Englund looks back on a killer of a role

Here's the question I've been dying to ask horror superstar Robert Englund for almost 20 years, ever since he created Freddy Krueger, the now-seminal razor-gloved arch-villain from Wes Craven's pop horror hit "A Nightmare on Elm Street."

Do you feel any philosophical regrets about creating an ultimate monster, one that gleefully raped and slaughtered children, only to have him be embraced by the very children he victimized? Freddy Krueger was the No. 1 most popular Halloween costume for two consecutive years during the 1980s.

"I never saw Freddy as a pedophile," Englund said. "I saw him on a revenge motif against the parents who burned him. His first crimes were murders. My theory was that he was so twisted, he killed children because they represented the future, and as an unhappy, damaged man, he just felt he had no future. And he was killing the evidence or symbols of it, which were these perfect and angelic little blonde girls. That was how I worked it myself."

Still, kajillions of children, undiscouraged by their parents, went out at Halloween wanting to be the very entity that sought their corruption and destruction.

"In terms of me having second thoughts about it, I may have, at some times," Englund admitted. "But it was never embraced that way. Freddy was more celebrated as the logo of a very scary movie that you paid your $3 to see.

"In fact, in all of the movies, a strong, young female finds her inner strength and she finds herself, whether her parents are divorced, or alcoholics, or pill-poppers or whatever the particular '80s or '90s syndrome that we were toying with. The young burgeoning adult woman conquers Freddy in all those movies. The young teenage girl wins."

Unless my memory fails me, the surviving character of one movie went on to be destroyed by Freddy almost instantly in the next one. So Freddy always ultimately wins over the teenage girls, doesn't he?

"Well, some of them survived a little longer," Englund said. "But the point of each one was that a woman vanquishes Freddy. A woman keeps Freddy down until he comes back again. I think it's more of a generational thing. Freddy comes back to haunt a generation of the so-called offspring of the original vigilante parents who wronged him. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Englund, a certified horror icon, will be the grand guest of honor at Mike and Mia Kerz's Flashback Weekend horror convention at Wyndham O'Hare in Rosemont. He will be promoting his new autobiography "Hollywood Monster" that took him the first six months of 2009 to write. He'll also be promoting his new scary Web series "Fear Clinic" that can be seen online at FearNet.com.

Weirdly enough, both "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (now with Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy) and Englund's 1970s alien-invasion TV series "V" are both being revamped with new casts and directors for a younger generation of thrill seekers.

Englund's reaction is understandable: "It just makes me feel old!"

For the record, the original Freddy Krueger is now 62.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=330379">Movie lover scares up annual Flashback convention <span class="date">[10/23/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>