Pinocchio Unstrung: An Interview with Robert Englund - Last Interview on the Left

This week on Last Interview on the Left, Henry and Ed welcome horror legend Robert Englund to the show to celebrate Pinocchio: Unstrung. The gang talks horror's next generation, practical effects, Freddy's legacy, killer puppets, the movies that still impress Robert, and why he's still chasing projects that surprise him. Plus, behind-the-scenes stories from Pinocchio: Unstrung, as well as a few unexpected movie recommendations from one of horror's all-time greats. Pinocchio: Unstrung in Theaters July 24th and VOD soon!

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• 0:52Speaker 02

  All right.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  That's our goal, Mr. England. We want to, we're, goal is to choke them all out.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Choke them all out.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  And your job, your, your help today, that's what's going to push us over the edge. We're going to literally attack other podcasts in their dreams. We're going to kill them one by one at a time.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  I like that kind of talk.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Yes. Very few times are the sacred audio hallways of Last Podcast on the Left graced by true legends. But this time, one is here, I mean, on Zoom. Yeah. One's on Zoom. And we have truly, this is, I, I, obviously a pillar of, of the, of our world. The ultimate man of nightmares. The star of arguably the peak of his career, Pinocchio Unstrung, is Robert Englund. Thank you so much for joining us today.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  Well, I don't think I've ever been called sacred before. I kinda like it. I think we have to give a, a, a little cred here to, uh, the great Richard Brake, who's plays Geppetto.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  In Pinocchio on Strong, because Richard's an old friend of mine and a, a, a previous co-star of mine in a little film with Robert Patrick and Hal Holbrook that we did together a couple of years ago. And I've just been, you know, such a fan of Richard's ever since, you know, following him, including his incredible turn on Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Where he plays the white supremacist, you know, in jail.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  He's terrifying in that.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  And spoiler alert, the best death scene in a long time, just amazing. The guy knows how to die.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's real, he is legitimately, we saw Pinocchio on Strong. Uh, honestly, I was surprised at the level of art and care that went into this movie, into this independent production with the puppets and the visual effects. How'd you get involved in this? How'd they rope you in besides massive piles of cash?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  I, I, I think they, I, I wish they were massive. I hope they're not the piles. Anyway, uh, getting old, piles means something different. Uh, uh, no, you know, I, I knew about the Winnie the Pooh.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  And my generation, and this isn't horror, but in a kind of, uh, Mad Magazine, Mad TV, uh, SNL kind of way, we had a sort of beloved experience with a, a show called Fractured Fairy Tales, which back in the fifties and early sixties was part of the, uh, Jay Ward, you know, Rocky and Bullwinkle, all of that stuff with great voice work. Hans Conrad, lots of people were working for that, those teams back then. So I've always loved the idea of that. And then in college. And also during the many years of my, my, uh, my sort of, I'm gonna say,

• 4:05Speaker 02

  intellectual interviews regarding horror, especially in Europe. I was reminded of all, all of the stuff we, we, we talked about in school and later on with Bruno Bettelheim and Carl Jung and all of the really source darkness and Freudian sexuality and everything else that's in the actual fairy tales. I mean, my God. Hansel and Gretel is a cautionary tale by the terrible parents to their children. If you don't, if you do not behave, Octon. If you do not behave, you must go into the forest, into the black, dark forest. It's actually called the Black Forest. And

• 4:46Speaker 02

  what happens when you're starving, there's a famine going on in Germany. What happens when you're starving? What's the first symptom? You hallucinate. Pie. Oh, a great chocolate cake or perhaps a house with cookie shingles. You know, and made of food. So, I mean, this is all dark shit. I mean, also, I mean, Rumpelstiltskin, that's a nasty, nasty story. What's going on there? And, and so I think that the fairy tales, after having been, and I don't say this as a criticism, just as a fact, but after having been Disneyfied for many years and cleaned up, you know, so we don't hurt our children.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, I, I think what happened is it's, it's, it's almost

