CHRIS LAWRENCE: Hello, Robert, how are you today?

ROBERT ENGLUND: I’m doing great, Chris. I just got in from Sundance. I have a few movies there, and I’m flying out this morning to go out overseas but I’m happy to talk about Killer Pad or anything else you’d like to talk about.

CL: Maybe you could explain for our readers what Killer Pad is about?

RE: I got this great little script a couple of years ago from an old friend and business associate of mine, Wayne Rice. He directed one of my favorite little cult films, Suicide Kings. I love that film. Wayne and I go back twenty years. Wayne also had great success doing Dude, Where’s My Car? And he wanted to do a low-budget teen comedy horror spoof; the sort of a demographic we had in mind sort of pigeonholed it as “boys without driver’s licenses”. And he handed me this terrific little script like the Three Stooges, we coined it the Three Slackers, combined with filth, who get a windfall of money so they jump in their beater car and drive to the west coast with their money to the Hollywood hills looking for a pad to meet girls. Lo and behold the place that they score is the porthole to hell and the terror and hijinks ensue. We’ve assembled an amazing cast. We’ve got Danny Franzese from Mean Girls, Nick Youngman, Bobby Reil from Mad TV, Andy Milonakis came in to do a spoof as a guest at a party. We locked ourselves up in a house on Mullholland drive and shot it in 23 days on a really tight budget and just had a lot of fun. It’s a genuinely funny, silly film, and I accent the word silly in a positive way, silly film.

CL. I wasn’t sure what to think at first, but it seems as if the horror and the comedy seem to blend well together.

RE: It’s definitely a silly teen comedy. The plot is kind of the “you’ve accidentally sold your soul to the devil” hook and of course the house being the porthole to hell; all sorts of silly horror spoof and parody sequences happen in the film. Because the movie has the “shoot and run” improvisational feel to it we wanted, some of the effects can be kind of cheesy and cartoonish, but that accents the film. The boys in the movie are in such denial about the horror around them. They always have an excuse and a theory for what’s going on. All they can and want to see are all these girls coming through their doorway to their parties. In their lameness and innocence they continually lie to themselves about what’s going on around them.

CL: And it looks like it will do very well on DVD.

RE: I’m happy that it’s a direct-to-DVD release. That used to be an insult but it no longer is. These are the kind of films that get discovered, they have a shelf life. I’ve had horror movies that are rediscovered years after they came out. I’m hoping they’ll market Killer Pad to the audience that I think it’s for: people who like gross-out humor but also like a good literary gag and the silliness of this movie. I’ve got a twelve year old nephew and a godson, and this is the sort of movie I’d want to sit down and watch with them on a rainy Saturday because I know they’d like it. If I had them watch There Will Be Blood or Michael Clayton, I know they’d yell and roll their eyes. This is the kind of movie you can laugh at.

CL: So this is the first film you’ve directed in about twenty years since 976-EVIL and a couple episodes of Freddy’s Nightmares.

RE: I’m basically an actor for hire, but I’m also a professional for hire. I have a relationship with Wayne Rice, and I’m such a fan of Suicide Kings and a lot of other films he’s produced, which is what attracted me to this project. Since 2004, I’ve been doing a run of very low budget horror movies. Also, I did a reality show that didn’t sell all through 2004 and that sort of used up some of the heat I had from the great success I had with Freddy Vs. Jason in 2003. So I had this stack of low budget horror scripts and when my reality show didn’t sell, I did all these movies like Behind the Mask, Hatchet, and Red.. We shot Killer Pad on a low budget, but we got a lot of great talent because we were in Hollywood and people could go home at night & be with their families. It was difficult but I’m really proud of the result.

CL: So now that you’re finished with Killer Pad, do you see yourself in the director’s chair anytime soon again?

RE: Well, now that you ask, I’m literally off at dawn to Rome, Italy to scout locations for a dark fantasy film I’m going to be doing. It’s based on an old Russian short story about a fallen angel, and a priest who doesn’t believe in God any longer who comes and saves him. I’ve got my work cut out for me, but I’ve got my script in good shape and some really interesting major actors involved. I still need to cast it out of Canada and Italy & Spain and scout some more locations; I found one really great village already down in the tip of the boot of Italy. It looks like Peter Jackson came and built it for me himself, its perfect. I’m feeling really positive about it, but all this flying around is getting to me.

