You're All Doomed: The Story Of The '80s Slasher Craze

between 1980 and 1989 too hard John Orr gave us well over 200 slasher flicks most of them were cheap and very few of them had much of a lasting impact on audiences aside from rabbit heart fans like us that is flaws and although we love most of these horrific endeavors taking the format of 70s classics such as black Christmas to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and of course quintessential slasher movie John Carpenter's Halloween studios realized they could make a lot of money chopping up teens so much so that the genre would collapse in on itself like a dying star before the decade was dead [Music] the early seventies and then a horror film with Wes Craven Co last House on the Left which had some notoriety and some success initially but as a byproduct both Wes and I got reputations as being people that would produce really disgusting stuff and cheap so if you want to puke in a bucket and cheap you know call Shawn and Wes finally I got to do some kids films in the late 70s I did a bad news bears kind of ripoff some cult here comes the Tigers and after we did that we had this notion of doing sort of had a soccer movie at that point everybody was saying what America really needs now is a good family film so Shawn and I'm set out and he got the funding and I love him we made two wonderful family films and once again America had lied it did not want to see a good family films evidently America wanted to see Halloween because in 1979 Halloween was absolutely raking in the box office dollars I was playing around titles and one of the titles that just came into my head at the time was Friday the 13th and out of frustration I said Friday the 13th Christ if I had a picture called Friday the 13th I could sell that I'm gonna make the scariest picture ever made it's gonna be called Friday the 13th so I said well my question and I went to school basically on the movie Halloween saw it once figured out what a good horror film would need first of all you have to start with a prior evil something that happened a long time ago that was really bad then you have to have a group of adolescents or slightly post adolescents who in an environment in which they cannot be helped by adults the other thing I learned from Halloween is that if you make love you get killed so I had to figure out a way to do that we took out this ad and variety that said Friday the 13th the most terrifying film ever made was a great big block letters crashing through a mirror he was very open about the fact that he was definitely gonna make people sit up and watch this in shown and I talked about all the possible places and it could be and I came up with summer camp how far is it to Camp Crystal Lake they have to watch themselves be thinned out one by one I had some theater owners from Boston who had invested initially in Last House on the Left and they came in for a meaningful chunk with all that stuff at hand suddenly I was able to raise the money to make a picture called Friday the 13th could you catch up when we were doing the set up for the movie we heard this kind of Walter corny the function of crazy Ralph is to set the tone for this horrible geographic area you're just a cast nobody that wasn't willing to go out and get dirty and have special effects applied to them and just accept it on faith we're gonna go out and do all this stuff but I but I swear to god it's gonna be okay as long as I have you'll do anything everybody was young and over acting terribly overacting everybody hey wasn't that the road up for Camp Crystal Lake back there we shot this picture in a tiny little town New Jersey called Blairstown we shot completely below the radar out of a Boy Scout camp camp Nobby Bosco that's what it was which stands for North Bergen Boy Scouts we had to wait for the Boy Scouts to all go home and go back to school before we were able to come in make a contribution to the Boy Scouts and camp out there basically for three weeks before we shot the movie you've captain bees already Jack and Marcie are gonna get drenched we didn't actually have a real whole script we would get pages that day and they would change what we did have they change them the next day you know so it was kind of like we got to find out as we were going along well I have mrs. Voorhees the image always was of me was that I was this girl next door and of course I've always said that there wasn't a gal that ever lived next door to me that I wanted to be like I got a pretty Betsy Palmer had worked in television on the morning talk shows and she was squeaky-clean comparable to the Doris Day type I was always trying to prove that I wasn't the girl next door I had a Mercedes which I'd had a number of years and it broke down on the Connecticut Turnpike so I said to myself I need a new car universe and I went out to go shopping for a car and I found a little Scirocco I thought oh that's what I want I want a cool little car like this and so the phone rang and my agent said how would you like to do a movie I said great that'll pay for the car that I want to buy and he said well that was you know there's just one other thing I have to tell you anything it's a horror film and I said oh no so the script came and I read it nice and what a piece of what monster could've done this and I said oh nobody is ever going to see this it will come and it will go and I'll have my Scirocco so real I kind of plastic part of Friday the 13th was taking mom and apple pie and standing it