• 5:37Speaker 02

  incumbent upon us to sort of return some of them to their source, their dark, dark source.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Why are we literally so afraid to scare kids now? I know when I was a little boy, a lot of my favorite media also scared me.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I, I, I, I think it's, was, was sort of a reaction to other aspects of the culture that perhaps, you know, put the cart in front of the horse a little too much. I know a couple of blocks from me, and this has saved me from being pranked on Halloween where I live, but a couple of blocks, uh, north of me. Oak Street.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  But all the dads, all the dads who love Halloween and had their helicopter moms, you know, all the beautiful MILFs and, and everybody, you know, is a little bit bougie, but, but, but great people and, and wonderful neighbors. But the dads were had it up to here with the kind of frozen princess Halloween.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  That's dress up. Halloween is monsters.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  And the Day of the Dead and vampires and werewolves and Frankensteins and ghosts and skeletons. And it, it's the dark side and they sort of had it with, with, with it going almost into some kind of ridiculous princess cosplay. And they sort of took over their street and made it really dark, all the decorations for Halloween. And, you know, I was, when that happened, I was spared a lot of the, the sort of trick or treat traffic. But I remembered back to when I was a kid and there was always a couple of kids that would be popular culture. I think my parents, my liberal parents even dressed me as Fidel Castro one year.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Communism is the true fear. Yeah, that is, that is what we're afraid of.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  He was man of the year, you know? But that was a pop, popular culture reference, maybe trying to win a costume contest or something at a neighborhood party. But, but we all wanted to be dark, you know? That was the whole thing back then and we, you know, and it was always bargaining with your parents about how much fake blood you could put, you know, on your costume and stuff. And the pranks, you know, the, the sugar in the gas tanks and, and waxing screens, you know, and, and ringing doorbells and disappearing and all of that. You know, turds in paper bags being set on fire, all that good stuff.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  We're still doing it.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Dark night. It was a night of pranks and I'm not talking about vandalism, but, but good, good all American fun.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Some like vandalism.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And I think it got a little sanitized because some people did take it too far in Detroit and other places. So I think it got a little sanitized and now there was a reaction against that. And I think that also sort of is the, is the opening for a kind of politically incorrect, fractured fairy tale.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  That's right. It really works. My favorite scene in the entire movie is when Pinocchio removes the guts from the person, when he went scooping all the guts out of the guy and then he's just kinda cram all the guts back into his torso. That was one of my favorite, cause I was like, yeah, that is like, he is just trying to be a real boy. Yeah, no.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  I wanna be a real live boy.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  But can I ask, this is not a criticism at all, but what part of Italy does this movie take place in the fact that a man is naturally named Giuseppe?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think the original, the Collodi, the, the original story. I know, I've been doing horror movies and publicity in Italy since the very early eighties and I love it. It's my favorite country, but you know, the Pinocchio puppets, you know, are ubiquitous. They're, they're everywhere.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Everywhere, yeah.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  And they celebrate Collodi as an Italian, but I think it's extreme northern Italy. It, it's all, which is, which some people call the Tyrol, Tyrolian.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  So there's, it's that blend of Austrian, Swiss, northern Italy, a little German, the Tyrol, you know, Lederhosen and the food is a little different up there. Uh, there, there's, the mountains have snow on them in the winter. Yeah. It's not the south. You know, it's not the Sofia Loren Naples. It's, it's the north. It's very, it, you know, Italy's a big country and, and it's very, like the United States, Maine is as different from New Orleans as New Orleans is, you know, from, from the coast of, of, of the state of Washington or Oregon. They're very different. They're different people. They, they have different interests, different hobbies and, and I, and Italy's that way too.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Are PR tours easier in Europe than in America? Like when you go over there for horror? Are they easier, more fun in Italy?

• 10:32Speaker 02

  For me, the difference for me was in my first experience in Europe. I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. I had a back-to-back science fiction mini-series that was international. And a horror movie, within a year and a half, that was also an international hit. And I was international, meaning people knew my name overnight. And so I was there a lot. And it's, it's an interesting point of view. In my first big astounding, you know, thing that I recognized, was the respect for horror as a genre in Europe. It's right up there with gangster movies and film noir and the Western.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  They probably like it even more than the so-called romantic comedy.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  They have art film, they have art film, but horror in those types of genre movies seem to really actually then put butts in seats that fills it out.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Well, it's not just that. It's they recognize that the stylistic director can really show his stuff when he's working in the world of horror fantasy and science fiction. And that's why, you know, they worship, you know, Dario Argento and, and, and the great Spanish vampire directors and, and, and some of the English directors in the world of Hammer films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and, and, and everyone. You know, Barbara Steele and everyone. So that world, you know, it has a kind of genre respect. And they, they respect it like the graphic novel or as another idiom of film, like, like the Western.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  You know, again, or something else. So it's an equivalent. It's not, in America, when I first started out and you were in horror movies, and I had done a fat 10 years of, of, of, you know, A-list films, working with the biggest stars of the 70s, Reynolds and Charles Bronson. People forget how big these people were and, and Barbara Streisand and a young Jeff Bridges and Sally Field and Susan Sarandon and then Peter Strauss, who was the god of TV movies along with Martin Sheen. But, but, you know, it was this strange thing, whereas in, they knew in Europe that this was a genre that had replaced the Western

• 12:58Speaker 02

  and replaced the sort of Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson gangster film. And, and it was to be respected and, you know, it was, I, I had done the other work, but I remember, I might have been Paramount. But I remember the Friday the 13th guys and, and we're, we're stuck kind of over by the kitchen door, you know, with the porthole and the

