Original subtitles

I heard one of your dream talked about the virus.

L�plagia

Village

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We're almost always been very authentic.

He is a total rock star.

He's a very serious actor, but he's also a great comedian.

Robert is a fellow actor, is a dream.

Robert Englinder, the great actor. It's just plain as that.

Files and your seat belts.

OK.

I'm ready.

OK.

I never set out to become a horror icon.

Something I wasn't planning if you saw it.

I went right into the makeup tests.

And that's sort of where I found a lot of the character in the voice.

Johnny Depp Waltz did about a week into the shooting and Heather looking all beautiful and young and do-ey.

And there was the makeup girl with little pink fans. She bought them.

We have to keep our stars cool.

What am I to shop bliver?

And I'm sitting over there. I've been working since five in the morning.

Itch, I've got glue all over me.

The makeup man David Miller stabbing me with his crusty makeup brush.

And I'm kind of pissed at the kids. They don't need makeup. They're beautiful.

They've got their whole careers at them.

God, I envy those.

And I went away.

That envy.

That jealousy I have for those beautiful young actors.

I said, I can use that. What is Freddy?

So child, you know, children, children are the future.

Over the rest of the movies, I was able to just remember that moment.

There was a synapse of mine.

I can get there. It's like I got there now.

And that's all I need to believe in Freddy.

Just to get back to that little moment.

And that becomes my short hand, getting to an essence of Freddy that I need to get to.

Without just going boog, boog, boog, boog.

Robbie England was sort of free or dain to be a lawyer.

But my father wanted he knew I had the gift of gab.

And I broke my father's heart.

I believe it was either my 11th or my 12th summer.

I was sent off as a shaperone of my mother's best friends, gorgeous teenage daughter.

She was a wannabe actress, and a year older than I was.

So we went to this professional children's theater together.

And I figured I was going to be sweeping the stage and having a flashlight

and ushering people in.

And it's a big transition in life.

You go from being literally, from being a child who the teenage world.

But it was also this world of theater that I entered that summer.

And I wound up starring in everything.

I was panokeo.

I was Peter Pan.

I was Aladdin.

And at some point that summer, I was in the girls bathroom.

And the girls were teaching me how to blow smoke rings.

They were the harem girls.

And I'm sitting there and I had curly hair to begin with that they were like giving me a burn.

I'm full of screaming hormones.

12 years old.

I had a breast in this air.

A boob in this air.

A doubly button right here as the girls touched me and blade with me and curled me and rolled my hair.

And I'm a cigarette.

And I sort of said to myself, I like this.

I think I'm going to do this.

I had this sequence where Anokyo is in shorts.

Leather Hosen.

And I would run across the stage.

Mugging.

Oh no.

And the Indians would follow me.

And it shoot arrows at me.

And then I run back the other way.

Well, during the run of the show, every time I came back for my second run across the stage.

I went out in an extra hour or two and the laugh got bigger.

I had arrows in my ass now.

Even a bigger laugh.

Well, I got to love that laugh.

That was mine.

I controlled it.

I didn't handset it.

And I really loved it.

I went off stage.

And there were guests backstage.

One of the guest backstage was none other than the great improvisational talk show host, Steve Allen.

Anyway, I know many of you want to know what kind of a show we're doing around Sundays.

I know I went.

Like I know.

The dis-is-like V-late night talk show.

In the world, the tonight show before Johnny Carson and I idolized him.

And he had a friend's daughter was in the show and he'd come back.

He'd give her a bunch of roses and he'd saved a rose.

I heard his voice.

Where's the kid that plays Panokeo?

He was, oh, there's the puppet.

And he gave me the rose and he said, you got it, kid.

I'm literally a kid.

I'm 13 years old.

To get that kind of vote of confidence.

You know, and grownups were not afraid in those days to tell you you were special.

Or you had a gift.

You know, they weren't worried about being sued by the Board of Education.

Or your parents because your parents wanted you to be an engineer or a lawyer or a doctor.

A lawyer in my case.

And my parents kind of knew.

Like introducing you to one of your sons.

This is Adam Röv, Lester.

Lester.

What's so touching about Robert is that the AV were with a group of people.

And there might be someone who's new to the acting world.

And he'll immediately say to them, oh, I saw you when you were in that after school special,

when you were 14 years old.

And he makes you feel like you're one of the club.

I think one of the things that you realize if you start to last a while in the business is that every year there's a fresh crop of people who are breaking into it.

Who don't know as much as the veterans do.

And Robert was always teaching.

We figured out how to do it safely.

And then he was running like the Peter Cushing and Hardback.

Run on the table and jump over the fire.

And then land with the sword.

Stand back hard.

This was my first time directing.

I was fucking scared.

I mean, this is Robert England.

This is Lin Shey.

This is Big Time.

Robert put his arm around me.

He gets real close.

And he's like, I know your nervous.

Don't be.

You come to me for anything.

He set the tone.

Alright, kick straight.

Alright, quiet.

Here we go, guys.

I just wrapped.

You know, I raided the big clap, you know.

And I was heading to my hotel and I heard Cory.

And I turned and I looked and I'm one of the side rooms was Robert.

It was coming here.

I think you really have a lot of talent.

And it'd be really cool for you to keep going and do that.

It's like you did a really good job.

But I just went.

To me, it was like such a great compliment from an amazingly accomplished actor.

It takes a really generous person to actually turn this spotlight on to all the people around him.

I just think that's really rare in Hollywood.

Robert knew from an early age that he was talented at this.

He wasn't just a hobby.

It was something he was not only that he loved, but that he was good at.

The reason you would discourage a child from being an actor is because it's a pretty sketchy, scary way to make money.

My parents sent me off with good tidings to the teenage drama workshop.

It was a shock to me later on to find out they didn't want me to pursue it.

And I had been recruited by Stanford.

And I didn't want to go there.

They didn't have a particularly great theater department or anything else.

I really damaged the relationship.

I think with my father, not my mother so much that my father.

And you know that I just was going to you know, hey for the day, I knocked your life for me.

And I don't think he wanted that.

And he worried for me.

I don't think they disapproved of acting per se.

They just recognized that it was a really tough job.

I did all the traditional academic training.

I did real Yeceser and I did playboy of the Western world.

I was doing classics now as well as I did not directly, but I played Jonathan Harker.

The young man who's girlfriend is suffering the effects of the vampire.

I look like a kind of skinny, big atom apple, Danny K.

Back then, of course I was, you know, ripped because I was a surfer and I had long blonde hair.

But I was hardly a leading man.

He was a very plain kid.

I mean he was, he's not the robber we see now.

I don't know what that I remember, but you know, they were kinder to playing looking.

Playing looking people I was pretty plain.

My audition in college I followed Richard Dreyfus, who had done an Edward Alvey monologue.

And that was like just amazing.

And I knew enough not to follow him.

Took my name off the list because I knew I could ever top.

He was just he was brilliant.

He in fact dropped out a couple of weeks later.

And he actually told me, you know, we got to get out of here.

And so we went off and formed our own theater company in Hollywood.

I died.

My left home, I wasn't speaking to my parents anymore.

I was living in the basement of a theater.

Girls were opening the trap door in the theater floor and lowering me down,

Donuts and French fries. I was broke.

We were all broke.

And living with girls, every girl I seemed to need,

that was single in New York, had a cat with a stinky ass cat box.

And the whole apartment smelled like cat shit.

You know, you sleep when a couch until she got tired of you.

And then we get a job. And everybody, like a fucking smoke signals and drums.

New, you had a job. They woke up, you and go, hey, I heard.

I have a little more light, please.

Let's see. I met Robert back in 1972. I think it was our 73.

And got to know each other well. And we had a lot of fun.

You know, just a bunch of crazy guys on stage.

All kinds of shenanigans going on.

I remember going to a party with all the football players.

And there were like 10 guys for everyone girl at the party.

And all the guys got really sick and drunk and throwing up from the beer case.

And the next weekend I was invited to a prominent apartment party.

And it was 10 girls for everyone guy, not beer cakes, but mixing cocktails.

And there weren't a lot of straight guys there.

Kind of a don't ask, don't tell time.

It was that was a very exotic kind of eye opening experience for me.

I'm not there perk about being in the theater and you're like playing many different characters during the course of a two and a half hour play.

What happens invariably is that you run off to the side of the stage and you all strip and you put on your next costum.

And you could be standing right next to a young lady who was stripping really.

Not that you were paying any attention.

But you know occasionally you just kind of glance like that.

That's probably not, it's probably not, I shouldn't say that nowadays.

And it does it for me.

I went back to college after that, it was very successful there.

And that's the beginning of my professional life.

It became dissatisfied and disaffected with politics of theater.

I was not even up to think the theater was free of that and pure and fairness prevailed.

And of course it's just like any other business.

And I returned to Hollywood.

That's see my first life.

We were high school sweethearts.

I can still remember seeing her, you know, get in my car and high school.

Take her to the movies with her, you know, her, her, her, her girl,

Sun Street hair and her sunburned, you know, shoulders.

And I was kind of a bad boy.

And then we patched it up.

And then I went off to college.

And then she wound up at that college.

And we sort of came back together again.

I think I, I, I matured just enough that I thought maybe maybe maybe that's the environment to be, you know.

You know, you don't need to other so long.

It felt like when you're young and felt like forever.

And so we, we made a goal of it.

I don't think she ever understood.

How serious I was about being an actor.

How much I loved it.

And I was so sure of what I wanted, what I needed.

I think that's he kind of wanted us to, you know, come back to California.

And have a house and a picket fence and babies.

We tried, but we just, we were just different people by then.

And, you know, I, you know, we're very young then.

And I can damage a marriage.

And I think we just changed.

Not necessarily grew apart because we had a very amicable divorce.

And we just got married to young.

I had retained an agent who'd seen me doing a low-dolly.

And I went on my first interview and I got a starring role in a movie.

1973, Buster and Billy.

It was this sort of strange romantic and brutal true story about a couple of teenagers

in the American South, Post World War II.

He definitely made an impression on me even at that age.

He didn't look like a movie actor.

And the performance was really special.

And it's not a genre film in any way.

It's a coming of age, drama, but it's kind of intense.

I beat out a ton of people for that part.

I found out later some of the people that were up in that role that Huzu and all they would

had this great Emmy award winning Make-A-Man, D'Alarm Strong.

And my character was an albino who idolized inside kick this older boy.

In the form of the very hunky, jam-micle Vincent.

Well, you're talking the lone range you hear.

I ride alone in the king's eyes.

My albino character doesn't like being an albino.

And he dies his hair black.

He uses shoe polish.

We wanted to look like an old crew cut.

But my hair doesn't do that.

We go to this great Russian, weakmaker in the San Fernando Valley.

And she's got an entire mental piece full of Emmy awards and Oscars.

And there in this room is John Wayne's hair.

And Jimmy Stewart's hair, she's got everybody's hair piece and everybody's too big.

She tried a couple of them on me.

And Alan Arkin had just done Catch-22.

Well, I got Alan Arkin's too pay.

And we're going to wear contact lenses to make my eyes pink.

First day, starring in a movie.

I get the contact lenses in and they're colored.

Pink to show that my eyes are green.

Pink and green together.

Make brown.

I look more like an albino with my own eyes.

And if I squint a little bit, then it works.

So I'm in my first movie now.

And I've got to get my courage with the director.

If I go to hand, it just doesn't look right to me.

I don't know if I can act in these things.

And he goes Robert, take him out.

And I'll look right.

Your own eyes are the windows of the soul.

First minute on a set.

Pop them out.

My eyes stop watering.

Action.

Nailed the first scene.

Again, it's that thing.

It's an adult.

Someone famous, someone tried and true and tested.

Listening to you.

And that's why they're good.

Because they know when to listen and telling me that.

And now my confidence is through the ceiling.

