A Nightmare on Elm Street's horror icon Robert Englund may have a surprising casting suggestion for future filmmakers looking to fill his blood-soaked, charred shoes as Freddy Krueger: Kevin Bacon.
Englund first donned Freddy Krueger's bladed glove in 1984’s original Nightmare on Elm Street. He reprised the role over multiple subsequent sequels, both good and bad, including Wes Craven's A New Nightmare, where he dually played both himself and the killer. It’s a role he’s played several times outside the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, be it game voiceovers, documentary hosting, and other appearances of his iconic slasher on both the big and small screen.
According to Variety, Englund feels his journey as everyone’s favorite nightmare character is over. However, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a replacement in mind in the form of another horror actor whose been on the scene for many decades—Bacon. While initially just a fan suggestion, Englund wholeheartedly approved, saying, “I know he respects the genre, and he’s such a fine physical actor. I think that in the silences and in the way Kevin moves — it would be interesting.”
Audiences and filmmakers probably want Englund to return to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. However, the actor says he's not capable of playing Freddy Krueger. “I just can’t do fight scenes for more than one take anymore, I’ve got a bad neck and bad back and arthritis in my right wrist," Englund said. "So I have to hang it up, but I would love to cameo.” Englund sat out the most recent reprisal of the film franchise, 2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street reboot, where Jackie Earle Haley played Freddy, to mixed responses.
An upcoming documentary, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, charts Englund's experience with the character that shot him into fame in the mid-1980s amid a horror renaissance that cashed in on the popularity of late '70s early '80s slasher horror like Halloween and Friday the 13th. “I felt there was a cultural shift that people recognized,” Englund said “Horror is the punk rock of cinema in its own way. There was a recognition of pulp as a great ingredient in our cultural world. There’s room for pulp and melodrama, and the door opened wider for horror.”
Bacon, Englund's proposed successor, who was cast as a doomed camp counselor in Friday the 13th as one of his first roles, may be the kind of actor to continue England's legacy. After all, Bacon later starred in several horror films in the succeeding decades, including Tremors, Stir of Echoes, You Should Have Left, and the recent They/Them.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Variety