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  coming out with the tray, boing, bang, and then and out. The worst seat in the house. And yet, it was, uh, you know, a youth movie, Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, you know, with that nasty Susan St. George and Peter Fonda that I think saved Fox

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  as a summer programmer, so that they had enough money to option Star Wars. And I think Friday the 13th really helped to fill the coffers after the debacle of King of the Gypsies. You know, the big Paramount flop.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  And, uh, yeah. And so, this is that thing, you know, they, we, the horror wasn't really getting respect, but it, it, it became a go-to moneymaker. And people forget, B-movie, you know, i- i- in the 30s, 40s and 50s and 60s, when you went to the movies, you got to see two movies for the price of one. Double feature, right? Double bill. And the, the, so, many times, the second movie was considered a B-movie, but it doesn't mean bad or less than. B means budget.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  It just was on, it, it, it, it figured, it was made on a different budget.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the other side of the same.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Than the other movie, yeah. And, but many of those movies have come to be some of our greatest films in the history of Hollywood, yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, cuz they, they lasted the span of time. We are now running a movie podcast show. We've just now been talking about the idea of those movies hold up way more than the last five years of movies, not, besides Pinocchio Unstrung.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Every, the last five years of movies, many of these movies are gonna kind of be forgotten because of the way they're being made. I actually think that Pinocchio Unstrung, to be frank, is a good indicator of that kind of coming to the other side of people of our generation making movies that love puppets.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  That love actual blood, love actual gore.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you know, blood and gore and action and violence and all of those

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It ages better.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Those parts of the recipe. They're part of the recipe. I mean, you know, I mean, I, I don't wanna live in a world that doesn't celebrate the original invasions of the body snatchers.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  You know?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Well.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I don't wanna live in a world that doesn't celebrate them.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  You know, the giant ant movie.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  It's frightening.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  These were great films. These are great films and they and they were. They had to be made with a with a low budget. And so everybody was constantly on their toes from production design through camera, through direction, through the actors to do a good job. No one set out, you know, to to make a cheap looking movie, you know, just because your budget was limited.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Uh, a- and you know, I've done recently, I I I did, you know, The Midnight Man with Lynne Shay, which is sort of a a one of those subset horror movies, you know, the games you shouldn't play. Uh, uh, uh, don't play that game. I did another one, Urban Legend, which I'm very proud of.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  A lot of fun.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Glossy, but great film. And a terrific performance by Rebecca Gayheart. And and and everybody's in that. Brad Dorff's in that movie and and and wonderful other actors. Uh, and then you you know, so so I I did one of those and then I did a kind of a a classic, uh, kind of Brian De Palma seventies film called The Last Showing over in England. Uh, uh, yeah, which I'm really proud of. And I, you know, I I I did a little retro one for last Halloween, you know, Natty Knox for my friend Dwight Little, wonderful director who did me, did my Phantom of the Opera and and an old, old friend.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  But but, you know, I've I've done different kinds and I realized I hadn't done anything down and dirty and nasty for a while.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  And I knew, I knew about Winnie the Pooh and I thought, you know, it's about time to, you know, put a little spice into my resume again, you know. So it was wonderful and easy for me to say yes to Pinocchio Unstrung, even though we can talk about it like the European critics would, you know, over a glass of wine and a cigarette in a hotel lobby in Madrid, we can talk about the, you know, the the the coming of age story that that is Pinocchio, you know, but also we got the nasty bits.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I tell you what, I I, let's just say, we all, we're huge fans of Guillermo del Toro, right?

