Exploring 976-EVIL - Robert Englund's directorial debut

[Music] Robert Englund is acted in well over a hundred projects and Counting in everything from movies to television however he'll forever be known as a household name in the horror community for his legendary character Freddy Krueger after the overwhelming success of The Nightmare on Elm Street series England was thinking about trying his hand at directing it was 1987 and he was just finishing his work on a Nightmare on Elm Street 3 dream warriors at the time 9 7 6 phone numbers were a huge thing 9 7 6 was a premium phone number you could call and be charged a higher rate usually well into the 2 to $3 range per minute it was originally used for phone sex people mostly guys would call a 976 number and talk to a live operator who would engage in sexy talk to them the ads were found in the backs of men's magazines and constantly ran during late night television 976 became so popular it branched out into one 900 numbers where they covered a variety of services everything from rock talk to video games to astrology you could even get messages from the quarries which was spoofed in an episode of The Simpsons if you wanted to you could even talk to the man himself Freddy Krueger England thought about a way to take this phenomenon and turn it into a horror movie what if you could call a 976 number and talk to the devil and thus 976 evil was born the script was written by Rhett Topham who recently wrote the rock and roll horror film Trick or Treat and brian helgeland who had just written the screenplay for a Nightmare on Elm Street for the dream master England took this and met with some producers at Syntel films according to him he pitched his head off and vomited his ideas all over them until they got excited with England's popularity in the horror community the prospect of him directing his own feature based on an also popular service was too good to pass up his concept was that a nerdy high school kid has an overbearing religious mother and is constantly bullied in school he discovers a hotline to hell and over time becomes possessed which gives him evil powers he uses to get revenge for the cast he hired Steven Jeffries who was evil ed in 1985 s Fright Night although it wasn't fright night that made England hired the actor it was his role in the 1986 crime drama at close range Jeffries would play the role of hoax the troubled teen who turn evil hoaxes overbearing mother played by Sandy Dennis who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the hero spike they hired Patrick O'Brien England said he reminded him of a young Marlon Brando Spike's girlfriend Suzy was played by Leslie Dean England saw her in an episode of 21 Jump Street and thought she'd be perfect for the role Robert Picardo was hired for the small role of mark dark the owner of the 976 company England wanted the movie to be like a horror film noir with some comic-book style elements he had the film storyboard and look like the panel's of a comic book since this was the late 80s the visuals were all practical England hired makeup effects master Kevin Jaeger the two had become good friends after working together on numerous Nightmare on Elm Street films with Yaeger doing the Freddy makeup Yaeger was also the lead guitarist in trick or treat with a budget of under two million dollars it was relatively low-budget they started filming in the fall of 1987 in and around Los Angeles California they filmed on-location when possible and built sets when they had to the movie theater was a miniature they filmed using a process called intra vision intra vision was first used in the 1981 film Outland starring Sean Connery it's been used in everything from standby me to Megaforce intra vision was a front projection process that allowed filmmakers to view a finished composite of live action and plate photography through the camera's viewfinder on set and in real time the plate in this case was the movie theater the doors in the ticket counter were real but the rest was the miniature the miniature was about two feet high and four feet long with real blinking lights and a full light-up Marquis it was a lot of work but much cheaper than having to find a location and pay for its use the posters on display were some of the directors favorites the Texas Chainsaw Massacre creepers and the Evil Dead they used this process for a few other scenes like the pit to hell in hoaxes living room while working on the film England met set director Nancy booth and the two hit it off they started dating and Nancy was leaving messages in the sets for Robert defined while going over the dailies little things like the ar+ and graffiti in the bathroom the devil voice on the phone was England himself he was happy with it although he said he should have changed his laugh to send a little less like Freddy England wanted to make the film have a religious angle which is showcased through his fish motif after spike makes his first call the sky rains fish is a biblical warning which Lucy mistakes is a miracle England said it was an unusual experience for him because he was standing off-camera on a ladder throwing buckets of fish in an oscar-winning actress throughout the film you could see fish numerous times they also had fun with the film by incorporating little things that had to do with the devil the phone number the order of deviled eggs el Diablo and datura stramonium known as The Devil's weed this was the plan on the card as well as outside Lucy's house later in the film Lucy's house is frozen because yes indeed hell had frozen over England was a fan of the British pop soul band simply read while filming he choreographed a love scene between spike and Susie to holding back the years simply read was unknown at the time and England got a quote to get the rights to this song for ten thousand dollars for the film he pleaded with the producers but they refused shortly after that the song explodes and goes to number one on the Billboard charts the producers were kicking themselves because they could have had a major song tied to the film for very little comparatively needless to say after the song hit number one and there was no way they could afford it so they had to use something else the themes for the death in the movie were partially inspired by a Nightmare on Elm Street in that what you fear comes back to haunt you Susie's afraid of spiders so she's killed by them speaking of which hoax calls forth an army of tarantulas to kill Susie they hired spider