One of my favorite Rolling Stones songs is “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and that’s a sentiment you can apply to my world— it’s only film, but I like it, like it, yes, I do. Cinema can be taken too seriously; sometimes part of the fun of going to a movie is that it’s completely disposable. Most of the movies I’ve been a part of since A Nightmare on Elm Street are like celluloid comic books, enjoyable because of the immediacy of satisfaction. If there’s a K-Y-jelly-covered guy in your movie wearing a claw glove and a ratty red-and-green sweater, chances are you’re not going to see a piece of high art. But there’s a fair to middlin’ chance that you’ll have a blast.
If only one of my movies survives the test of time, that’s wonderful, but if I can make you forget your problems for a minute or three, I’ve done my job. My goal as an actor, writer, or director is that you have a great time, then you go back to your life, hopefully in a better mood, ready for a night of peaceful sleep and sweet dreams.
Or, better yet, a night of horrible sleep and brutal nightmares.
APPENDIX 1
ROBERT ENGLUND’S MUST–SEE MOVIES
ON THE WATERFRONT
Director - Elia Kazan
Starring - Marlon Brando
One of the greatest American movies ever made. Check out the scene when Brando picks up Eva Marie Saint’s glove.
THE BAND WAGON
Director - Vincente Minnelli
Starring - Fred Astaire
Terrific musical-theater spoof. The last dance number, a Mickey Spillane/Raymond Chandler detective story take-off with Cyd Charisse, is worth the price of admission by itself.
ROMAN HOLIDAY
Director - William Wyler
Starring - Audrey Hepburn
Classic contemporary fairy tale. You will fall in love with Rome and Audrey Hepburn in her debut. Makes me want to go out and buy a Vespa.
EAST OF EDEN
Director - Elia Kazan
Starring - James Dean
James Dean’s greatest physical performance. Check out the scene with his mother, and the stalled-merry-go-round exchange with Julie Harris.
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
Director - Alexander Mackendrick
Starring - Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis
Wonderful performances. Gritty James Wong Howe location cinematography. You’ll never look at Tony Curtis the same way again.
ANATOMY OF A MURDER
Director - Otto Preminger
Starring - James Stewart
Extraordinary cast. Riveting story. Terrific courtroom scenes. Lee Remick in tight sweaters and Ray-Bans, George C. Scott’s debut.
TOUCH OF EVIL
Directed by and Starring - Orson Welles
Kinky, strange, over-the-top film noir. Welles doubles fifties Venice, California, for a Mexican border town. Brilliant use of overlapping dialogue.
THE FUGITIVE KIND
Director - Sidney Lumet
Starring - Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani
Brando meets southern-Gothic Tennessee Williams again! I want his leather jacket. Watch Joanne Woodward’s spoiled-rich-girl turn.
HUD
Director - Martin Ritt
Starring - Paul Newman, Patricia Neal
Newman at his best.
CHARADE
Director - Stanley Donen
Starring - Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn
Sophisticated thriller, Paris locations, amazing supporting cast: Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, James Coburn.
LORD JIM
Director - Richard Brooks
Starring - Peter O’Toole
Classic boys’ adventure film. Exotic locations.
THE PROFESSIONALS
Director - Richard Brooks
Starring - Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin
Best example of heightened “purple prose.” I prefer it to The Magnificent Seven.
IN COLD BLOOD
Director - Richard Brooks
Starring - Scott Wilson, Robert Blake
Poetic, haunting serial-killer docudrama. Would make a good double bill with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
TWO FOR THE ROAD
Director - Stanley Donen
Starring - Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney
Best dissection of a relationship on film. Funny and sad. And you get to travel the back roads of Europe in the sixties.
CHARLEY VARRICK
Director - Don Siegel
Starring - Walter Matthau
Brutal contemporary western.
MURMUR OF THE HEART
Director - Louis Malle
Starring - Lea Massari
Wise film about coming of age in a French middle-class family during the Vietnam era.
