Movies
SDCC 08: Robert Englund Talks ‘Elm Street’ Development History
This past weekend’s San Diego Comic Con was filled with all sorts of surprises, and the news just won’t stop coming in. B-D stringer Jeff Otto had the opportunity to chat one-on-one with Robert Englund, who played the infamous Freddy Krueger in eight films and a TV series (and almost a reality show). Inside, the actor discusses Freddy’s future slashing possibilities, even though most have been left in the dust.
Bloody-Disgusting sat down with Robert Englund at Comic-Con for an exclusive chat about two new projects he has upcoming — Zombie Strippers (with Jenna Jameson) and the Evil Dead-esque Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. More to come on those two projects shortly, but first we wanted to bring you what Freddy Krueger himself had to say about the future of his trademark character.
“The most recent rumor I’ve heard that has legs is that Michael Bay is going to produce a remake of the original Nightmare on Elm Street through Warner Bros.,” Englund told Bloody-Disgusting.
We asked Englund whether he would be up for playing Freddy in the remake. “Well I doubt it because I made Nightmare on Elm Steet. That’s me. This is a remake of the original and I’m sure they want to take advantage of the new special effects to exploit the dream landscape and that they would want to reinterpret everything. I would hope that they would. I would hope that Freddy doesn’t look like me. I would hope that maybe he’s wearing janitor’s overalls and maybe he has an old baseball hat on instead of my fedora. Let a new actor reinterpret it. That’s the fun of remaking it. Obviously he needs to be burned and disfigured. That’s part of the myth. Obviously there needs to be a Nancy and there needs to be this back story, but it should look different.”
“A lot of people are worried about all the remakes — if ever there was a film franchise that could stand a remake [it’s Elm Street]. [There is] so much of the movies that takes place in the dreams, the nightmare, in that landscape of the mind which is very surreal. This is a perfect place to exploit CGI and really embrace that. I’m all for it. If they want to ask me to play the dream analysis expert, that would be fun.”
John McNaughton, director of the classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, has also been mentioned as a potential director for a Nightmare prequel almost a year ago. “I heard there’s a prequel script,” England confirmed. “[That’s] a great idea. There’s a lot there and I would love to be asked to do that because I think I can still play Freddy out of makeup.”
A Freddy Vs. Jason sequel has been on the table for some time now, with possibilities ranging from strictly Freddy Vs. Jason tangling mano a mano once more or throwing down with the addition of Halloween’s Michael Myer’s or even Evil Dead’s Ash. “There is no Ash,” says Englund. “That’s off the table because I think Raimi is remaking Evil Dead.”
“They were talking to John Carpenter which leads me to believe they would bring Michael Myers into the mix somehow. I had heard one great story about maybe making it a little bit period [and] still having Jamie Lee Curtis alive as an adult and having her move somehow with a young Christina Ricci niece or something into Springwood. Then of course we could all be there and go after her.”
“I’d like to throw down with Jamie Lee.“
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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