AN INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT ENGLUND
BY: Terry L. DuFoe

I would like to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Before I start this 
interview I have to admit that a couple of the things we have in this room are 
the Freddie Doll and your "Freddie Sings" record album!

RE: Yeah, hang on to that Freddie doll. I understand it's worth quite bit of 
money now. You know there was some sort of Canadian Jerry Falwell fellow who had 
them banned for awhile, and they were real valuable right after that. I remember 
a couple of years ago I was doing a Halloween special and it was taped right 
across the hall from where Pee Wee Herman was taping his show. He came running 
over with a whole box of them he wanted me to sign. He's a big collector of toys 
& memorabilia. He was the one who told me. He had just heard that. He yelled, 
"Oh they've gone up in value, they've gone up!"

I especially got a kick out of the record album. Did you have a good time doing 
that?

RE: Yeah, you know that was a while ago. That was back around Nightmare on Elm 
Street Part 2 so I believe I did that in New York. I remember that it was a lot 
of fun. The one I remember the most though, was when I laid down some tracks on 
an Alice Cooper album before he became involved in Nightmare 6, this was a while 
back too. I drove somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley one night, and I 
went through the security gate, and it must have been twelve or one in the 
morning, it was really strange. Rock stars like to work at night. I walked in 
this recording studio, and there was Linda Ronstadt, Alice Cooper, and Mike 
Bloomfield, and all these stars from the sixties that I remembered, it was kind 
of fun to hang out with A1. I put some Freddie laughs on a couple of his cuts.

Horror is very popular and you've definately helped in that area to excel it to 
where it is. Why do you think that people like to be scared?

RE: Well, I think part of it is a kind of a fascination with the abomination. 
It's parcel of human nature, you know, we can't turn away from it. Think about 
driving by an accident on the freeway, we can't help but look! This is 
especially true in horror films. America doesn't deal well with horror, even 
though we're a rather violent society, we don't really deal with death well. 
We're sort of youth obsessed, we don't deal with our aging citizens very well, 
we have the warehouse, retirement homes, etc, and other cultures really don't 
understand that about us. So I think that one of the attractions, subliminal 
attractions to the horror films, is sort of an unconscious way of dealing with 
death. I think it's because there's usually one person in a horror film that we 
identify with, and the obvious out come at the end of the film would be death. I 
think it's a way to sort of like transfer that fear we all have that sooner or 
later we're all gonna die and kind of have a little mini catharsis you know, in 
the dark for two hours at a matinee or the local bijou, you know. A way to get 
over that ordeal or to address that a little bit. Going to the movies is kind of 
our way, the American culture way, of dealing with it. I think that the horror 
movie has sort of become the equivalent, the cheap thrill equivalent, of the old 
carnival, the old side show and freak show and sort of what we have now in place 
of that in the culture. The horror movie is an approved cheap thrill.In Europe, 
I know it's very different in Europe, the horror movie is like jazz or the 
western, it's a very American cultural thing that's in fact, respected a lot 
over there. It's kind of a wonderful American import like westerns Or jazz .

Do you have any particular memories of watching horror films as a child?

RE: Yeah, you know this quote is about as fresh as you're gonna get. I remember 
I was in the third grade and there was a movie program on every night here 
called the Million Dollar Movie, or something like that, with the fabulous '52, 
and it was on I think Saturday nights or Friday nights. It was on late I think, 
and I have this firm belief and theory, that in those days, as a child growing 
up in the fifties, that movies were not edited on television yet because they 
needed it to fill up this large block of time because there wasn't as much 
programming where this guy would come on in the commercial breaks and you know 
bang the hood of a car and sell used cars like a Hal Worthington or something. 
The big event was, the so-called untouched Frankenstein. James Whales's 
Frankenstein, and all the kids in my third grade, all the guys in my third grade 
class, I should say, this is a rite of passage thing, we all were gonna try to 
get our parents to let us stay up late and watch it. I remember my mom, let me 
stay up in the den that night, and it was sort of past my bedtime, and I watched 
Frankenstein, and I was going along pretty good with it but I remember the sort 
of black and white German expression which was kind of working on me a little 
bit, subconsciously, you know. It was so strange, I don't think I'd ever seen 
that stylistic components of that kind of production design, which was kind of 
working on me. I remember it when he picked up the hunchback and he kind of 
hangs him on the hook there, the monster does. That really flipped me out! That 
image kind of stayed with me for a while. Of course, that following Monday at 
school, instead of discussing the most recent Twilight Zone, which was the sort 
of thing we all talked about, we all discussed Frankenstein before recess. 
Standing in line before school, and during the lunch hour, you know the big 
thing, but that was a big event for me. The first seminal horror film that I 
remember. Again this is the late fifties, and the movie was made in the 
thirties, and it was shown on television, so there was sort of a distance, a 
detachment on it that was also, a kind of release of time, or something. I 
remember it was kind of significant, in that we all had to see it. It was a 
right of passage.

Do you think that horror films must follow a particular formula as to what they 
must include to be one that would actually work or be scary?

RE: Well, I mean, I think there's certain credibility factors that have to be 
answered, or in terms of the classic horror films, films that deal with 
vampires, wolfmen, things like that, mummies, what have you. There are certain 
myths that have to be retold every time. They can be updated, they can be 
modernized, they can be freshened, but they still have to be there. It's a part 
of laying down the base, so it can snowball, it begins to roll, it sort of 
involves you. In terms of those, I think, yeah, but I think there's always room 
for something, you know, completely new and novel in a horror film that does not 
destroy the credibility factor, even in a most fantastic situation, and I'm not 
talking about naturalism as an acting style, I don't agree with that. There has 
to be a kind of a credibility factor, I think that's one of the things that's so 
great about Stanley Krubrick's, The Shining, it's very fantastic, it gets more 
fantastic as it progresses, because, I can remember wonderful credibility 
factors going on within that old hotel, with the child and the sort of hide and 
seek that's going on there that really, really works on you as an audience. 

Why do you think that Freddie touched a particular nerve the way he did? He got 
so very popular. What did Freddie have that the others didn't have?

RE: You know, I'm not so certain in Freddie per say. I think Freddie has become 
the logo of an experience that is the Nightmare on Elm Street. The reason I 
think the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are so popular is because of the dream, 
and I think that it's so universal, the nightmare and the dream. We all dream at 
night, we've all had nightmares, it's something everybody can relate to in every 
language, in every country in the world, and I think that's the universality of 
it. It's a frightening concept that there could be some evil out there, lurking 
and existing in some kind of subconscious pergatory, and it knows everything you 
think and all your fantasies, and all your fears, all your flaws, all your 
habits, that are so private to you, that exist, especially manifest in your 
dreams and he knows those and can exploit them. It's that universality that 
everybody in the world has had a bad dream at one time, and the idea that 
somebody can get in there and mess with that is a frightening concept; and the 
evil, the person that does that is Freddie. That's why Freddie has become the 
man from the experience, sort of the logo for the experience in the Nightmare 
films. 