HAPPY NEW YEAR (LA BONNE ANNÉE)
Director - Claude Lelouch
Starring - Lino Ventura
One of my favorite caper films. And a philosophical one at that.
AND NOW MY LOVE (TOUTE UNE VIE)
Director - Claude Lelouch
Starring - Marthe Keller
Best use of parallel story lines I’ve ever seen in the cinema.
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
Director - Mel Brooks
Starring - Gene Wilder
My favorite comedy. Improves with age.
1900 (NOVECENTO)
Director - Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring - Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu
Epic film storytelling. Brilliant use of a single location as it changes with the seasons and the years. De Niro and Depardieu in the flower of their youth. Plus Dominique Sanda. And a Grand Guignol performance by Donald Sutherland.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
Director - Steven Spielberg
Starring - Richard Dreyfuss
Look for the slightly darker uncut version.
NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS (LA NOTTE DI SAN LORENZO)
Directors - Paolo Taviani, Vittorio Taviani
Starring - Omero Antonutti
An Italian village survives Nazis at the end of World War II. An awkward shoot-out toward the end among family members and towns people divided over the war is as startling and real as anything I’ve seen in the cinema. Soul-wrenching, offhand violence.
APPENDIX 1.5
FREDDY KRUEGER’S
MUST–SEE MOVIES
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
Director - Richard Fleischer
Starring - Kirk Douglas, James Mason
The Nautilus, a giant squid, a neurotic James Mason: what else do you need? How about Kirk Douglas singing? The monster calamari’s sucker wounds on the sailors ruined my summer vacation.
FORBIDDEN PLANET
Director - Fred McLeod Wilcox
Starring - Walter Pidgeon
My classmates and I argued during recess about what the “Monster of the Id” was. It took us an entire semester to figure out it was a saber-toothed tiger. (There was no video or DVD back then, remember?) We were prisoners of our imagination. A Robby the Robot action figure is on the desk next to me as I write this blurb.
THE BAD SEED
Director - Mervyn LeRoy
I accidentally saw this movie instead of a cowboy flick at a kiddie matinee birthday party. I feared the sound of tap shoes and girls with pigtails for years.
THE INNOCENTS
Director - Jack Clayton
Starring - Debra Kerr
Perfect film adaptation from a literary source. Brilliant black-and-white cinematography and sophisticated sound mix. What happened to those children? Oooh.
ROSEMARY’S BABY
Director - Roman Polanski
Starring - Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes
Perfect movie. Stands the test of time. Cassavetes’s performance grows more layered each time I see it.
THE EXORCIST
Director - William Friedkin
Starring - Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow
Contemporary classic.
S
ISTERS
Director - Brian De Palma
Starring - Margot Kidder, William Finley
Best use of split screen to build suspense I’ve ever seen. My favorite mad doctor in the history of film.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER
Director - John McNaughton
Starring - Michael Rooker
Relentless. Unnerving use of documentary style to convey claustrophobic terror.
THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE (EL ESPINAZO DEL DIABLO)
Director - Guillermo del Toro
Starring - Eduardo Noriega
Beautiful, lyric, sad ghost story with political undertones. One of the kinkiest amputee-sex scenes since Romeo Is Bleeding.
FRAILTY
Directed by and Starring - Bill Paxton
This film amazed me, fooled me, I never saw the ending coming. An underrated classic.
MAY
Director - Lucky McKee
Starring - Angela Bettis
Brilliant title performance, empathetic and scary at the same time. A kinky, twisted, contemporary, dysfunctional horror revenge tale set among the scruffy hills and struggling lives of East Hollywood. Don’t trust your vet. Bonus, Anna Faris as a hot lesbian.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (LÅT DEN RÄTTE KOMMA IN)
Director - Tomas Alfredson
My favorite new take on the vampire myth. Hypnotic performances by the young leads. Forget your prejudice against subtitles and find this film!
APPENDIX 2
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF
FREDDY KRUEGER
(AKA, MY TWENTY-FIVE FAVORITE FREDDY QUOTES, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Welcome to prime time, bitch!
