realized it was nicotine because he was chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes. I took his picture just for the hell of it and I spread them on my kitchen table and said, ‘Which one would you go for?’ They both jammed their finger on the picture of Johnny and said, ‘Him!’ I said, ‘Isn’t he kind of scruffy looking?’ They both said the same word at the same time without looking at each other: ‘He’s beautiful.’”

Once the cast was assembled, the production sped by. “It was a quick five-or-six-week shoot,” says Langenkamp. “We all got along great. There was no drama. It was a time in Hollywood when we really were starving actors. Nobody had a great car or was on the verge of breaking. We were all really glad to have a job. There were drugs, as it was the ’80s. I wasn’t a user, but I knew they were around and was very aware that some people would come to work and maybe not be 100 percent.”

For Langenkamp, working with Depp remained strictly professional. “Johnny was married to his wife who lived in Florida, so the idea of having a crush wouldn't have occurred to me,” she says. “I’m not the kind of person that tortures myself with unattainable men.” However, she had her hands full with the foul-mouthed, playful Englund. “Robert really enjoyed pestering me because on the outside I do look like such a goody-two-shoes. He would do whatever he could to ruffle my feathers.”

While the cast enjoyed their time on set, a very nervous Bob Shaye was frantically watching the budget and praying Wes could pull off the project.

“The gamble was that the whole thing would go kablooey, and that I would have a lot of egg on my face,” Shaye says. “As we started pre-production, we found out that some of the investors had disappeared. I had made the decision to start paying some of the key people out of my own pocket to keep them from leaving the set. Meanwhile, I was scrounging around trying to pick up the really messy pieces that these so-called investors had left behind in Los Angeles, all while I was in New York. I hadn’t a clue how to fund an independent picture, but I was trying.”

Nightmare on Elm Street was released limited on Nov. 9, 1984 and went national on Nov. 16. Despite a slow rollout the film did exceptionally well, making $1.45 million the first week and $2.05 million the second; ultimately, it grossed $24 million. Freddy became an industry, and New Line—which became cheekily known as The House That Freddy built—went on to produce The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Heather Langenkamp continued acting and settled into an industry niche with AFX Studio, an Academy Award-winning makeup effects company she runs with her husband, David Anderson. Robert Englund continued to act and direct, never breaking free from horror movie typecasting but remaining happy with his lot. Johnny Depp, you know.

As for the movie itself, it earned a spot in the permanent collection of the horror movie canon—even if the people involved can’t agree on exactly what makes it so timeless.