Since you started doing the films, have you had bad dreams? 

RE: The only one I've ever had about Nightmare, and again, this is not another 
one of those stories, it's not fresh but it's a pretty good story. I was on 
location during the filming of Nightmare on Elm Street Part One, and we were in 
Hollywood, somewhere late at night, and in fact, in that situation, we were 
shooting at night only, it wasn't a question of losing the light, it was a 
question of losing the night. We were trying to get this shot and we were 
setting up, and they let me go back to my honeywagon, my little trailer dressing 
room to take a nap, 'cause it must have been like, I guess, three or four in the 
morning. I rolled up, you know, I was in my full Freddie drag and I rolled up a 
towel, kind of the way you used to roll up your swimming trunks and carry them 
to the public pool or something, sort of like the Japanese do with a pillow, and 
I did that so my makeup wouldn't smear, because it's all around me, down on my 
chest. I laid down on my cot, and I had the dimmer, the lights around my makeup 
mirror on very, very low, they were just sort of ghosting. The honeywagon was a 
little narrow trailer with a cot on one side, a big mirror and a counter and the 
makeup lights around the mirror were on very softly, and I fell asleep. About an 
hour later, you know that hour before dawn, sort of strange, I got this knocking 
on my door, it was the director who said Robert we need you, we need you to get 
this shot. I sort of yawned, and kind of rose, half asleep and half awake and as 
I did I looked into the mirror and there in the half light, was this old, 
decrepit man. I forgot I was in the makeup. I was Robert Englund waking up, and 
I was still half awake, still half dreaming, and it scared the bejesus out of 
me. I remember that moment, and the reason I take so long to describe it had to 
do with me not being awake, and the director saying Robert, Robert, not Fred. 
I've been an actor for a long time, I've been many, many times when I've taken a 
nap in those rooms, but this was during the first film and I wasn't used to 
wearing the makeup yet, and then also the fact that I wasn't really quite awake 
in strange light that this happened. You know how those light bulbs are and it's 
also that kind of, you know, that distance that happens in a mirror, you know, 
you're like equal distance away from the mirror as you are on the other side, so 
I really looked kind of far away.

You didn't ever have to go home wearing the makeup did you? 

RE: No, I've never driven a car wearing it...I've driven in the makeup once as a 
passenger, but I wasn't driving. We actually drove down I think it was Hollywood 
Boulevard, we scared some prostitutes. We were on our way to a photo session, 
and I had to keep the makeup on. I also wore it across the street once when & I 
learned not to mess with it because we walked into a Tai restaurant. I was just 
so sick of the catered food on location, I was having a hard time with it too, 
with the makeup, and I thought, maybe I'll have some Tai food today. We all went 
across the street and the busboy, was in fact not a young man, but a very old 
man, and he came out of the swinging doors in the kitchen and he saw me and I 
scared him to death. He was probably you know, an illegal alien, right off the 
boat. I felt kind of terrible about it because he really got scared, he dropped 
a platter of food and everything, it was kind of weird. I just looked up at the 
guy, you know, it just startled him, just the timing of him coming out of the 
door and me looking up, and I just kind of heard the noise. Again, you know, 
after I've been in makeup for hours, I kind of forget I have it on. I'm rather 
nonchalant, I think it really started him the way I made eye contact with him.

How long does it take to put all the makeup on?

RE: Well, you know, I've done a couple of recent makeups that was very 
difficult, well not real recent, I did Phantom of the Opera a couple of years 
ago, and more recently I finished a film called the Mangler, actually it's the 
name of a laundry machine called the Mangle. It's the actual name of a machine 
that folds, deep cleans, and irons sheets in a laundry, an old fashioned 
industrial laundry. This is from a short story by Stephen King in his book 
Nightshift and I just finished that. The director was... Tobe Hooper, he did 
Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It stars myself and Ted Levine who 
played the transvestite from Silence of the Lambs, and I had a rather extensive 
makeup in that. I also did the final Nightmare on Elm Street, or Wes Craven's 
Nightmare which comes out this Halloween, I did that afterward and it seemed the 
Freddie makeup, even though it evolved again for this last Nightmare on Elm 
Street film, the makeup evolved, but it still is easier than the extensive 
makeup I did for The Mangler. I think the makeup on the Wes Craven's New 
Nightmare, I think it takes, I think we had it down to three and a half or four 
hours. It's generally been between three and four hours depending upon if 
they're preparing me for an effect or if they need me for a close-up right away. 
When we did the Freddy TV series, we modified a little bit, made it more simple, 
so I was able to get in on then in about two and half, or three hours. But 
generally speaking for the movies, the makeup has always taken between about 
three and a half to four hours. 

When you were approached to do the movie you were basically a character actor 
before right?

RE: Yeah, I was actually at the time of the First Elm Street, I was tasting 
quite a dose of my first foree into being a celebrity. I was starring in the 
television series V, a science fiction series and I sort of had been singled out 
by the fans, my character, and I was really getting a lot of attention for that. 
I was attending Star Trek conventions, signing autographs with William Shatner 
and things like that, because there was no Star Trek on television at 'that 
time, we were sort of filling a void, in a science fiction world. I think we 
were the only science fiction show on television at that time and I was really 
experiencing some popularity, so the Nightmare thing really took a back seat to 
all of that attention. I didn't think that much of it except that I worked with 
a bunch of extraordinarily talented people during the summer and I knew we were 
on to something, we had a nice little ensemble but I thought it was going to be 
like a little cult film. 

Did you have any hesitation at possibly getting involved with the makeup thing, 
that it'd maybe be an ongoing thing, worrying that maybe you wouldn't be 
recognized as yourself?

RE: Gosh, I think I did close to fifteen movies, maybe more, between fifteen to 
twenty movies by the time I had did the first Freddie. I was starring in a 
series, I'd done an awful lot of television guest starring, I probably had done 
a dozen, maybe really prestige movies of the week by then. So, no I didn't have 
a problem, I was quite established- I had starred with Jeff Bridges, Sally Field 
and Arnold Shwarzenegger, Susan St. James and all sorts of people by then. I've 
done a lot of stuff, so that wasn't the problem at all. I literally did it 
because it fit in my schedule, and I wanted to work for Wes. That was the reason 
I did it originally- When your doing TV, you get these things called haitus, 
where your in between, your shooting the schedule for the series, this film, 
this project, Nightmare on Elm Street Part One just happened to fit perfectly in 
my hiatus and I was curious about Wes Craven. I thought he was an interesting 
guy and I wanted to see what it would be like to work for him.

