This weekend, Freddy Krueger can be your Valentine.
Hell, theyve even got several episodes of theFreddys NightmaresTV series that aired in syndication in the late 80s.
Why isntZombie Stripperspart of this marathon?
Robert Englund:I dont know.
Thats pretty fucking grindhouse.
Either that or2001 Maniacs.
I think part of it is that theNightmare on Elm Streetfilms hold up for everybody.
They really stood the test of time.
I think also theres a strange element, it can be twisted, of romance.
I think thats part of it.
Its also a great alternative, I think.
They cant do that.
They cant take Jennifer Aniston in another rom-com.
Binge parts four and five, and this is the great thing Ive been trying to get out there.
I dont think theFreddys Nightmarestelevision series has been seen in a while.
It went into some kind of legal limbo for a while.
Its going to be really fun to binge.
Im gladFreddys Nightmaresis being shown in the marathon.
Sisters Keeper was the best episode, right?
Also the pilots great.
Theres been talks for years about a great prequel script floating around.
Fred Krueger, the first kill.
Theyre just these really bad ambulance chasing lawyers, and youd see Freddy without the make-up.
Its fun, you really see some twisted stuff.
So I want to watch it.
I havent seen that for a long, long time.
Ive been building a new website and I went down into some wormholes on the Internet.
Every time it says, Do you want to see more images?
It must be bittersweet to talk aboutNightmarein depth after Wes Craven passed.
Did he ever talk to you about doing any of his non Freddy movies?
Maybe a part inScream?
I got the call immediately for his series.
My God, we had great episodes of that.
Angela Bassett was on that show.
There was a great standup comic who did one that was about the tabloids, Bobby Slayton.
I directed many episodes of that too, but that was just a great show.
Jack Coleman was there, and Lindsay was there, and my wife and my dog.
We were watchingSaturday Night Liveand we were all a little drunk.
Wed been drinking since nine oclock at night and its 11:30.
There was a sketch with Dana [Carvey], Head Wound Harry.
It was so dark.
Wes Craven allowed himself to turn into a little boy.
He was always catching up on the culture a bit.
I remember Wes started to laugh at that sketch and actually fell off the couch.
Wes is a quadruple threat.
Im just an actor.
Wes is a writer, director and many, many things.
But Wes let me see him and let me see the kid and let his guard down.
He wasnt my boss anymore after that moment.
He was never my boss again.
I think from that moment on he was my friend.
Of all the extra Freddy stuff you did, you were in the Fat Boys video.
Did you ever get to do the Fresh Prince video that never saw the light of day?
No, I remember I had friends who had a teenage daughter who was obsessed with Will Smith.
Thats how I heard about that number.
I wanted to do a kind ofAbbott and Costello Meet Frankensteinwith The Fat Boys.
They werent having it.
No, when I wrote my bookHollywood Monster,I went into the Internet, thatSongLyricssite.
I typed in Freddy Krueger and I got 30 pages of songs with Freddy Krueger in them.
I had no idea.
I knew a few.
Its amazing to me how many times that Freddy is referenced.
Thats how big it was in the culture.
Nightmare 2was the unsung sequel and its gotten a lot of credit now for being gay.
Its also the only one with a male protagonist and its the only standalone Freddy movie.
Do you wish there had been more standaloneNightmareswhere it wasnt necessarily connected to the children and Nancy?
I like the fact that Freddy needs to be connected to Springwood.
He is for better or for worse on a revenge motif.
Thats what were dealing with.
I liked the class system in that movie.
You didnt really think Freddy was dead afterFreddys Deaddid you?
Well, Ill tell you, we all took off our gloves onFreddys Dead.
Its very over the top.
Theres actually a moment in that movie where I was replicating Bugs Bunny in a Warner Bros. cartoon.
Im pushing some wagon.
Its almost Whats up, doc?
We had 3D in that movie and all sorts of bizarre effects.
We were referencing the culture.
We had Alice Cooper in there, we had Roseanne Barr, and Tom Arnold.
So we were pushing the envelope.
We could go that far.
After part six, there was really nowhere to go.
Wed sort of put, without a bad pun here, the nail in the coffin of Freddy.
I wasnt a kid any longer.
I was in my early 50s when I did that.
Its like a football player on Monday morning.
You cant get out of bed.
You do those fight scenes, and I had a lot of stunts in that.
But I was sore and I wasnt a kid anymore.
That was so long in incubation and development, that film.
I had at least two start dates on that movie.
At one time it was going to beFreddy vs. Jason 2000,the millennial movie.
Id been hearing about it forever and ever.
Sam Raimi at one time was going to do it.
He had his own ideas.
It almost looks like a graphic novel if you watch it.
Its a great mash-up.
Its really a good little movie.
I didnt know how good it was going to be so Im kind of glad that thats my lastNightmarefilm.
I dont think I could top that and Im too old now.
But its not just make-up.
Youre sticking your head out of a TV.
Youre coming out of a waterbed.
Youve got arms coming out of your head.
All along the way, were those a lot of tough shoots?
They were but it has to do with the spacing and what else I was doing.
Im coming up on 80 movies now and thats not counting four television series and 100 guest star roles.
I get tired like anybody else.
I love the franchise.
Freddys been good for me.
Freddy made me international.
Ive done 14 or 15 movies in Europe now.
We were at the junkyard, and Renny showed me the rough assemblage of the junkyard sequence.
I had a blanket on and was having a cup of soup.
Renny knew that I was running out of energy.
So by seeing that rough cut, I got my second wind but I was dragging tail.
I didnt want to do part five because I had just finished another movie.
Stephen was doing storyboards and hes such a great illustrator that I just said, Take me now.
He goes, I want this whole sequence to be like M.C.
I went oh, perfect for a dream sequence, I get it.
Hes afraid of his mommy.
Did that give you something interesting to play?
That was wonderful to play, yeah.
Freddys afraid of his mommy and hes afraid of the memories.
The memories come back to haunt him.
My best time on that was the sequence in the insane asylum.
That was fun because that was my first time with the floating crane camera.
It was just me and 100 extras, and this little teeny camera.
It was like having a drone on a little wiry crane.
That was my first time working with that technology, which was great.
But that was also the hardest stuff because all that upside down stuff.
I was like a pinata full of blood.
Plus my arm was pinned up behind my back.
Did you know which lines were going to be big?
Like Welcome to prime time, bitch or Hows this for a wet dream?
Welcome to prime time, bitch was mine.
The original line was something like, Now youre in the big time, Jennifer.
The first time tends to get a little messy.
I cant remember if that was written or if I improvised it, or if I added to it.
Thats a great nasty, rapey, beauty and the beasty, Freddy final girl line.
It really plays into a kind of subliminal thing.
And theres an anime.
There was actually a Japanese anime action figure of a famous blonde anime girl that dresses as Freddy.
Nylons, ripped, big boots or nylons and stilettos.
So theres all these incarnations of them co-opting and taking the power back, which I find fascinating.