They had the after party of my premiere at Chasins in Beverly Hills, which is the restaurant.

And it was like, who's who of show business?

And there at any given night.

My father went without me.

I couldn't attend because I was doing another job.

I was off on location.

My father really kind of saw this world.

And realized that I was doing really well at it.

But it was, I think, just seeing the family name, single card that really touched him.

And we were often running.

It's fun now to go back through Robert's early movies.

I actually appreciated Robert from the very beginning.

Who was that?

That time Robert was building a nice gallery of characters as a character actor.

I was a character actor in the theater and I was a character on film.

And I understand those roles.

A psychic, best friend, pissing a cat boy, scuzzy little chunky boy, and I'm getting lots of

street time with those girls.

Hands on the counter asshole.

I did a little filler job for the great American director Robert Aldrich who did whatever happened to

Baby Jane and the longest yard with Bert Reynolds.

They did this movie called The Hustle Real Dirty Dark Contemporary to War.

And I'm hired to play the guy that kills Bert Reynolds in the end.

It's just sort of random killing.

And one of the shots they want is that dirty hairy shot that great camera looking down the barrel of a gun shot.

The problem put in too much of a load.

So when they get back for the shot of me actually shooting Bert,

Bert's a couple of feet away from me.

I fired again and Bert's too pay-go-do.

I didn't even know Bert War ought to pay then.

I'm like, oh my god, Bert bites me into his trailer.

Bert Norrs me as shot of Bush Mills.

Bert says, now kid, don't worry about that.

That wasn't your fault he goes.

You gotta be his mean and pimply and junky as you can be.

Because the meter has asked you, you are.

The more the audience is going to feel bad about my death.

And this is the biggest star of the 70s.

Telling me this, someone of power and major star to speak into me.

One on one, making me feel good, taking this pressure off me after that horrible accident.

We go back in and we shoot.

It's a great moment in the film.

The first time I noticed Robert England and a movie

was in Bob Raefelson's Stay Hungry.

Now from the man who directed five easy pieces comes Stay Hungry

an extraordinary new film that takes you into a fascinating world.

It was like who's who?

The Great Bob Raefelson who had just come off of five easy pieces.

Jeff Bridges, one of his early great roles,

Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I know Arnold Schwarzenegger's done a brief cameo in a Robert Alpen movie called

The Long Good Bye.

And he's done a documentary called Pump and Iron,

which is the beginning of the fitness fan worldwide.

And this movie is the first movie to address that.

Lots and lots of wonderful people.

And me, I'm one of the stars.

I'm like fourth or fifth of the movie.

Robert played a bodybuilder in that.

Tag top and all. He's a little guy, but he'd been a swimmer.

What are you trying to say?

What do I do to me, that madman?

He told me.

It's there if you don't have nothing on your stomach.

Wonderful actors in that film.

And just this amazing cross-current of Hollywood culture,

the sixties and the seventies all coming together.

As Jim and Karen said, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger before he could say money.

Arnold, who was like, this is at the absolute peak of his beauty.

As this sculpted man and Arnold's brilliant and funny,

we all came back to Hollywood.

We were going to help Arnold out because we all fell in love with him.

Arnold already through his indoors.

Through his endorsements from bodybuilding.

Oh, what is considered ocean park now.

He was such a shrewd, savvy businessman.

So immediately we all realized he was already vastly successful.

How did you feel?

How did you feel?

How did you feel?

How did you feel?

How did you feel?

I remember walking through onto this set

and there were tumble weeds

and a two story Victorian wooden rundown house

that was supposedly in the desert somewhere in Texas.

And then in the dressing on the porch,

there was a monkey with bald spots all over him.

He was digging his hair and he was mad and he was rattling in his cage.

That was one of those roadside attraction places

that they had in the forties in that kind of newly mobile bathroom

highway system USA.

Last stop for gas, 500 yards on the right.

See the giant iguana and the bats from hell.

So it's one of those places often a side road

where obviously Toby Hooper's families and guests and victims

will show up.

You can live was my first horror film

and it was called Death Trap.

We had to change the title because of the famous play.

I get this part and you have to remember

the 70s my go to Sarriotype was Rettnak Western neutral sidekick

and so I did my little pissing cowboy and I got the role.

Get on my property.

Look at that, done ruffle his face.

Eatin' the life was awesome.

It actually had a big Toby Hooper fan

and I didn't realize it was Robert until of course after the fact

and looking back on stuff.

How's your name?

Name's button.

We had to finish the movie without Toby.

Talk around the set was it had something to do with Toby not making it

my undernuff Toby Hooper.

You know, leave him alone.

You'll see it when he edits it together.

The only thing I regret is I had to really wrestle

with a giant rubber alligator.

The day we were going to do the scene with making love

and then him getting up and going outside and getting...

That was the new scene for me.

And that's the day the producer comes in and goes,

I'll tell you something.

Toby Hooper's not going to be here to be here to be with this one.

You know what?

Oh my god.

No.

I was really scared but Robert was really supportive.

He was really there for me because I was really nervous.

He can't come.

Something about him just made me feel at ease.

Yeah, apparently in the Japanese release.

There's actually in the middle of one of my scenes.

They go beyond.

There's actually like a sexual insert shot with no pun intended.

Oh, okay.

And then I'm telling you everything right now.

I'm not paying.

It's not me.

It's me.

It's me.

I'm wearing a skirt.

It takes us to get you from this sort of thought.

We could try some new.

My name's Buck and I'm here to fuck.

I didn't even realize that for quite a while and got it from Kill Bill.

So you're starting to see Robert's influence echoing through pop culture.

My name is Buzz.

And I'm here to fuck.

I auditioned for Kill Bill for the orderly.

The Clinton has told me he loves eating alive.

He has a great aesthetic for growing house.

And I had a nice little talk with Clinton.

My first take was all he wanted.

But then I had to do it again.

And it was so dim that I put on my reading glasses.

And I put on my reading glasses.

And it really, it changes me.

You know, and I become the, you know, the drug is to the store or something.

You know, the pharmacy.

So Clinton, if you think I'd be happy.

I'm happy.

My name's Buck and I'm here to do it.

Morning, people.

I'm feeling lucky.

I'm starving.

A third of the trio of 70's Southern Red Nix that I played was last of the Cowboys.

Also known as the great Smokey Road Block.

You have to remember, trucking movies were real big in the 70's.

Keep on trucking.

I had the honor of starring with the Great Henry Fonda.

Arguably one of the best actors in American film history.

Also in that film, I had a lovely young leading lady.

Susan Serrandon in one of her earlier roles.

Sort of a double whammy of me, this is working character actor.

Getting to work with one of America's greatest film actors.

And so to be Oscar-winning Susan Serrandon.

I had met William Kat at a Saturday audition.

And it was my third or fourth callback for Carrie.

Baby, Carrie, baby, Carrie!

Stop, baby!

They were liking me for the John Travolta role.

And I believe that day it was myself, a William Kat, and Nancy Allen, who eventually married

Brian DePaul.

Obviously, it's revolved.

I got the part.

It was fabulous.

And a young Robert England was obsessed with George Lucas and Zoia Trig.

And Francis Ford Copeland, he idolized these guys.

And we had heard rumors about a pop-lip smell in the acting community.

And I managed to wrangle an audition.

And I wanted to read for the cook.

I've dressed military.

I had a tank top on an old green military.

Thrift shop tank top, light beater.

And I had dog tags.

And I was 170 pounds of muscle-eyed and old military shirt

with a sleeves rolled up on over my sleeveless t-shirt.

So I had a kind of cool look about me.

They said, no, you're too young.

They looked at me for a minute.

They said, you know, they may want to see you across the hall.

George Lucas is working on a new project.

Seeing for a takeaway place.

And I checked out again.

It's no mistake.

You can't find a gun at me.

You know, I found it.

It's just not there.

George Lucas and Brian DePaul were casting at the same time.

So all those casting sessions, they held it together.

And I think they saw every up and coming young actor

and young actress in Hollywood at the time.

They wanted Han Solo to originally be kind of like a cool older uncle.

You know, the kind of guy that would, you know, give you your first beer.

Now they were kind of bobbing and weaving.

They didn't know whether to keep it older or maybe have Han

Be somebody almost Luke's age.

You know, it could be a contemporary of Luke's.

But, you know, bad boy.

From my dead body.

Now that we have seen Harrison Ford as Han Solo,

you cannot picture anybody else in that role.

I'm sure Robert wouldn't have given a great performance.

But it's just like asking, can you picture somebody else's pretty crueger?

You have nothing to worry about.

Immediately, they thought I was too young.

And they took a poll right of me.

I think, maybe they fell me with, you know,

with a lamp shade off.

I'm super-rate.

I can't remember.

But I do remember there being a table in there.

And I saw the signs for Luke Skywalker.

I didn't have signs.

I just took a picture of me.

I didn't even read for Han.

But I stole the signs for Luke Skywalker.

Again, home.

And my girlfriends in the back bedroom type of way.

She's working on a script of it later become lost boys.

Mark Hamill.

My buddy, always at our house.

And in Mark's Andre, was always he always brought out six pack iron.

And I come in and I gave him the signs that Mark,

you might really be right for this.

He's got on the phone with his agent.

Got on interview.

I think that very next day went in and the rest is history.

You have to find the rebels.

But we're carrying the logs to them.

Mark Hamill.

Turn him.

He was almost mine.

It's a great 70s moment for how everything came together

and blended together.

And now things bounce off each other.

You know, it's just interesting how that all works.

We were back in the 70s.

I wasn't working constantly.

And there were some unemployment checks.

Sometimes I'd help out friends in front of and behind the camera.

My neighbor lived downstairs.

Worked with Tommy Lee Wallace and John Carpenter.

And I offered to help him one day.

He wanted me to get gather leaves.

And stuff in the garbage bags to all these dead leaves from the gutter in the streets.

So he could go off, throw the front of the camera and have the blow through the air

and throw them a lovely young actressing, Jimmy Lee Curtis.

And another iconic 70s movie, Halloween.

It's kind of cool.

I professionally knew what Robert was up to and watched his career grow.

We were all kind of growing at the same time.

But obviously, I didn't really have an opportunity to spend time with him again

until we did Pied Wednesday.

Big Wednesday.

The day you face your own biggest challenge, the day you risk it all.

I had idolized some of those surfers as a child that who's story big Wednesday is.

And John Millius, the great John Millius, the writer, director, was also at Malibu

at that special, special moment of time.

John directed it and cast all of us in this.

Another tribe of guys that was living on that ribbon of life right on the coast during the 60s.

So it's his memory.

But I remember some of what he remembered.

We were not that too far off in age.

It wasn't so much about the party scene, but it was about tasty waves.

So we would always hunt.

So you'd have to get in your car and run up and down the coast.

That was my life.

And I know Robert Sherrad, that kind of life for a long time.

But when I met Robert, I remember there was a perfect thing because he shakes hands with somebody's going off the wall.

And he has lines who want to mess Robert the best.

I'm sure his arm must have stayed casual, but he's not sure.

But what was fascinating about it was he didn't go, oh, I'm glad you've seen one of my other movies.

What he said was very seriously, quite love that movie.

Robert has this wonderful speaking voice.

He was the narrator of Big Wednesday, which a lot of people don't know.

In the old days, I remember a wind that would blow down through the canyons.

It was a hot wind called a Santana.

The narration was so rap-sotic and beautiful.

Robert spoke it so wonderfully.

My friends and I would sleep in our cars and the smell of the offshore wind would often wake us.

I kind of pinched my nose for it just a little bit.

I remember the three friends, you know, Santa Attowins.

I didn't do it like Sean Pan.

I didn't go full.

Good.

Oh, really.

But I did just put enough of it on it, but I also wanted it to be as if it was a remembrance of things past.