Did you work for him because of his previous film, Last House on the Left?

RE: Yeah, you know, this was 1984, there was kind of a big sort of music, punk 
rock, rockabilly renaissance going on in Los Angeles at the time, it was really 
kind of a real (garbled) music scene then. And it was kind of fun to go 
nightclubbing in L.A. still. I wasn't a part of that scene, but I was certainly 
a witness to that scene, and I remember Wes's movies were sort of playing 
surreptitiously in a couple of the clubs, and Wes was sort of like considered 
cool and underground then. So that was part of the attraction. Did you ever 
imagine when you were approached to do the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, did 
you ever imagine it would get as big as it did, where now you're into the fifth 
or sixth?

RE: Well, I really didn't do it because of that movie, I knew he had done a 
really good job, everyone worked really hard and it was really interesting, you 
know. I did it because In the first Nightmare I was hanging out with Johnny 
Depp, who just got here from Florida, and Heather Lange who looked like what 
everybody thought Brook Shields should look, and Bonnie Blakely who at that time 
was married to Vim Venders, and Wes Craven, & John Max. Charlie Schlieser was in 
that movie also, you know, the voice of Roger Rabbit. There was a really 
wonderful actress named Amanda With, and a really interesting boy named Dick 
Free. Then all the special effects guys were there who went on to be superstars. 
You know, Kevin Yeagers, he does Tales From the Crypt and he directs and he does 
Chuckie and all of that. All of the special effects guys have gone on to become 
quite famous in Bond films and everything. I knew these people were all 
extraordinary, I mean, we all knew Johnny Depp was going to become a, you could 
just tell, Johnny was like, sort of like a James Dean guy, walking around the 
back lot there, you know, we all knew we were on to something, but I don't think 
anybody thought it was going to be a hit. I think we thought it was going to be 
this hip little underground film and again I was so preoccupied with my success 
on V at the time, I was you know, quite popular. It was a new experience for me. 
That was a kind of a first for me, so I was really dealing with that more. I 
didn't have my first clue until it had been out for awhile, people tend to 
forget now that there was no hype machine for New Line Cinema back then. I don't 
think the hype really began on these movies until sometime between Two and 
Three. I joke about it, but it was sort of like sporadic regional release at 
that time, and I again I'm dealing with V and all my popularity, and I was doing 
a talk show or something in New York, and I was signing autographs at the old 
hotel Roosevelt in midtown and I had a line of people getting autographs from me 
for V and all of a sudden, these sort of like science fiction Trekkie-type fans 
turned into heavy metal punk rock fans, and they all wanted Freddie autographs. 
They were bringing me like torn ads out of newspapers from upstate New York to 
sign, and like a couple of photos they scrounged from lobbies and movies 
theaters, which is fine, and that's when I knew it was taking off, because I 
think that line literally went out of the Hotel Roosevelt that day. I can't 
remember if it was Sixth Avenue or what but it like literally went around the 
block and I'm signing autographs, with like pretty big people and I had the 
longest line. That's when I realized that Freddie was really beginning to take 
off. 

The thing you had really achieved is your name, Robert Englund is known as well 
as Freddie itself, where a lot of people can not even name who played Leather 
face or Jason or whatever.

RE: I also think our movies are several rungs up the evolutionary ladder, you 
know. Freddie wears a glove with knife fingers, and if I would point that arm at 
somebody, the verb you'd have to use to describe what I'm doing is probably I 
slashed at you. There has been this word around forever called slasher movies, 
and unfortunately, you know, I think Freddie has been lumped into that category 
especially by adult critics that have forgotten how to be a teenager, and got a 
little bit yuppie judgemental, and never even bothers to see these movies to 
realize that these films are incredibly imaginative. They're made on a 
shoestring, yet you get more bangs for your bucks for a Nightmare movie than 
just about any other movie made for an equivalent budget. On top of that, over 
the years we've discovered the pop talent in Hollywood whether it's Johnny Depp, 
or Renny Harlen the director, or Steven Hopkins whose responsible for Predator 2 
and Blown Away, or whether it's Chuck Russell who did Nightmare Three, and now 
has The Mask debuting tomorrow. Or whether it's Rachael Paloway* who did Tank 
Girl and Ghost in the Machine, or of course Wes Craven or Jack Shoulder, or 
whether it's the actors like Patricia Arnett, or Jennifer Rubin and these other 
people we've discovered. So you know, I think it's unfair to lump our movies in 
that category, and I think that there is a level of sophistication and 
imagination and mythology about these movies that has really made them a much 
more of a footnote in horror history. On a par with better films than let's say 
the typical ones, I think part of it with me is, I had a nice, a happy accident 
happen. That happy accident is I did V, and then I did Freddie, and everybody 
knew my face from V, and from the talk shows and the science fiction fans, a lot 
of them are crossover into horror, so I had a nice one-two punch evolving into, 
sort of snowballing into the success of these films. These films became 
universal. I've been in Europe every year for the last twelve years because of 
these movies, the last ten years because of these movies because they're so huge 
in Europe and Japan. I think that what took off is that universality kicked in. 
I think people saw me in the talk shows, remember me from other acting jobs and 
put the name together with the performance. I think I also may be brought an 
interesting body language, I never played Freddie like Freddie thought he was a 
monster. I think Freddie's fairly arrogant, he has some problems obviously, but 
he's fairly arrogant and he certainly enjoys his reign of terror, and I think 
the audience likes to anticipate the (creative?) way he does away with somebody. 


Were you or the studio ever very concerned with the child killer theme?

