It’s been almost a decade since Robert Englund donned the bladed-glove and burned flesh that is the essence of Freddy Krueger, cinema’s most famous child murderer. However, the fifty-four year old actor isn’t as resilient as he used to be. “The chemicals and the makeup are really hard on my skin which isn’t that resilient anymore, even after a ten year break,” says Englund. “It’s kind of fitting because Freddy’s older and more frail now and he really gets his a*s kicked by Jason in this film.”
If Englund had never appeared in the long-running Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, he’d probably still be considered a genre staple, whether it be as the kindhearted alien on the ‘80s television series “V,” or as a character actor in dozens of horror films over the past thirty years including “Urban Legend” and “Wishmaster.” In the 1976 film “Eaten Alive,” director Tobe Hooper’s failed follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Englund had one of the more memorable opening lines in film history when his redneck character, Buck, said, “My name’s Buck and I wanna f**k.” But it’s Freddy Krueger that will be scrawled on Englund’s tombstone, a fact that hasn’t prevented the actor from doing other projects. “I go to Europe and I get to do all of these interesting art-house films because they don’t care about labels,” says Englund. “They’re so much cooler over there.”
Englund is sitting in a makeup chair, in front of an abandoned and decrepit mental asylum located in the bowels of New Westminster, British Columbia, a very dark city. In front of him is a piss-covered dungeon that is being used on this day, Halloween, 2002 no less, for Freddy’s lair, his trademark boiler room. A few days before, Englund was stuck in a giant water tank, located on the grounds of the University of British Columbia, where some of the Camp Crystal Lake water scenes were filmed, not to mention Freddy’s new Demon Face, a brand new look for the child-killing monster. “His face expands and blows up like a big bubblehead,” says Englund. “You see all of this stuff explode out of him – past demons and victims – and it looks really sick. I call it puckface.” Englund is adamant about the fact that 1994’s “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” the previous installment in the “Elm Street” series, was anything but a failure. “What happened with that film is that we did ‘Scream’ two years before ‘Scream’ came out,” says Englund. “It wasn’t a big hit, but it made something like $60 Million because everyone rented it after ‘Scream’ came out.”
Get the interview in part two of ROBERT ENGLUND: FINDING FREDDY>>>