And give it the kind of class that the gentle poetry in the narration required, John.

Millies had written.

It was about their friendship.

It was the film.

And it was another guy standing just outside of that, talking about their friendship.

I hadn't done a part that small in 10 years.

I had worked at Warner Brothers a lot.

I felt comfortable taking a pay cut.

And I know that story that they told.

Big Wednesday for me is literally the last day of my youth.

This is the road to Potter's Plus.

Maybe you've been there.

Clean, picturesque, full of old fashioned friendliness.

I met Robert England in some casting sessions.

When I was casting some television projects in Los Angeles,

well Gary's hired me several times.

I mean, we had done mysterious to the television movie.

And Robert came in and I found him really interesting as an actor.

And as a person, I just really liked him.

And I really went to the wall to convince everybody that this guy could hold his own against no a berry.

Reverend McLeish, you know, his name was on that 10-per-minute?

Yeah.

Well, he opened that six months before it was issued.

And I was right.

And he did.

And he was absolutely fantastic.

And then I hired Robert again on Dead and Buried.

By the time I saw Dead and Buried for the first time,

I was already a big Robert England fan.

And just so excited to see him outside of Freddie.

Any chance I could see him outside of Freddie.

I was just fascinated.

You're the good gander that faced Eddie?

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I actually tailored that part for him.

Actually, I don't even think in the, in the, in the earlier drafts,

that Harry had a name.

He was just a tow truck driver.

And he just had a few scenes.

And what we did was, you know, what I did is I sat down.

I expanded the part of, of Harry and gave it to Robert.

Harry was wonderful with all of us.

You know, and we were kind of like treated like an ensemble.

It was still that moment of time in Hollywood,

where even if you had a small role,

that wouldn't bring you in for two days and work you really hard.

You'd be running a show.

So I was here for the whole shoot.

Listen, I just pulled a late model for out of the water down by the South Beach.

Yeah, they're see, come off the bus.

When we were doing the setup, he had the kids airplane in his hand.

And he was sitting there flicking the propeller.

Yeah, that was almost kind of an ad lib of his, and I said,

That's great.

That's the thing about Robert,

his, that, his dialogue delivery is so natural.

And just so real great jack-albums and that movie, Lisa Blount,

he's just sort of deaf nurse.

And that's, you kind of really, I think that may be the original deaf nurse,

performance in the, in genre films.

And what's funny is he carried through who gets the needle in his eye.

His name was Freddie.

Stan Winston also worked at Phil, the great Stan Winston.

That was one of my very early effects make up experiences.

It's also one of my favorite posters of the NFL month done.

And occasionally I'll get a European version of that post,

which you've decided, you know, one of the conventions,

but it's just an amazing poster and a classic.

Roger, Carmen, it just purchased some warehouses in Venice, California.

So it was all these warehouses had been converted into Rogers' new low budget studio.

Roger was doing sci-fi, getting in on that sci-fi band wagon.

We knew what the audience was wanted.

I did Galaxy of terror because there was going to be an act of strike.

I had the shittiest, crampious little dressing room.

It was like two theater flats, pinned hinge together,

a couple of bed coat hangers hanging on a doll,

and a little stained plastic chair.

That was my dressing room.

Cross from me was a little make shift office for the art department.

And there was a guy with scraggly long blonde hair in there.

And he would be drawing all the time creatures for the show.

And it was the art director.

And he would throw balls of paper out.

And I would grab them and open them up.

They were great drawings.

Well, the guy was James Cameron.

My daughter onto some success.

And he'd covered the walls in styrofoam boxes from the dumpsters.

Like, it's good as star wars.

What is it?

Nothing.

I keep seeing something.

And then nothing.

I've been a huge operatingman fan for a long time,

but the first time I saw him was in Galaxy of terror,

which is a little sci-fi gym that a lot of people don't know about, which annoys me.

Of all my movies, Galaxy of terror, and forward fairly.

How the two craziest pop culture casts.

We had the star of Happy Days, Aaron Moran, Grace Abrisky,

from Twin Beats, Ray Walston, and then the great, right Sid Hague.

I love the night time by the ghost costume.

Sid was, you know, just a sweetheart.

I was off to do my Vietnam movie.

Don't cry. It's only thunder.

Sid had done 100 movies in the Philippines.

And Sid wrote down all these places for me to go.

The best sushi bar, the best Chinese restaurant.

He was like, it's sort of like, back then for me, just a like, a mentor.

Big brother about, you know, the crazy world of being a character actor internationally,

which was about to happen for me.

No price, only thunder. I call it my Vietnam movie.

And it's a true story. The boy it's about.

Was actually the technical advisor on a popular snout.

It's really, I think, worthy, amazing, and an important story about the other aspect of Vietnam.

Which is why Francis Ford Coppola insisted that Paul Hensler, who wrote this project about his life,

made it into a film.

My characters into taking drugs, he's very confused and misguided and very unhappy person.

Because of the situation that he finds himself in doing all types of these sort of casualties in Vietnam.

My name was Tripper, because I was an ambulance driver, and I was sort of this stoner.

One of the things that we know now about Vietnam is a lot of young men,

went that far from home, and that was the first place that had ever been high,

because drugs were everywhere. That was sort of my character.

The guys that just kept themselves lightly buzzed all the time.

Did you hear the yellow thing about it?

I'd damn an haven't you heard an ockin'.

We just clicked right away. He's a very impassioned actor, and I was too, so it was a perfect match.

Dennis just sort of taught me how to go on location.

And I had big cases that musicians travel with.

And he had a couple of things from home that he needed.

I remember he had silver frame pictures of his friends and his family.

I brought a boom box with me with two speakers.

I know that Robert checked this out and was very like,

Whoa, look how you roll, all you know.

Dennis and I went into town when I, and Dennis had cut the sleeves off

of one of the military shirts.

I mean, that's what we were on a, on a pop call, and we got arrested.

Because Dennis got busted. You know, he had not allowed to mutate.

The, the uniform. I remember the guards.

The MPs got us, and Dennis says, you can't arrest us.

We're moving starts.

Dude, this that's not good to work.

Yeah.

And we, and Susan, saying James got us out.

And I think she had to promise them.

Dean J, she was going to be DJ on Arm Services radio

in, uh, in the Philippines.

She had to like give them a bunch of tapes of her.

I just just just say James, and you're listening to the E.C.

And, and, and, and, and something like that.

We hung out quite a lot and had a good time.

Yeah.

Trying to find these guys and to not make this a morality tale

about the sweet Americans who were saving orphans in Vietnam.

It's really, I think, a worthy, amazing, and an important story

about the other aspect of Vietnam.

There's a great deal of resonance in it today.

What you do with the collateral damage.

And is it collateral damage or are they people?

Wonderful.

Great shot.

Television at the time of V was mostly something I didn't pay much attention to.

I loved movies.

TV was kind of the same old, same old, all the time.

And then a long comes V.

Suddenly, we're talking about lizard aliens underneath human skin.

Spitting open in the bike.

And I loved it.

V was about this alien species that has come here supposedly to be our friends,

but they have a dark agenda just like the Nazis did when they rolled into Northern Europe.

I had a dear friend and he was he was close to the casting director,

Philis Hoffman, and Philis had brought me in on several projects and brought me in for V.

It was to play this alien who had a proclivity for malaproping for using the wrong word.

To mean another word.

So I was going to be comedy-related.

I know that's a lot of parcel right there.

Robert walked in and I thought, oh, this is just so right.

He looks so right.

So we started reading together and it was like bang.

This is the guy that I had in my mind when I created the character of Willy.

I said, can you know, I said, give me some help here.

How do you see him, you know?

And I remember can say two words, she'd wilder.

That just was so out of love field for me, but I loved him, wilder.

Robert absolutely captured that desire to please and to be involved

from the very first time we see him in the scene with Jason Bernard,

where they run into each other.

Jason is this big gruff in Son of a gun who just doesn't like these aliens,

taking their jobs.

And he pumps into Robert and says, what the hell you're doing?

Robert takes his glasses off first, the dark glasses so that it's he can see his eyes.

And he says, oh, I need help.

Help what?

I am just just what?

Yes.

Oh, get out of the way, damn stupid alien.

And he absolutely got the moment that I was looking for.

He was somebody who was not a menacing or dark or evil

and didn't really believe in the leaders' plans.

But rather was more connected to humanity.

He was the first alien that really kind of took humanity side.

I feel like, you know, he fell in love.

But he was so innocent.

I think it was his innocence and me that really kind of made me fall in love with the character.

And I think what made everybody fall in love with the character.

And you know, you kind of counteract him with Diana, Jane Butler,

who's like the Super Evil One.

He was just such nice mixture of like, you know, humor and innocence and sweetness.

Just whatever everybody wants to find in a guy that doesn't exist.

And real people.

Oh, harmony.

Robert has a great ease and facility that was really fun to be around.

And we hit it off right away because we're both the talkers.

Hey, you want a burger?

No.

Don't you find your free?

Sometimes.

I love the juxtaposition that made Kenny Johnson wrote the two characters

because I played sort of the salt of the earth.

I was the catering truck, you know, innocent.

Very grounded.

And he was this confused alien.

It was on the side of good and didn't speak English.

So it was too great.

Very different, you know, characters, much of, you know, have a castle,

which is perfect combination for a great relationship.

I think they look real snappy in those uniforms.

Robert and I worked together before either one of us were known for our characters.

And I did a couple episodes as one of his lizard men or something.

I was in a makeup, but, you know, technically, one of his bad guys.

He was the number one miniseries in America.

It was the ratings as good as roots.

It was my first sort of big introduction to, wow, television.

It really reached us a lot of people.

And they've either two things where he made me international overnight.

And people do my name overnight.

He began to get recognized.

And that's a moment when an actor transitions from being just a working actor

to being a recognizable star.

You know, I was flying over for awards and film festivals and publicity.

So it was just a great experience for me.

I had a window within my schedule.

And the only project that really fit was this thing called a nightmare on Elm Street.

Had an awkward strange title.

I knew a little bit about West Craven.

I had him filed under David Lynch, artist, dark, strange.

So when I went on the interview, I was sort of expecting

Rasputin or some Goth guy.

Of course West is sitting there dressed in Ralph Lauren.

Pinwell, Cordoid Royce.

Brilliant area died smart puns a lot like Slecks, Corny jokes.

What's interesting about Freddie Kruger is that when West was first looking for this character,

he was auditioning stuntman.

He wasn't even looking for an actor.

Interesting fact.

I had way back before Robert was hired had a meeting with West Craven

because I had done the Hill Savise 2.

West knew that I had burns scars.

And he said he was developing a new character that is going to be a horror character

who's been burned.

And he goes thinking of using someone with real burns scars.

When Caine tells that story now and he just started to wonder

what if it had gone that way.

But everything always works out like it should.

I was in the middle of spring surfing.

I was tan.

I had long curly blonde hair.

And I thought, you know, I didn't feel like I look anything like what they're going to want.

I'm a big enough.

I'm not scary enough.

There's nothing threatening about Robert, at least in his demeanor when you're meeting him.

So I went and I took that dipstick from under the hood of my car.

And I got some oil on my hands.

And I greased my hair back straight to my scalp.

Realized my buddy had left a cigarette button in my ashtray of my car.

So I took a little saliva and I mixed it with a cigarette ass.

And I put circles under my eyes.

They look very natural, just kind of discolored.

But I got him permanently now.

Now my face looks long and lean.

I got in there and I just let West do all the talking.

I kept my mouth shut.

And I played.

I'm staring game with the West.

And as long as he talked, I tried not to blink.

And it worked.

Yes.

You just got it.

You really look for actors that you print can.

Right through all of the newer civilizations.

One way or the other either has victimized perpetrator.

There's a sort of cociple factor of people that are one moment to be nurturing their children.