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Oh, me.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Huge fans, huge fans.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Mimic, Mimic's one of my favorite movies.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Love it. And I love Cronos. I love all of it, you know, all those, his old movies.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  He devils backbone.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  He's incredible.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. With a leg or without it. You're gonna have a with leg or without it?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  That brilliant actor that played the lead, God.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  So good. Yeah. But I will say, my taste runs more towards a Pinocchio Unstrung. Look at the story because we've seen the big fancy Pinocchio a thousand times. We had, what's his name? Was it Roberto Benini? Remember when he was doing, he did his highfalutin Pinocchio? We've seen highfalutin Pinocchio.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And listen, I understand that because Roberto Benini was doing a salute to Italian culture. And how they think of that story. Because they do, they celebrate it. It's, it's, it's, it's a national memory of a passage in childhood, you know?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Where, for us, for every kid that has a, a, a frozen as a, as a natural passage of childhood, there's also a kid that had The Exorcist. You know, as a test, a passage of rites. And they're both, they're both to be celebrated. Don't get me wrong. I just don't like it when we have, when we tend to think we have to like tone everything down. You know? I think people can handle that. I mean, that's the reason we have ratings.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  You know?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  And the original Pinocchio from 1941 is terrifying. As far as Disney movies go, I'm gonna call it the scariest one.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  There's some mutation stuff going on in that. Well, I mean, I love Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  But I gotta tell you, and then there's that weird necrophilia in, in, in Snow White. But I, I, I gotta tell you, you know, I, I used to go for auditions at Disney back in the seventies. And we actors passed around, you know, over a couple of beers at the local pub in Laurel Canyon. We would pass around that you go, and once you got that pass, and you're on the lot for an audition, and you park in that crappy lot. You know, in the heat of summer, far away from everything, you can walk up onto the campus of the original, well, not the original, but the studios of Walt Disney.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  And you walk right in the animation building. And what our secret was, you walk up the stairs to the second floor, and they had a constantly changing, evolving show of cells from all the Disney movies ever made. And I remember seeing the background cells for the Island of Lost Boys from Pinocchio.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, Pleasure Island.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Wow, there was some cool stuff. And later on, about another month later, on a callback or something, I saw all of the mutation cells and original drawings for Pinocchio's transformation, you know. Oh my, yeah, just great stuff there, great, crazy, dark stuff. And you'd see ones that weren't used, you know, a dark pencil drawing that wasn't used. It was just a little too, too hardcore, but still, they, you know, they, there was, they knew where to draw the line, or they thought they had to at that time, you know. They were their own, they had their own sort of standards, you know.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's terrifying, that movie. I mean, when that transformate, when Lampwick transforms into the Donkey Boy, and he has a mental breakdown and starts breaking the mirror and like bleeding all over the.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  And I remember seeing the pencil drawings of Donkey Boy, you know. And as a kid, that's terrifying.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so good. Are there any, like, parts or like things that you either went out for or saw that you're like, man, I wish I could have fucking got a shot at that?

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Well, no, I mean, you know, we all, all of us, and, and you know, this is what we thrive on, you know. It's our, along with, along with adrenaline, it's the ones that got away. I remember being called back several times for a film. And it was, I think, the most expensive film being made in Hollywood that year called March or Die, a French Foreign Legion movie with Gene Hackman. And I didn't get the part. I'm not, I can't remember the name of the actor that did, he certainly didn't, you know, go on to do a lot of other stuff.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Cause you murdered him in his sleep.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Nothing against him, but I remember losing sleep over that.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  And I remember losing sleep, I got called back a couple of times for the great Jack Nicholson film, The Last Detail. The young southern sailor that goes to the brig. And I remember reading the book and in the book, I, I could be wrong about this and my, my memory could be failing me here, but I don't remember him as being big. I remember the, the boy, he was vulnerable. That's why Jack Nicholson and his MP partner kind of save him because they know he's not going to survive the brig, you know? And I, you know, and, and, and listen, you know, recent history, you know, notwithstanding.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Randy Quaid is a wonderful, brilliant actor. From the last, from the last picture show to Missouri breaks and beyond, Randy Quaid is a wonderful actor. And he was terrific. He was terrific in that film, but I always thought he was too tall.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Did you end up seeing his sex tape?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  It looked like he could have, it looked like, well, it looked like Randy could have taken care of himself.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  In more ways than one.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, whereas little, whereas little Robert Englund doing my little, you know, thin southern boy, whose mama might have loved him too much. You know, uh, uh, you know, I, I, you would have worried about me going to the brig, the marine brig, you know? Whether I could survive.