RE: Well, he was a child killer, I'll be honest with you. He was a child killer 
who, in fact, you know, it'd be like everybody likes to blame the lawyers, he 
gets off on a legal loophole--a legal technicality, somehow. Then the vigilante 
parents burn him alive. What happened was, at the time we were making the movie, 
there was a terrible scandal in South Bay here in Los Angeles, with a day care 
center, with child molestation. I think Wes and I think everybody was a little 
nervous about the audience, or the public thinking that we exploited that in a 
way. It's a pretty horriffic, strange case, and so, it's always been kind of 
soft, played down, that was with the original, you know. The crime of Fred 
Krueger is that he was a child molester, but it in fact is a mythic, Germanic, 
kind of cautionary tale, like an old fairy tale thing. Krueger's a German name 
and he's a boogyman and comes into your dreams, and if you're not good he will 
go after you. It's like the original Hansel and Gretel in fact, a real 
cautionary tale from a famine-stricken Germany where the children, Hansel and 
Gretel, are literally forced to leave the house because there's not enough food 
for them, hence the bread crumbs and the gingerbread house and all that. That's 
almost like a hunger hallucination that the children have. I mean, those old 
fairy tales, you know, on the side, they're pretty hard core stuff. I think this 
is part of what Wes was planting in the mythology of Freddie, a subliminal, 
Freudian, Jungian thing there. So, I mean, I don't really think we had a problem 
with it but we certainly soft peddled it because of this sort of simultaneous 
scandal that was going on in Los Angeles, we didn't want it to look like, even 
though Wes had written it years before that had occurred, we didn't want it to 
look like he exploited that or anything. 

Did you get any protests an all?

RE: No, you know, over the years there's been a couple of bogus news reports, 
media reports, I can remember recently, maybe two or three years ago, being in 
New York and I heard there was a protest out here, and you know I was doing 
publicity in New York for it, and there was a simultaneous release all over 
America. And I got back out here and my friend heard it on the news, showed me, 
he taped it off the news and it was like 50 reporters and 3 housewives. If it 
would have been 50 housewives and 3 reporters, that's news. But it was really, 
and that was just bogus. I think there was like one protest in Canada that was 
the only true thing that ever happened. The tragedy is that there's so many, I 
mean you sound really knowledgeable about the genre, but I cannot tell you how 
many talk shows I've done in major cities in this country, AM Saskatchewan, At 
Noon With Houston, you know, things like that. Where these shows exist 
completely on the work of we folk in Hollywood. And they could not live without 
our product, and without our clip, and this sort of publicity mill and of course 
they're good for us too. But I would think at least they would find time to see 
the product they talk about, or the product they (garbled), and they don't. You 
can tell that many times they haven't even seen the movies. 

Do you find a lot of times that they treat it like it's fluff?

RE: Well, no, they'll criticize horror films without ever having seen them. 
There's some really big differences between horror films. I know there's some 
crap out there, but there's also some terrific stuff, and I mean terrific hard 
core underground stuff as well as terrific A & B feature stuff. I saw an amazing 
film last year called Dust Devil by Richard Stanley who directed Hardware. This 
is a hard core, it is violent, it's got some gore it, but it's just amazingly 
done and Hardware is also. I felt he did a terrific film, and yet, they sort of 
dismissed it, out of hand, 'cause they see one clip, you know and it's violent. 
It's like the Freddie movies, sometimes get dismissed and thrown in just as a 
low budget slasher film catagory. In fact, I don't think Freddie has slashed 
anybody since Part One, now he just exploits everybody's flaws. You know if 
you're afraid of a cockroach, he turns you into a giant cockroach; if you're 
afraid of bugs, he'll turn you into a giant cockroach. Freddie's not out there 
gutting people, and drinking their blood. 

I'm so glad to hear the respect that you have for the genre because I share in 
that. I really love the field.

RE: I had to rediscover it. I'll be frank with you, I don't rush out to scary 
horror movies the first night. I discover them on the late show, on cable, but 
I'm pretty up to date on them. In fact, I often on talk shows and convention 
interviews recommend some that I think have sort of slipped through the fingers 
of people, whether they're thrillers, or horror shows or science fiction. A film 
made a couple of years ago, White of the Eye with David Heath, and Cathy 
Moriarity. A terrific little, kind of psychological thriller, almost in the 
serial killer horror genre. I take my time to seek these out and recommend them. 
But to be honest, I had to rediscover the genre because after Nightmare One, I 
was asked a lot of questions, and there was a series of films, and a period if 
films that if I was not current on I had to go back and catch up a bit, but, 
I've always loved, my favorite films of all time of any film, the wonderful one 
with Deborah Karr, The Innocent, which I think is just one of the greatest 
horror films ever made. Especially one of the greatest ghost films and yet, 
nothing is revealed. It's all done subliminally, you know, in editing. 

One of the films that I really loved that you had a part in, was Eaten Alive.

RE: Oh, yeah, Tony's film. That was fun. I gotta tell you something about that. 
I had some trepidation about that because I don't know, the producers of that at 
the time...it was quite low budget, I wasn't sure if they were going to hold up 
their end of the bargain. I walked on the set and it was shot at the Rolly 
Studios across the street from Paramount and Rolly Studios hadn't yet, been very 
successful. They hadn't spent all their money on this big face lift they have. 
Now they've got one of the most fun connessaries in town. It's like a little 
Mexican Cantina on the back lot. Of course there's a couple of great old bars, 
and a couple of great old Mexican restaurants in that neighborhood now and 
stuff. The famous Lucy eletobe and things like that. When I was on that lot 
working for Toby I had just finished the biggest movie made in Hollywood. I just 
starred for Jeff Bridges and Sally Field for Bob Raefulman in Stay Hungry. Bob 
Raefulman, of course, at that time was the hottest, coolest director in the 
world because of Five Easy Pieces, and I had all my eggs in that basket. I had 
literally beaten out Gary Bussey and Sylvester Stallone, and I was waiting for 
that to come out, when this little horror movie came up and it really seemed 
interesting, and I really, again, I really wanted to work with Tobe Hooper, but 
I still had a little...you asked me if I had any trepidations about Nightmare, 
well I never did, but I did have a little trepidation about this film. I walked 
on that set over all the studios, they're all kind of great run down, old 
fashioned Hollywood. I walked on that set and it was one of the most phenomenal 
sets I ever walked on, in terms of a set. It was this old Victorian ranch, kind 
of a shrunken version of the ranch in Giant and it was there, and there was 
tumbleweed, and giant iguanas, and lizards, and things, and ah, it was just so 
weird, and old metal cans. I was walking around, getting oneself in character 
and Carolyn Jones, who I had idolized for years, and I just really had a great 
time on that. There were some problems towards the end of where Toby had a 
run-in with the producers and I think that the last week of shooting was done by 
the editor. So, even though it's Toby's film, he really didn't get to do the 
last sort of week of shooting, there's a big broo-ha-ha, and Toby's so great. I 
wish they would've just left it alone. 

The little girl on that, she blew me away. What ever happened to her, do you 
know?

