Editorials
When “The Extreme Ghostbusters” Met Pinhead and His Cenobites
Unlike so many sports drinks and snack foods in the late-90s, Extreme Ghostbusters earned its extremity. The younger, decidedly hipper team never went after the troubled spirit of a BMX biker or unnecessarily wore sunglasses. Extreme Ghostbusters wasn’t completely blameless – the grunge-caked cover of the theme song does it no favors and the advertising just had to call it XGB – but its oh-so-edgy adjective really referred to the show’s hellbent dedication to scaring the bejesus out of its core demographic.
As it stood, Extreme was already a sequel to The Real Ghostbusters, a series that mixed in more than a little nightmare fuel with Saturday Morning fun until the Family-Friendly Police of 1980s cartoons forced the creative team to cut it out. Before Slimer was promoted to above-the-title talent, the Real Ghostbusters visited various forms of hell, dealt with repressed trauma from a closet-traveling boogeyman and battled a trenchcoated allegory for child abduction. However dark it got, the show always ended with the heroes dancing down the street in their bright, color-coded jumpsuits.
When some of the same producers decided to make a follow-up in the mid-90s, with the far-too-cheery working title Super Ghostbusters, they found a cartoon landscape much more accepting of adult themes. From tip-to-tail, Extreme Ghostbusters would be darker, even in the most literal ways. Gone was the toyetic, crayon-friendly palette and angular, anime-inspired style of The Real Ghostbusters. Instead, Extreme Ghostbusters showed a washed-out world where night seemed to last 23 hours a day and the edges weren’t softer so much as worn down.
The ghosts looked like broken carnival mirror reflections of those from the original series, almost more alien than supernatural (a Men in Black animated series in almost the exact same style would debut a month later). And whereas The Real Ghostbusters relied on a lot of misunderstood spirits that took something more compassionate than a proton stream to evict, Extreme Ghostbusters was almost wall-to-wall poltergeists. Cannibal clowns that spread like an infection. A return of the child abductor surrogate, this time two of them, in an episode that had to be toned down significantly from its first draft. Bone-stealing demons that leave victims barely alive and looking like deflated balloons.
And an entire episode based explicitly on Hellraiser.
“Deadliners” was the fifth episode of Extreme Ghostbusters’ one and only season, first airing on September 5th, 1997. The character list on the final draft of the episode’s script, penned by producer and returning Real Ghostbusters writer Duane Capizzi, makes it plain:
THE VATHEK – a trio of otherworldly, Hellraiser type demons.
With names like “Crainiac” and “Gristle,” these monsters were as close to Cenobites as a cartoon would allow. Dead skin peeled and pulled taut over the red meat underneath. The leader wears a buzzsaw down the center of his skull. Another has no skull at all, but a pile of gurgling flesh folds, an empty sleeve from which a smaller, pulpy nightmare occasionally emerges to scream. Stitched mouths. Surgical drills for hands. Hollowed out eye sockets. On a show frequently and fatally misplaced in a timeslot aimed at preschoolers.
And who’s responsible for these grotesque parodies of human biology?
H.P. Kline, a reclusive horror writer.
While the episode mentions Stephen King and softens the Lovecraft reference by renaming him J.N. Kline, it paints the fictional author most like another famous horror writer. Much like the rhyming R.L. Stine, Kline made a name for himself with a series of adolescent-aimed scary stories to tell in the dark that happen to start with the letter “G.” The only differences are that Kline’s series is “Gore,” the monsters are always the Vathek, and they just so happen to be real.
When reports come in that J.N. Kline has gone missing and locals have started disappearing around his remote, New England home, the Ghostbusters answer the call.
The monsters only borrow Hellraiser’s designs, eschewing the sexual sadomasochism for a motive kids could better understand and subsequently repress – the ritual carving and reconfiguration of human flesh. The Vathek consider skin nothing more than modeling clay and wax about “infinite aesthetic possibility” romantically and emotionlessly, somehow at the same time. The resulting plastic surgery successes are just as disturbing as their creators, if not even more so.
By the time the Ghostbusters find out Kline didn’t create the Vathek so much as make an ill-defined book deal with them, the episode hews closer to Lovecraft and another Lovecraft-inspired work, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, where another author is imprisoned by his fictionalized, if not quite fictional works. As expected, the Ghostbusters eventually defeat the Vathek, conveniently restoring all their butchered experiments to normal (a common, if understandable cop-out for the show).