upside down and saying you've never seen a mother like this I didn't get up there and try to play a bad lady in fact I tried to play a good lady who had gone a little wrong but that was because she wanted to save more children she didn't want them to die and I couldn't let them live in this place again this was the mother that I never had the one who would protect you and go to any horrible lengths to do it and you do you want to do that you want to all of a sudden get very kind of and I was beginning to do that and shines would say no no no no Betsy he said to us play it straight that's all kill her mommy kill her what we needed to do was create something that had an element of circus in it but we had no idea how to do any of this stuff I think Steve miner said we should hook up with some Tom Savini who would work with George Romero and Dawn of the Dead he would be looking through my screenplay and me saying well I noticed you have a hatchet in the face on page 38 or whatever it was now and he turned to Shawn and say do you want a fake face and a real hatchet or you want to fake hatchet in a real face Savini just said anything's possible [Music] there was a highly technical special effect that literally they could only shoot once I mean when that arrow comes through and the blood squirts up and Tom Savini is underneath the cot and he is squirting blood into this tube with this plunger so that can come up through the fake rubber chest after the shot Shawn says cut and everybody applauds and Tom Savini comes out from underneath the bed covered in blood and it's sheeps blood and he's an encompass like this and it's just awful and somebody says what happened and he said well I I started to hit the pump and the fitting gave way so blood was going all over the place so he had to literally blow on the pipe to make the blood come up through the arrow and then look like Kevin Bacon was squirting all over the place if you're gonna sit there and blow sheep's blood up through a tube in Kevin Bacon's alleged chest you're giving a lot and then of course you get the one shot with the hatchet in the face which is of course the styrofoam hatchet glued onto the real face and that was the other thing about it you waited for the next one that happened it's about to build up to the tension it's about the don't go in there's it's about oh don't go in there one of the most memorable aspects is the music it's iconographic now excite people come up to me oh you did and everybody thinks is cha cha cha I like cha cha cha what are you talking about I got this idea from the picture there's a close-up boat Betsy Palmer's now kill it the mouth is going to kill him okay mommy so I got the wacky idea to take kill her Bonnie the first letter of first two letters have killed ki and ma ma and then there was a gizmo we had : Echoplex which were using a lot in the film I went to the microphone and I don't know why but like I just went and it went then [Music] oh so I think it's obviously a success because everybody remembers it and we were at the at the last last last penultimate draft and Sean said Viktor we need a chair jumper for the end and I said okay and I went back to my drawing board and borrowed from all of the best horror films I've ever seen and so we have a dream sequence with Adrian King floating around in a rowboat and then the hand coming out of the water and it's Jason the ghost story is over so you can turn on the lights so dawn comes up and she's on this beautiful placid lake when the kid comes up out of the bottom of that lake comes up musically at a point where it's all so unexpected [Applause] then you had the audience the part of jason's we wound up hiring are eve lehman he came out and did it we were both so cold and freezing they had the heaters there and you know they had towels as soon as we came out and we did it a few times I know cuz we're gonna get it we're gonna get it right don't worry about this is it but I certainly did not suggest in that team that he was hydrocephalic or or deformed in any way Tommy Savini showed me this Polaroid and I didn't have my glasses on him at that night and I said now who is this he said oh that's your son Jason I said why does he look so strange he said oh he's a [ __ ] I said what I said that wasn't in the script he said no but they thought he didn't look weird enough so we are making them up because of the nature of the nightmare ending and because they Shawn had Tom Savini on board it's such a fabulous makeup artist they turned him into sort of a monstrous looking cretins I mean he just looked awful we had screenings for ourselves then we had the first screening that I recall for Paramount and if you call the ending when that head pops up I swear people just jumped at it and I think that's the thing that's sold it and the next thing I know paramount has bought the movie and is gonna do this massive release in all these theaters I'm going wow Warner Brothers took foreign distribution paramount took domestic at that point Frank Mancuso was running distribution for Paramount and he made a choice to take this no star independent film release it nationally with a national budget and see what happens and the notion of doing an independent film that would ever be released nationally had never occurred [Music] the opening night on Broadway it was just it was packed do they know what they're and they jumped every single time something happened there were real screams screaming running out of the theater in the middle of the film just