RE: I don't know, but you know the actor in that, that I love, he played the 
father. He's also in my favorite horror film, which is Brian DePalma's 
Sisters,William Tidley. He was also in Phantom of the Paradise, another DePalma 
film, which is the hit take-off on Phantom of the Opera, and Bill Tidley. I just 
thought he was just great in that, as a sort of dirty suburban guy and he's 
also, I think the best mad scientist ever. I think he's just the best mad 
scientist ever in Brian DePalma's Sisters.

Did you have a good time doing the Mangler?

RE: Yeah...

What's that about?

RE: Again, it's a short story from Stephen King's book Nightshift. It's a story 
about an antique laundry machine, iron tub machine. It's accidentally cursed. 
The curse is Blood of virgin, eye of bat, hand of glory and what happens is, in 
an old warehouse, a bat accidentally flies into the machine and dies, so it's 
got the eye of bat. Then a girl pricks her finger on it, and she happens to be a 
virgin, and a little old lady drops her tablet in it. Her tablet is Digel, and 
the active ingredient in Digel is belladonna, and the other word for belladonna, 
of course, is hand of glory. So, this machine is accidentally cursed, and I 
played a sort of old, aging, Everett clone, lady from Shanghai capitalist in the 
terminable age, with my polio leg braces, and I've got a voice box, and I'm real 
old and crippled. There may or may not be a secret society in this town, a 
sacrificial society, and they appeased the machine with a sacrifice every 16 
years. But then the machine is accidentally cursed through these events, so it 
begins to really act on its own, it's really strange. But we were supposed to 
shoot it in Toronto, in an old brewery, doubling as a laundry and at the last 
minute our producer, who was producing the Michael Jackson concert in Africa, 
South Africa, right after they lifted the sanctions, had to rush back there 
because of the broo-ha-ha over Michael Jackson. So we all had to do the movie in 
Africa, so we all had to go to Africa. But we did it over there, which made it 
more difficult, but I've seen it, it's terrific. It's a real great 
atmospheric...and Ted Levine who was the transvestite in Silence of the Lambs 
plays the New England cop in this. He sort of like the you know, hung over, 
doing the cop from a small town, and he's terrific. He gets to plays a good guy. 


Is this is coming out on Halloween?

RE: I don't know when this is coming out. I know Wes Craven's New Nightmare will 
be out October 21, so it's definately a Halloween movie. But I'm not sure, I 
think Columbia's going to pick it up, but I'm not sure when it's coming out. 

Tell us about the new Freddie movie.

RE: Well, this is strange, you know, it's kind of like a nightmare in a 
nightmare. It's about making Nightmare on Elm Street Part Seven, and Bob Shae, 
the head of New Line Cinema plays himself, Wes Craven plays himself, I play 
myself, and Heather Langencamp, who is the star of the movie, stars as herself 
in the movie. She plays Heather Langencamp. It's about Heather's reluctance to 
do another Nightmare on Elm Street Movie. Because of various things that are 
going on in her life, and she has a young son now, and she's not sure it's right 
to do, you know these violent horror movies, and these various things, strange 
things begin to happen. While were filming the movie, the L.A. earthquake hit, 
so Wes incorporated the L.A. earthquake into the movie. So you really see real 
aftershocks in the movie and then we also staged our own of course, but it's 
real strange, you just don't quite know what's going on. You don't know if 
Robert Englynd is contributing to it, or maybe Robert Englynd is harassing 
Heather, you know. Maybe Wes Craven is in on it, maybe he's not. Maybe their 
manipulating her to do this movie, and what the movie really does in fact, is 
it's no longer, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies which are over now. We're no 
longer on Elm Street now. We're no longer at this specific, symbolic town of 
Springwood. We brought Freddie, the sort of urban myth, you know that's told 
around camp fires at summer camp into the real world. Freddie Kreuger is sort of 
equivalent of the Hook Man that terrorizes lover's lane, and Freddie Kreuger 
who's now the nineties, alligator's in the sewer, urban myth is now lifted out 
of the fantasy world that he's been imprisoned in, in the Nightmare on Elm 
Street movies and he's out in reality now. He's in the cinema verite. He is a 
Hollywood, reality now. He's out. He's unbound. He's Freddie unbound, and the 
makeup has evolved and everything. 

Is it different?

RE: Yeah, yeah, it's really strange though. He's still burned and disfigured, 
but he's almost as if he's idealized himself into the best possible superhero 
version of a burned, disfigured monster, you know. He's almost Hollywoodized 
himself. It's really strange, 'wonderful and interesting. Everybody was pretty 
well led to believe the last Freddie movie was the last, and we'd never see him 
again. The last film was the last Nightmare on Elm Street, but not the last 
Freddie. See, there's no more Nightmare on Elm Street. The new movie is Wes 
Craven's New Nightmare. We're not on Elm Street, we're not in Springwood. It's 
nothing to do with Freddie revenging himself on the parents of Springwood or 
their relatives, or their offspring any longer. The revenge cycle of Nightmare 
on Elm street is done. Nightmare on Elm Street, Part Six, Freddie's Dead, was 
the last Nightmare on Elm Street, but Freddie's resurrected. Taking this new 
direction that Freddie's taking.

Is Wes going to go on with this or does he foresee this as the last one. 

RE: I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Obviously Wes and New Line have 
buried the hatchet and are working together again. But I know right now, Wes is 
doing a big Eddie Murphy movie. I don't know. I don't know if Wes has any plans 
to do any more, you know, Nightmare's. 

I gotta ask you this. There's been a rumor going 'round, including on USA, that 
show they have called Hollywood Insider, that there's going to be a movie with 
Freddie, Jason, and Leather face together. What about this?

RE: Well, I don't know, I've never heard about Leather face. I can't remember if 
New Line Cinema, and you can check on this, owns the rights to Chainsaw 
Massacre. I know they released the last one, the one with Dennis Hopper. 
However, I do know they own the rights to Friday the 13th now, and I have heard 
that there is a script called Freddie meets Jason, but I haven't read it and I 
haven't seen it. 

Would you like to do something like that?