The next moment's slash in this.

These other throats.

And so you look for that willingness in the part of an actor to expose that.

And to be cruel or to be inventive in the cruelty.

Quite often it's the most gentle or the most

civilized.

Now I'm going to be truthful and honest as I can here.

People are so kind to nice and they say that West thought I was the only person that understood when he pitched the idea to me.

But it could have been a symbol.

It's me having a thin face and West being paranoid about the makeup effects and how they would work.

Just knowing that my skinny thin face when you put the foam latex on it would still be natural in size, in ratio,

with my broad shoulders.

The day that I saw him really in his makeup was as part of that high school scene where I go into the basement and I see Freddie Krider for the first time.

And I think it was the first time I saw him and make up.

And maybe West had planned it that way.

I mean if he had it was really genius because I turned around and I see him in his makeup and it's dark and it's really scary.

Oh my god.

Creepy.

So I remember thinking, wow that's what Freddy's going to look like.

It was what I pictured but it was shocking to see it in person.

I mean it worked well for my character and that's being the first person to fight Freddie.

You can't have Freddie Krider without Robert England.

It's Robert who makes that character.

You can see the way Nick Castle moves when he's playing Michael Myers.

You can see the way Kane Hater moves when he's Jason.

He's got very specific body language.

But Freddy's the one that under all that makeup Robert really has to act.

It's quite weird.

Oh but said well you know, I just done this movie.

I'm covered in makeup.

I don't have many lines.

I don't know.

Maybe I should get into real estate.

What should I do?

My feeling is the monster characters.

They don't become iconic because of the writers.

They don't become iconic necessarily because of the directors.

They don't even become iconic necessarily because of the makeup although it certainly helps.

You can have all those factors.

If the guy behind the makeup isn't selling it right, isn't convincing, isn't himself convinced.

Then it doesn't work.

Like most actors, you don't realize that this is going to be a life-changing moment.

And I very long straight.

The first one was really a big breakthrough for everybody.

I first saw Nightmare in Elm Street and I don't know if I had ever been that scared and

it just really really struck another part of the world.

I was frightened.

I mean I was stunned because it was the first time and a long time

where the process of the filmmaking disappeared.

And I just was blown away.

It was different in so many ways because the concept of it was just so like,

I'll read just leave beyond every other slasher will be.

It's a very strange movie.

Such an offbeat movie.

I remember really being blown away by how popular or it felt to feel people were

shrieking, laughing, enjoying themselves.

I remember going to my girlfriends house at the time to watch Nightmare in Elm Street

and I was unabashed and not afraid to say that I was nervous.

And to watch that and try to keep my cool in front of my girlfriend was challenging enough.

It was just so imaginative, set strong characters and I never seen like a film like Freddy.

He was the first real slasher film icon that had style.

The movie influenced me so much that I wrote a pre-plurance in a debob shape

when I was 14 and ended up in turning it new line when I was 19.

I worked there for 11 years and that's where I made final destinations.

I literally credit Nightmare on Street as starting my career in the business.

I went to see Nightmare on Home Street with a girl and I was just blown away by the imaginative.

Characteristics of the film and his character. Six months later, I get a call from my friend Bart Mixon,

who is working with Mark Shostrum, who invited me to come work on Nightmare on Home Street 2.

I was going to work with the big new horror star Robert England.

He brought so much into Freddy, the way he built Freddy.

And then you see the footage that they tried to use in Nightmare on Street 2 with the doppelganger.

And it's night and fucking day.

I remember being at a meeting at the production office and they were actually kicking around

whether it was worth bringing England back to be Freddy.

I guess the norm at that time was using stuntman for Jason or Mike Myers or whatever.

I mean, this is like this asshole and a cosplayer out of the walking out of the steam.

And you're like, that's so not Robert England, but the buck is going on.

Why are an actor and then Barry and Mika?

It's like, that's why you hire an actor.

Thankfully, I think the main producers recognized what he brought to the first film.

And I'm sure there would have never been a part three, you know, had that happen.

And he brings that character back to life, that's special.

And that's the gift of a true actor.

We got special work to do here.

You would be.

My actual first meeting of Robert England was on set after working for about three months.

He had just finished having his makeup done.

And I turned over to see him tapping his finger on a mirror.

Oh, Mr. Nifey hands. Mr. Nifey hands is here, like they came up full Chevy Chase style and said,

Ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Like it.

That's Freddy.

There might have been problems involved too.

Why the rash.

When I got to work with Robert on Nightmare 3,

oh my god, he was the elder, but I was like the mid elder,

and then we had the younger kids.

And we both took a much more protective attitude about the kids.

He's often in a fantastic image of himself,

puppeteer in the sky, or he's a giant snake coming out of a floor,

following Patricia Arquette.

The effects in part three are fucking amazing.

And so having him on the set as himself,

there weren't that many days of that.

He's larger than life in a way.

He is a character in that dream.

He's not the actual real pathetic, strange little man

that was Freddy Kruger.

I asked Robert, I said, are you a child murderer or a child molester?

There's a big difference here.

I mean, the guy was a fucking child molester.

There really isn't much sympathy for Freddy Kruger.

I mean, kids love Freddy Kruger.

There's something about him that everyone is sort of dismissed

the child molester part and thought, oh, this is a guy who kills you in your dream.

He became the boogie man.

And the fact that Robert still managed to make him not just horrific,

but likable, where you wanted to see more of him,

and you're not just hating him and waiting for him to die or go away,

that's everything.

And that's why Freddy will last.

And new one quickly moved away from anything molester, which is wise.

So he just murders them, which is bad enough.

I did notice that there were little kids coming to my door

and he was just Freddy.

And that's when I really realized that it hit this pop culture in her place.

When I was in his dressing room with him, and we were talking,

there was a huge crowd, and they started rocking the trailer.

And he was so great with them.

He went out there, and he was dressed in his stuff, you know,

and his outfit, and he went out there, and he was like,

you guys got a quick knock in the thing, you're not me over,

but I appreciate you all out here.

You know, he was really nice, and it was scary.

I mean, we thought we were going to be tipped over.

I'm ready for the idea.

Nightmare on on screen.

This is my favorite room, man.

I made it myself.

This is something on up.

This is my call.

He doesn't become a rock star of horror because he's a child, murderer, molester.

It's because Robert England has so much humor and so much personality,

and so much water, more instead of being.

You can't have any film or any style of film about having a charismatic person

to help.

I just love the way that Robert was able to juggle humor with horror.

The humor was very rare in the first, but it was there.

And it became embellished in the sequels afterwards,

in some people's opinion.

Freddie does speak.

That's bet you lot.

Oh, that's a deep, deep.

But it's Robert playing this scarred character who has this wicked nasty sense of humor.

And it really appeals to a young audience because they don't think about mortality.

And they enjoy the rending of these bodies on screen by the bladed glove of Freddie Kruger.

I believe it's very clear.

And that point I had a little boy who had nightmares and kids had nightmares always

want the thing that scares them.

That's what they see.

So he was always wanting all this Freddie Kruger stuff.

So it was such a trip.

He wouldn't understand.

I worked with that guy.

It actually would probably have freaked him out.

For the same reason, you'll embrace black metal in the hopes that your parents would hate it.

You embrace outrageous violence in films.

And so Robert is a de facto hunker to this audience.

I mean, I've always said that car films are to film what rock is to music.

By the time Nightmare 3 came out, and Robert was a guest VJ on MTV,

and you had the dock and song, interestingly enough,

that was the first time I met him.

And that came on MTV.

I was like,

I'm living, I'm living.

I lost my mind.

And this was like a real, real, serious, serious video.

I've always said that Freddie is rock and roll,

and had his record in mass.

We made a lot of fun of him,

and what he had become, and what Freddie had become.

And why the pop culture around Freddie was just so,

you know, it was just really amusing and crazy.

And he's Robert's fucking England for God's sake.

That was dreadful, looking star, Nightmare on L.

We thought they'd buy this very fine.

I'm not a school teacher, Debbie. Mr. Robert England.

Please welcome the man who played Freddie Krueger Robert England.

Robert, Robert England here.

Do you like your movies?

Yeah, I do.

I think there's a, I think there's a need for these movies.

I hate to say this, Freddie, but I can't go and see your movies.

I am too afraid.

It's a complete accident. It's a happy accident.

The double whammy of me being an international television science fiction character

that everybody loved.

That's very, very different from the dark bogey man of these incredibly imaginative

and original horror films that I did that became of franchise.

There was just so many things you could buy.

Record albums and sweaters, of course, and hats.

There's just so much that they ended up marketing that as much as it's nice to see Freddie

via Rockstar, I thought that it kind of, there was something cheap that she'd been the whole thing by it.

The reason that I, a benefactor from this gift that just keeps giving is because simultaneously

another happy accident occurred.

First, there was early cable and I was on cable, arts 123, early video.

The mom and pop video stores.

People would stay home now and make it.

They'd let the kids pick a movie.

Of course, the kids would pick.

Nightmare, no, I'm street one.

Or nightmare, no, I'm street two or three or four.

And they'd bring it home on a Saturday mom and dad sit around and they'd watch mom and dad get scared, have a pizza.

And then there was Freddie's nightmares.

I mean, like, Freddie had his own television show.

Freddie killed children.

And he had a television show.

Which everybody loved.

I was lured into the television series.

I had a number of factors.

And not the least of which was money.

I'll be honest.

I was lured in specifically because they were going to give my DGA card.

My director's killed a American card.

I directed several episodes.

I did not have to give Robert much direction.

He knew Freddie better than I did if this bench doesn't getcha.

I will.

I was in, like, a motel room with my family and we were clicking through the channels.

And it was like an ad for call Freddie at one point where it was like, like, 1-800 call Freddie and he'll talk to you on the phone.

By the ready, back ready, room had that bench.

You know what I was looking for the best men?

It was like phone sex, but it was with Freddie instead, you know?

Robert was willing to make fun of himself a great deal.

And I think he knew how absurd and crazy it was at that Freddie Kruger has not been this worldwide phenomenon.

But he loves it.

I never set out to be an actor to sign autographs or or drive a Mercedes, but I must confess that I do like the attention.

My mother died early on in the Freddie phenomenon.

She'd see me on chat shows, on talk shows, or she'd be watching the late night talk shows in Johnny Carson, or someone would do a Freddie Kruger joke.

You see, Mayor Bradley's a little bit of trouble.

He declared today Freddie Kruger day.

It had begun to enter the vernacular then, and so she was receptive to that, but then she passed and didn't really see the sort of peak of the phenomena.

But my father got to experience a lot of that.

And the only time my father ever visited me, I could have been, you know, not wearing makeup.

I could have been that anyone of dozens of other projects.

But he came the day that I was crucified with Makita Struz on three-quarter inch plywood.

That was the first project I worked with Robert on that metaphor.

This is the biggest sequence.

It's the finale.

It's the end, Roll the Souls, burst out of the McIpped Avengers on Robert.

And I had this animatronic chest and torso on.

A Jason to me was a giant King Kong size, chest of souls.

They were doing a ratio thing with the camera.

So I had these phenomenally sculpture, special effects, makeup, heads of my victims, the souls of my victims.

Moving around and talking and their little mouths and their lips would move and their nostrils would flare.

And I could feel their little clockwork mechanisms behind them, you know, tearing up my flesh.

I was up there for probably eight hours.

We tortured the poor guy.

We're shooting all day.

He can't move.

He's literally glued into that wall and this big animatronic body that's sticking under his chest.

Total trooper.

And that's the day my father came to see his son, recruited by Stanford.

Crucified in-make with men that had like, they were like,

wires going up every orifice on my body, you know, hi dad.

It wasn't embarrassing as much as it was surreal and funny.

But I've been looking back on it.

It was a rather strange way to have your father see you working as an artist.