screaming and yelling the best part of watching project at 13th in theaters and I was watching the audience say don't go in there yeah I mean literally talking to the screen saying girl don't go in there you don't want to go there and Shaun would just go on I got him I got a wall the kids had come out of the theater telling the kids are coming in this year to all you better look out or there was so much fun and it became a really big social event the next thing I knew I was looking at the Variety results and we were in the top ten people poured into the theaters to see this and kept coming and kept coming and kept Tommy they started talking about 10 million 20 million 30 million dollars when the film was released by and large it was dismissed by the critics as being exploitative and just not really worthy of attention the critics universally hated it I read that that I'm really awful and that the movie sucks and that we all suck uh one of them was fit to be tight because I had done this movie how dare I let my viewing audience down by playing this horrible woman he said you write to her so there were people who were disappointed in me parents and educators would say this is not a productive use of your time the feminists didn't like it particularly who's gonna die well the [ __ ] gonna die for sure and a good person the virgin she will survive did she live because you were a good girl I never bought into the notion of sex equals death that the reason everybody gets punished in horror films is because they're sexually promiscuous I would certainly raise that if you make love before you're married you are gonna get punished somehow we weren't we were just messing I'm not sure whether the vengeful moralistic tone of the movie was anything I was thinking of consciously I was basically working from what I had seen in my own movie going experience prior to that that if you were following your lustful heart that you were going to get nailed for it that was at least the Puritan ethic that I was brought up with this but it was getting interesting I didn't look at it that way as you know the victim I actually thought it was an empowering position I lived have I written something that caused people to go off you know if there's a paranoid schizophrenic got their who's seen Friday the 13th 147,000 times should I feel guilty if he goes up and murdered somebody ma'am we didn't find any boy can he still be we started talking about doing a sequel within days really of the initial success and that came directly from paramount you killed eight people maybe next year you should kill 12 people my friends in Boston felt it was really important to bring back this Jason character well I thought that was just the worst idea I ever heard I was completely wrong there was no hockey mask which became one of the icons in the film it was never my idea to put a hockey mask on anybody because I had nothing to do with parts - through whatever I said I don't know who this guy in the hockey mask is I would never have done what I did to camp blood if my little boy hadn't drowned I said he's at the bottom of the lake Friday the 13th kind of became its own little industry to MIT the most important thing you can do in a film career is make money because if you make money but people will let you make more films and take other chances and nobody will blame them so I've had a lot of opportunities given to me as a result of doing this one little film in New Jersey oh god help my kids maybe producing Friday the 13th movies long after I'm gone even people who aren't huge fans of the horror film in general still point to Halloween as a magnificent film groundbreaking film but on the other hand Friday the 13th which came out only two years after Halloween is looked upon with really universal derision but the truth is Friday the 13th is actually an extremely well-made and suspenseful film the only difference is that while the murders and Halloween were in the shadows off camera dare I say classy the Friday the 13th they were in your face you actually saw a real live decapitation without a cutaway in full view of the audience and audiences had never seen that before they were prepared for it and it was really surprised that I was I got a taste of it they wanted more bloody birthday day overwhelming film you won't soon forget when you know how to celebrate every day is Mother's Day final exam he's come back on the one night they were celebrating New Year's Eve he was out ending that there by this latest motion picture is another you're making nothing but really big films now we're talkin the last one was money pit which st yeah [Applause] they're good whether you're Jackie Gleason yeah it's big time and we're making with only big time folks so I mean the big day when there was a time I guess when you obviously we're not in the big tide did not make big time comes for a great majority of my life as a matter of fact what was the first film you made the first actual appearance on camera I made in a movie was a movie called he knows you're alone which is a epic hack-and-slash of film you remember the hack-and-slash period of filmmaking in which every movie had a knife you know the girl would be at home when they pan across the kitchen there would be a nice loaded loaded with knives and she'd hear a noise should go off and under part of the house can you come back without a knife type of movie better how long ago was it this was eight hundred years ago this is 1943 78 79 so was that before your television show