RE: I'd have to read it first. You know what's been wonderful for me each time 
out, first of all I only do Freddie once a year and sometimes a year and a half 
in between, sometimes even two years, and the making of a movie's only two 
months out of my life. Every time I go to do one of these, I meet all these 
phenomenal new people. I worked with Yassef Connel, I worked with Patricia 
Arquette, I worked with Jennifer Rubin, I worked with Johnny Depp, you know. I 
get to work with all these great kids you know, and these great special effects 
people, whether it's Kevin Yeager, or David Miller, wonderful, gifted people 
who've done Coneheads, Chuckie and Tales From the Crypt, and Thriller the video, 
and all these other various things and I worked with these people, and the 
cameramen on Nightmare's always going, and the director's are...all the 
superstars in Hollywood are the Nightmare directors, quite literally. Right now, 
you have the Mask, Blown Away, are directed by two alumni and Renny Harlen of 
course you know does everything from producing Rambling Rose to directing Die 
Hard Two. So these are all Nightmare on Elm Street alumni, and Wes Craven is 
obviously doing the new Eddie Murphy now. So every time I go to work, I'm 
working with this great talent pool that's assembled by New Line. This is a 
great treat for me. I'm sure that New Line would assemble a great imaginative 
crew again and that would be the attraction for me, if the script wasn't 
ridiculous, you know.

I was trying to remember if you mentioned the title of the new Freddie movie 
here? 

RE: The new one? 

Yeah.

RE: Wes Craven's New Nightmare. That's what it's called. Wes Craven's New 
Nightmare.

I really enjoyed the series Nightmare Cafe. Talk a little about that.

RE: Well, that's another reason I'm involved in the new Nightmare. During the 
filming of the series up in Vancouver this project came alive and Wes Craven and 
New Line Cinema got back together again and it's cancelation is one of the great 
disappointments of my life. I had a great crew. I was working with Wes Craven's 
staff. Wes Craven's staff are just the like best in the business. Just wonderful 
people to work for. Maryann Madelana, who's been with him as far back as Serpent 
and the Rainbow and they're just great people. I thought it was a great show. I 
thought it was the new Twilight Zone. I wish it had a different title. I wish it 
had been called maybe Terminal Cafe or something like that. Our ratings weren't 
that bad. I think we were around anywhere between 38 and 46, in the ratings. 
There were a lot of shows way below us that are still on the air. I mean, I love 
the talent on Picket Fences, but I don't think they got the formula right on 
that show, and Picket Fences, nobody's watching Picket Fences and it's still on 
the air.

Do you think that's one of the basic problems with horror sci fi on network 
television, they don't give it a good slot? 

RE: No, no. That show wasn't really horror. That show was pure fantasy. I mean, 
we had comedy episodes, we had serious family episodes, we had that wonderful 
episode about that African American family that was reunited, through the death 
of a child, you know. I think it was more like a Twilight Zone fantasy show. I 
know for a fact that we were held up in the industry as an icon in production 
value. They made every other show in the network look at our shows for 
production value in terms of how good that show looked. Okay, but again, there's 
no way to measure, it and I think what happened was the network was just so 
committed to the shows they kept on instead of us ,which were great shows, 
Picket Fences and I'll Fly Away, but we had higher ratings. I don't mind being a 
sacrificial lamb for a show like I'll Fly Away, even though it went to PBS and 
was cancelled, but the fact of the matter is now that two or three of the shows 
that were kept on when we weren't are off the air now, I think they should have 
put us behind Quantum Leap. I think with the two of us together, Quantum Leap 
would still be on the air and I think we would have been a one two punch for 
science fiction and fantasy fans. I think it was a huge mistake and I think it 
was a terrific show. I'm broken hearted. It took me, maybe three to four months 
to get over that, because I was working in one of the most beautiful cities in 
the world, Vancouver, I was working for the creme de la creme of a company, 
headed by Wes and Maryann and it was really sad, you know.

Do you think the new exposure on sci fi and your sci fi series collection might 
possibly bring it back?

RE: It's already on the sci fi cable. It's already been set to be on the sci fi 
cable. So that's a positive thing. But it won't come back for any more than the 
episodes that have been done, I don't think, because I don't think they have the 
budget to do the show the way Wes needs to do it.

How would you describe your character in Nightmare Cafe, is he perhaps like 
Freddie.

RE: Not at all. There's nothing in common with Freddie. Except perhaps for the 
fact that he's dead. He was dead, he was a ghost. He started in suspended 
animation in a kind of a pergatory. It's almost as if he was a bad angel. He's 
sort of required to work in a cafe, which is kind of a bus stop in pergatory. 
Kind of a coffee shop for people either on their way down or on their way up, or 
people that have one last chance to sort of have a kind of, have done something 
in their life where they either deserve to be punished or they deserve to sort 
of find some resolution in their life. So, Blackie, my character Blackie, was 
actually, we sort of decided he was a gambler from the turn of the century, that 
maybe had died cheating, but in fact, deep down underneath all that there was 
sort of a heart of gold. He was sort of left there to manage the cafe. He was 
sort of like working off his points. He's sort of like a black angel or a dark 
angel and sort of working off his debit in his life and then, sort of maybe, 
sooner or later, maybe would have handed it over to the other characters.

How well did the Phantom movie do for you?

RE: Phantom of the Opera was a huge, huge hit on video. I don't think it was a 
resounding success domestically, in the United States. I think it made between 
$8 and $10 million, but then again, it only cost $2.5. It certainly made some 
money domestically, profit-wise. Then there's all the money it made overseas 
added to that, plus, but I mean it was a really big hit on video, so that was 
good for me. We sort of found our audience in a rental market.

I didn't get a chance to see that film, but a lot of people compared the makeup 
to Freddie, but it wasn't really the same was it?

RE: Oh it wasn't anything like it. You know what the tragedy was with that is 
that, the poster for it, they found a moment of time in that movie where I 
revealed the most destroyed part of my face, which is like in the movie for 
like, just a second. I never looked like that in the movie except for that 
second where he takes off that mask at the opera, for just that one second. I 
think when they made the poster they enhanced it a little bit with more red, you 
know, and it looks a little bit like Freddie. But the makeup didn't at all even 
remotely look like Freddie, you know. That sort of like hurt me that they 
exploited that a little bit and I think that was wrong to do. But people that 
saw the movie certainly don't think that. The concept for the makeup was there & 
was this disfigured face, burned by acid or something, and it was a very 
different disfigurement than Freddie, it was a very different effect. It was a 
bald head with springy hair, like the crypt keeper, and then what he would do is 
he would apply, he would sew a makeup face, using makeup and things he had found 
in the bowels of the Paris opera onto his own face. In our case, the London 
Opera, he would use makeup and stuff he had stolen there living down there in 
the layer beneath the opera, that he would like sew it all over his face in a 
patchwork, and then put makeup over that and he sort of idealized himself as 
sort of a beautiful face. We got the idea, the inspiration from Beethoven. You 
know those busts of Beethoven that you see, with the long flowing hair? So 
that's sort of what he looked like, he sort of looked like Beethoven, with 
Frankenstein, and a little bit over made up, so it made him look kind of, you 
know that kind of new romantic look. He was really pale, and a there's a little 
bit of eye makeup, Kohl eyeliner around the eyes, but then he had all this 
flowing hair. Of course it was a wig. You see the wig, you see him doing it. 
It's really painful, you see him making himself presentable so he can go to the 
opera and then he wears his scarf over his mouth to cover the stitching. 