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Talking about the past, I have to, one of the major comedy influences to me was The Adventures of Fort Fairlane. I love that movie. I thought it was great. You were wonderful as Smiley. How surprised are you to see Andrew Dice Clay become this like great actor?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. Andrew was always an actor. Us, we actors. When I watched Andrew's stand-up act, I could see his recipe. And there was a little bit of Fonzie. Fonzie, a little bit of like if Fonzie cursed. Okay, so that's, so Henry Winkler obviously got it from one of those Long Island guys. A little bit of Joey Butterfuko.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  And that, and that Long Island guy, you know, that, that moment of time. And the way those guys treated and addressed women and talked about them, which is crass and stupid, but also fucking funny, you know? And that's, he was doing a character. You know, he was doing a character of that guy.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, because he was an impressionist before that.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  That you could laugh at and with. And it's a performance thing. So when I saw him in his other stuff, I wasn't surprised that Andrew's got some chops. I used to go, when I got a big residual, to this gourmet market on Sunset Boulevard. And, and I had a lot of adventures in this market, you know? Christmas shopping one year, you know, stoned and things like that. But I, I used to see Andrew there a lot. I think he had, was driving a big Cadillac convertible then. You know, and he would be in the parking lot, you know, shining it, you know? And, and, and looking good for the ladies, you know? You know, all the MILFs that shop there from up in the Hollywood Hills, you know?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  And I, this is way, long before he was, you know, the clay. You know, he was, you know, the, you know? And, and, and so I, it doesn't surprise me. You know, I remember when he, I think I was in his dressing room talking about something when he signed. Uh, the contracts, uh, for his first home. And he was like a big kid. He was nervous about, you know, that stack you have to sign when you buy a house, you know? And, uh, uh, so, you know, it, it's strange, you know? I mean, I, I liked Nora on SNL. But I think her, her protest against Andrew was a little misguided because that was a character. He was playing, you know?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I certainly don't think Andrew, you know, hates women or anything like that. And, you know, you know, Andrew went on to do Woody Allen movies and HBO show and lots of other stuff. And the last thing I saw her in was a toilet bowl commercial. So I'm, you know, and, and she's a wonderful actress. She's a wonderful actress too, but it's like such an unnecessary thing, you know? It's like you've got, yeah, early on I learned, you know? You can't be envious or jealous or competitive in that kind of, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? You know, stern, uh, you know, where you, where you, where you, where you seek failure for your fellow artists, you know?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, live your life, live it.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Fail you.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  You're living for shooting fruit.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  I hate it when any movie bombs, even if it's a movie I don't like, because it's bad for Hollywood. It means there's going to be less movies made. I want everything to be a hit. And when I see actors, you know, make a lot of money that, that maybe they don't, maybe they, there's other actors that deserve that more. That doesn't make me hate them, you know, or like them any less just because they hit the jackpot, you know? And it's just, that's just an unhealthy way to live.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, very much so. And like Andrew Dice Clay, do you think that you, your persona as like the master of horror? Also sort of like paints how people react to you? Like, do you think that like you, you disappoint, do you really disappoint people? By not being a child murderer?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. I had a fat 10 years in Hollywood before I ever did Freddy.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  And in that 10 years, I did a dozen movies and starred in half of them. You know, again, you know, I starred with Jeff Bridges and Sally Field and, and Henry Fonda, Jeff Bridges.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  I do want to ask quickly, what was Charles Bronson like?

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Charles had a guy, an assistant who had a little miniature ticker tape with him. And he would be stacking, checking his stock market.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  And he also, he also would tear out dialogue. You know, and keep it real simple.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  And parse his lines down to smaller, clean lines of dialogue. And also, I watched him and he would reach, he would practice reaching for a prop. So he didn't have to look at it when he went to get it. And he'd measure it off. And in a way, he moved and rehearsed his physical stuff like a dancer. He wasn't big, he was compact, but he moved beautifully, like Lee Marvin moves beautifully. Or Kevin Bacon moves really well and interesting. They, or old John Wayne had that great strange grace in the way he moved. And, uh, and I watched him do that, like he would

• 29:06Speaker 02

  measure his grip for a coffee cup so that he could just keep talking to you and reach out a frame and bring that coffee cup in, you know, or screw that bottle, you know, and switch hands and, you know, he just, he was great that way. He really moved. You see some of his movies, Cato's Land and things like that and watch him move. It's, he's just beautiful to watch. We forget, you know, how big Charles Bronson was. Every culture in the world thought he was one of theirs.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  The Russians thought he was Russians, the Polish thought he was Polish. Well, he kinda was. You know, Czechoslovakians thought he was Czechoslovakian, Spaniards thought he was Spanish.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, he's also, he had that idiosyncratic way about him that kinda cut through everything. Like, I feel like that's about, thing about actors we're missing a little bit now. It's like, you, anybody can impersonate Charles Bronson. Anybody can impersonate Marlon Brando. You know the voice so indicatively.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Well, this is one of the things we've lost. If you think about Jimmy Stewart's hesitant delivery. Or Henry Fonda's Midwestern accent. Or Brando.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Or John Wayne. You, you recognized them when you heard them, let alone when you saw them. It was a signature voice. And I think that that's something that actors have to realize has, is part of the component. You know, uh, uh, of, of an actor. You know, every once in a while, you, there's certain actresses that have such beautiful, deep, husky voices. You just love hearing them speak. And it makes them just that much more fascinating or sexy or, or, you know. You, you just, you like that. Yeah. It, it, they, it's, they come with a full toolbox, you know, so to speak.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  And we've lost that a little bit, I, you know, you know, and I think that people probably thought they could compensate by going to the gym. You know, or something, but you, you, you can, as long as you're taking your shirt off. But then you also have to sound right when you speak.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Well, that's what makes you so important. It's clearly you and Pinocchio Unstrung. And it's, it was, it was great to hear you curse again, by the way.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  I mean, all I tried to do was to avoid the Freddy laugh as much as I could because the Freddy laugh is an old, uh, uh, class exercise from, from, from voice class, you know, that I had. Uh, and that was my go-to thing because it's about the breathing on the diaphragm. To sustain that laugh. And so I, my muscle memory, I fall into the Freddy laugh pretty automatically. Now I have to consciously pitch it higher and breathe less, you know, to, to, to, you know, get, get, you know, if I want to, if I'm doing an evil laugh when I'm doing a voiceover, you know, for animation or something now. I, I have, I consciously have to pitch it high and bite off the air and turn it more into kind of like a demonic giggle or something. So I don't, so I don't remind everybody that they're listening to Freddy Krueger.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Well, you've done many transformative performances, like you, your work in The Mangler is great. Uh, you're just, like, you just appear into that guy and I love that movie too. And you've like, at this point.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Well, that's our, that's the great Toby Hooper again, too. You know, Stephen King loves Toby Hooper. Stephen King loves the way Toby treats the Stephen King, uh, uh, canon.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yes, there was something about like, so coming back to like the idea of being now like a horror icon. You went through, I'll have an old acting career. Now you're a horror icon. Are you ever just like, ah, fuck, I just want to be in a Dove commercial, but everyone's so frightening of me? Everybody's, I can't, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would love to see how you shower.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's strange now, you know, I, it's, um, I, I'm gonna be doing a, a, a sequel to a wonderful, smart, smart horror film I did called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Yes, that's right. And it's one of those films that's slowly ascending on the cult market, but it, it still hasn't been seen enough, and I'm really proud of it, and there's a wonderful, wonderful performances in that film. Uh, but we had written a sequel for figuring Scott Wilson into it, you know. Yeah. In a really big way, and, and God love him, Scott passed away, you know, uh, and, That's hard.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  And, yeah, we lost a great, great, great actor that I go way back with, and, uh, and so we, they had, it took them years to figure out another script, uh, for that, but I'll be in that doing my sort of homage to Donald Pleasence again. Yes. Yeah, and, and I, you know, I'm lucky, I did a lot, a lot before I did Freddy. So I was established in Hollywood, and you know, a lot of Americans haven't seen them, but, you know, I've done nearly a hundred movies, and I've done dozens of movies in Europe, like, you know, uh, uh, on a level of Behind the Mask, uh, uh, The Last Showing is one, uh, you know, for, uh, Phil Hawkins, with, with a wonderful actor in it, Finn