yeah it was it was I played a guy in this movie I always said that if this was Gilligan's Island I would have played the professor it was there with that bad and did was the thing released it actually would can we were making it when the guy wrote it who was a very nice guy very talented right it was called shriek told while we're making was called the uninvited what did this mean nobody really know and then MGM no they cut it together and release it as Blood Wedding finally finally came out of the title he knows your lungs your look the whole title was he knows you're alone so don't go in the house cuz he's gonna stab you with a knife and this is the all of the victims were surprised that was a deal there's a psycho killer had to kill Brides now he could either walk into you know a place where a wedding was going on and like slash away oriented over here somebody talking about their wedding or go to Bloomingdale's look through the registry I just yeah find out who's getting married number seven oh nine what's the pattern on the knives [Music] I'm most interested in fear the emotional fear for example why after seeing psycho were so many people afraid to take shower not me you were afraid right you bet fascinate people pay to be scared when you think about it at linear college they have the finest security the best teacher student relations strictly enforced curfews and killer you had a situation where one film led to another led to another it wasn't as if you know the National Endowment of the Arts was throwing money at these producers because the slasher film was really helping the culture it was that filmmakers cinema by accident hit a pine a formula that was so embraced by the mainstream movie going teenage audience that they just took off and for years and years they producers and directors could really do no wrong any shitty movie with the holiday in the title with the mask killer that was attacking usually scantily clad dressed females just did bananas at the box office one terrifying night about speakable evil New Year's in the early 80s when the slasher film was in its heyday this correspond did with the birth of the home video generation so you had a whole new demographic of kids of fans loved and devoured these films we're never in a million years would have been able to see them in the multiplex success breeds success an imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery and nowhere is that more apparent than in the slasher film so while these great American slashers were in their heyday you also had other countries trying to copy their success you had bloody moon out of Spain had snap shot or the day after Halloween from Australia also from Australia you had nightmares also known as stage fright pieces which was financed by American money it had a Spanish director it was set in the US but actually filmed in Spain and then of course you had all we think of as prototypical American slashers like My Bloody Valentine happy birthday to me from the territory they were really Canadian tax sheltered movies which were usually produced directed and starred Canadian filmmakers now the latest breaking Eyewitness News with Jerry Dunphy Christine lund ed Arnold for Ted Dawson with sports Johnny mountain with the weather and the Eyewitness News team horror movie opened tonight in Hollywood officially and all over the Los Angeles area there's a lot of controversy over this one which is why we're paying attention to it feminists in particular said that this is a film that promotes harm to women and Martin has more on it right now and Christine the movie is maniac and the billboards themselves are pretty gruesome movie goers tonight told me the plot is a man who hated his mother goes out and kills women besides the billboard the picture is also advertising as the movie the LA Times wouldn't run ads for now president Eleanor Smeal had this reaction to the Billboard all I can say is that when you talk about violence towards women and brutality this just typifies it and I think that it is shocking and it contributes to the injury of woman tonight I asked moviegoers who had just seen the film if they thought it was potentially injurious to women yeah I'm gonna be scared to walk out at night really now you think it was unfair to women how about you what did you think of it I think it was a sick movie it was where they it was kind of stupid you know but I wasn't as scary as I planned it to be like other movies I seen like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or something like that did you think that a movie like that would would inspire violence towards women I think some guys might have ideas watching this you know if they're sick - coming in here and you never know two young men who were about to see maniac said movies are fiction it's real life that's scary bothers you to see some guy like Bittaker for instance who's convicted of doing torture and murder on young girls but it doesn't bother you to see this well no not really because the movie well it's just a movie it's fiction but bittakers case that's true it freaks me out a little this doesn't give you nightmares No you are a young woman do you think it might yeah definitely I wouldn't be seeing the problem woman so far the movie management there told me the movie is doing a fair business it's British we look back at these slasher films and we think that they're fun and cheesy and that'll be harmless forms of entertainment at the time the country was really in an uproar over them they were