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An American leading actor of a number of horror films, probably best known as Freddy Kruger in Nightmare On Elm Street, A (1984) and all of its sequels. Englund, a boyish, tall and gaunt figure became a cult favorite after that film but had started working in the 70s. He was cast in Eaten Alive (1976), as a sex crazed maniac directed by Texas Chainsaw Massacre director, Tobe Hooper. From then, he went on to a number of low-budget horror films, including Galaxy of Terror (1981) and _Fifth Floor, The (1980).
Then came the big break as Freddy Kruger in ‘Elm Street’, as the man of bad dreams with the disfigured face, and a red striped shirt with his right hand as razor sharp knives. The film was directed by Wes Craven and was so successful that producers of New Line Cinema had him reprise Freddy in all of the sequels. With the success of the sequels, he played a the title role in the semi-remake of the horror film classic, Phantom of the Opera, The (1989) for 21st Century Film Corporation. From then on, Englund has frequently worked with horror director Tobe Hooper, for example in Night Terrors (1993) and Mangler, The (1995).[Editor’s Note, the above bio short comes from IMDB]I would actually disagree with the bio, and say that Robert Englund got his really big break in the mid 80’s playing the loveable Willie in the smash mini-series “”V.”” But then that’s me.I recently caught up with this true legend and giant of the Horror business, on the eve of the premiere of the highly anticipated fan-boy wet dream film, “”Freddy Vs. Jason”” and to say he was in an excited and talkative mood would be an understatement. All I did was say hello to him, and he was off to the races. He was so good and happy that I didn’t even get a chance to start the interview with my standard – yet boring, famous first question. But then we all know who Robert Englund is, so it’s all good. He had so much to say that he ran out of time, and told me that he’ll give me a call later in the week to continue. So here is part 1 of a 2 part interview with the man himself, Robert Englund. Warning this interview does contain one spoiler. I don’t think it’s a real major spoiler, but it’s a spoiler never the less.Robert Englund on Kelly Rowland[Gushing] She is almost like Katherine Hepburn. She is like a princess. You just want to give her diamonds or something and to protect her. She’s just so beautiful and classy.EMHow was your first meeting with her?REI met Kelly in the offices at the set. The first time that I met Kelly she had to leave the location because she had the number one song in world with Nelly. As an entertainer there are two shows that you have to do, one of them is “”Saturday Night Live,”” and the other one is one that Americans don’t really know about, but because I do a lot of stuff in Europe I know about it, it’s a huge show called “”Pops of the Pops.”” It’s been on the air since before the Beetles. If you have a number one song, you have to do it; it has people like Sting, Destiny’s Child, Elton John, Elvis Presley, etc. It’s just amazing the stars who have been on this show. So she had to fly to London to do this show.Then she came back, our schedule was shifted around and we had to work a month of nights. When she got back from Canada, she had to work at midnight at the lake, because we were on Jason’s Turf. We had this scene together where she had all the dialog. She had like two pages. She is the first teenage girl who gets to diss Freddy, she really goes off on him, and makes fun of him. She talks about his sweater, his manhood, his complexion, everything. It’s a really well written monologue. Plus she had to walk backwards while she did it and hit her mark at the same time because we had this big stunt planned. It was a really difficult scene to shoot but she nailed it by her second take.EMWell I hope Freddy didn’t take that back talk lying down!RE[laughs] I’ll tell you what happens. This is the only time in the movie where Jason and I team up and had a double kill sandwich, so to speak.EMDid you guys have a big fight over who would get the good kills?REWell the guy who is playing Jason, Ken Kirzinger is really one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s huge, like a big 6’7 stunt coordinator from Canada. If you look at his bio, he’s done everything and is currently working on Vin Diesel’s sequel to Pitch Black called “”The Return of Riddick.”” When I met him he was working on X2, which was filming right down the street. When he came into the office as a Stunt Coordinator, Ronny Yu [The Director, you can read our interview with Ronny by clicking here] saw him and thought that he was exactly how he pictured Jason. So most of the time when I was hanging out with Ken, we talked about all the movies that he has worked on, so we never got into any fights. When you do so many fight scenes with someone, you really have to know and trust the person that you are working with. Because if he fell on me it would be dangerous, a lot of times in the movie I’m wearing real knives on my hand because you can’t really use the fake ones. A lot of times the shot will start off with me scraping the walls or the pipes. If we are rolling around on the ground I’ll use the fake ones. So we really have to trust each other, it’s almost like a dance.EMHow different was it to work on a film that blends “”Friday the 13th”” style filmmaking with Nightmare and isn’t a pure Nightmare movie?RE![]()
