Nightmare (1981) UNCUT

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• published: 17 Jun 2013
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Due to the numerous comments of whether Tom Savini was or was not involved with the Special Effects in NIGHTMARE I have included two short articles from FANGORIA magazine which should hopefully put this debate to rest. - 2/18/2016 SAVINI SUES: About a week before the film Nightmare had it's world premiere at 50 theaters in the New York area, ads sprang up like mushrooms in all the New York newspapers and in weekly Variety, declaring that the film came from the man who terrified you in Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th. In these same ads, the largest credit listed was 'Special Effects Director TOM SAVINI.' Since the last time we spoke to Savini he was already knee-deep in Creepshow critters, we were wondering when he'd been able to squeeze in another picture, and why he had never mentioned it. We didn't have to wonder long; shortly after the ads appeared, Savini called us from the Creepshow location to tell us that the Nightmare credit was a total fiction, and that he was going to sue. According to Savini, he was contacted initially to do the effects, but the producers never got back to him--until Nightmare had been completed in Florida. After the film had been cut, however, it was decided that it still needed some work, and Savini was called in as a consultant, as New York-based effects technician Les Lorraine, assisted by Ed French, worked on the body-chopping concluding sequence. "What I did consisted solely of advice", says Savini. "I'd tell them that something needed to look more organic, or how something should be lit. But none of the effects work in the film is my own." --(FANGORIA #16) NIGHTMARE: At last, the final word on the effects in Nightmare, last summer's terror epic that falsely boasted effects by Tom Savini. While brief sequences in that film were shot in the New York area (with some consultation by Savini), Cleve Hall of Jacksonville, Florida tells the following tale of the on-set effects for the Florida-made film: "I was contacted to do the effects for the film Nightmare in December 1980; at the time the film was being called Dark Games. They had already begun production and had three weeks shooting schedule, so I found myself with no pre-production time, a small budget, and six people to mutilate. My first step was to enlist the aid of my friend and partner, Steve Sleap; while he did makeup and applied prosthetics, I was casting limbs and designing new ways to chop, hack, slice and blast people to pieces. With an average of three hours of sleep each night, Steve and I pulled it together, killing three people on our last night of shooting, but because production was somewhat behind schedule, one scene was scrapped to be done later in New York, the flashback with two gory deaths. Steve and I were contacted four months later to complete it, but both of us had prior commitments. The film subsequently changed names and producers, and suddenly Steve and I had no screen credit. I'm not surprised at the Savini references--that's the kind of production it was. I still hope to see the film, because Steve and I worked fairly hard, and did some fairly grisly effects." --(FANGORIA #22)