looked at you know along with heavy metal one of the chief corrupters of America's youth if you must hide if you can scream if you are able but above all if you are alone don't answer the phone [Music] rated R TV commercials like that one exploiting the plight of women in danger those ads have been saturating television for the past two years and the summer and fall of 1980 are the worst yet they signify a disturbing new trend at the movie box office one we'll be discussing on this special edition of sneak previews across the aisle for me as Gene Siskel film critic of the Chicago Tribune and this is Roger Ebert film critic of the Chicago sun-times now normally on sneak previews Roger and I review new movies this week however we're going to be looking at a group of recent films that have some very ugly things in common all of these films are thrillers featuring extreme violence directed at young women to put it bluntly what you see in most of these films is a lot of teenage girls being raped or stabbed to death usually both this is a depressing development in American movies and on this show we'll examine the nature of this trend and then speculate on why we're getting so many of these films and getting them now a lot of movie goers adults and teenagers both go to see these are rated films and they assume well they're just going to see a bunch of routines scary pictures but oftentimes they're really shocked how awful these films are to begin with one of the things the so called women in danger films all have in common is that they portray women as helpless victims and after you set through a dozen or so of these films as Gina Ryan Jean and I have unfortunately had to they all fall into the same pattern a woman or a young girl is shown a lone isolated and defenseless and then come suspense building scenes where the girl think she's about to be attacked but she isn't and then just when you think everything's going to be okay and nothing's gonna happen a crazy killer Springs out of the shadows an attack sir and frequently the killer sadistically threatens the victim before he strikes you know a lot of people think that the battle has been won in Hollywood on films about women they think that now women have parity with men that they're strong women images in the films Jill Clayburgh and an unmarried woman Jane Fonda in every picture she makes got it all wrong findin Clayburgh make up one film a year maybe right these films are coming out week after week playing to millions of people and the dominant image in American films today on women is not founded in Clayburgh it's women like that cowering in the corner knives being brandished in their faces being raped being sliced apart that's what's going on in American movies that's why we're doing the show I think a lot of people have the wrong idea they identify these films with earlier thrillers like psycho or even in our recent film like Halloween which we both like these films aren't in the same category these films hate women and unfortunately the audience's that go to them don't seem to like women too much either now we go to see these films and movie theaters these are not the kinds of movies where they have nice private little screenings for the critics and to sit there surrounded by people who are identifying not with the victim but with the attacker with the killer who are cheering these killers on is a very scary experience yeah the movies are played so that they really are in favor almost of the killer and really against the women cowering back I don't think we can stress this too strongly that we're not talking about it just a couple of films it seems like we're getting new ones of these kind of films every other week that amounts to a major movie trend here are some examples there's prom night with teenage girls being slaughtered at their high school prom the ad campaign is if you're not back by midnight you won't be coming home there's don't go in the house a guy who was tortured by his mother burns three woman's of death the cell line here is you have been warned and there's terror training which six college students at a masquerade party on a train stalked by a psychopath and there's the boogeyman a supernatural killer haunts a house here's one of the ads for the boogeyman you can't hide from him [Laughter] [Music] [Music] by the time they believe in him it'll be too late [Music] the boogeyman he's going to get you and we're out to get the boogeyman before he gets you in you're four bucks now a week after week these other kinds of movies were getting it is relentless every film company seems to be making one of these movies or distributing one that some fast buck artists has already made in addition to the films we've already mentioned this season we also have he knows you are alone Motel hell phobia Mother's Day schizoid silent scream and I Spit on Your Grave which is easily the worst of this disgusting bunch the newspaper ads for these films are bold and the way they suggest terror but in no way in many cases do the ads really prepare you for the kind of explicit violence we end up getting on the screen decapitations are not uncommon and shots repeated stabbing shots of all parts of women's bodies are grotesquely routine think at this point somebody is probably wondering why why why Natalie why is this happening I have a theory in the last couple of months I've been seeing these pictures I'm convinced it has something to do with the growth of the woman's movement in America in the last decade I think