Will The New Freddy Please Stand Up?

Who should play the new Freddy Krueger?

With news of (another) A Nightmare on Elm Street remake hitting, fans of the franchise have been speculating and arguing with one another about just what approach the new movie should take after 2010's remake flopped.

The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise has some of the more passionate fans I've encountered over the years I've been part of the horror fandom. Face it, the Nightmare movies provide a lot more to be passionate about than most of the slasher movies at the time -- from character to plot to imaginative dream sequences to mythology building and motivation for the monster. For whatever reason, if you were a horror fan during Freddymania in the '80s, it's a franchise that made its mark on you. Freddy was inescapable.

Freddy has been depicted in several forms -- toasted tormentor in the shadows, sadistic clown, cackling goofball -- and there's a devoted fan for each one. Some fans love Elm Street in all of its incarnations. Fans of the Jason movies are a jokey, rowdy, fun-lovin' bunch that matches the tone of that franchise. Michael Myers fans are a somber bunch who are picking up the pieces of their heart that's been shattered so many times by that franchise's absurd turns. Freddy fans, we're serious about this stuff. We love it.

But there's a new wave of fans who accuse a lot of us longtimers of being stuck in the past. (Maybe if you're introduction to Freddy is Freddy VS Jason, you shouldn't be dictating where the franchise should go.) For a lot of us longtime fans, it was difficult to see the original being remade in 2010. Unlike the Hammer films of the '60s, which logically remade those old Universal Monster movies that had been limited by a lack of color and censorship, there was just no real reason to remake the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. And it was right for the fans to be apprehensive about the remake being in the hands of Michael Bay's company Platinum Dunes, which specializes in taking the horror movies of yesterday we loved and turn them into Xtreme Mountain Dew ad music videos. Those of us who didn't want the remake, who didn't like it, have been accused of turning away new fans of the franchise, but I think the lifeless, pointless remake was guilty enough of not bringing in new fans.

I'm anti-remake, period, but Hollywood's going to do what it's going to do. I actually had hopes for Jackie Earle Haley in the role of Freddy. He's not only a good actor, but after spending so many years out of the spotlight, he's a performer who's hungry to take whatever on. I thought it was pretty brave of him to take the role of Freddy so soon after having critical acclaim for Little Children. (I probably would have talked him out of it if I was his manager.) But the remake did him no favors. In an attempt to prove that the new Freddy was "serious," they stripped him of ANY personality. No, I don't want that buffoonish Freddy who dresses like the Wicked Witch and makes jokes so bad that Austin Powers would cringe, but even before Freddy became that clown, he was known for his personality. That's one of the several things that made him stand out from the silent baboons like Jason or Michael. Freddy has spark, he's a live wire. The entire 2010 remake was a flat, dull, pointless exercise, a sinking ship that took Haley down with it. If he had been allowed to cut loose, he could have made a major impact on that movie, been its sole spark of life.

There ARE fans who refuse to accept anybody other than Robert Englund playing the role. As far as I'm concerned, there's no real reason why Englund couldn't play the part again. I think he has a couple of more Freddy performances in him. He's already shown so many sides of the character and reinvented the role for New Nightmare. But I've gotten the impression that Englund's kind of glad to have Freddy in his rearview mirror. And, realistically, you know Hollywood's not going to bother with him. But, Englund's made his mark. He's played the part to the best of his ability and proven he's the definitive Freddy Krueger -- he's the Sean Connery to which every other actor who takes the role will be measured to. Englund played Freddy in eight movies, a TV series and countless promotional specials -- in a world that can barely get the same actor to ever play Batman more than a couple of times, that's a hell of a run.

The new remake, if that's what they're going for, could be a complete shot-for-shot Xerox of the original, but in Hollywood's mind, they'd still be under the impression it's a "new" movie. They'll probably want a new Freddy. Other than his personality, one of the things that stuck out about Freddy WAS the way that Englund returned to the role so many times. (Has any horror actor ever returned to the same part as much as he has? I don't even think Christopher Lee played Dracula as many times.) There was even a revolving door of actors for the Universal Monsters. So, as much as I might be one of those oh, so annoying fans stuck in the past who wants Englund back, I acknowledge that it would make no sense to try and restart the franchise with someone who might only be able to do a couple of movies, opposed to someone new who could do several. (One option Hollywood could take is to get Englund and have it be a motion-capture performance; Freddy could be depicted in a way that's much more surreal and monstrous than make-up could allow. But I'm opposed to motion-capture, to be honest. It robs performers of their talents, life and performance by painting a cartoon over them.) So, there's no doubt they'll be after a new Freddy Krueger.

