Last Updated on July 28, 2021
The Arrow
interviews Robert Englund
Robert
Englund has been on the scene since the 70s. He’s been in films like Tobe Hooper’s “Eaten Alive”, “Dead and Buried”, “Galaxy
of Terror”, “The V series”, “Wishmaster”, “Urban Legend” and way
more. But it’s his incarnation of dream killer Freddy “the
freakin’
man” Krueger, originating in Wes Craven’s genre classic “Nightmare
on Elm Street” that immortalized him as a horror icon.
Let’s face
it, the Big K is now amongst the ranks of all the horror greats: we
have Dracula, Frankenstein and yes…we have Freddy! That’s quite an
accomplishment and Robert deserves all of his success. He has always
been really good to his fans throughout the years, while being a fervent horror fan himself. Now, as we all know, the long
awaited “Freddy vs Jason” will soon
be upon us. The film is done shooting and
has now entered post-production. PART 1 of this interview concentrates on
“Freddy vs
Jason” while PART 2 will be about Robert’s other upcoming
projects
and more! Freddy vs Arrow is on! Here’s what this great man had to
say.
Hello?
ARROW:
Hello Mr. Englund, how are you?
ROBERT:
Fine.
ARROW:
First, I’d like to thank you for giving me years and years of
nightmares as a child.
ROBERT:
(still in Freddy voice):
Well, it’s a dirty job and somebody had to do it. What can I tell ya!
ROBERT’S FAV HORROR MOVIES
ARROW: (laugh) I’ll start off by asking you
what your favorite horror movie is?
ROBERT: I actually have a couple– I sort of like to do old school/new school, you know?
ARROW: Yeah.
ROBERT: I’d have to say right now the ones that are in memory the
most are “The Innocents” with Deborah Kerr, a black and white film,
sort of what I would call old school. More recently I really liked
“The Devil’s Backbone”.
ARROW: Yeah, great movie!
ROBERT: Those right now are my favorites and both of them are what I
like to call at this stage in my life: the classy end of horror.
Sort of like “Rosemary’s Baby” and stuff like that. But I don’t want my fans to
think that I don’t like them down and dirty too– I also recently saw a
great little English film called “Dog Soldiers” that I really liked and going back to the early eighties, I loved
John Carpenter’s remake of “The Thing” with Kurt Russell, I haven’t
seen it in a while but it’s a movie that I hold very dear. I also
loved Brian De Palma’s “Sisters” back in
the 70’s. The film had a great use of split screen, blended comedy,
horror, thriller and had some great nightmare concepts. Have you
seen De Palma’s new movie?
ARROW: Yeah, I have actually…Femme Fatale.
ROBERT: Did you like it?
ARROW: Yeah, I did. It’s Brian De Palma going back to
his old way; “Body Double” kind of vibe.
ROBERT: I like that stuff, my friend Greg Henry is in that.
ARROW: Oh yeah! Have you seen the film yourself?
ROBERT: I haven’t seen it, I literally wrapped “Freddy vs Jason” on
the last week of November and they were still shooting when I left.
I missed the cast party and all because I had to fly down to Laguna
Beach where I live. Once there, I threw the wife and the dog in the
car and drove all the way back to the California coast because I had
to do Thanksgiving with my wife’s family. I just drove back 2 days
ago and my face is still swollen around the eyes.
ARROW: You relaxing now?
RE: Yeah, I’m just taking it
easy:
sweeping up the leaves, getting ready for the holidays to hit.
FREDDY VS JASON: DIRECTORS AND SCRIPTS
ARROW: Well, let’s hop onto what everybody is
mucho looking forward to, me included, which is “Freddy vs
Jason”.
ROBERT: Sure.
ARROW: What was it about this specific screenplay that made
it be “the one”, as opposed to all of the other scripts that strolled
through over the years?
ROBERT: I think it wasn’t just the
scripts delaying the production…they also went through a bunch of
directors. I have been set to do this movie since 2000, that was the
goal. Sort of like Freddy 2000 you know?
ARROW: Yeah.
ROBERT: So the first director was Rob
Bottin the genius effects guy–
ARROW: Yup, The Thing…
ROBERT: They had problems with the
budget with Rob, so then I think they brought on Guillermo del Toro…but he went on to
“Blade 2”. They were tweaking the script all this
time too. I actually went to Europe once and sat across one of the
producers of “King of the Hill”, the animated show, and he had also
done a draft for the film! I thought that was great! So after
Michael De Luca left New Line, there were new people that
had to be agreeable on the script and maybe there were changes in
attitude as to what the script should have.