CL: Well, between promoting Killer Pad and then scouting your next movie you’ve got a full plate.

RE: Well I just had those movies at Sundance so I’m a bit jetlagged from that experience being in the deep snow. Our film Red did really well, that’s the one starring Brian Cox and I’m just so proud to be in it. One of my other little horror movies, Jack Book’s Monster Slayer, it was fun to see it there with all the fan boys. We showed it in Spain and they liked it really well. Its like Killer Pad: its intentionally low budget and hand-made and fun, and it was received very well at Slamdance (Editor’s Note: Slamdance is a sort of anarchic independent Sundance Film Festival), and we just got a really nice write-up in L.A. Times.

CL: That must be really gratifying, when you put so much time and effort into a project and you finally get to show it to audiences and they react positively to it.

RE: That’s really weird. All audiences respond differently. I’ve seen movies that my producers didn’t like but audiences loved. You have to understand that making movies is a crap shoot because there are movies that I love and think are great that nobody goes and sees. Now, I’m in the world of thrillers, horror, and science fiction & fantasy so I see a bit more of those. I saw a movie recently with Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga, who was nominated last year for an Oscar for The Departed, in a film called Joshua. I really believe that Vera Farmiga’s performance in that film is one of the strongest female performances of all 2007, yet nobody is talking about it, nobody has mentioned it, and nobody has seen it. I think about what if I was the director of that movie and he did such a good job and it hasn’t caught on. Sometimes it takes years. I have a Stephen King movie I did in 1990 for Tobe Hooper (Night Terrors). I’ve worked with Tobe a number of times but this movie is catching on now with his fans, because his fans have grown exponentially and it has been shown on cable. Every time I look at my TV Guide I see it’s playing on Cinemax, so it’s obviously caught on or else they wouldn’t be playing it every Saturday night at eight o’clock if it wasn’t getting a good response.

CL: But there’s nothing that beats that feeling when you’re at the movies and the lights start to go down and the movie is about to start. Even with all the advances in home audio and big screen TVs, there’s nothing that beats the experience of seeing a film in theaters.

RE: There are some movies that you need to see in theaters. I don’t care how good of a system you have at home; you want to see a movie like Transformers in a theater. Certain movies need to be seen in a theater; certain comedies need to be seen in a theater too.

CL: It’s definitely a social event, even though you’re sitting in a dark room with other people, you get the communal experience by seeing it with other people rather than by watching it by yourself

RE: Take something like Juno for instance. It’s so a quirky and offbeat that when you see it with an audience and you laugh at something strange and ten other people in the audience laugh with you, then you know you’re watching the movie right.

CL: I’m usually the opposite; I’ll laugh at something dumb and be the only one in the crowd laughing.

RE: It’s nice to laugh out loud at something strange and its affirming to have other people laugh out loud with you. I know what you mean, though, I’ll be in a theater and I’ll see a great joke or something subtle and I’ll laugh but the rest of the audience is so uptight or they don’t get it, or their wives dragged them to see it and they don’t want to be there.

CL: So true. Well if you don’t mind I’d like to switch gears a little bit and maybe ask you some questions about A Nightmare on Elm Street. Is there any possibility of you reprising your role as the nefarious Freddy Krueger?

RE: I don’t know. One of the guys I used to get all my gossip from at New Line has moved over to Twentieth Century Fox. I do know there was a prequel script, or there was some gossip that they may be remaking the original which probably won’t be me. Maybe I can find my way into the prequel. There’s been some talk of Freddy and Jason and Michael Meyers butting head too.

CL: What about Ash from the Evil Dead series?

RE: No, that’s off the stove now. I think Sam Raimi is remaking Evil Dead.

CL: One could still always hope, couldn’t he? I was seven years old when I was taken to see A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, and that scared the bejeezus out of me. Were there any films that scared you as a child?

