One of the unwritten rules of horror movies is that every successful film eventually has a series of rubbish sequels and, eventually, an even worse prequel that robs the original of much of its mystery.

The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is all too familiar with rubbish sequels (and don't forget the Freddy vs Jason spin-off) but luckily it has managed to avoid the curse of a rubbish origin story.

Not that people haven't tried.

One person who wrote a treatment for a possible Nightmare prequel was John Saxon, the actor who played Lieutenant Donald Johnson in the original film.

Ron Galella, Ltd. Getty Images

John Saxon contemplating the failure of his screenplay (maybe)

Johnson's treatment, titled 'How the Nightmare on Elm Street All Began', went on sale on eBay this week and... let's just say there's a reason he never became a successful scriptwriter.

Saxon's proposed ideas for the film, from what we can grasp from the photographs included on the eBay listing, included Freddy Krueger just being an innocent psychiatrist.

And that's not all, it turns out the villain of the film would have been... none other than real-life murder Charles Manson. Hmmmmmmmm.

New Line Cinema

Obviously this treatment never got made into an actual film, but we're sure that whoever forked out the $350 for it is more than happy with their piece of film history that never was.

The most recent entry in the franchise was the 2010 reboot (originally planned as a twisted Goonies homage), with another one meant to be in the works.

Want up-to-the-minute entertainment news and features? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io