At the time, syndicated cartoons ran for 65 episodes almost by default; five episodes a week for 13 weeks, allowing stations to easily program a quarter. Extreme Ghostbusters only saw 40 before it was cancelled. If the timeslot killed the show, a few years of erratically scheduled timeslots buried it. Home video did no further favors – six episodes reached VHS and 13 hit DVD, but only in Europe. Extreme Ghostbusters never quite got enough credit, especially compared to its beloved predecessor. At a time when neither was the norm, Extreme followed a diverse cast of characters into stories that toed the line between scary and terrifying for its adolescent audience.
Fortunately, the series is now streaming in its entirety on Hulu, so the curious and the Clive Barker fans can enjoy Extreme Ghostbusters a whole lot easier than ever before.
Horror was permanently changed in 1984 when Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street unleashed Freddy Krueger on the world. This brutal boogeyman pushed horror to exciting new places, but so much of the character’s impact is the result of Robert Englund’s quintessential performance.
Englund has a long and storied career as a performer that’s covered far more than horror alone. However, there’s such a sublime, sinister synergy between Englund and this heightened genre that’s made him one of horror’s most revered names.
Englund is set to scare audiences again as a malevolent reimagining of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio Unstrung, but he’s also been responsible for many more macabre monsters.
The Cricket (Pinocchio Unstrung)
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has somehow spun a morbid experiment in public domain exploitation into its own cinematic universe, the Twisted Childhood Universe. There’s been increasing promise in the TCU’s various films, which has also led to a growing list of capable horror guest stars, such as Roger L. Jackson, Richard Brake, and now Robert Englund. Englund is by far the most impressive name to attach himself to one of these movies, and Pinocchio Unstrung certainly doesn’t squander the opportunity to have him on board as its terrifying take on Jiminy Cricket. Englund’s performance as “The Cricket” in Pinocchio Unstrung becomes a sinister subversion of the classic character who is meant to function as Pinocchio’s conscience and moral compass.
Englund’s Cricket is instead the ultimate instigator who perpetually pushes Pinocchio into greater violence that condemns humanity and its many misgivings, rather than idolizing all the “real boys” in the world. Pinocchio Unstrung is a love letter to practical effects and old-fashioned animatronics and puppetry. This means that Englund just provides the voice for Cricket, but it’s still a deeply sinister performance and one of the most unnerving characters to appear in the Twisted Childhood Universe. Once again, Englund is careful not to just repurpose his Freddy Krueger persona, and he instead develops an original voice that plays into past renditions of the character. There’s a palpable rage and disdain in Englund’s Cricket that turns him into a threatening loose cannon and makes the audience forget that he’s only a few inches tall.
The Phantom of the Opera (The Phantom of the Opera)
The Phantom of the Opera is a foundational horror story that’s still being explored over a century later. 1989’s cinematic adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 classic doesn’t always get the respect that it deserves, despite it containing one of Englund’s most nuanced horror performances. Directed by Dwight H. Little, who previously helmed the underrated Halloween 4, The Phantom of the Opera operates as a gorier take on Leroux’s source material that feels like a lost Hammer Film picture. The titular Phantom is the perfect role for Englund following A Nightmare on Elm Street, and his participation in the picture was initiated by Englund promising his agent that he’d do another horror project after Elm Street’s success.
Englund was excited to tackle an iconic character who had previously been portrayed by formative horror legends like Herbert Lom, Claude Rains, and Lon Chaney. Englund beautifully fits the mold and is sublime casting for this ‘80s take on the character. Englund taps into a powerful dichotomy between the Phantom’s brutal and tragically sympathetic nature. It’s a role that’s significantly deeper than Freddy Krueger and better explores Englund’s range as an actor, which helps get him away from cheesy one-liners. It also doesn’t hurt that Little concocts a uniquely twisted take on the Phantom’s disfigurement, which was achieved by sewing human skin onto Englund’s face. The modern-day sequences that bookend the film were meant to tie into a planned sequel, The Phantom of the Opera 2: Terror in Manhattan, which unfortunately never came to fruition.