The pain in the ass for me was that in the Nightmare films I’m always in the boiler room or some girl’s bedroom, so it’s always kind of a cozy, sexy, or steamy environment. But with that damn Jason he’s always at the lake. Whenever we did his nightmares, dreams, or back story about him that had Freddy in it, we were at Camp Crystal Lake, which was shot at this beautiful lake in Canada that really looked like Switzerland. The problem is that it gets really cold in Canada and we did all outside stuff. That’s one of the things I didn’t like about working with Jason was hanging out on his turf. I had to do underwater stunts, fight scenes on the water, the big wire stunt with me coming out of the water; they set the lake on fire, etc… It wasn’t as bad for me because I was able to wear a wet suit underneath my costume, but those poor kids where wearing next to nothing. [Ed Note, is me, or is it just plain weird having Freddy Krueger say those “”poor kids?””] They had to run around in wet jeans and a T-Shirt. They have the fake blood, lake water, sweat, and it’s a cold fall night. We were all miserably cold. But we all survived.EMSo was this one of the toughest shoots that you’ve had?REWell I’m older now, so my skin isn’t as resilient as it used to be. So the makeup isn’t a little rougher. I haven’t had to wear makeup since I did “”Wes Kraven’s New Nightmare”” in 1994. When we used to shoot in California it came off pretty easy because of my natural perspiration, it would come off in about a 1/2 an hour. Because of all the water stunts they had to use two – three times more makeup and glue on me than they normally did. For the first couple of weeks [this time out] we couldn’t get the ratio of glue quite right so every day it was really tough to get off. The makeup takes about four hours to put on, and a hour and a half to take off. Two weeks into the movie my skin was really raw. I had a couple of cuts by my eye. I had a break in the middle of the shoot where my skin was able to heal. So yeah this was a rough shoot, although I liked it, and really liked the director, cast, and crew, it was tough. I think it was the twin locations.EM Your makeup actually looks a lot darker in this film.REFreddy is a little older and meaner in this film. So they wanted to keep him in the shadows a lot. There is a lot of fire and water symbolism in this film, where Jason hates the water and Freddy hates the fire. There are a couple of sequences in the film where the shots are literally color coded in the film where one is shot in red, and another is done in a “”pukey green”” which really makes the makeup look dark. When Freddy gets really pissed off, Freddy changes and we use a different kind of makeup that is more exaggerated and demonic looking.EMDoes it take longer to put on the darker makeup?REYeah, it takes a little bit longer, because I’m using different teeth, contact lenses, and more.EMHow do you like playing the new darker Freddy?REIt’s fun to play him. I wouldn’t want to play him 365 days a year I did that a little bit when we had the series in the late 80s. It’s fun to come back to play him, he’s one of the great monsters of the last 25 years, so it’s always good to bring him back every once in awhile, and at least once in the 21st century. He’s stood the test of time. New Line did a DVD box set of the series awhile ago, and I’m getting whole new generation of fans because of it, both here and in Germany because of it.EMWhatever happened to that boxed set? I’ve been looking for it all year and can’t seem to find it.REIt’s around, but I think there’s going to be a new printing. I didn’t get to participate in it, because I was off making a movie in Europe. But it’s really cool because when you go inside it the pictures are probably the best pictures ever taken of the making of the movies. It’s a really classy package.When you see on the big screen in the 80’s, it really scared you and was a real collective experience. I used to love going into a theater in the inner city where people scream at the movie and sitting in the back watching the reactions of the fans. Kids of today get the DVDs and sit alone in their bedrooms and watch it over and over again, they stop it and pause it. They know more about the plots than I do now. I get these fan letters from people and I don’t have any idea what they are talking about half the time.EMDo you think people overanalyze the films?RE[laughs] Well, yeah. Although Wes Craven does hide a lot of sick stuff in these movies, there is a lot mythology and weird symbolic stuff going on. People forget that there’s a really strong young girl, who is usually a virgin, and just becoming a woman….EM [Interrupts] But that’s horror 101….REWell yeah, but it’s really Wes who really started it. In the other movies those girls always died. In the nightmare movies, they were the ones who were able to keep Freddy at bay for awhile. Each movie has a strong girl who represents the coming of innocence. That’s the theme of these movies, where Freddy represents the loss of innocence. He’s kind of the bad government, the bad doctor he is totally politically incorrect and doesn’t care if you are black, gay, in a wheel chair. If you are deaf he’ll turn up your hearing aide full blast to kill you.EM[laughs] That’s the brilliance of Freddy!! That he takes your worse nightmare….