that these films are some sort of primordial response by some very sick people of men saying get back in your place women these women in the films are typically portrayed as independent as sexual as enjoying life and the killer typically not all the time but most often is a man who is sexually frustrated with these new aggressive women and so he strikes back at them he throws knives at them he can't deal with them he cuts them up he kills them get back in your place it's against the women's movement I think you're basically right gene you know after you've set through hour after hour of this complete trash you begin to ask yourself what did these female victims do to deserve the horrible attacks they undergo in these films what was their crime why is it suddenly open season on young women in the movies well one thing that most of the women victims do have is in common is that they do act independently and I agree with you on that point to one degree or another there are liberated women but choose to act on their own in the moment that a woman starts making decisions for herself in these movies you can almost bet she's going to end up paying with her life and horribly what's your problem you and kids like you bury one such family I was particularly shrouded in controversy was 1984 as Silent Night deadly night the TV spots depicted a man dressed as Santa carrying an axe and murdering people causing a rage parents to pick at the movie during its opening weekend and subsequently got the movie banned whether they clearly had not seen the film many felt that it was wrong for Santa to be portrayed as a killer not knowing the fact that it was actually a deranged a psychologically tortured man dressed as Santa during the killing as opposed to Kris Kringle himself still despite the waves and waves of negative press for a time being the slasher genre continued to prosper I would go on and introduce us to its biggest icon yet Freddie is the Ultimate Nightmare a sociable he's a party animal ready rocks like Freddy's like addicting and you know it gets better and better each one scariest movie I've ever seen a long time I don't think I'll sleep tonight [Music] when right a director Wes Craven first imagined dream stalker Freddy Krueger the idea is bouncing around in his head were equally sick and clever while sleeping people are at their most vulnerable making it nearly impossible to stop Krueger from often whomever he pleases inquiry imaginative ways furthermore nobody can stay awake forever so eventually whether it's after a week or two months or longer they're going to enter into Freddy's domain and the outcome won't be a good story Freddy was a child murderer the parents of his victims burn him alive and about a decade later he comes back and starts killing the remaining children of those parents in their dreams it was inspired by I think three articles in the LA Times over a period about a year and a half the first one was kind of sketching it was the story of a young man dying after having a severe nightmare and they couldn't figure out how it happened Matt eclis and then there was a second story about nine months later and nobody the newspaper didn't seem to correlate it they didn't seem to remember the other story and then the third story and I'm the one that really made me feel I have to write a script about this was this kid all these kids were Asian all over Southeast Asia all come out of kind of war zones from Vietnam and Pol Pot yeah you know the coaling fields and their families had gone through the location camps and then at the end of the United States this kid was having nightmares and he said somebody's after me in my nightmare if I sleep I know I'm going to die and his father was a physician and he said I'll give you sleeping pills you'll be all right we've come through a horrible time now in America you're safe and the father started giving the kid sleeping pills we could supposedly was taking them but he stayed up and he stayed up for something like five days it was amazing just you know keeping himself awake almost by putting matchsticks in his eyes and finally fell asleep while the family was watching television and they took him upstairs and put him to bed and the parents later said we all convinced that the crisis was over and in the middle of night they heard screaming and thrashing him ran into his room and he was like kicking and screaming and they got to I'm gonna just felt bad and he's dead and there were three things that really just made me think this is a movie one was they did an autopsy on him and nothing was wrong there's no physical reason for it the second was that they found the family said they found all the sleeping pills that supposedly had taken hidden so you'd obviously put them in his mouth and when dad wasn't looking it was right back out because he didn't want to sleep and the third thing was this incredible thing this kid had run at an extension cord behind his bedroom curtains and into the closet he had a mr. coffee and there was black coffee so he had a source of keeping awake even when he was in his room supposedly sleeping it was just so it was heart-rending because this kid he was right you know he died as soon as he fell asleep Freddie was based on I think was based on a man who scared me when I was a little kid you know again my father was dead it was always a sense that I had it but like nobody's around to really protect us you know his dad's gone and I just was lying in my bed we're in a second-story apartment