But you know, behind the scenes, it's a different story.

It's something I've been departing with for a more than an important one.

I very well could have played partying with those guys.

I just don't remember.

I like it.

I was in the makeup trailer and I was watching him get his makeup on, which was elaborate.

And we would talk about things like, you know, acting and Shakespeare,

and I was thinking, I have to be afraid of him.

He's so sweet.

But then when I saw him in the scene, when I had scenes with him,

he becomes this swaggering sexy, almost villain.

I mean, he's got this sexiness about him, I think.

That feminist has a certain sexual threat to it.

And his victims are women.

I mean, that's all built into the character.

You have the predator posture, and he comes to your bedroom.

He's in your subconscious, so he knows what's in your diary.

He knows what you want.

He knows your fantasies.

That's what's sexy about it.

And it's funny, because as I said, I answer all the email on how I'm editing the diary.

I love you so much, I was...

And it's like, yay.

I know he's going home with me, so I really don't have to be jealous about that fabulous,

pretty at there with her skirt that stops there and we're sure that stops there.

Do he...

A horror film was like, one step above like, crapping porn.

You know, they're like, oh, you got a horror film big deal.

Yeah, we did know it was going to explode.

But Robert England had become a star, and I knew who he was, too.

And then we're wrapping up to film, and he...

I go, hey, can I get a autograph from you?

Like, people do now.

This is Danny, hopefully we'll get to work together again.

And then like three weeks later, we ended up getting nightmare five.

It became a real thing.

So I've been a fan of Robert for a long time.

I knew I'm not mirror-nosed, but I had never seen one, but it's kind of like,

I don't know, this shit was a serious.

This is a cultural phenomenon.

People love Freddie Krugger, and I feel very blessed, fortunate that I even had the opportunity

to work with Robert.

I mean, he's super nice.

I don't consider that I've done six horror movies.

I consider I've done one role.

It's a chance every once in a while to get it just the way I want it.

And it's kind of fun because of Freddie.

I can do a little bit of that.

I change the voice.

I change the way I move.

You can't replace it.

You can't put somebody else in that makeup.

It has to be Robert.

And I don't think anyone will accept anybody else.

In 50 years, I hope there will be other actors playing and doing a fabulous job at Freddie Krugger.

My only problem with Freddie now is that I'm turning down other projects that I'd like to do

when the Freddie project comes a lot.

Last year I had to turn down a great movie in Australia.

It's the actor's nightmare.

You can't divide yourself into split like an amoeba.

That's very frustrating.

I mean, gosh, I've waited all these years to have this problem.

I mean, you know, all of a sudden you get a role that defines you.

And sometimes people don't allow you to escape the confines that I care to.

Here was a guy that as a character actor, Krugger, I think, done anything.

Because his skill set is there.

However, having done Freddie, it launched him into a kind of American subconscious.

And now a worldwide subconscious where he's iconic.

And yet it was oddly limiting for him.

Robert became so associated with Freddie that Freddie gets the credit for his performance.

There is so much more to Robert than Freddie Krugger.

And I think if there's any, I'd say, downside is that it's deprived of seeing him branch out into parts that might have actually also really thrilled us.

I can play a lawyer tomorrow.

If somebody asks me, it would be very happy too.

But does Kess get sick of playing rock and roll on night every night?

Probably.

But that's what everyone's there to see.

So in a case like Robert England where you get to play a character like Freddie, you just completely knock it out of the park.

And everybody knows you as that and loves you as that.

That's pretty amazing.

He is a really talented actor.

And I think assumptions get made about horror actors that they're less than.

And it's unfair.

One of the problems with being, you know, an icon, if you will, or having an iconic part, is that you end up holding onto it like it's a life raft, you know.

Like you boy, without this, I am nothing.

I don't think you get trapped in that role, like you used to.

I think that it's a bit of a bit of a gift in a curse.

It's not a curse, it's a blessing.

And I think Robert appreciates that and has learned to appreciate that as much as I have.

At some point, I know I've found this, is that I kind of just have been really happy with the idea that this will be the one part that people know me for.

And I have to be okay with that.

And I think Robert probably is too.

And I think he's been able to handle it quite well.

I thought a little bit about fighting it.

And there came a point when I absolutely surrendered to it, partly on the advice of West Graven,

but also with myself as an actor.

I embraced it.

I heard your head quietly back your mom.

He turned my head down.

Robert is such a pro.

And it's not just that he's a pro, but his own performance.

He's one of those film actors who understands film.

Robert has probably seen more movies than all of us combined.

Oh, one of my favorite films in 1974, Ryan DePomple,

sisters after the day's work.

He would get out of his whole outfit.

And we'd all have a couple of beers and go to the small screening room.

And he'd draw something to my attention that maybe I wasn't aware of.

And I could draw something to his attention that he wasn't thinking about.

No matter where you are or what you're talking about, he's just a hundred mile an hour ball of ideas.

Well, Robert pays attention.

It's not all about Robert.

It's not all about Freddy.

It's not all about that character, but he really understands the machinery of film making as well as the creative depth of the actor.

It goes beyond the actor.

No's where the camera is, no's how close the shots is, no's how the pictures perform so codingly.

So he's hyper aware of what lens is on the camera.

What's that not just what the angle view, but what's the lens so that if he takes two steps back on a move,

is that going to be really impactful or is not going to be so impactful?

Because the lens selection is going to change that.

Right? And so there's a very like interactive way that Robert works with the people around him.

People have often talked about how he angles Freddy's glove.

It's not a surprise that he's directed himself, 976, so you've all...

I thought I told you not to tell him.

I thought he'd bought last night.

He promised that he would bless him by the Lord.

I directed my first professional play, Thinkin' 1966.

For me, directing film is not as pleasant and experienced as I thought.

And I'm much more at home directing in the theater.

The only offer I ever get, are genre.

It takes a year on it, your life, because there's pre-production.

And then there's the shoot, TikTok, TikTok, the nervous stuff,

and I'm not sure if you can really look at it in the creative process

like you imagine you can in theater.

But I had some wonderful actors.

I got to work and direct the late great Sandy Dennis.

Literally invented the neurotic female on film.

I've enjoyed working with him very very much.

First of all, because he enjoys me, I think.

I can justify that experience just for that.

On the set of 9.76 evil, I was actually nervous about working on this movie,

because I'd heard that the director was an actor,

and he was the first time director, and this can be a pain in the ass,

especially in the art department I was a set decorator.

So if they don't know anything, they'll come in.

Oh, that's not how it was in my grandma's house.

So you have to have this kind of robins like, come play with the cameras.

I hadn't seen any of the night movies.

There was a rolling stone magazine with this picture, and I was like,

oh, okay, oh yeah, that's him, okay.

Nancy drew the shorts, and got the grunk job of having to drive the location manager

and myself looking for locations and hauling with,

I had already picked a couple of locations.

I would make Nancy drive anyway to those locations,

and she'd have to drive on the freeways for hours,

and I was slowly falling in love,

and this is so creepy now when I think back on it.

But I also, I found out where she lived.

Hmm, okay.

And I, a couple of nights, I'd throw it getting my courage up to knock on the door,

and asked her out, I would sit, watch her light go on upstairs.

Like a hitchcock to move you to something.

Worked out fine.

I remember taking her to a famous bar across the street

from the Formosa, and I kissed her, and my knees almost buckled.

I was like a little kid, because I'd been around.

I'd been divorced.

I'd come out of a ten year relationship that wasn't working.

I had a lot of scars, and I was probably 38 years old.

I remember saying to her, and I stole this line from an old James Garner Sally Field movie.

I think I'm in love for the last time in my life.

You know, I'm going to be running on empty, and she said,

well, you know, clear out your baggage, and call me, and I did.

I was on the show when Robert and Nancy met, and I can tell you that,

by the end of the show, you could hear their heart beats,

and you could see the twinkles in their eyes that were so in love.

I saw that this could be serious, that he was a serious man,

and he had serious intentions for me, and therefore we wanted to be logical about it.

Who was this lovely woman next to?

This is my fiance, Nancy Booth.

We did, and it worked.

Nancy, you have strange taste in men.

Is he all-sweating his regular normal all of that?

Sweet and intelligent, wonderful, yes.

I don't actually think I've seen Robert without Nancy as long as I can remember.

They were like two little sweet peas in a pod.

She strikes me as someone who can just keep the train running on the tracks,

and they just bring out the very best in each other.

I think that they're pretty humble, couple,

but they just happen to live. It's really rock star lifestyle.

I also contribute to why we don't have children,

I hope you can get out. I wanted to be with him, being traveling the world.

He worships the ground she walks on.

It's a really beautiful thing to see,

and I just think they are a really good team together.

Here we are, 30 years later, so...

I am all kinds of memories about fan of the opera.

That was part of a two-picture deal for me,

with a big international company,

Cannonville, was 21st century,

and it's a family business.

I'm not going to go along realize that the fan of the opera,

titled the literary title, had come into public domain.

So he thought I need to immediately make a fan of the opera.

It was all over Broadway, the Lloyd Webber version,

was still very active,

and they went to Robert right away, because he had become the horror kind of icon.

I think it was my biggest payday, considerably more than I'm reserving for the nightmare films.

I knew that as a marketing tool, Robert England was a value,

but we were really going to make a movie about Eric Desler,

and kind of left Freddy behind.

I made up with much more intricate and much longer in application than Freddy Kruger.

There was also the Deformed Phantom make-up,

so I had on two make-ups at all the time,

and they later on that day you might need to see a bit of it peeling away,

because the Phantom's preoccupation was,

he would kill to take the skin off his victims,

and cover his deformity, so he could go out in public

to the opera, attend his beloved opera, listen to the music,

and hear his beloved Christine sing.

I didn't meet Robert until we were actually in Budapest,

where we shot the film, and we had nowhere to rehearsal.

You just get up there and you do it.

Joe looks like what you imagine, Christine took a look like,

and Jill can sing, and she's the one who will act with you.

I'm the tears.

Not only did she have to starve,

but did this film, not only was it period,

but she had to sing and lip-sync and shouldn't,

as much work as I had on that film is not more.

There's one odd ball scene where he's completely alone.

I just had the camera on Robert,

and he shows up, and he watches Christine perform in fowth,

and he's watching her on stage,

but he didn't have anything really to react to,

except an eye line and the music.

But what he did is an actor in that moment,

I really understood the longing, the lusting,

everything was in this, there's no dialogue, just Robert acting.

So for a director, that's a big moment, we think, oh my God,

this guy really can deliver.

Robert England is...

You're here, aren't you?

The Phantom of the Opera.

When they marketed it, they went for the lowest common denominator,

they made one poster, and they docked it, so it looked a little bit like Freddy.

The marketing people didn't even be behind, but we did.

The German posters and the British posters are a great handsome photo of me as the Phantom and Jill.

They say, Robert England, you loved him as Freddy, you'll love him as the Phantom.

I don't mind that, that's fine, that comes with a Jared or M from Hollywood kid.

I know that.

I just didn't like that doctor to look like Freddy.

That was one problem.

The second problem was that we completely split our two audiences,

because the Lloyd Weber Phantom people were not expecting the horror-core elements.

It didn't surprise me that it had problems from that point of view.

You lost the audience when it got into the sliced dice.

Dwight Nye, always were going for a genre with a film.

Dwight Nye remembered being teenagers and taking our girls to the drive-in movies

and seeing all the hammer films.

Christopher Lee, Peter Kushing, Herbert Lomb, we love those films.

So we used the saturated color and we changed our fandom from the Paris Opera to the English Opera.

So that we could be in the same time-fant frame, but in the London of Jack the Ripper, to get it that edge.

It was a strange combination to be honest, a very strange combination.

I'm Robert England, and you're watching USA, America's favorite, cable network.

After Phantom of the Opera, the door had opened for me to work abroad.