I always felt there had
to be a great “Jason nightmare” or the movie wouldn’t work and how
Jason and Freddy would get together was always a problem for me. As
time went by, we needed to re-integrate the back stories on both
monsters in the script. Now all those things are accomplished
amazingly and amazingly fast, I think. You’re going to have to
surrender a little bit to the contrivance of how Freddy and Jason
get together. Freddy literally needs Jason.
HYPNOCIL
DRUG, FREDDY DOWN AND OUT &
THE LOOK OF THE FILM
ROBERT: There’s also a subplot about “Hypnocil” in the film which is a
drug. The script kind of makes a statement about today’s drug
culture: Prozac, Viagra and everything. So the parents of Springwood
have developed a drug to prevent them from dreaming. So by
preventing people from dreaming, Freddy can’t get to them and people
have now forgotten Freddy, the fear, the legend, the myth. The
portal in which Freddy can enter has sort of been sealed shut, because
people don’t dream anymore. But there’s also side effects with this
drug, this pill, this hypnocil…as in hynotioc and this is a
subplot in the film.
ARROW: Actually, wasn’t “Hypnocil” the drug that Nancy
took in “Nightmare on Elm Street 3” to not dream?
ROBERT: Yeah, they brought it back.
The adults are manufacturing it now and the lead girl Lori, played by
Monica Keena, her father is a pharmaceutical guy. So Freddy is sort of impotent now and
he can’t reach his revenge on the siblings and the survivors of the
vigilante parents that burned him alive, so he needs someone to
instill fear, so he uses Jason since Jason operates in the real
world. Jason becomes Freddy’s sort of “Frankenstein monster” and
Freddy eventually lo
his control over him as Jason begins poaching on Freddy’s victims.
And t
also all sorts of nasty stuff in the film, there’s a nasty
back-story on Freddy, a
a nasty back-story on Jason…and
Freddy gets inside Jason’s nightmares.
ARROW: Wow, I’m now officially anxious to see
this.
ROBERT: It’s great. This is not
anything new, the critics are saying this is another way to exploit
the franchise and all, but it really goes back to “Batman Vs
Superman”, “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein” or the
“Wolfman meets Dracula”
and all that. This is like an old tried and true, wonderful, fun
Hollywood popcorn concept and it isn’t anything new. Because of
Ronnie Yu, the director who did “Bride of Chucky”, and more recently
Samuel Jackson’s film “Formula 51”, I look at this film as a great,
state of the art– almost like a coffee table comic book, just by the
way it looks.
Fred Murphy who was the DP on
“The Mothman Prophecies” and “October Sky” was the DP on the film and between he and Ronnie, they
sort of came up with this beautiful, and yet twisted, look to the
film. It’s like some gorgeous, twisted, violent Dutch comic book you
know– Asian, Cyber Japanese Cyber Punk, illustrated comic book with
Scorsese camera angles, Orson Wells camera angles and film noir
style…it’s REALLY interesting! There’s also lots of different colors
plays, kind of like Paul Schrader’s style. It’s just really a great
classy, violent popcorn movie. I’ve been calling it a gourmet
popcorn that’s spelled…G-O-R-E (in a scary ass
Freddy voice that made me jump).
ARROW: (laughs) It sounds like a
freakin’ visual
treat!
ROBERT: It is, and I think that the
audience just has to surrender itself to the comic book mentality
of it. I don’t mean like comic “funny”, I mean like the graphic style.
Once the movie starts, there’s just a great rhythm to it…it’s just
cool sequence after cool sequence.
JASON GOES
RAVING IN CORN
ROBERT: My favorite scene in the
movie is a sequence I’m not even in. It’s a sequence of Jason at a
rave in a cornfield in middle America.
ARROW: OH YEAH! (I got excited there…big time!)
ROBERT: The scene is just phenomenal!
When you read it, it has these great rhythms to it and when you see
it visually: little rave nerd boys with day glow clothes being piped
and speared by Jason and flung across rows and rows of corn glowing
like meteors or comets through the night.
ARROW: Wow!
ROBERT: It’s cool
stuff…really cool
stuff.
ARROW:
That’s like a crowd pleasing Jason scene for the fans.