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Jones, just does a great performance, and he was the gay knight in Game of Thrones. Oh. But, uh, yeah, but, yeah, but it's really a good little sort of salute to Brian De Palma, uh, really immaculate, great little low-budget film, and I've done a lot of that stuff, you know, in Italy, in Spain, and England, and Russia, and I, all over, the, so, I get to do that, you know, I play the old prince, or the old priest, or, or the mad doctor, you know, or, or the old psychiatrist, you know, and I tell the backstory, and I get to play with my skills, you know, doing a monologue, I even got to do the monologue, even though I was doing a Robert Englund makeup role.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  All I got to do, a wonderfully written cadenced monologue that really was a great intercut between this actual event and my telling it in Stranger Things.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  So, I get to do that stuff, you know.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  You also work with complete madman J.J. Viard several times.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I love that guy. I have done one project with him. I used to work for Adult Swim extensively. I love J.J. What's his, can you honestly just tell me, give a little, small, little insight of what his process is like?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's so strange because I saw the anime, again, I saw the pencil drawings. Because I played a gob, I played a gob of snot. And I think I played one of the three bears. I can't remember.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  It was like a Goldilocks fractured fairy tale.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  And then he also did King Star King, which was great.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was the gross-out version, you know? It was gross-out humor. But it's really off the wall and, and, you know, you get, always you get pieces of it when you're talking to him. And, and you get, because you want to be on the same page. But you gotta wait till you see it. You know? And then it all comes together. It's just one of those things. I mean, you know, you imagine, look, I love sinners. I really love sinners.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  But can you imagine the pitch to that? Now, you had the help of Get Out being a big hit.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Which is maybe African folk tale, you know, brought into contemporary concepts. We have a whole new source material we can go after. But imagine trying, you know, even though he was a huge director at the time, still pitching sinners, you know?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Musicology, the history of American music, you know? Uh, vampires, slavery, voodoo, voodoo, African myth, slave myth, all of that. And you're gonna make it and you're gonna put it all into, any one of those statements could be an entire movie. But to put them all in one movie and mash them up like that and have that kind of success where you just went on that ride, I remember. That that musical number, which was like the history of American music and that moving camera, you know, and that dancing and all of a sudden you saw one of the guys from the Funkadelics.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  You know, out of the corner of your eye and you're like, did I see that?

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, was that booty?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  To hide it, to blend it in the choreography over here. Later on, you got a close up of it, but it was like, did I, did I, am I hallucinating? Am I imagining that? Is this, is this dance? And, and yet it was, it was all intentional and all choreographed, you know, you know, within an inch of its life and it was just brilliant stuff. But that's that thing, you know, is, is when, when you have ideas that wild and you wonder, part of it is, you know, it's, it's hard to pitch that stuff. And, and I think, you know, with, with, you know, I, I don't understand how when they, when they describe some stuff, it gets, it gets bought because I, I wouldn't get it either. I wouldn't get it either, but it does.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Then there's other stuff, there's other stuff that you, when you, when you see and you watch it, you go, I don't know how that got made. You know, that's the flip side of that, you know?

