Of all the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies , the original film remains the best thanks in part to a very simple but extremely effective premise expertly realized on a shockingly low budget. The idea of a serial killer capable of offing you in your sleep sounds like the stuff of pure, terrifying fantasy. But while Freddy Krueger is, thankfully, entirely fictitious, it turns out the inspiration behind this slasher icon has a very real basis. "A Nightmare on Elm Street" writer and director Wes Craven was actually inspired by newspaper articles covering the bizarre and tragic story of Southeast Asian refugees who died in their sleep after suffering from severe nightmares.

In the 1984 horror classic, Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger terrorizes suburban teens who encounter the slain child kil

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