ROBERT: It’s a great Jason scene with
Freddy getting in at the end of it. It’s just structurally such a
wonderful relentless, Jason the mindless shark feeding at a rave
scene. It’s just the perfect thing. The rhythms, the geometry of the
corn field. It’s really going to be a famous sequence, I think.
DOES FREDDY GETS HIS DAY? BABY JASON?
FREDDY AND JASON SELLING OUT OR NOT?
TO GORE OR NOT TO GORE?
ARROW: Does Freddy get his own famous, crowd-pleasing sequence?
ROBERT: Freddy has a couple of great
sequences in the film, but he’s kind of like the puppet master in
this for a while. What’s great about Freddy in this is when he gets
to comment and manipulate the back stories and the fears of the
characters– especially with Jason. I’ll just give you a hint: Freddy
meets baby Jason. Ok…it’s great, it’s just really sick stuff.
ARROW: I wanted to address this. Being on the
Net
a lot and hearing all the feedback about “Freddy Vs
Jason”, I picked
up that the younger teens, the newer audience are really, really
looking forward to the film…while some of the long time, more
hardcore fans are a little afraid that maybe Freddy and Jason are
being watered down or “mainstreamed” for today’s target audience.
ROBERT: All I can tell you is this:
Remember what I told ya before? Gourmet popcorn?
ARROW: Yeah.
ROBERT: There’s more violence, Freddy
is less funny and more violent…
ARROW: Nice! (fanboy body rush happened here)
ROBERT: Freddy is a little older
here, Freddy is not uber-Freddy like he was in “Wes Craven’s
New Nightmare”, he’s not a jokester either. He’s a little slower, he gets
yanked in reality, gets an ass kicking. Freddy is also a little more
afraid and his powers are a little diminished. But he has an agenda
and there’s more violence and more twisted shit in this film than in
the last 4 Freddy movies.
ARROW: Well, that’s very good news! Would you say
that the
film is more axed towards the fantastic, the gore or a little bit of
both?
ROBERT: I think
it’s a meld of
both. The film is really stylish but it’s also really violent. It’s
got lots of effects and lots and lots of good gore. Sometimes it
gets a little “Monty Python” gore, but that’s intentional
because it’s dream world shit. So you get both values out of it.
KANE HODDER, JASON’S MOTHER AND
ARROW: Now I want to address this.
Lots of fans,
me included, are pissed that Kane Hodder is not Jason and…
ROBERT: Let me tell you what I know
about this.
ARROW: Shoot.
ROBERT: It was never meant as
an insult to Kane except for the reality that Kane is not in it,
which you can perceive, as an insult because Kane was certainly
responsible for the popularity of Jason in the last 10 years.
Director Ronny Yu, who has lots of strong stuff out there, I mean we
loved “Bride of Chucky”…well, Ronny had this image of
Jason. Now I’m
not sure if it derived from a Friday the 13th movie as much as from
an illustration, a comic book what-not, but he always presumed that
Jason was gigantically big and because it’s “Freddy Vs Jason”, he always
thought that in this comic book style that he was going to exploit, Jason would be larger than life, almost basketball player-like. He’s
just absolutely huge in this movie!
(Arrow Note: Ken Kirzinger, who plays Jason in FVJ, is 6″5 and
Kane Hodder is 6″3… they should’ve given Kane elevator shoes for
those 2 inches. COME ON!)
I always serve the writer first because
I’m English trained, even though I’m American. I don’t protect my own
ass, I protect the writer’s ass first.
knows best and the writer is my first god, then I serve the
director, then I serve myself. Actually Jason’s
mother has this piece of dialogue
I’ve been using as an image. I always get inspiration from whatever
characters say about my character. So I use this piece of Jason’s
mother’s dialogue where she calls him a “big stupid dog”. I’ve been
thinking of Jason as a huge stupid dog and Freddy as just like a
little yap-yap junkyard dog.
ARROW: (laughs)
That’s hilarious.
ROBERT: That’s the imagery I used for
the whole movie. And there’s a little bit of sympathy for Jason in
the movie even though he’s a relentless killer, because his
back-story is more sympathetic. So I played into that, I made Freddy
a real asshole in this movie, even more so than usual. He’s that
little yappy dog that you want to see get his and Jason is like the
big stupid dog with a little bit of sympathy in him. Now you can
quote me on that, but that might be a trap, don’t print this as the
result of the battle necessarily, as I like to say Freddy takes a
licking…but he keeps on ticking.
