Robert Englund's got a solid idea for a Nightmare On Elm Street reboot
Robert Englund knows he’s “too old” to play horror icon Freddy Krueger anymore, and has resigned himself to playing “old doctors and shit” in his twilight years. That said, he still thinks there’s a place for Freddy in the modern horror landscape, and he’s got a vision for the character that transcends a single actor. As Nerdist reports, Englund chatted about his razor-fingered alter ego on a panel for Eli Roth’s History of Horror AMC docu-series on the 2018 Summer Television Critics Association press tour. There, he said:
If I had an Eli Roth budget I would have cast different actors to play Freddy for every potential victim, because Freddy is only alive in the imagination of his future victim. They would talk about it at a slumber party or in a locker room at school, or on the bus going home. All we know about this Fred Krueger is he wears a hat, wears a red and green striped sweater and has a clawed hand. That’s the specifics.
He added that his Freddy is just one of many, and that “every one of the victims could have a different Freddy they imagined.” Of course, as the substandard 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street made clear, it’s not a proper Freddy movie without Englund. He knows that, too, as, in this vision, there’s still a role for the 71-year old. “And then at the end, it would be the ultimate victim and we see Freddy peel [his face] open and maybe it’s yours truly revealed,” he said. “And it’s the essence of Freddy.”
To be honest, Nightmare as filtered through Stephen King’s It sounds pretty cool, but one question lingers: Is there still a place for Kevin Bacon?