If anyone knows true terror, it's Robert Englund. The horror icon haunted a generation with his portrayal of Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and its seven sequels, in addition to appearing in an array of genre cult classics. His latest gig finds him not only without makeup but also without a character to embody, as he hosts Travel Channel's new series, True Terror with Robert Englund, in which he interweaves twisted tales guided by newspaper accounts, expert commentary, and reenactments. In his own words, Englund describes True Terror as "comfort food from the dark side," equal parts The Twilight Zone and Unsolved Mysteries with a dash of Dateline.
"I think what drew me to it is the challenge of being an on-camera host personality," he confesses. Indeed, Englund draws influence from Rod Serling and Robert Stack, in addition to tapping into flamboyant parts of his persona, citing Vincent Price and Klaus Kinski. "It’s not True Terror with Robert Englund pretending to be somebody else. But, there’s a bit - I don’t want to say an embellishment, but a little dusting of all of those influences on my choices when I host." He also mentions the difficulty of transitioning between the series' on-screen appearances and voice-over narration. "I don’t always see all of the images that they’re shooting because we’re working different schedules at different times... It might be a really gothic image; it might be something violent; it might be something lyrical and elegiac; so you have to make that transition and make those decisions. It’s kind of a challenge, but I like it."
Unlike many of the shows that came before it, True Terror is based on documented accounts rather than hearsay. "It’s something you can tune into and learn something dark from the sort of underbelly of the American psyche," notes Englund. "But all of the stories began as journalism. They began as newspaper articles. And that’s what I think distinguishes it from two guys in a Louisiana swamp seeing a UFO." The series' Bigfoot segment was verified by an unlikely corroborator: "Our source is Teddy Roosevelt, president of the United States, on a hunting party in Montana with Native American guides." Another stand-out story covered in the first season occurred during the smallpox epidemic. Englund explains, "I had no idea that there was some scam between coroners and the guys that drove the charity wagons to the cemetery, coffin makers, and the last buck stopping with the gravedigger. That, in fact, people were literally being buried alive for profit. And this is as recently as late last century."
If afforded the opportunity of another season of True Terror, Englund would love to explore serial killer H.H. Holmes, as detailed in Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, which the host recently read. "It's about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the Columbian Exposition, and simultaneously America’s first serial killer, who exploited the growth of the fair and the growth in the population in Chicago and the country girls coming to town for the fair. There’s some estimates that he may have killed up to 200 people." He'd also like to delve into more Native American folklore. "We touch on it in a couple of segments, but there’s some interesting stuff with that, even with Native Americans and Sasquatch or Native Americans and their own ghost stories."
Englund equates horror and true crime to a communal experience akin to church. "I think people loved sitting in the dark together and being frightened together, especially younger people, because the younger people think they’re going to live forever... The only time you really confront death now, unless you have a sick relative or a friend, is in a horror movie or the thriller or the serial killer film, because we have an identification with the potential victim, the person in jeopardy. We’re emotionally involved. We have empathy and catharsis with that, and we sit in the dark together and respond to that in the old movie theaters. And I think it was multiplied... We’re there on the couch with the lights dimmed down, sitting by the glow of the flat screen, and we do surrender to that identification with the jeopardy of whatever person is being threatened in a horror film. And I think we need that. I think it’s just our way of kind of a substitution for dealing with our own mortality."
Once afraid of snakes, Englund faced his fear when he acted with a baby albino python in 2000's Python, and he hasn't personally experienced any supernatural occurrences outside of déjà vu. "I’ve walked into rooms that I’ve dreamed of before I entered them. And it’s happened a couple of times, which is really strange." But his mother used to tell him a story about her own ghost encounter as a sorority girl during the Los Angeles flood of 1938. "There was a loud knocking at the door, and she opened it up, and one of the sorority girls came in all wet... My mom made her a cup of coffee, and they talked for a while." The girl indicated that she was going to a boarding house up the road to stay with a friend and then left. "The next morning, the police came to the sorority house, and they told them that they had found this girl’s body. But they had found it 36 hours before, which would have been about 12 to 15 hours before my mother made a cup of coffee for her. And my mother... she went back and found the coffee cup, and it had lipstick on it."
The opening story of True Terror's premier episode involves a familiar subject to Englund: the dream world. On the subject of Freddy Krueger becoming a part of modern folklore, the man behind the makeup expounds, "The whole concept of Nightmare on Elm Street is very symbolic. I think, basically, it’s loss of innocence in America. The one clue that nobody ever picks up on; Freddy has the line, 'Every town has an Elm Street.' Well, every town also has a Broadway and a Main Street and an Oak Street; but Elm Street’s also the street that JFK was assassinated on in Dallas. That’s sort of the beginning of our loss of innocence and our distrust of government and our group American paranoia, and Wes [Craven] was sort of turning that around and making that also the loss of innocence for a generation and, in particular, young women."
While it remains unknown if Englund will ever return to his iconic role of Freddy Krueger for one more film, the veteran actor teases an exciting upcoming role on a popular series. "I’ve got something coming up that I’m going to be shooting later this month. I’m not allowed to talk about it, but it also is very challenging, on a show that’s terribly, terribly popular. And I’m looking forward to the fan reaction to that as well." Until then, catch him on True Terror with Robert Englund, premiering this Wednesday, March 18, on Travel Channel.
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