and heard this guy sort of mumbling grumbling and trembling long and what's the pin down it was this guy kind of dressed like Freddie you know dark jacket sort of brimmed hat that they wore in those days and he stopped and somehow just look straight up at me and I just I was so scared you know I just like jumped back and I was back in the shadows waiting for the sound of him going away and waited waited seemed like I waited forever finally well he must have gone and so I went back to the window and he was there and he just went you know and then he started walking down the sidewalk looking over his shoulder like and he went into our building so I don't know who that guy was but he became Freddie my brother went down with a baseball bat and the guy ran away so my big brother saved my life who knows he might have been just thought out I'll scare this kid for the hell of it so that that became the basis of Freddie just the sort of an adult that took delight in terrifying a child was the basis of it and then the rest was actually a quite intellectual process of what will he wear and I thought you know like an overcoat would be good and then I thought of the idea of a janitor so because you know I taught Greek mythology and that descent into Hades was always going down and fire and so made his job basically being in Hades you know the sweater the sprite sweater was a scientific American article on the two colors that are the most difficult for the human retina to see side-by-side stuff of it that was those colors and there were a lot of films being made with villains that had masks but I wanted him to build talk so I said instead of a hockey mask or whatever I'll give him a mask of scar tissue and that'll be the way that your parents killed him and the final thing with the claws was you know we went through the usual thing of a hunting knife show it'd be you know a scythe that should it be you know all this crap in it so I said I'll go back to the most primal weapon you can think of man I thought well it would be tooth and claw you know what men faced before they had real weapons and then I thought well cave bears you know that clutch I'm getting grabs you and then combine that with the human hand you had kind of the elements of both the ancient and then they were you know highly evolved dexterous thinking that makes human so incredibly unique our hands you know so putting those two things together just made made something was pretty powerful it's funny a friendly originally I was thinking he should be a guy in his 70s and we looked at a lot of you know older gentlemen and they you know I think if you get to be 70 you're kind of like mellow you know you've got you've seen it all and you're just grateful to be alive and life has a lot more kind of preciousness to it and so and then Robert Utley came in and it was like not this guy you know he's too young and he just had such an enthusiasm for it and I had found that and then we looked at a lot of big stuntmen - and I found stuntmen who were very also very gentle people in general that they they were so in control of their body in physicality they didn't have these issues you know that people that are a little bit more normal and you know we're beat up as kids or whatever and Robert Englund just had no hesitation to play something really evil and I realized that that was what it took it didn't take an old guy didn't take a big guy it took somebody who was comfortable you know looking inside and saying what would I be like if I was utterly evil a lot of people can't do that you know they don't want to go there so they'll play a kind of bowl you know kind of Tobago though kind of do a jokey but you know Robert was willing at least the first one to be serious and that's what was the beginning of these films for me was I believe it was my second audition for the film I went to a casting office in Hollywood and it was very crowded there were it seemed like 12 or 15 you know young women and we're each going in one by one and I got to go in with Amanda whis and I we went in together and I read for Wes and I remember during the reading it just I was just compelled to make my fingers into this shape and say it was just a part in the dialogue where I'm describing my dream and I just had this little Club it just just became alive somehow and and I think Wes really liked and he let everybody go except for me and and he came out and he said I'd like you to know that I'd like you to be Nancy and I just that never happens in Hollywood they always have your agent call your people and it's always it's never like that and that's the kind of man Wes what I always felt when we were filming the first movie that it's rare in in modern films and certainly the films that I've seen in my life where the protagonist and the antagonist are so clearly defined and represent actually represent good and evil with no equivocation at all and Robert Englund and I talked a lot about the underlying you know symbolism of our our battle and Robert is a very intelligent person and very highly trained actor so he in a lot of ways encouraged me to think of the battle on much like more you know archetypal level if I can use that word and and so and he and I even today talk about it as if we're talking about a Greek tragedy we don't we've never thought of it literally it's popular teenager slasher film we always have had the respect for it that Wes was able to create a modern myth about you know the struggle between good and evil and and as the issues of