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Every day I say this.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Every day I scream that until the night.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you, after you go through your checklist, they've made it for money. They made it because it's a sequel. They made it because those are popular characters. They made it because they thought they needed a rom com movie released this June, whatever. You know, you see that. But once you've exhausted all those checklists, you go, why did they make that movie? You know?

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  Who's the target audience for that movie? I, you know?

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. You've mentioned rom coms twice and I gotta say, being a horror icon that you are, I feel like horror is the only prolific genre over time. Like everything comes and goes. Rom coms are kinda out right now. Regular comedies are kinda out right now.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  But I think we do have, we still have romance films.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  And, and, and we, we have horror and we, we have action films. And it's fun, you know, it's so much fun to, uh, you know, you, to go on Apple TV or to go on Netflix or to go on Prime Video or somewhere and then to deep dive, you know, and, and you find these great little wonderful action movies, you know, that, that are, that with, you know, European stars or low budget. What's, there's one I've, there's two of them now.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Can't think of the name. It's a foreign name, like a Finnish name. It's a director from Finland and they're revenge movies. They're a guy and he avenges himself on the Nazis. Yes.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  The Sisu movies are amazing.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  That guy's up there with George Miller. That director.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, those are incredible.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  But the second one is almost Road Runner. It almost de-evolves into Russian Nazi Road Runner.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  I mean, I watched it on the edge of my couch, but why aren't people talking about those movies? I mean, I, you know, I'd love to ask Tarantino, you know, if we could go to his little movie theater in Hollywood and have a double bill of those, you know?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, have you seen?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Serve everybody borscht and German sausage.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  That'd be incredible. Have you ever seen the film The Last Circus?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  It is in 2010. I feel like, I cannot believe I'm going to, I'm going to recommend you this movie.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at it.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  It is.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  I got it. Last Circus.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  And it's a basic.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  The director's amazing. He did another movie called Witchin' and Bitchin'. That's right on the money, too.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Amazing. It is a, the only way to describe it, it is fascist clowns left behind in the, in the Spanish Revolution. And they have to save their circus by killing everybody. You have to, you have to look at it. You're gonna love this thing.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  This is right up your alley.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Now. It sounds like it has a little bit of Devil's Backbone.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It does, a little bit.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, Franco and Franco and the regime and all that. No, recently, I've been a big champion of the guy that did Blue Ruin.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, phenomenal.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  And he also did that one with, for me, the best shootout in the history of cinema is in the one with Skarsgård and Riley Keo. And they, and the Native American indigenous, they're on the reservation. And they surrender their baby up to the cult, the Native American cult, you know?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  I just saw it. I can't.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Something dark, something dark. I think.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  He's.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Near dark or.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  It holds the dark.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  It holds the dark, right.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Yes, hold the dark.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Now, here's the third one you put with that is Rebel Ridge.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  And all those three together are like, slow burn revenge, but there are sequences in, in, in that film that are, that shootout with, with the highway patrol on the, on the compound, the Native American compound where he has the 50 caliber up in the barn. The coverage, the coverage is, is Orson Welles, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah. Yeah. It's, you know, Don Segal. It's brilliant. I mean, he's got a camera under the wheel of every car there, so that you get to watch, you watch people die underneath the cars, let alone what's going on, you know, and, and, and the, and the, the highway patrol

• 42:20Speaker 02

  vehicles are slowly deteriorating, you know, in, in sequence, in continuity, as it, as it progresses, you know, and just amazing.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  That is going on my list.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love what a fan you are of everything.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I'm a fanboy. I'm a fanboy.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Well, we gotta, we're gonna, you know, let the man go. We gotta let him go to the living life.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  You gotta let me go, cause I gotta, I'll, I'll go do a con somewhere and I'm gonna run up and tell Ron Perlman how much I love him, you know?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta attack him.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  I'm just a fanboy like everybody else.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Can we do a lightning round with you?

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, cause I, cause you being a fanboy, I saw this one great interview with Aretha Franklin, and they were asking her about all the, the, all the other great singers of all time, and she was giving quick reactions to each of them, and, and you are the Aretha Franklin of horror movies, in my opinion.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  More like, I would actually probably say the urethra Franklin. I'm just trying to have fun here. I'm trying to have fun, I'm sorry.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  So, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to get your opinion on other horror icons, real fast and rapid fire, would you mind?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think, yeah, do you start doing it?