ART FILMS IN THE HOUSE AND SPIELBERG’S
“TAKEN”
ARROW: Setting Freddy aside, what else do you have going on
movie-wise at the moment?
finished in Europe that are coming out but they won’t come out in the
States: they’re like “art films” and I’m very proud of them. One of
them we’re calling “Who Started All This”, I have a
better title, but it’s about the war in Bosnia and Serbia and what
it’s done to
people over there. It’s in English, but I’m sure it will be mostly a
European art film. We have some really amazing actors in it and a
brilliant director who had films at the Cannes Film Festival. It was
beautifully shot by a Polish cinematographer, it was a real
international experience for me. I play a sort of decadent European
Professor in it. The other film I just finished before I started Freddy Vs
Jason came about through these two eccentric, wonderful directors from Sicily, they’re
like notorious for outrageous stuff on Italian television. They did
sort of like a bogus game show before any of the reality show hit
the States, they shot all of their films in black and white until
mine, they don’t use women, they use men in women’s parts….
ARROW: (laughs) That’s pretty kool.
but in this film they used a lot of known actors and they used me. I play a
B-movie star from Hollywood in the early 50’s who goes to Italy in
hopes of reviving his career. So I play a famous American actor
who’s been to all the Beverly Hills parties and knows mobster Lucky
Luciano. He goes over there to star in a movie but
they’re really laundering mob money through the production. The film becomes this great Italian
comedy about the mafia, the catholic Church, Hollywood and Italian
filmmaking. It was kind of cool at this
stage in my career to be shooting this film, taking three hour
lunches and drinking a bottle of wine everyday with the Italian crew
under the Palm trees of a beautiful villa somewhere. It was an
adventure and I hope to do more of that in my career. It’s just so much fun to travel and do that stuff.
ARROW: As an actor, you played Freddy
for so long, it must be great for you to tackle different
kind of roles.
it. I wouldn’t be
able to do it if it hadn’t been for Freddy. You see, in Europe
there’s’
no stigma about horror, horror is like Jazz, Levis, it’s something
they love from America as opposed to George Bush and all that. It’s
like rock and roll or rap, it’s a great American import, it’s something
they love. I’ve been going there for years, doing publicity,
film festivals and I’ve gotten to know a lot of people over the last
20 years. Since “Urban Legend 2”, I’ve been doing lots of non-horror
which is really fun for me. On these low budget films, it’s sort of
like being in a Robert Altman movie. You’re in Paris, Prague,
Rome…it’s really been a treat.
By the way, I just
saw a great horror sequence last night, I don’t know if you and your friends
watch Steven Spielberg’s “Taken”.
ARROW: The TV show?
ROBERT: It’s on Sci-Fi.
ARROW: We don’t get that up here
in Montreal, Canada.
ROBERT: It’s absolutely phenomenal.
There’s a sequence set in 1950 at the Roswell lab,
there’s a guy that’s been abducted and they go to take out the thing
the aliens planted in his head. Now the subject can make people have every
memory they ever had of their fears surface all at
once. So a
the operation on him at a primitive 1950’s used car lot, all the German
Nazi scientists that have been brought
there by the Americans and all the military guys go absolutely
berserk while operating on him. They take the probe out…oh
my god, it’s like one of the best sequences in recent years in horror. You’ve
got to look for some bootlegs out there. It’s
called “Taken”– a 10-hour mini-series. It owes a lot to
“V” my old show,
Close Encounters, Roswell…it’s really terrific stuff.
ARROW: Those are great influences,
I’ll try to check it out. Kazaa here I come!
ROBERT: Yeah…TAKEN.
976-EVIL, FUTURE IN DIRECTING?
ARROW: Last question,
976-EVIL.
ROBERT: Yes…
ARROW:
I thought the film was flawed, but I also thought
that you had a
great eye.
ROBERT: Why thank you.
ARROW: I was just wondering if
you’re ever going to direct again.
ROBERT: I was actually asked
yesterday to direct a werewolf movie, but here’s the thing you have
to understand. I love horror and I respect my fans and I’m grateful
to my fans and I go to see every horror movie the day they come out.