I've put a ridiculous amount of thought into who I think would be a good, new Freddy. I think Freddy needs to be dark, menacing, and have a sense of humor. Not the moronic cartoon humor of Freddy's Dead, but the cruel, sadistic humor. The taunting. He needs to be merciless, he needs to exploit his victims' fears as much as he can, and he needs to savor it. He can't be turning victims into a balloon, pop them with his glove, and be like "He was full of hot air, HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" No! We need Freddy to be dark and scary again. The burnt bastard needs to go back into the shadows. He needs to be intimidating, genuinely scary, sinister, vicious. He needs to be more quiet, deliberate in what he says. He shouldn't be Schwarzenegger, firing off more bad one-liners than bullets. He should be a creep and you should want to hate his guts and want for the protagonist to prevail.

I kept visualizing the way I thought Freddy should be depicted until my brain formed someone who I had seen play nasty bastards and who I think would fit the bill. I wasn't aware of the actor's name, but now that I looked him up, his name's a bit too unintentionally cutesy to cast him as Freddy (though I imagine marketing departments would have fun with it), but I think he'd do a great job: Burn Gorman.

Gorman is a heavily active actor with a Shakespearean background, but not too well known; I'm not familiar with Torchwood, but with that and Game of Thrones, he at least seems to be comfortable with geeky stuff and knows how to handle an association with it. I think he's unfamiliar enough in America that, if the movie failed, it wouldn't really hurt his career, especially back in England. If the movie would be a success, if he would be successful in the part, it would get him a bit of a boost in America, but I don't think it would so negatively color his resume and reduce the amount of dramatic work he could do in his home country.

The first interactive horror game...no, not Brainscan

In the early and mid '90s, virtual reality was everyone's dream, the big technological trend. My God, could you imagine a piece of equipment that could make you feel like you were transported to different locales, different time periods? Or, the big one, equipment and the programming that could place you inside your favorite TV show or movie? It's the 1990s, the future, and the future has always promised two things: flying cars and virtual reality! The future is now!

I think it was that kind of thinking that led to the early '90s "motion picture video game" style of video games. Popular on the PC, which was quickly forced into every home "because it's the future!," motion picture video games never really impressed people. They were touted as the next step in video games -- the bridge towards placing you in a video game, like VR! -- but they were hardly video games! A majority of them made you sit through clips and told you what buttons to push and a little meter in the corner reacted to it. Instead of placing you within the video, it was basically the video game equivalent of Simon -- you had to punch in the correct pattern of buttons or else it would be "game" over. This wasn't the future! This sucked! And a lot of the motion picture games would lag as they loaded, so they were nearly impossible to "play." (An example: there was a noir-based shooting game called "Who Shot Johnny Rock?" which required you to react quickly to hidden assassins. Problem was, you'd recognize an assassin, scroll your target over to aim, and the damn video would freeze as it loaded, favoring the assassin who then shot you and then game over. Fun, right?)

To a young kid who grew up on 8-bit Nintendo and loved video games, the Sega CD's arrival was exciting. This is it! A player's total immersion into video games! This was pre-internet, folks, so nobody knew what a flop the system would be. Sega CD was damned pricey and I couldn't buy one and none of my friends had one. But did it flop -- it debuted in late '92 and was in mark-down aisles by '94. How do I know '94? Well, I remember watching the movie Brainscan, thinking how cool it looked to have a totally immersive video game -- that came on CD, not a big, clunky gray cartridge -- one that was like real life, not some video game about an Italian plumber who eats mushrooms and kills turtles. Then I remembered...the Sega CD. Yeah, the Sega CD looked like Brainscan, it looked like the future, the ultimate in gaming experience. Soon afterwards, I bought a Sega CD and a ton of video games (because they were practically all in bargain bins.) Finally! So long, onion-ring collecting hedgehogs! Hello, a video game experience that's so intense it blurs reality and gaming! The future was here...

...and it sucked. The Sega CD's massive disappointment and suckiness is well-documented, of course, but in addition to those "motion video" video games and their lagging I talked about above, even their traditional side-scrolling games were disappointing. Games like Bram Stoker's Dracula or Cliffhanger had such clunky controls that they were impossible to play. Those motion video games were either pointless or dumb or so nonsensical that they weren't worth the effort. (And that's not even touching upon how many of them had local car dealership commerical production value and/or -- usually and -- the acting caliber of an Unsolved Mysteries-type reenactment.) But one game always interested me. One game always stood out as not only being interesting to me, but actually fun: Dracula Unleashed, which the packaging boasted as "the first interactive gothic horror game."