I did movies in Russia.

The experience of shooting that movie was life-changing,

whether he plays in drag really well, and that remains to be seen.

I did movies in Italy, and the UK, and Mexico, his real and Bulgaria, and Romania,

South Africa.

That's a little sweet.

My passport was now the passport of an international man of history.

Among those films I did in Europe, when we did in Spain,

counted Almario where they shot all the Clint Eastwoods, the Getty Westerners.

I worked on a film called a leg-blast, a scene at the Killer.

I met some work from the UK who had a film success in all of the movie's new weapons name.

You know, the guy with the nails in his face, I can't remember the name.

Oh yeah, pianohead.

We'll tell you all so what a crowd's on.

There was a movie I was supposed to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger,

and they never got the financing complete, with Paul Verhoven, who I love and respect,

and Arnold who I knew.

He was going to do a Crusades movie where he was Arnold Schwarzenegger's valet.

And it would be can, as six months in northern Spain, that's how the project being

and with more money than I'd ever been offered before in my life.

There were a lot of delightful things that would have happened on this movie.

I, as a younger actor, losing those roles.

Are those movies being canceled?

Costs me weeks of sleep and tension.

But you can't entertain that any longer.

You learn at the point where you say, if the let it go, man's he's always telling me,

Robert, let it go.

I do it.

So there was a point, you know, at someone in my 40s where I did, I just let it go.

It made peace with the fact that somewhere in my old miduary probably the first sentence.

You've Freddie, and you know what, Rear is ugly that I had.

I'm sure people ask you this all the time.

It's Freddie really dead.

Of course he is Freddie's dead and gone.

Oh, my God.

West called me up and said he had thought of an idea to bring everyone back together.

And it brought Nancy and Freddie back and he wanted me to read it.

It was just so preposterous.

I mean, the whole idea of playing myself, I just had to look at my husband and just say,

I don't know if you say no, I won't do it.

Have you seen any of the script by any chance?

Well, West won't show it until he's finished.

I was attracted to the sort of meta-deconstructed element of it.

And the fact that West was making it for the fans.

You know, I talked to Robert and, you know, he was very excited about it.

And I talked to West and he was really excited about it.

And I decided, yes, and I immediately was really excited about starting that project.

And Robert and I just, you know, we had a wonderful time doing it.

Miss me.

The Freddie character was still iconic at the time.

That you didn't have to necessarily see the movies to know who he was.

It was almost like a superhero.

I remember West saying this is sort of an Uber Freddie.

This is an angry Freddie because he was based on some essence of truth, his evil.

And now he's been exploited by Hollywood, Robert England, and West Craven, and New Line Cinema.

And he's going to get us.

I think both West and I were just extremely jealous of Robert.

You know, here's West Craven, even.

He's writing that because even he felt that what Robert was going through is just kind of absurd.

And ridiculous, considering, you know, it was West Craven's creation.

I made a conscious decision then.

I saw how big Freddie was.

There's this exponential growth of fans.

And you can't control that.

And it's really difficult.

You either started very early in your career.

And I did to control it with a manager that really sees a specific thing for you're going to be an action star.

Or you're going to be a list always and you can't say just anything else.

Or you kind of surrender with what's happened in terms of popularity.

And what people want from you.

I didn't find it.

I never thought I would become a genre star in horror.

And so I just went with the flow.

I never had seen the movies.

But when I got to call that, I was going to audition to be in one.

I was elated because I immediately knew and it was pretty exciting.

I never played.

Get that back.

I was exposed to the makeup process with Freddie early on.

So I saw Robert beforehand in the transformation.

He was always very personable in and out of the character.

He was a joy to be around.

Of the seven, I would say the new nightmare is probably the best.

Because get reinvented.

And Robert is of course very affecting because you get to see him.

What he's like as a person and as opposed to the Freddie Kruger character.

He's darker.

More evil.

When new nightmare came out, it was successful.

But it wasn't a mega hit.

I think people didn't know what to make of it.

The title even maybe was a little strange.

It's a it's a Freddie movie, but it's not a Freddie movie.

It's got Wes's name in it.

What is this?

And it was kind of his playground to explore the themes that I think he really expanded on in screen.

And his next movie and screen was just that much more accessible to the fans.

But after screen came out, people were discovered.

Wes Craven's new nightmare.

It happens a lot of times with some movies where with enough distance they kind of come into their own.

I was a little surprised that Wes Craven's new nightmare didn't come out of the gate as a huge box office.

Success.

We worked really hard on it.

But you know, the 90s things were changing.

And some of the old war horses of horror were diminishing in their fame and their success.

And the audiences were looking at different kinds of movies then.

I sort of ran out of gas a little bit.

At one point in the 90s, you know, we decided that people were already forgetting that it's nothing I've done in the 70s.

So we did some Disney films up meet the details and the paper were gaged.

And to this day I probably signed more autographs for that little family film than any other project except for Nightmare in Elm Street.

I'm so bitch.

Then you die.

Get them back to work.

I think Manglen and Phantom were my double built.

They were supposed to be a second Phantom film.

And the Manglen was a package thing. It was very lucrative.

And I mean, I think it now I'm really been fully certain.

And I'm still in the movie.

If me modern masters of horror have just created the ultimate machine.

For terror.

The Mangler.

I said, well, you know, tow these back.

And I like the source material.

And I need to hook.

And I remember that old Orson Wells movie, Lady from Shanghai.

And the guy with the leg braces, the cock hold and husband.

He decided to start and give it what?

He'll cast a book.

When he's reading, he's like, oh, who'd you use for that young guy?

I use Nick Nolty.

And I was like, you cast your eyes.

When I read the short story, I imagined him.

And I translated that into the eminent communicated to my makeup man.

That's the look I want to go for.

It'll guard me.

You're damn, son of bitches.

Robert England is a better actor than any of the roles that he's played after Freddy Kruger.

He brings everything to the table.

And the only times he has let down is if the script is not as good as it should be.

Because Robert is capable of elevating material.

Why don't you shut that thing down before somebody else gets hurt?

I don't know if he's not a fireman.

He's having so much fun.

And he's so evil.

He's so great.

And so delicious.

And in every scene, it's the scenery showing in the best way.

It's like he will look at his scene and understand really how to make the most out of it.

Probably.

He is a little bitch.

The mangle are originally supposed to be shot in Toronto.

Instead, we went to Johannesburg and shot it at Studio there.

On our soundstage, I think they found a body.

That was a little scary.

And also seeing the remnants of apartheid everywhere was a bit frightening.

Our wire in the top of fences and lots of German shepherd dogs.

I don't think they're pets.

But it was getting better.

It was getting hopeful.

But I had a great time making that movie.

But there are horror icons.

There's Freddy.

There's Jason.

There's Penhead.

There's Chucky.

But then there are iconic horror actors.

Robert England, Tony Todd, who came harder.

One of the fun things about Wishmaster was certainly eye.

And I think the whole crew regarded as a kind of validation to the period immediately before the movie was made.

Which was at the 80s era of monster character.

And so I put a lot of references into the script, names, wings to the audience.

And what was Grace as the barber Robert Kershwin, the director.

Because he was the K and K and B. He had these connections with so many iconic figures from those ECC's movies.

I brought you 10 years for this movie.

I did Wishmaster because I love the hook. I love the gimmick.

And you careful what you wish for.

I was excited.

And I was excited that he was going to be playing, you know, just a victim.

Oh, my genius shit.

The character Robert was playing Beaumont.

The somewhat corrupt art collector.

It was so unrobots wheelhouse that it was like he could have done it without dialogue.

What do you mean it?

It went down in history.

Yes.

Robert and I came from very different backgrounds.

My name was all physical.

Which fit with the Jason character because there's no dialogue.

It's all physical stuff.

But Robert had the perfect background with all his acting training.

And once I started doing characters with dialogue,

I found it pretty challenging because I had no training and acting ever.

You said give a shitty there.

We had a lot of core character actors that were playing all sorts of smaller roles.

Everyone sort of stop full of everybody from the horror genre.

After I heard they were in, Robert included a few characters a little tweak.

Think in, well, you know, they probably need more lines than a gave him.

And maybe you're sure to try to make the lines better.

This is not going in the fucking film.

That was the first time that they got the trio for my so-called,

and Robert, we didn't work together.

But we have this story three shot that floats around.

The appears on the tables because everywhere.

Andrew had the burden of the makeup and that film.

That's the G.D.

That you're trying to do anger, but I can't.

His voice is so great.

Make your wish.

It was really a workout getting that thing work in mind.

I went in and auditioned.

And was quite lucky to be able to sit with Robert before the audition.

And he, as a big brother, was so insightful about it.

And one of the things he said is that, to make sure you put in your contract,

kid that when you're done, they got to go clean your face.

There's going to be glue in there for weeks that you're not going to get out.

And I'm thinking, wow.

And I do know for a fact, Robert has record of consecutive days wearing the makeup.

But I think it's because of Robert's experience that other sort of directors and producers sort of heard about,

well, you know, you can't, you start pulling the skin off and it will start changing the,

the complexion.

And so he was a guinea pig, really for that.

And so people pay attention.

Thank you, sir.

I'm going to listen to him business.

Horror movies for me were kind of the product of diminishing returns in the 90s.

I think the makeup rolls especially.

But I did begin doing horror movies out of makeup.

I was not a big fan of horror films.

And so when I came to Urban Legend, I took it because it was,

of Jamie Blanks's approach to Urban Legend was not going to be a slasher film.

He said privately, we're not going to show what's in the script.

So there was a lot of blood, bloody stuff in the script.

I was going to be really playing with the thriller aspects.

I said, who's playing the professor?

And he said Robert Angle.

And I didn't quite register it, you know, Freddie Krunker, really.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what he's in.

Your first thing is always, oh, it's Freddie.

It's the guy who played Freddie.

No, it's Robert Angle and it's Freddie.

Well, it was a little skeptical.

Right, because it wasn't really a fan of those films.

Who came back?

What you think?

I met him as Professor Wexler on set at the University of Toronto.

And I was a completely taken for Robert.

He was completely surprised.

The babysitter and the man upstairs

is what we call an urban legend.

That's a really well-directed movie.

The movie is slick as snott as we used to say.

And it helps up because the psychology of the characters are so rich.

All of them are so interesting.

All are suspect.

At some point.

That's right.

And there was an extraordinary cast.

Jared Letto, who has Oscars now,

I love Alicia Whitt.

And then there were cameos.

I mean, he loved her at a divine and grand-gorth.

And Baron Munchhouse and John Neville.

I remember Michael Rosenbaum telling me he's like,

Oh my God, I got to work with Robert England.

Urban legend.

It was so cool.

He came in and he taught the class.

And he was just fantastic.

Like anyone who's a horror fan,

they just geek out when they're around Robert.

And he's just so, so sweet about it.

Also good sport.

We had to stuff him in the trunk of a car.

Now think about that.

The trunk of the car is not really big enough.

And so you have to really squash the poor guy in there.

And then you're going to close the lid.

It wasn't always playing the villain.

Sometimes I was the red herring.

Well, I think you're expected to see his Professor Waxon.

He's still a suspect in our minds.

I began to explore another kind of role

and the children to another kind of role.

I was very proud of the film.

I called to Lawrence Arabia of horror films.

Just a look of it.

And that movie was a hit.

You know, every budget was a genuine authentic hit.

I always forget that, you know, because some of my movies aren't hit.

And then some of them are.

When I was doing the NBC,

asked me to go do a Thanksgiving day parade.

I did the parade and I get down off the float at the end.

And I have bra, and this Harley with an extended fork

pulls up in this gorgeous sky with blonde hair.

Going down his back in a big beard and he's muscular.

And he goes, Mr. England, I want to show you my ink.

And he takes off his vest from his neck to his elbows.