I’m like out there the first day “The Ring” comes out. I’m
a good
horror fan but it’s
not my best talent as a director. Suspense, thriller and effects are
not my gifts, my gifts are in casting, camera, art direction
and script. I should be doing movies like “Tender Mercy”, that’s
really more my style. With 976-EVIL, I was so paranoid with all
the effects in the movie, that I didn’t have enough time to direct my
exposition scenes and my character development scenes as well as I
would’ve liked.
I did them all very simply, heads and tail to length
the editing. It was a very low budget movie and the producers cut
that all out in post because they thought a horror movie had to be the
same running time as an action movie, when in fact with horror movies
you can take lots more time. But my producers didn’t know that rule
and thought it had to be 90 minutes and that’s not true. I could’ve
had the movie down to 103 minutes.
ARROW: That would’ve been fine!
ROBERT: Nothing wrong with that. The
point is that they didn’t let me and had a trailer editor come in to do
the job. So all the production values on the length of the
exposition scenes were lost. Now my special effects came out pretty
good, I budgeted enough time to get them in there and I had some
really good actors and called in a lot of favors from Kevin Yagher
and people like that.
ARROW: So what did you get out of the experience?
ROBERT: I loved doing POST on that
movie, I loved shooting most of it and I turned in a really great
rough cut and when it was taken away from me, it kind of freaked me
out. I’m kind of like a junkyard dog in real life, I bear a grudge.
Also, I had in my contract ever since 1985 that if I did television,
I automatically get to direct a certain amount of episodes so I
don’t have to go knock on doors and beg. So consequently, I’ve
been a bit lazy about pursuing directing.
STOLEN SCRIPTS AND ROBERT’S DREAM JOB
ROBERT: I also had, without divulging
too much info…a script ripped off from me..
ARROW: That sucks! What happened?
ROBERT: From a very famous company
who shall remain nameless. I had a script ripped off and the
guy that wrote 976-EVIL, who is a partner of mine, he had two scripts
ripped off and one of them was the one I was working on with him.
It’s just weird and I don’t know if I want to go through that. Should
I get angry and sue, or should I just keep acting and be a character
actor? By the way, I was actually a character actor before Freddy,
but Freddy made people learn my name which is great for an actor because before that I was just that face, you know?
ARROW: That face with no name we all know…
ROBERT: Exactly. People actually were
worried that I was going to get stereotyped as a monster after
Freddy, but my God, I got stereotyped as white trash for 5 years, the
best friend for 5 years, the redneck for 5 years, the nerd for 5
years and let me tell you…it’s better to be a monster than to be a
nerd.
ARROW: (laugh) I can imagine.
ROBERT: We go through different
incarnations in my our careers and now I play the Professors, the
Mad Scientist, the Doctors and Teachers which is kind of fun. Having
said that, I’ll probably direct again, but my feelings say that it
will either be on the stage or on television. Obviously if I could
have anybody’s career it would Jeff Bridges’, Donald Sutherland’s,
or Gary Oldman’s…somebody like that. These are guys I really love,
but right now I just want a dream job.
I wouldn’t mind being in “Tremors” on the SCI-FI channel, you know co-starring on that,
directing a couple of episodes and not beating myself up so much.
That’s what I think might happen after the big Blockbuster Freddy Vs
Jason comes out. I’d love to be second billed or third billed on a
series like Buffy or Angel. That and directing a couple of episodes
because it would be easy as opposed to spending a year of my life
knocking on doors and making preparations for a movie. It’s so
collective when you direct. Now I’m a team player, but when I want to
direct, I want to be boss. When you get to be my age, I’m a
real nice guy or I’m a real son of a bitch: I don’t have a middle
anymore. That middle area got beaten up by road rage or something.
ARROW: LOL
ROBERT: That’s sort of my feelings on
directing right now.
ARROW: Fair enough Robert. Well, I won’t take up any more
of your time. Thanks a lot for the interview!
ROBERT: No problem and see if you can
check out “Taken”.
ARROW: Will do Robert. Take care!
ROBERT: You too John.
You haven’t lived until you’ve
heard the TRUE Freddy Krueger’s voice cackle at ya over the phone! I
expected a burnt tongue to pop out of my receiver at any moment.
I’ve never felt so “fanboy” during an interview…I mean, here I am
talking with a man who scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.
Robert lived up to his positive rep, he was way cool, funny and very
pleasant to interview. Thanks A BUNDLE Robert and New Line and keep kicking it
dude! I now can’t wait for Freddy Vs Jason!
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