No good deed goes unpunished, and in the case of crafting the little girl corpse we see in “A Nightmare On Elm Street 3,” doing exactly what the director wanted ended up backfiring. As special makeup effects artist Mark Shostrom shared with Bloody Disgusting, director Chuck Russell’s instructions were straightforward: “Think Aushwitz.” So, he went about his task to create what Russell wanted: “I went to the Simon Wiesenthal museum and I got research and I made this corpse. The ribcage looked very emaciated and it was a little heart wrenching, this poor little girl puppet.”
If you’ve already seen the film, you already know that this is not what we got in the final cut. No, instead we got the less impactful skeleton grinning up at Kristen, telling her that she is hurting. While it gets the point across, it’s not the emotional gut punch originally envisioned. So, what exactly happened to warrant this change? Shostrom did too good of a job.
After 10 weeks of hard work in constructing this mechanical corpse, Shostrom presented the little girl puppet to Russell. It was so realistic looking that the director completely shut down even the thought of filming it. As Shostrom describes the moment on set, he shared, “[Russell] looked and said ‘Oh my God, everybody who’s Jewish in the audience is going to look at this and hate me. We can’t film this.'” With the time crunch, though, something had to be done and fast.