His a tattoo of Freddie and Jason grappling.

It's a fan question since 1984.

Hey, Mr. England, do you do it?

Who do you think would win man?

If Jason and Freddie threw down,

it's that same thing that happened in the 1930s.

A kid turned to another kid and said during the Depression.

Who do you think would win between Frankenstein and the Wolf Man?

So this is this, it's an adolescent fantasy.

Even after Jason goes to hell, they were talking about Freddie versus Jason.

It wasn't just about seeing Freddie versus Jason.

It was seeing Robert versus Kane. That's what we wanted.

I was called into New Line Cinema.

Had a lunch meeting with an executive,

she gave me the script, said we're finally doing this movie.

And I was so excited.

When I'm given the script and said we're finally doing this movie,

I tend to think I have the job.

My understanding was, Kane had the arc.

He was offered the role.

The weeks following, I knew something was wrong.

Something was not going as I expected and had in the past.

So I knew something was not good.

During pre-production, Kane-Gurzinger walked in the office in Vancouver.

He Ronnie sitting there at the director.

And he looks up and there's Kane-Gurzinger applying for the role of Stunk Ordner.

That there had been a storyboard done.

And they elongated Jason.

He looked gigantic.

And Ronnie's mind's eye.

He's always seen Jason as almost a silent lumbering giant.

And Freddie is this little energetic nagging junky our dog.

But he saw Kane.

And his wish was fulfilled.

And then I was finally told that they were going with somebody else.

And he just hired Kane.

He said, I want you to be my Jason.

It was devastating for me.

Very low point, my career that I had busted my ass for almost 15 years playing that character.

Nobody wants to take the accountability for it.

And just replaced and not even given the courtesy of saying,

Why?

Nobody ever, to this day, has told me a decent reason why.

Just how shitty, man, because they were both so excited,

waiting years for this to happen.

And obviously Robert still got to do the film.

But I'm sure even for him, it wasn't what he had always thought it was going to be.

Robert has been quoted as saying that he always had pictured it

that not so much as Freddie versus Jason, but England versus Hater.

That would have been nice.

At the same time, I can't expect him not to do the movie.

I think he ended a great job.

It's just we wanted, we wanted Kane.

When I was eight years old, nine-year-old Shrewd was on TV.

And I remember just thinking, Oh my God, this is like scary thing.

I've ever seen.

I couldn't sleep.

I had circles under my eyes.

I'd lost about 10 pounds.

My doctor, Dr. Sergio, said,

What's going on with you?

It's not her.

I said, I can't tell you.

You will understand.

And I guess eventually I said, Well, this is guy.

His story comes in the alumni, your dreams, and he kills you and he's like,

And then, nine-year-old Shrewd, both of you look like my father's always movies.

They're not real, and I was like, they're on.

I guess he has reprimandation to my mother.

It was to find a picture of Robert England and a picture of Freddie

and a trueer.

And to put them side by side near my bed.

And so every night before I went to sleep,

I used to look at both of them and say, OK, that's a real guy.

That's the fake guy.

And he's not really, he's not really, he's not real.

And I remember what are those knife thinking?

You know what?

I'm going to be an actress when I grow up some day.

And I'm never going to make movies and stare a little kid.

But I did.

Go!

Freddie, first is a jay set in a Freddie versus Chase.

There was a hard shoot because I was getting old.

And I did a lot of my own stunts from that movie.

And it was cold because we had to go to Camp Crystal Lake.

And they could only find one in Vancouver,

so we were up there in the cold.

I could tell you the first cast on on set in Makeup was still jarring

in somewhat traumatic for me, which works.

You know, for my role and my character and all of that.

I guess my saving grace and that is that I chilled in.

So my baby ropes off would be crowded with me.

Can and me were able to hide wet suits under these art floor groups.

But the actors and young Jason Ritter, the beautiful Monica Kina,

you know she used to be the sexy femme to all survivor girl.

There's no way to end a hide anything.

And there would never be a day that would vibe.

We wouldn't make sure that I had a coat on.

He was always sort of thinking of me even before himself,

which was very, very special.

They put in a hot tub.

And so after every take,

we'd run and jump in the hot tub, it was right on the set.

Monica hadn't any Jason Ritter would pop in,

but we also had a water for safety.

We had Navy Seals.

In those state-of-the-art high-tech wet suits.

That would have that thick.

All those guys wanted to do is get in the hot tub big Monica.

It's not a straighty Jason Jason Ritter.

Monica Kina and a couple of Navy Seals on the hot tub.

It was like some demented orange.

With over 1,000 career kills,

he's come back to life seven times.

Hailing from Alms Creek,

Ready!

Through the...

You've never seen an audience so grateful.

It was like you can combine Freddie and you can combine Jason and you can combine

Dummy-Dummy-E-Rass.

It was like the most believable,

cinematic or gazmic experience.

And he's just went nuts.

But that was a big, and that was a big international hittersbottles.

And it's still a great, on a flat screen later night with Colpica and Wandaire.

It holds up.

In the 2000s, I was offered a lot of low budget.

Product.

Time to learn.

I call him up.

And I'm like Robert,

there's this film that I'm working on.

Because what's the name of it?

I go as a cold zombie strip for a single stop doing.

And I'm like, what do you mean you'll read it?

No, no, no, no, no, I'll do it.

What the name like that is kind of a good, right?

It was also great for me to work with a lot of the new young directors

that were starting out.

Tim Sullivan, Adam Green,

and they're really talented young guys and they respect the genre.

He didn't make me feel like I was the first time told it.

He completely trusted me, which made it so much easier to direct them.

Shall we get started?

In the funhouse massacre, Robert played our warden cane.

Welcome to Note Man's Land in this clan.

Definitely the most high profile actor at that point I'd ever worked with.

This guy comes in and he just takes his craft that serious.

It's just like every character means something to him and he wants to contribute

and stuff like that.

And that's what we did.

I learned a little from, you know, and I hope I passed on a little waged in my shelf.

Action.

Get back.

Come on, guys.

Let energy.

Come on.

I had done Detroit Rock City in 1998 and at that point I woke up one day and I was like,

I wanted to write and direct.

When I made that decision, it just so happened that a guy named Chris Cobain,

who ended up co-writing maniacs with me, got the right from her

and I was a realist, a realist, a realist.

And I knew from the beginning there was only one person that could play Mayor Buckman.

He said I want to remake 2008's with Robert England as a button.

Done.

Let's do it.

Me, Mark.

Miss Peach says, y'all might be in contact with me, you can't.

Tim had approached me way back during I think nightmare 3 or 4.

He was working for Michael D'Amuka, the producer then, that new night.

And I'm like, hey, Robert, how you doing, so all of that?

You know, I got, well, I need you to play Buckman.

I only do it if it's he-hawn acid.

And I want to play him as like a preferred internal Sanders.

Well, good job, guys.

And what was exciting was getting to see a great Robert England performance

not in the makeup.

And we gave him an eye patch and a scar and all kinds of stuff.

But I wanted to see Robert's face.

You don't be a wet ding-dong, then.

He comes totally prepared.

He works really hard on the material.

He really understands the content.

He asks him a million questions.

Just like I do, you know, I mean, we're both studied actors.

And we've had a lot of experience and, but also a lot of schooling.

Hey, Mark.

I love the detail of the work and so does Robert.

She really has to impress a little etiquette of pot, you do.

Ladies and gentlemen, shall we?

I played his wonderful wife, this granny boon,

who was, I like to say, is a cross between Scarler or her and a black widow spider.

It's your maker now, bitch.

2001 made it as a very tough shoot.

I think we shot the movie in like 18 or 20 days.

And it was a huge cast and lots of kills.

And we, I mean, we didn't movie barely for a million dollars.

So it was just one of those things that everyone's doing it for the love movies.

Yeah!

Yeah!

Whoa!

I think the problem we had was our original set burned down in Hollywood.

And they moved to Georgia.

They found this village in Georgia, where they moved all these anti-bombing

buildings from the 19th and 18th century.

Well, Phil, the pleasure about it!

My cautioning to Tim was, because we lost that set.

That's money that's gone up in flames.

That's time that will ever get back.

And I said, but Tim, this looks better from the home and it's set.

This is all real.

Robert was a part of it.

And Robert stayed with it through thick and thin.

We had this big finale, which originally was this big fight scene.

And we had three nights scheduled for this.

And the teachers came one night and shut us down.

Yeah, we were doing it under the radar.

Unions are unions.

And I am suddenly told that the three nights I had for this finale would now be one.

The ending of Baniacs was pretty hectic.

Talk about being made on a shoestring.

There were a lot of details that were difficult to complete.

I did not know what to do.

And Robert was like, wait a minute.

And Hanlin Shade took me aside.

And they said, let's think about this.

Why don't we just do something?

Where it's like a gauntlet of maniacs.

You know, the main two characters have to walk through this maze of all the maniacs.

But every joke they said before will now be turned into a tragic truth.

We were under pressure.

I mean, I don't think we ever did.

Two or three takes.

That was Robert coming to the rescue.

It's not just a monster movie.

It was really about avenging what was done to us during the Civil War.

And gratefully, I think we got a wonderful end of the film.

And I think the teamsters were fine in Dandy.

I love Lin Shade work with Lin several times.

We did a film together called The Midnight Man.

And again, the reason I wanted to do it was because of Robert, he called me up on the phone.

And was pitching this movie to me.

That's a nice little traditional horror movie in the vein of the game children shouldn't play.

We had a scene together in The Midnight Man, which was my idea actually.

But Robert was so thrilled with it because it was sort of that we were family in the moment.

And we were actually very hostile towards each other and I end up killing them.

I like them.

We were like, I really like these are great person as well as a wonderful actor.

Do you have an old idea?

I'll hear a damn thing last.

So how will this play out? How will this work?

You won't like what you see.

I'd probably see it.

The rise of Leslie Vernon by the mask.

It's a great little film.

And it deconstructs horror on so many levels.

My first got the script for Behind the Mask.

One of the big selling points was this is going to be Robert England.

Not playing the Nemesis.

His playing hero, which goes against type completely.

His name is Leslie Madkusa from Na Na Vata.

The approach was to go to Robert for the role of Eugene.

Robert sort of prophetically and wisely said,

Well, I don't know if that's really the role for me.

And I think you had had more of a conversation with him about how that actually came around, did you?

No.

Okay, good toss.

It was a chance for me to do a little salute to Donald Pleasant.

What Robert brought to the table was, yeah, I could do the Eugene thing.

I could be the retired killer and everybody would expect that.

And this, by the way, was before he'd seen frame one of anything that we'd been working on,

even though what he'd got himself into, but he just jumped in.

That's not true. He told me he loved the script.

And it was entirely the script.

I said, frame one, one, not the script.

The script was, yeah, really?

Of course. That's better.

We got really lucky because he is an unbelievable professional.

But then he also took everybody under his wing.

The kids were great.

I saw scenes with Nathan Bezos who played Leslie Vernon.

That's a wonderful, wonderful performance.

He pulled me aside after one of the takes.

And he said, you're just fantastic.

You know, you remind me of the young Anthony Perkins.

Has anyone ever told you that?

And after hearing that, I felt like I could do anything.

I could do anything.

I could do anything.

I could do anything. I could do anything.

I could do anything. I could do anything.

I had been, you know, night in.

You're best, like, man.

No more.

Good answer.

His presence alone was enough.

He could have just walked in and cast paycheck,

but he plugged himself in fully 100% right from the beginning.

Seeing him pop up on the screen, ultimately,

does nothing but elevate the status of behind the mask.

That's his ultimately his gift to the project.

Does that what you meant?

Yeah.

Thanks for saying me again.

Please, the problem.

Don't kill me.

Yes.

Yeah.

Why are showing?

I know that scene.

The midnight movie.

I wanted to call it, at least for American audiences.