Wranglers to control the arachnids essentially what they did was sit off-camera with elongated straws and whenever they needed them to move they'd blow on them the movie had a few oh ma jizz Susie's death was an homage to Janet Leigh's death in psycho the bowler JJ's wearing was an homage to a Clockwork Orange the character of mark dark was meant to be the devil to show this they added the subtlety of having Robert Picardo his hair or form little horns England is terrified of glass death scenes and movies so he put that into his film with this woman being killed by a picture window blowing out England said he always liked girls in the Catholic schoolgirl outfit and by putting Suzy in the getup he was kind of working through something the vacuum tube in the film didn't really work they just had a prop guy drop the vessel in the tube and they added the noise and post throughout the film hoax had three stages of makeup after he begins his possession the first is a slightly deranged look but still normal in the second his features are sharper and his hairs longer they call this his Michael Jackson stage then the third was full-on demonic with scaly skin cat eyes and claws on his hands and feet to get the cats to stay on the corpse of Lucy and a dummy that they stuffed full of tuna England and Jaeger didn't want to let the audience down so they made sure to amp up the gore in the film they finished filming and moved into post England presented his cut to the studio and they thought it was a little too long about 15 minutes or so he took it back and trimmed some of the more superfluous details from the film most of what was cut really didn't matter a few seconds here a few there things like a longer shot of the diner or a gang member walking down an alley however there were some things that were cut that did add more to the film when Lucy first encounters the fish she gathers him up and puts him in her refrigerator and freezer so when the reporter comes to the house she opens up the fridge and they spill all over the place another was a scene with hoax in the principal it showed yet a bit of a crush on her which then showed why he felt betrayed by her later the biggest scene that was cut was when JJ gives Suzy a ride home the two were talking and the scene humanizes JJ to the point of where it made the audience feel bad for him then they twist that by making him attacker and almost raper she gets away and goes home which explains why she's so on edge when she's making her dinner England trimmed the film down and delivered a leaner 92 minute cut to be released into theatres after finishing with 976 Evil England returned to the nightmare series with the nightmare Tom Street for the dream master which was released on August 19 1988 and was number one at the box office making almost 13 million dollars it stayed in the top spot for three weeks it made over 49 million in its domestic run it was the most successful in the series up to that point by contrast 976 evil opened on March 24th 1989 and despite having the horror icons name all over it the film opened in 17th place imagines Poland close to three million dollars over its theatrical run when the movie was released on VHS they used the extended version which was the original cut England made with the exception of the attempted rape scene the movie did well enough on home video that the studio greenlit a sequel that went direct a video in 1992 and was directed by jim wynorski the only returning cast member from the original was patrick o'brian although they did bring in buck flower who makes just about any movie better Robert Englund was sad the movie did so poorly and returned to acting he had high hopes for the film he said I want 976 evil to be very American a sort of remnant to Edward Hopper's world a romanticized wrong side of the tracks a place that is sort of funky with a little zap comix kind of charm it's a nasty profane evil little movie he didn't direct another film until 2008 skilar pad he hasn't directed again since the best thing to come out of this movie was his meeting and falling in love with Nancy booth the two were married in 1988 and are still together today Rhett Topham wrote some episodes of Freddy's nightmares but left the industry after that brian helgeland on the other hand was much more successful he went on to write conspiracy theory man on fire Mystic River and won an Oscar for Best Writing for LA Confidential he's also moved on to directing with payback a Knight's Tale and 42 he's currently working on a game of Thrones spin-off movie Kevin Yaeger continued to work on the nightmare series and went off to create another horror icon the Chucky doll in the child's play series he also directed the fourth Hellraiser film Hellraiser bloodline but due to dimension pictures most likely Harvey Weinstein rieta ting the film against his wishes he disowned it and had his name removed it now uses the notorious directed by Alan Smithee pseudonym 976 evil is a different sort of horror film while it does have a lot in common with other horror films such as the revenge angle the overly religious mother and the good kid going bad it still ties it together with a 976 angle that helps to set it apart not hugely apart but different enough the movie was recently released on blu-ray and it includes the theatrical and the home video version while there are some things in the home video version that make the film better overall most of the stuff that was cut was stuff that deserved to be cut it still doesn't include the attempted rape scene so it's not the full uncut version I heard awhile ago this was up for a remake and I thought really with today's audience would they even get the whole nine seven six angle it was pretty much gone by the late 90s and early 2000s a large part of what made this whole thing work was that nine seven six or the one nine hundred numbers were so huge at the time you could get just about anything I don't think would even make sense to remake this now despite having a horror icon at the helm nine seven six evil ended up being fun but not really all that scary however you want to know something that is scary Evangeline Lilly was once one of the call now girls for a 900 party-line commercial tonight I'm gonna do something just for me I'm going to live links it's the best place to meet local singles and you can try it for free [Music] you later dog [Music] you

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Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2018