You mentioned that you were a fan of some of the classic monsters, like 
Frankenstein. Phantom of the Opera's certainly a classic monster. Is there any 
others that you would like to portray that you haven't had the chance to?

RE: I was supposed to do the Mummy, and there was a scheduling conflict and the 
director, and an actor died. Various things happened and I didn't get to do it, 
but then again, that would have been a stretch. It's strange I don't really 
think of those as classic treasure's. There's been some talk of me doing the 
Hunchback of Notre Dame for European television, a four-hour version, and part 
of the gimmick is they're really going to go back to the novel with the whole 
thing, and really deal with the whole story and especially the fact that 
Esmerelda, the gypsy was really a Jew, a Jewish gypsy. When she takes sanctuary 
in the Catholic church, in Notre Dame, that 's really an amazing thing, that a 
Jewish girl in those times would take sanctuary there. I have wanted to do this, 
and my input is I don't want to wear face makeup, maybe having something wrong 
with my mouth, I don't know, maybe the corner of the eye. What I want to do is, 
I don't want to play the monster of Notre Dame, I want to play the hunchback. I 
want to have a really amazing hump designed and I wanted it to start out of the 
lower back of my head, right above the vertebrae. I wanted you to see the 
vertebrae, almost like the beginning of a stegosaur's thing coming out. We 
wanted to make it a physical performance more than a monster makeup.

Do you think that you're status in Hollywood gives you the opportunity to have 
input like you're talking about with designing makeup, and giving them 
suggestions? 

RE: Certainly with makeup, yes. As a matter of fact, I learned a lesson on the 
Mangler. Our Producer didn't like the eyebrows, so my makeup man, who's not my 
normal makeup man that went with me, he just sort of bowed to the producer and 
tried to break them down a bit. There are several shots in the movie where I 
don't like them, you know they look kind of zebra stripped. I just wanted big 
white George Bernard Shaw-type eyebrows. That was my conception. I don't know 
why I didn't be demanding, just tell somebody to shut up, that they didn't know 
what they were talking about. But I'm getting old now, and I'm just getting 
known as a sort of Johnny one-take-pro, Hi Robert Englund, everybody likes him, 
he never gives 'em any trouble. But I'm just not gonna take any crap from people 
anymore, about things they don't know anything about. You know Tobey used to 
stick up for me because he was getting it from the other end. I need to stick up 
for myself because I have a reputation at stake now. In the Mangler I like my 
performance, I like the makeup, but there are a couple of shots where the 
lighting isn't right. There was another thing, I don't want to get into it, but 
there was another thing where they wanted more red on a certain aspect of the 
makeup and I should've not let them do that either because it's not going to 
look false, but it's confusing to the audience what they used it for. It's never 
brought up, it's never talked about in the story of the movie. It's confusing, 
if you're going to bring something up, you have to bring it up, you can't just, 
you know and so I'm a little disappointed with that. Although it's a terrific 
design by David Miller, when you're in Africa and you don't have your normal 
applicator there and stuff, things get a little strange. I have to learn to 
demand more now, because I am an experienced with this stuff, I've worked in it 
for ten years.

How do you feel about getting older?

RE: You know what it is, I just can't do that stuff anymore after the second or 
third take, you know, you get black and blue. 

Let me ask you this, do you have any children?

RE: No.

You are married, though.

RE: I am married. I have Nancy, my wonderful wife.

What does she think about your career.

RE: 0h, she loves it because I'm really big in Europe especially Italy in Spain. 
I'm also pretty big in London. It's amazing, I can go everywhere. It's amazing, 
there's even like little Valium key chains, with my picture on them and in 
Russian it says "Take one and he will come for you." I've been mobbed in the 
summer palace at St. Petersburg, I've been mobbed in, I've been recognized by 
punk rock busboys behind the iron curtain in Budapest Hungary. Quite literally, 
in Italy and Spain they have a great love for the horror genre. I go to Europe 
once or twice a year, I do a movie a year over there or I go to film festivals 
and stuff, and Nancy and I really love to travel. 

Does she go with you all the time?

RE: 0h, yeah, she always goes. 

How did you meet?

RE: I was directing a movie and she was the set decorator.

Does she mind when fans come up to you, and do you mind?

RE: 0h, no, you know the thing is, for better for worse, I'm a B movie star. 
When you're a movie star it's different than being a TV star, they give you a 
little more respect. When you're in TV, you're in people's living room all the 
time, but movies you know, especially, even though I know everybody's seen 
Freddie on cable or they've rented Freddie, it's still a movie, and there's a 
little more distance, you know, it's always a mystery. I've never had a problem 
with a Nightmare on Elm Street fan. I had a problem with V fans, but never with 
Nightmare on Elm Street, and you would think that I would, but it's actually 
just the opposite. The only problems I've had were with fans from V.

What did they do?

RE: It wasn't like a problem so much, there was a girl who was really obsessed.

A David Letterman type thing?

RE: No, this girl literally was trying to turn herself into the character I 
played. She just got real obsessed with the character, and what he stood for. 
She was real bright and everything, and she's fine now. I just made her channel 
her energies into writing. She was really a bright kid, just a real bright, you 
know like a really bright Trekkie, she was into the whole spiritual thing of 
what that character stood for that I did on V, and she got her hair permed like 
me, and started wearing the outfit and stuff.

What do fans mostly say when they approach you. I imagine pretty much the same 
thing.

RE: Well, most of them have had a seminal experience, a drive- in movie 
experience, or a great experience seeing one of the movies when they were young, 
and it scared the you know what out of them and they love that, they remember 
that as a fond nostalgic moment. That's made me realize that if the Nightmare on 
Elm Street movies are remembered for anything they were sort of one of the last 
great popular culture, things that the kids discovered themselves. It wasn't 
forced on them, again, there was no hype machines with the first two movies. I 
know the second movie made, just in America alone, made like $40 million, and it 
cost like $2 million, you know. This is a lot of profit. I'm not even talking 
about video or anything now. There was no hype machine, it wasn't forced. The 
teenagers discovered and found these cool little movies on their own, it was a 
grass roots thing. I think there's this kind of nostalgic memory for seeing a 
Nightmare on Elm Street movie in the drive-in, or on a first date with a girl, 
you know it's a great date movie where the girl gets scared and you put your arm 
around her or whatever. They were cool and they like some of the lines from the 
movies. People always ask me, to write down some of the lines from the movie on 
the autograph. I think that there's also a momentum of publicity and attention 
around them. Johnny Carson did Freddie Kreuger jokes, Jay Leno does Freddie 
Kreuger jokes, Dave Letterman does Freddie Kreuger jokes, and what's his name, 
the great cartoonist, the black comedy stuff, the really weird kind of sick 
humor cartoons does Freddy jokes. I've been in famous cartoons, I've been in 
Doonseberry, I've been in Playboy, besides my interviews and everything, Freddie 
Kreuger has been through the culture now. He'll probably be in the dictionary 
someday, you know, and he's really entered the culture. 