It was midnight movie.

And I knew that movie was a little budget,

but I also knew we were in the confines of one set,

and it's very small cast.

You're not allowed in here anymore.

I corrected the aspect on your screen three.

He's so good at that.

It's a very complete character.

Please, do not hurt her again.

I...

How did this happen?

This is the guy who saw what you did.

I called him on his...

It was a rough shoot because the movie theater we were working

was supposed to have until noon.

Hi, remember, the Minion movie was so big.

This small cinema in Chester had an extra early screening.

Finn and I, we have blood all over us.

And it's like quarter to eleven.

There's eleven am screening.

And we walk through the lobby.

All the school children are coming to see their Minion movie.

And as they walk in, Emily Narynton,

Finn Jones Roberting when her walking out,

Drenched in blood.

These poor little English school girls.

They're going to see the Minions.

Instead, they see the three of us watching out.

You know, I'm really proud of some of the best work I've done in the years.

And that's because of Phil Hawkins,

getting me freedom, and also giving me really good notes,

and letting me discover stuff.

I talk about this film all the time because I want more people to see it.

There's an effects artist slash writer,

slash director, and Robert Reinhall.

He called me up and he said,

Hey, your old buddy, Robert,

it's coming over for a lifecast.

You want to come say hi.

I'm like, sure, it's a movie called Fear Clinic.

That Rob had co-written and was set to direct.

But web is so dorsh in a fear clinic.

It came out great.

And it was so hard because we were running to tell segmented stories.

We had, you know, you only get 15, 20 minutes for each little web is so d.

But the effects were really, and we had wonderful cast.

King was part of that project.

Robert Hawkins had it all in his head.

But he didn't necessarily share that all with us.

He brought us together and said,

you know, never had you guys face off in the big movie.

So let's have a face off in this, and that was kind of fun.

When we got to the film, we got Corey Tender from Swiftknock.

It's okay, let's make it.

We're gonna need you to come.

I walk on the set.

And I was like, oh, this is gonna be cool.

You know, you know, fucking movie.

I turn around and holy shit.

There's Robert England.

It was very cool.

And I'm just staring at him.

The entire time, like, such a fucking fan boy, dude.

And I was like, oh, okay.

I'm infected as well as everybody else from the sort of hyperbolic chamber

that removes people's paranoias and fears.

But the idea was that within that kind of coffin-like device,

there's a residue of everyone's fears.

No.

Break.

Break.

What's happening?

One of the things we built was a huge pulsating cocoon.

And it eats at the climax of the film,

it eats this fear creature that we had made.

And it spits out Robert.

And I never crossed my mind that he would,

I mean, naked.

That'd be naked, right?

I mean, why would he have clothes on when he gets spit out of this cocoon?

So Robert just do ropes as a clothes.

And he's just standing there naked in front of the whole crew.

I'm an old man now.

I don't care.

You know, I got man.

We call him man-tits now.

And he gets down on the floor and a fetal position.

He goes, I think, a stape.

He's got a hair.

Because the cocoon was covered with his weird kind of spider webby,

silicone, meshi, slimy stuff.

And he goes, you got to cover up my cock and balls.

And I'm like, what?

You see my massive manhood?

Oh, my fucking God.

What do I do now?

It was very, very cold.

That's the hard part.

Fuck.

So I think that might be one of the highest or lowest points of my career.

I had to slime up Roberts cock.

You know what the cold does to one's manhood?

The only talk about that much.

Sorry Robert.

As long as I'm going to be naked, you know, I want to be mindful.

You're sure of a weapon in my body parts going sideways to live where it's warm.

Wednesday.

Unlike Marron Goldberg Street, one, two,

Freddy's coming for a smooth.

No.

I had waited a long time.

And my agents, Joe Rice's fan for a show,

with his family was the Goldbergs.

He'd been approached by Adam Goldberg.

It's such a 80 self-referential show itself.

It's almost a malem time to the 1980s.

Robert England takes on the Goldbergs.

I had such fun doing that show.

Even though I respect the character of a Freddy Kruger,

I think I was finally able to have fun with it a little bit.

I get to work with Wendy McClendon.

I was such a fan of her since Bridesmaids.

And I knew all my stuff was going to be with her.

And it was this great gag about how I retime my swore.

Or said anything dirty.

We knew it was going to be bleeped out.

This is getting way too cuddgy feeling for this scoutle boy.

It's time to die!

She's not afraid of Freddy.

And at the end she just goes off on a ranch.

She just leaves me standing there.

And the original ending was I would just turn to the camera and go,

Oh, that's some prime time.

I say the f*** around here, Lady.

Not anymore, Mr. Kruger.

Kruger, it's Kruger!

Stranger things.

The scary season or the horror season.

I was invited to do an episode.

I was feeling great about it because I had

Gredd for the Kerry Alt was role.

The mayor in season three.

And didn't get it.

I didn't.

I was disappointed because I loved the show so much.

It's not that he didn't get it.

It's not somebody else did get it.

I mean, you know, I mean, actors.

There's only one role.

There's only one actor's going to get it.

And then when they asked me to do this role,

I'd COVID auditioned in my own plane all white,

little bathroom.

And I made it look kind of just, you know, my character against all white.

But anyway, they liked it.

You know, I had it learned.

It was already to go, you know, a child with a bit.

Got my plane ticket and then COVID and then COVID and then COVID.

So we finally shot it, late spring, early summer.

He has this long speech.

And after he got, I mean, I love note from one of the other cast members saying,

I didn't even know that was good.

I didn't even know that that character was interesting until you did that amazing performance

and blew us all away.

It does have this sort of dusting all over season four of a frame of reference of Nightmare on Elm Street.

You know, I think Wes was great and would have been very pleased.

You know, it would also be fun about being in strangers.

It's all those parents that come to come to cons and ask for the autograph, you know,

and they bring their kids who don't know who that.

But now that I'm showing up in these cameos,

it's kind of fun that I'm crossing that generational boundary.

It just nailed it.

That's pretty cool.

That's the guy that played Freddie Kruger.

I told you you'd like him, you know.

No, I assure you, I am still very much in hell.

Robert, get ready!

You're a horror convention every weekend all over the world.

You know, one thing I think the internet and social media has done

is really, really brought the horror culture and horror audience together.

When you see the film, you're probably way too young to see it.

So you spend a rest of your whole life at Comic Con's and things like that.

Trying to recapture that original excitement.

And they're happy to revisit it, hoping the lighter still has gas in it.

Robert has a connection with his fans that few others have.

I've heard of kind of superstar icons who literally don't even look at you

when you've come by by the autograph.

I'm always amazed at actors that sit there like they're miserable.

They have to be there.

Nobody's making you be there, so don't do it if you don't like it.

You've got to be careful about meeting the people you like.

Sometimes it'll disappoint you.

Robert handles the fans great.

I love how he interacts with people.

If I could sum it up, it really does come down to all of his personal appearances.

And the fact that he's so fetching a personality and fun and loves the character.

Never ever have I seen him rush through signing an autograph for somebody.

Anybody who went to a convention where Robert England was at would leave feeling he's my friend.

You don't feel stupid as a fan when your time has finally arrived and you've waited for ever.

He looks right at you the whole time he's speaking to you and whether it's 30 seconds or two minutes.

And for that moment you are the most important.

There's nobody else in that room.

I think he completes his fans expect for him and then gives them a little bit extra that is surprising and gracious.

It's part of the gift.

It's part of the experience people are looking for at a convention and they get it.

I always like when we're sitting close to each other because the banter that we have with the fans, then the banter with each other that the fans enjoy and you know it's always fun.

It makes their week or their year to be able to meet Robert England.

So horror has exploded exponentially in a way that I don't think anyone ever really saw coming.

And it's great to see Robert getting the love from the fans.

You know when my son recently died of brain cancer he was the first to call me and he'd always offer me great advice about how to move forward and get, you know, just be strong and offered, you know, he's always like, Heather.

Heather, Heather, you know, he always says my name like seven times before he tells me what he's going to tell me.

And it's always, you know, it always comes from this humongous heart that he has for people.

I've never seen him leave somebody without a smile.

The fact that the fans are still there for him, there's still power to all of the things that he's done before.

And anything that he does after that is going to have that kind of weight.

So it's to me it's a testimony to his talent.

It's a testimony to the characters that he helped bring to life.

There's nothing that Endur's more than something that is simple and yet sophisticated.

It Endur's and that's the kind of character he created and audiences loved and for that.

What he can do with words is alchemy.

I'm a huge fan of the man, Roberting, one of the actor, Roberting.

There really is nothing like sitting in a theater and watching a movie on the big screen.

And when you see something like a Robert England who is bigger than life in his own way,

he created a character that for whatever reason people have just devoured.

There are iconic horror actors.

Bill Lagosi, Boris Carloth, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Robert is definitely in the latter category.

There's a way of things that happens with these monsters we love.

Call us the great example I think were,

No matter how heinous he is or his character is on screen,

there's a separate little part of our brain that says,

I love this guy. There's a likeability that in no way impinges a weakens the frightening power of the performance.

But he has a feel good. And I think Robert is absolutely one of those guys.

I think we just, we like him.

Carloth was in his mid 40s worried about where his career was going or more importantly wasn't going.

When Frankenstein fell out of a clear blue sky for him.

He talked about my dear old monster and said, I owe him everything.

And I have to say the same thing really.

An actor's great stand-a-me is anonymity.

And if you have anything that puts you on anybody's radar,

you should be eternally thankful.

Years and years ago I met and became very close friend of Vincent Price.

And I said to him one day, Vincent,

isn't it frustrating that you got sort of type cast into this one kind of thing?

And he said, oh my dear, no, are you kidding?

You know, he said, first of all I've been able to keep working all the time,

which a lot of actors don't get that opportunity.

And do I enjoy the iconic stage aspect of it?

Of course I do. I mean, I'm an actor.

You know, who wouldn't?

And I think it's absolutely perfect that Robert should be considered among the pantheon of the stars.

Any of those that have captured the public's imagination in such a way that they want to keep seeing more and more of them.

You can't control a career.

I have friends that are infinitely more talented than I am.

That made terrible mistakes saying no at the wrong time.

Saying yes to many times, to underpaid artistic projects that nobody ever saw.

And it hurt their reputation because those movies all bombed.

But by sticking with the horror genre, by being loyal to it,

now I'm playing the old scientist, the old priest, the guy that tells you the legend of whatever the backstory is.

And I enjoy them and because I've been around the genre so long, I know how they're, I know how to play them.

I remembered at some point that as a child, I too was a horror fan.

And I remembered Louis Robby England.

I'm going to his godfather's house and he had entire rooms in his home full of coffee table books.

And I remember getting this big coffee table book about life magazine goes to the movies and in the golden age of horror section.

Looking at pictures of Frankenstein and the little girl by the river before he breaks her.

And an entire page of the makeups of Lawn Cheney.

And being fascinated with that as a kid and yet that had all gone away.

I had erased all of that. I had erased that Robbie England.

That boy who mowed lawn so he could go see angry red planet and forbidden planet who stayed up until midnight to watch the late late show of Frankenstein undenaded.

And at some point that all came rushing back to me. And I realized those are the teenagers, those are the young adults now.

That I mean so much to because they're preserving that experience of sitting in the dark and feeling alive by being frightened and being scared.

I started to respect it on a whole different level.

And I said to myself, alright, I'll be, I'll step a little bit.

And I cannot say and I wouldn't be presumptuous.

I say that I could fill their shoes, but I'd step into the shoes a bit of the late-class skin scheme and the late-dissum price.

And nobody else was doing it.

It's just been a great, happy accident to my career.

I'm having this great afterlife as an actor within the genre.

And I'm just grateful for that because this is something I never would have expected.

Something I wasn't planning, it just something that happened.