Dracula Unleashed is meant to be a sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula. The plot involves the American Alexander Morris arriving in turn-of-the-century London to investigate the suspicious death of his brother, Quincy. (Quincy would be the guy played by The Rocketeer in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film -- the one who died while fatally wounding Dracula with a Bowie knife.) Alexander's investigation is slowed down when he meets a woman, Annisette, and begins a relationship with her. He continues to make contact with those who knew Quincy -- familiar characters like the Harkers and Arthur Holmwood -- when a series of grisly murders begin to occur around London. Murders...of the vampire kind! It looks like Dracula's back, and it spooks the ones surrounding Alexander, impeding his investigation, all while he's swept up in the mystery which involves Annisette.

The way you play the game is you control each of Alexander's moves. Each distance he travels is measured by time, which is crucial -- arrive at someone's house too late, you're likely to be turned away by their servants and therefore could miss out on a critical piece of information. Arrive at the newspaper stand too late, you might miss out on a piece of the puzzle. Arrive at a shady part of town too late? You might find a vampire biting a game over into your neck. Not only is it important to visit particular locations at particular times, but the game has a whole variety of objects you'll need to gather and have in hand to unlock certain parts of video and advance the story. There's a whole variety of ways to screw up in this game, but I find it an overall enjoyable game that's not frustratingly unplayable like a lot of these "movie" video games that the Sega CD and PC loved.

The acting is surprisingly decent as far as these games go -- it can be a bit theatrical at times, but not terrible -- and I think they did a good enough job on the sets and wardrobe -- I can't imagine the budget for this being all that high, but they make the most of it. The makers create a good atmosphere that evokes the feeling of a Victorian-set horror tale -- and I'm a bit of a sucker for horror set in that period, they go hand in hand to me since all of the classics are based on novels from that period. (So, it's a bit of a disappointment to me that I couldn't get into Showtime's series Penny Dreadful.) There was a company several years ago who released the game onto DVD, and it's nice to have in good video quality (as well as extras such as a making of and outtakes). I prefer to play the game on Sega CD, though -- it's easier to navigate and access the items the character carries.

I still think this game is fun, with a lot of neat little details that you'll appreciate if you're a fan of Dracula or horror stories set in the time period, and it's a clever continuation of the Dracula story. It's a game that I still like to haul out and play every now and then and people should be a little more open-minded about it (and the Sega CD system in general).

So Cool, Brewster

Fright Night is one of my favorite horror movies. Its premise is extremely clever, and it's just a well made and filmed movie at a time when a lot of horror movies didn't have love put into them because they were copycatting a Jason or Michael.

The movie has a lot of elements of classic Dracula or vampire stories, but completely contemporizes them. Main antagonist Jerry Dandrige follows the typical Dracula type template -- he can be smooth, he can be charming, but he's still dangerous -- and brings him into the '80s, into the city. Farewell 19th century, farewell backlots mimicking London. But here's part one of what makes the movie gets really creative...the vampire is facing people who are well-versed in how to deal with him: horror fans. Part 2? That the horror fans, when every adult fails to help them, turn to a failed horror actor for help. That's just a stroke of genius to me, and writer-director Tom Holland has said that the movie only lingered in his mind until he came up with Peter Vincent, and after that flash of brilliance, the entire movie wrote itself. The characters and movie are aware of movies and genre convention, but not to the annoying degree of something like Scream, to where everything is a reference and it's really putting down the genre and has characters who think they're superior to typical genre characters, but fall into the same trap as those they ridicule.

People who criticize this movie think the premise is "cheesy" or "unrealistic," when you just need to go with the flow. You have to keep in mind the ages of the protagonists. At 16 years old, what choices do you have? Charley already tried to get his mom to help, but she's self-involved. He went to the police, they wouldn't listen. In his movie-obsessed mind, the only option left was someone who had done decades worth of fake vampire hunting, who had enough experience to know what to do and what they're up against.