You’re all my children now!
How sweet, fresh meat!
No screaming while the bus is in motion!
What’s with kids today?
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but nothing will ever kill me!
You forgot where you came from, kid, but I know where you’re going!
I’ve always had a thing for the whores that live in this house.
The only thing to fear is fear himself!
I should warn you, princess, the first time tends to get a little messy.
Now there’s a face only your mother could love!
Your eyes say, “No, no.” But my mouth says, “Yes, yes.”
Just because it’s a love story doesn’t mean it can’t have a decapitation or two.
When you wake up, it’s back in the saddle again!
I don’t believe in fairy tales.
Why don’t you reach out and cut someone?
You can check in, but you can’t check out!
Wanna suck face?
If the food don’t kill you, the service will!
You’ve got the body, and I’ve got the brain!
Kids. Always a disappointment.
Better not dream and drive.
This boy feels the need for speed!
I am eternal!
APPENDIX 3
FREDDY’S
FAVORITE KILLS
For my number-one favorite kill, I almost went with Johnny Depp being eaten alive and then regurgitated by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but the winner, by a finger blade’s width, has to be the death of that feisty Tina (Amanda Wyss), who put up such a fight while I thrashed her about on the ceiling of her bedroom. Freddy loves a worthy adversary, especially if it’s a nubile teenaged girl.
A close second goes to my hearing-impaired victim Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) in Nightmare 6. In these über–politically-correct times, it’s refreshing to remember what an equal-opportunity killer Freddy always was. Not only does he pump up the volume on the hearing aid from hell, but he also adds a nice Latino kid to his body count. Today they probably wouldn’t even let Freddy force-feed a fat kid junk food.
Dream death number three is found in a sequence from Nightmare 3. Freddy plays puppet master with victim Phillip (Bradley Gregg), converting his arm and leg tendons into marionette strings, then cutting them in a Freddy meets Vertigo moment.
The kiss of death Professor Freddy gives Sheila (Toy Newkirk) is great, but not as good as Al Pacino’s in The Godfather, so my fourth pick is Freddy turning Debbie (Brooke Theiss) into her worst nightmare, a cockroach, and crushing her in a Roach Motel. A classic Kafka/Krueger kill.
For my final fave, you will have to check out Freddy vs. Jason playing at a Hell’s Octoplex near you. Here’s a hint: the hockey-puck guy and I double-team a member of Destiny’s Child. Yummy! Now where’s that Beyoncé …
APPENDIX 4
ROBERT ENGLUND’S
INFINITE PLAYLIST
“Naïve Medley” - Talking Heads
“Waiting in Vain” - Bob Marley and the Wailers
“(I Can’t Believe) I’m Still in Love with You” -Junior Walker & the All Stars
“Under My Thumb” -Rolling Stones
“Stupid Girl” - Rolling Stones
“Spanish Harlem” - Aretha Franklin
“Day Dreaming” - Aretha Franklin
“Gimme a Little Sign” - Brenton Wood
“Tighten Up” - Archie Bell & the Drells
“Holding Back the Years” - Simply Red
“1999” - Prince
“Come Fly with Me” - Frank Sinatra
“Come and Get These Memories” - Martha and the Vandellas
“You Beat Me to the Punch” - Mary Wells
“Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” - Ella Fitzgerald
“Fool in the Rain” - Led Zeppelin
“Don’t Let Me Down” - The Beatles
“Lu” - Laura Nyro
“Carrie Anne” - The Hollies
“Anna (Go to Him)” - The Beatles
“Young Blood” - Rickie Lee Jones
“I Won’t Grow Up” - Rickie Lee Jones
“Sweet Home Alabama” - Lynyrd Skynard
“Help Me” - Joni Mitchell
“Someday, Someway” - Marshall Crenshaw
“Jaded” - Aerosmith
“Crystal Blue Persuasion” - Tommy James and the Shondells