Victor Creel (Stranger Things)
Love it or hate it, Stranger Things assembled some impressive guest stars that took advantage of their respective legacies as ‘80s genre legends, such as Linda Hamilton, Matthew Modine, Cary Elwes, and Robert Englund. Englund’s turn as Victor Creel in the streaming hit’s fourth season is one of the series’ best performances and a role that rises above the mediocrity around it. Victor Creel is an opportunity for Englund to actually subvert expectations and play against type. It’s brilliant casting that initially conditions the audience to be wary of Creel and view him as a frightening threat. This perception is reinforced when Creel is encountered in a psychiatric ward and horrifically blinded.
Creel’s disturbing eye-gouged appearance is revealed to actually be a symptom of his tragic life and the psychological torment he received from Vecna. Creel is hard to look at, but there’s nothing to fear about him. He’s led a sad life that’s filled with inescapable guilt. He’s more like one of Freddy Krueger’s victims than Freddy himself. Englund goes above and beyond as Victor Creel, and the emotional monologues that he delivers are among some of the actor’s best work and proof that Englund’s still got it.
Marquis de Sade (Night Terrors)
Tobe Hooper’s Night Terrors is a particularly forgettable ’90s horror film that faced a litany of production problems and changes that certainly didn’t do it any favors. The story is a mess, even for a Cannon Video production, but it provides the novelty of Englund pulling double duty as the cruel Marquis de Sade and his modern day descendant, Paul Chevalier. Night Terrors banked on the novelty of Hooper directing Englund as one of history’s greatest monsters, and his performance is easily the best thing about this movie.
There’s an unabashed glee to Englund’s work as the Marquis de Sade that’s reminiscent of Freddy Krueger’s twisted jubilation over his creative murders, yet it doesn’t just feel like a carbon copy of Englund’s iconic role. There’s an appreciated degree of restraint going on before the film goes off the rails and incorporates supernatural elements and abstract dream sequences. Chevalier and his modern cult worship the Marquis de Sade as a deity of torture and liberation. The nightmare sequences that involve the Marquis de Sade are the most chilling and make this figure look as frightening on the outside as he is on the inside. There’s enough to latch onto here, even if the film as a whole is a mess, and Englund doesn’t squander the opportunity to play two sides of the same creepy coin.
Scarecrow (Injustice 2)
Robert Englund is no stranger to voiceover work, and he’s voiced his share of macabre and memorable characters over the years. That being said, one of his most inspired roles is the work that he did in NetherRealm’s dark DC Comics-based fighter, Injustice 2, where he plays Jonathan Crane, better known as the Scarecrow. There’s a certain tongue-in-cheek brilliance to having Englund voicing the Batman rogue who is the self-appointed “Master of Fear.” There’s certainly a meta quality to Englund’s casting here, right down to how some of his dialogue explicitly references Freddy Krueger one-liners like “Welcome to your nightmare” and “Now I’m playing with power.”
Englund doesn’t just phone in this performance or replicate his work as Freddy. The actor cultivates a unique voice for Scarecrow that cuts to the core of this character in a menacing manner. Englund’s Scarecrow is raspy, erratic, and honestly one of the better takes on Dr. Crane. It makes one wonder what he’d be able to accomplish if he were playing the part in live-action. He takes a simple role and breathes fresh life into it. Curiously, it’s not his first time playing a Batman villain. He does comparably interesting work as The Riddler in The Batman and the more obscure sorcerer, Felix Faust, in Justice League.
Evil Bloodthirsty Brian (The Hughleys)
There’s a surprising relationship between horror icons and sitcoms, with Robert Englund being no stranger to adding a devious dose of terror to a farcical comedy. Englund shows up as a playful take on Lucifer in Married…with Children, but he also provides a genuinely chilling performance in the first season of The Hughleys. Season one’s “Storm O’ the Century” is centered around the Hughleys and Rogerses getting stranded at a seemingly haunted hotel during an intense blizzard.
“Storm O’ the Century” functions as a proper love letter to horror fans, with genre guest stars that include The Addams Family’s John Astin, The Shining’s Shelley Duvall, and Robert Englund as the comically-named Evil Bloodthirsty Brian. The episode certainly prioritizes its comedy, but it manages to also be legitimately creepy thanks to a locked-in performance by Englund. He’s used sparingly, but always to punctuate a particular scene and function as a jump scare. Evil Bloodthirsty Brian sports a ghastly scar and has a look that’s just frightening enough to be included on a ’90s sitcom. Anyone who is curious about Englund’s performance can check it out for free on Tubi.
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