ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to A Nightmare on Elm Street stars Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp to celebrate the new 4K UHD release. The duo talked about the horror film’s legacy, if they’d return for another movie, and more. The classic film is now available in 4K on both UHD and on digital.
“Can your nightmares be fatal? In this classic of the horror film genre that launched a movie franchise, a hideously scarred man who was murdered by a lynch mob returns years later in the terrifying nightmares of his killer’s teenage children… and the dreaming teenagers are starting to die in their sleep,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Heather, the role of Nancy really turned you into Scream Queen, and you’re such a key part of kicking off this film that spawned so many sequels and really changed the face of horror forever after. So, 40 years later, how does it feel to really have left your stamp on an entire genre and be a part of this pivotal film?
Heather Langenkamp: Well, there was a moment in the last 40 years where I really had to sit up and take responsibility for being this character. I mean, she’s so important to so many people, and I couldn’t just blow it off like a past role that happened to be in a popular movie. I mean, she’s so important to me. She’s so important to people. For her, just all of the qualities that she displays on film. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world now, looking back 40 years, very few people ever get this kind of chance to play a part that actually has such an effect on our culture.
Robert Englund: We all get typecast in Hollywood. You know, I’ve been typecast as a southerner, as a nerd…
Langenkamp: As a Freddy Krueger.
Englund: Yeah, and as a horror actor. You have to embrace it. Those are very different. Heather went almost immediately from being an ingenue working with Joanne Woodward and things like that to being this sort of cult horror starlet. I remember she chomped at the bit a little bit back in the early days. Part of it’s just being young and trying to define yourself in Hollywood, but I have so many accomplished actor friends over the years who have banged their heads against the wall of that typecasting or turned down roles because they were worried about typecasting. All of them are out of work now. I’m kind of happy that both Heather and I stayed on the merry-go-round for a while.
Robert, you’re an icon of all icons, and I love your performance in this first film. Freddy’s not as jokey as he gets in the sequels, but there are still a lot of humorous moments. But the key thing is even when Freddy is doing something goofy, he’s still terrifying. How is it straddling that line in your performance? It is really brilliant how you used both of these tones.
Englund: Well, we acknowledged the desires of the huge audience after Nightmare 1. We played to some of the things they liked about Fredy. One of the obvious was his sense of humor. Because he didn’t have a lot of monsters then with a sense of humor. Uh, cracking wise, I always sort of thought of it more wise-cracking as Clint Eastwood, “Make My Day. Do you feel lucky, punk?” kind of thing.
We probably jumped the shark by the time we got to part six, but I want everyone to know that we did that intentionally. The really gifted Rachel Talalay, who’d been with us all along, we really wanted to make a movie about Freddy in the culture. That’s why we had Roseanne Barr and everybody, Tom Arnold and Alice Cooper, and we acknowledged all of those things as well as Freddy fooling around a little bit with popular culture, but that’s us listening to the sort of jungle drums of the popular culture [and] playing to it perhaps too much at some points.
But we came back with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and even Freddy vs. Jason, which I sort of took on as a graphic novel.
Tyler Treese: Heather, one quick final question, we’re in the realm of the legacy sequel nowadays. Would you be up for playing Nancy one final time and having one final nightmare?
Langenkamp: I mean, it’s something that, of course, I think anyone like me would dream about because I feel like I have so much left in me to play a character like Nancy. You never stop thinking about Nancy and how she would handle certain problems in her life, especially if this guy were in there. So, I do dream about it, but it’s a tough call in Hollywood these days.
Englund: I think I’m up for Freddy vs. Viagra [laughs].