Are you upset the Nightmare TV series ended?

RE: Well, you know what happened with the Nightmare TV series, we went into that 
with the understanding that we were going to be on really late at night in 
syndication. And what happens is once they buy you're show, they can put you on 
any time they want. Many of our shows were just really violent. It would be like 
if Tales From the Crypt were on at six o'clock, and syndicated instead of being 
on HBO at eleven o'clock at night, or on FOX at eleven. Now it's on FOX at nine 
o'clock at night, which is a network and that hurt. We would just get cancelled 
or sponsors would drop out and we weren't right to be on at six o'clock at 
night, we used to be on after eleven. That's what hurt me although a lot of our 
directors have gone on to much bigger and better things. The problem was to 
shoot that show in no less than six days. We began shooting it in ten days and 
by the last season, we were shooting it in four. They were on the budget and the 
shooting schedule. 

Now, Craven wasn't involved with the series was he?

RE: No, not at all, but Joe Adler was able to get us in under the wire in the 
last season, he learned so much during that last season, he's the guy that was 
able to bring the budget down on Tales From the Crypt, and that's why Tales From 
the Crypt is still around. Tales From the Crypt in it's first year was like, it 
was almost like a pet toy, it had no sense of reality in terms of television 
programming, I mean, it's like $1 million an episode or something. 

Out of personal opinion, do you think Craven Freddie's was the best?

RE: The first one is certainly the scariest and I love the evolution of Wes 
Craven's New Nightmare. I also think that parts three and four, seen together 
are a great double bill. Terrific little double bill, they really go well 
together because they have the overlapping characters, you know, the end of the 
nights overlap there. Now on the last one, when that's on TV, of course they 
can't do the Freddie vision. 

Do you think that it hurts a film, you see on TV that way without having the 
effect?

RE: I sort of thought they would like solve that, what with all the technology 
we have now, but again, these movies had a feeling on them with a budget, 
whereas a James Cameron movie doesn't, you know, and that was the problem. I 
love the idea of going to a Freddie marathon in two years, and when that one 
comes on everyone has to put on the 3-D glasses. I think that's such a great 
stunt, that's a great gimmick, I think there should be more of that in film 
going. But, no I don't think its for TV. I think it's a problem.

Do you get a kick of all the little Freddie's running around on Halloween. Have 
they ever come to your door?

RE: Oh, yeah, they did a claw made out of parrfin on my brick walk last year, a 
couple of years ago, and we have a picture of it in our scrapbook. A couple 
years ago, I was in New York doing a, what's the big nightclub there, the big 
nightclub, it's not as hip as it was, I think it was Aria or something like 
that, but there was this big hip nightclub there, and I was doing the midnight 
show live on there, on radio there. There was this big contest and everything 
and I was flying in and we were late, and we were zooming through New York in a 
limo trying to get there on time, and I mean literally taking turns on two 
wheels driving a little fast and we turned down this side street down in the 
lower east side, lower east side where this big nightclub was. We came to a stop 
and there in the cross walk was a mother dressed as Freddie Kreuger, she had 
like six little Freddie Kreuger's walking with her, she looked like a duck with 
her ducklings. 

Now the claws itself, those were real knives right?

RE: There were several that we used, I mean there was one for fright, one when 
for when I had to cut things. But the concept is that it's a leather gardening 
glove and it's been dipped in salt water to fit me real well and then on the 
back, like armor, on a knight's glove, is copper plating with fish knives on the 
fingers.

Did you ever get hurt with that thing?

RE: Yeah, on Part four, in the church sequence, there's a sequence where the 
girl, comes down the aisle of the church and I grab her. We rehearsed, and 
rehearsed, and rehearsed, and rehearsed and it was a stunt girl, and when we did 
it, she wasn't on her mark, and it was either stab her or stab me, and so I 
stabbed myself. 'Cause I had to like kind of pantomime grabbing her and when I 
reached around to keep from hurting her 'cause she was off her mark, I stabbed 
my other arm pretty bad. But that's the only time out of all the movies that 
I've gotten seriously hurt. I've broken my nose in the reshoot of Freddie's 
Dead. I took the makeup off, you know ten hours later, and there was blood all 
over my face, and with the makeup I didn't realize it.

Is that pretty much the worst thing that's happened to you on a set?

RE: Well, let's see, um, I mean, I've worked a lot with fire, and that's pretty 
bad. On the movie Ford Fairlane I did a lot of my own kickboxing in that and a 
lot of my own fight scenes in that, and I tore myself a hernia on that one. But 
that's about it.

How are you going to spend your Halloween?

RE: This Halloween? I think I'm going to be on location, I'm not sure. I'm 
hoping that I'm going to be doing a little strange project in May, and I'm 
supposed to go to the Arnold Schwarzenegger talent hole to do a project this 
year, but it's been put on the back burner indefinately now because of the 
budget. So I'm trying to get another gig in Europe, and this one looks 
interesting. It's directed by a guy who directs European MTV and there's a lot 
of talented people working in there, in that studio, so I'm kind of looking 
forward to that if it comes together. 

Any other projects you could mention other than the ones that you mentioned?

RE: Well, I'm going to be doing a movie of the week that's real interesting like 
Robin Cook's Coma. He didn't write Coma, he wrote the screenplay for Coma, 
right? Yeah, so that's coming up. I'm not sure of the title of that, but it's 
kind of neat. It's kind of like, it's not really horror, but it's sort of like a 
thriller in a hospital.

Are you still interested in doing dramatic roles, too?

RE: Well, this is a dramatic role.

Oh, Okay.

RE: I play a Boston doctor.

Let me ask you this, if Freddie Kreuger were to wish our readers a Happy 
Halloween, what do you think he'd say?

RE: I think he'd say uh, "Have fun, piggies, I'm staying home. I'm leaving 
Halloween for the amatuers."

-END-