It's a well made movie. The casting is great, the performances are good, everyone is likable. It's one of the rare horror movies that is comedic, but still scary. (I like to try to avoid calling it a "horror comedy," because that detracts from just how scary it actually is.) Honestly, while I like a lot of vampire stories, to me they're not really the scariest, but Fright Night has a lot of imaginative vampire designs that I actually DO find scary. When Jerry goes monstrous or how Evil Ed ends up and especially Amy with the shark mouth? That's scarier than that whole Lost Boys look, with their Klingon foreheads, which most vampire movies and shows have stuck with since. (Some people associate the look with Buffy, but Buffy ripped it off of The Lost Boys.)

For a lot of people, one character stands out. And for as much as this movie has going for it, I think without this character, without this specific piece of casting, the movie would be remembered less. That character is, of course, Stephen Geoffreys' Evil Ed. Where Charley Brewster is meant to be a horror fan, he kind of represents to me the type of casual fan who's a bit of a dabbler, who likes horror, but his attention can be swayed elsewhere. He's a "normal" fan, who will probably eventually abandon his being a fan and anything associated to that fandom -- including friends -- for a shot of "normalcy." Evil Ed is the bigger horror fan. Look at his room. This kid breathes horror, bleeds horror. He's the one who helps Charley further understand vampire rules, he's the one who impresses Peter Vincent with his knowledge of Peter's old movies. He hears the grisly newscasts about the murders and see Charley's descent into obsession over the possibility of Jerry being a vampire -- his town, his life, is turning into a horror movie all around him and he loves it. Evil's the die-hard fan who's often the point of ridicule, who knows he's not seen as "normal."

Evil Ed's seen as a nerd and an outcast and a weirdo -- look at the nickname he's earned. And he puts up this front about not believing Charley. While he enjoys the idea of his life turning into a horror movie, I don't think he's quite as wicked or "evil" as people in the movie and in the fandom think he is. He wants to think there are creatures out there in the night, but the idea still frightens him. He's still obviously scared deep down. Look how panicked and desperate he is when Jerry's after him. He gets cornered and bursts into tears knowing he's dead. But Jerry, in the smooth talking charm of Dracula, offers him power. A power Evil thought he'd never have, the power to be better than the "normal" folks who torment and ridicule him. The power of one of the monsters from the movies he loves. A power that can show those who have judged him what evil really can mean. He'll become the monster he's always been accused of being. His life now completely a horror movie, with him as its featured monster, he really lets loose.

We've seen a dozen mopey vampires in movies or on TV -- Jerry included -- but in Evil Ed we have a vampire who really loves being a vampire and is going to use it to his full advantage. It's interesting to me that the movie takes a character who was good, who was normal, and turns them into an antagonist. Unfortunately, once Evil Ed is injured by Peter, he drops out of a big chunk of the movie, until his one last scene at the end. And the movies loses a lot of life. The quirky energy, the manic glee brought to the character and movie by Geoffreys really energizes the movie and you don't quite realize just how much until he takes an absence. Geoffreys is such a good match for the character and gives him such unique life it's hard to believe he was under the impression he'd be playing Charley. I didn't care much for the remake, but was surprised that Colin Farrell often expressed how much he liked the original in interviews, even singling out Stephen Geoffreys and his performance as Evil Ed.

And, of course, the movie ends with a hint that Evil Ed has survived to terrorize another day. There's only been rumors and speculation, but most people seem to think he would have been the primary antagonist of Fright Night 2. I know the comics had this bizarre storyline of Evil Ed returning and running a nightclub, but...yeah, those comics were nonsense. Fright Night 2 itself ended up being a really weak and forgettable movie, a cheap, lazy and half-hearted flip of the first one. So I think it's better that Evil Ed and Geoffreys were left untainted by inferior follow-ups. (Tom Holland says he had written a spec script for Fright Night 2 that the studio nixed because they wanted someone new...and cheaper. I'm really curious what Holland would have done with a sequel, but he sidestepped the question when I asked.)

Horror fans seem to generally think positively about Fright Night. At the time, it was successful at the box office. Yet I always thought it kind of slipped between the cracks. (So I was surprised that it was deemed big enough to remake.) The Lost Boys -- which Fright Night is constantly pitted against by horror fans -- certainly seems more well known. Even feeling like Fright Night was a little under the radar, I felt a flicker of hope that maybe they'd make a couple of figures from the movie once I saw Lost Boys figures coming out. You could do vampire Jerry, Evil, shark-mouth Amy. But...no. Evil Ed's good enough to put on T-shirts, but not have a figure?! So it again falls to fans to make their own figures. Here's the custom Evil Ed I had made:

Boxed, front and back.

Before and after vamping out.