RE: When I was a child, we would go to matinee movies for people’s birthday parties and sometimes they’d change at 3 or 4 in the afternoon for the adult movies. Once or twice I was stuck there and I saw The Bad Seed. I was also frightened by an old war movie, The Naked and the Dead. There’s a sequence in that where there’s a soldier gets bitten by a snake and dies a horrible death from the poison of the snake and that freaked me out. I don’t remember a horror movie scaring me until I was much older. I loved science fiction and I loved horror as a kid. I love Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet. The Exorcist definitely creeped me out. More recently there have been some great horror movies that I love but they don’t necessarily scare me. I loved John Carpenters remake of The Thing. The most recent movie I’ve seen that creeped me out was a movie called May by Lucky McKee starring Angela Bettis and it slipped through the cracks but it’s a great, great film.

CL: I think that’s one of the reasons why horror movies are so fun, because we can let our guard down and let ourselves get scared or creeped out, but you know you’re okay and you can walk out of the theater or turn of the TV and everything will be alright.

RE: I still like being manipulated and surprised. Especially with that creepy kind of horror. I remember seeing the first Hellraiser and the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre and they freaked me out. I was an adult, but they freaked me out; it’s a truly disturbing world in those films.

CL: That’s when you know that the filmmakers have done their job, when they’ve managed to evoke a physical or emotional reaction from their audience.

RE: That what makes the Nightmare movies so scary, especially the first one. There’s that great subtext of the dream and the nightmare which is psychological and surrealistic and everyone can identify because everybody’s had a bad dream and we have a hook in deeper than most films.

CL: Psychological horror definitely goes a lot farther than just blood & guts. This is kind of a funny question, but I remember seeing an interview you did and you talked about when you were making the first Nightmare film and you fell asleep in your trailer and when you woke up and saw yourself in the mirror and were really creeped out by what you saw. Do you still get flashes of that man looking back at you in the mirror?

RE: I didn’t have a movie star trailer back then, I just had a regular trailer room and they’re real narrow like a hallway and one side is a cot and one side is a mirror. They had those makeup light bulbs going all the way around the mirror except these were dimmed down really low with a dimmer switch, so I could barely see myself. And as I sat up I saw the motion in the mirror opposite of me and it wasn’t me it was Freddy looking back at me. I can close my eyes right now, literally and just take a breath and remember that nightmare. It freaked me out, I jumped and I can remember exactly the color of the lighting. I was deep in the mirror as I was far away from it, and I also wasn’t completely awake, it was in the middle of the night and somebody had knocked on the door to get a shot. That really got to me, I don’t really dream about it a lot anymore, but I have.

CL: I think that would definitely spook me out! Of all the work that you have done, what was your favorite film to work on or maybe what do you get the biggest sense of accomplishment from?

RE: I just gave this speech at Sundance; the process of making a film is very different from the end result. I had a great time working on a film called Stay Hungry when I was a young actor. I also had a great time working in Italy on a film I did a few years ago called The Return of Cagliostro. Those are my two favorite experiences making a movie. I guess when I look back upon it; I starred with Henry Fonda in a movie in 1976 and he’s arguably one of the greatest actors on film. This last year I worked with Brian Cox in the film Red. Even though I had a small part, just to be able to be able to hit my marks and be able to work with Brian Cox… I’m really grateful that at my age I’ve really come full circle and I’m still working with actors that great, as well as with all the young kids I’m working with too. It keeps you sane.

CL: Its nice to be able to work on different genres of films.

RE: It’s very lucrative for me to go out and do 2001 Maniacs or do cameos in horror, and horror has been very good to me. But I’m playing different parts now; I’m playing doctors, fathers, scientists, and that’s fun. I wasn’t always Freddy. I did fifteen movies and two television series before I ever did Freddy. I’ve been around forever, I started my first movie in 1973, and I think this spring literally I’ll have been in the business for 35  years. I think I’ve done over 70 movies now too.

CL: That’s impressive. You’ve garnered an impressive body of work; you should definitely be proud.

RE: I’ve always wanted to be a character actor, and that’s what I am and its fun. I’m like you, I’m a fan. People forget that most of us are fans too. I just got back from Sundance; I got to meet Paul Giamatti, which was a big treat for me. I saw Billy Crudup there too; I’m a big fan of him. I got to hang out with Brian Cox. It’s great, you have to get over your nervousness and you act with people you’ve looked up to all of your life and remember you’re equal too. I remember having to get over that even when I was in the theater, and I’m sixty years old, and sometimes I get the impression that when kids work with me they feel that way.

CL: Well, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to speak with us and I wish you much luck and success with Killer Pad and your future projects!

RE: Thank you, Chris.