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Well, I, I think we gotta, I think we have to salute Richard Brake, Geppetto.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Because Richard is becoming a great face like John Karadine, and, and, and I even think there's a bit of Christopher Lee to him.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  He's great in 31.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  And, and Richard's, you know, in real life, Richard's tall, and so, that, that's a, a great asset. Um, I love Anthony Hopkins.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  You know, I can't get enough of Anthony Hopkins, you know, i- i- in horror. Um, I don't have, I don't have- A Dracula, except for Gary Oldman.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Really?

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Gary Oldman is my Dracula.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Over Christopher Lee?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  No, Gary Oldman is my Dracula.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Woo!

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Cause I gotta, I've gotta use mine's eye, you know, I've gotta use mine's eye and the sense, his sense of period, you know, so I love that, but I gotta tell you, and I don't know the name of it, and maybe it's four, five years old, you're gonna gotta go online and figure it out, David Tennant, Doctor Who.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Broadchurch, David Tennant, I saw him on West End, the guy is brilliant, but David Tennant did a serial killer, a chain smoking serial killer.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Nilson.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I can't, I don't know what the name of that.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Dennis Nilson, it is, it's Nilson. Mindhunter. Yes.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  DS, DS.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Dez, it's about the, it's, it's, the movie's called Dez, and it's about the ser-

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yes, Dez!

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Yes, it's about the serial killer Dennis Nilson.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Well, he, and, and I'll tell you right now, I love that show Mindhunter.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  There were some performances on Mindhunter that blew my mind, but that performance by David Tennant is incredible, and everybody should see it, these are the things that are falling through the cracks, you know, that we have to get everybody watching, you know, because what happens is they, they see so much hype, and I, listen, I'm gonna go see Odyssey this afternoon, I can't wait, 70 millimeter.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Do you have any extra tickets?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  As soon as I sign off with you guys.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Do you have any extra tickets? Because there's so much tickets.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  There's so much hype about other stuff, that we get, we, we don't, no one's spending money on these little gems.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Like, like Dez, or, or, or to tell us about them, or to, or to, or to hype them, or, or, you know, make them, or, you know, uh, After Dark, or whatever that was, you know, but, but we got, these movies are great, I, I meet, I've never met anybody else except you guys that's seen, you know, Blue Ruin, which is just a perfect film.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  It's a perfect, it's a perfect film.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is. The Slow Burn Revenge movie, oh my god, and that actor is brilliant, I've seen him in lots of stuff.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  The guy that played the lead, I think, I'm not sure, but I think all those guys. I think they're all from the North Carolina School of Performing Arts.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yes, they're all from, it's like same guys that, uh, Danny McRice.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  And then they make one movie a year, you know, but they're really good. You know what? I think Angela Bettis, who's in that great movie, May. I think Angela Bettis is one of them, you know, in that crowd. They're just really talented, talented young people.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  What about the ultimate horror icon, Dick Cheney?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Dick Cheney, yes.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Shoot me in the face.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Classic film, Roger Corman, right?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  God, I'd love to see you haunt his dreams. Oh, God, that would be amazing for you to crawl into his nightmares.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Have you ever haunted your own nightmares?

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have not. I used to have snake nightmares. And I have, I have the actor's nightmare, you know, where I still am worried about my lines for Merchant of Venice or something, you know?

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, all the time.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  And I've hidden the script backstage, but I can't find it.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  I know. Well, honestly, Pinocchio Unstrung, it is gonna be available for VOD.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Skip the Odyssey. When you can't get tickets to the Odyssey, you'll see Pinocchio Unstrung.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Honestly, it's a good way to get you charged up. Get ready to go. You are going to love, honestly, I think everybody's gonna love the puppets in this.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Yes, I can't believe it's all practical.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  And we, and this for all, for all the hardcore horror fans out there, and, and I know I have some. Yeah, Pinocchio, it is Pinocchio, but it's Pinocchio Unstrung. We deliver the goods. You'll like it. Give yourself a little, a little summer nasty horror fix.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Go check it out, July 24th.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, that's any day now.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is coming out, man. It is coming out in two days.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  I, I was like, yeah, it's, it's gonna be at the theater in a couple of locations. You can check it out or VOD. Just watch it. It's so much fun.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  It's really fun.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Turn the lights off, get a pizza.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Crack a beer and watch it.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Not joking along, not joking, I've seen basically all of his movies, Reese's movies, and I think it's the best one.

• 48:15Speaker 03

  It is the best one. It's definitely, yeah, yeah, no, it's, you can see him really getting a hold of things here.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  It's pretty awesome.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  Well, they're fun too. They're fun too.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  I gotta go sand in line, you guys.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Go get them. Go get them. Go make your journey home.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  I gotta find my shield and my toga.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Oh, well, just go. You're not wearing pants. What does it matter?

• 48:40Speaker 02

  My high heeled sandals.

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