nancies became more developed first you just see her as a teenager then you see her as the child of a divorced family and then you see her as a person who's very concerned about her friends and then in the later films she's trying to take care of teenagers and a social worker type and then finally she's a mother of her own child and a wife she you know and we often you know wes is very I think concerned that her story was always toward the good and what our what our ideals and virtues are all about in our society and we always talked about those things and and Robert and I we enjoy being enemies and we were always you know playing those kind of tricks and stuff on each other as that after we had finished the first film it was it was such a small film I mean our budget was so small and I and when we had this screening we had a little screening room at Warner Brothers and me and Johnny had arrived late and Amanda Wes and and all of the people had come to my house first and we'd had you know a little celebration we got to the theater and there were no seats for us so we had to sit on the floor and the fire marshal came and told us we couldn't show the film because the theater wasn't big enough so some people either left or we ended up sitting on the floor I mean it was so small film written all over it you know and our clothes it all come from the you know Salvation Army basically it was some new socks thrown in here and there it was pathetic when I think about it and and then they made the second one I thought I can't believe they're doing that I mean of course it was successful so I could believe that they were doing that but to me I was very glad like I don't want to be part of that and then I remember a trick-or-treater came to my door who was dressed as Freddy and I went he's big he's a household name Freddy Krueger is it and I was in college at the time and frat fat fraternities were having parties and people coming dressed as Freddy and no one ever came dressed as Nancy but if people came dressed as Freddy and I and I thought well this is even getting bigger and and I realized this is this is what they're gonna make a lot of money off of and I never thought I'd be part of it again and West and West had a falling out with New Line Cinema's so I knew I was kind of attached to him and I knew I wouldn't be a part and then they let West write the third the screenplay for the third one and he called me and said I'd like to put your character back in and I'd only want to do this if you said now that you would be in it and you know the same gracious way that he always does things and I said he called me on my birthday I said this is the best birthday present I could have ever gotten I said this is and I assumed he would direct it and I was like of course I'm so excited and then he didn't he wasn't signed up to direct after all and Chuck Russell came in and he rewrote and so we made that film and you know by then it was just on its own nightmares they have a way of coming back first to have one then another and before you can screen yourself awake you find yourself plunging into a Nightmare on Elm Street three dream warriors yes once again its way into the [Laughter] that's right it's the return of cult hero Freddy Krueger the same wild maniac who helped turn the first two nightmares into video blockbusters nightmare 1 120,000 units nightmare to 180,000 units together these two hits spent over 50 weeks on Billboard's rental charts and for the past two summers Freddy's nightmares have been the nation's top video rental titles now it's Freddy's third time around and he's all set to claw his way beyond the right with the release of nightmares Green Freddy slashed his way to the top he's a media phenomenon with featured appearances on TV shows across the country it's the biggest nightmare ever but nobody's going to lose sleep over this one well maybe the makers of platoon because for the very first time in history a small independent film has swept the weekend box office grosses and the top money-making film this past weekend is Nightmare on Elm Street 3 dream warriors with eight point eight million dollars in ticket revenues the number one movie in the country last week in Syracuse they called in the Mounted Police to control the crowds of theaters out in Los Angeles they chanted Freddy and guest spots on such nationally broadcast hits as Good Morning America and The Late Show with Joan Rivers Jax is become a real cult figure pretty slimy portrayal of Freddy Krueger with his razor edge but I know but thousand you don't know who would talk that here is a picture this is the third he's this is yeah can you get this on child okay it is his third film now called Nightmare on Elm Street the third one the movie is just open and it's a blockbuster they made thirty million dollars in one week alone that's telling me will will will you please welcome rich Robert Englund [Applause] oh don't leave home without but wait there's more and I ain't talking about a buddy back you sly somatic operator check out the awesome in-store onslaught we've done right video stores are in for their biggest nightmare ever beginning with Freddie's arrival on this ghastly in-store banner but a profile a traffic stopping wall poster a hair-raising 3d poster for your special media lightbox disgusting and a monstrous larger-than-life floor display guaranteed to have your customers screaming for a nice slice Plus Freddie's got a killer contest under his hat that's guaranteed to cause an elm street traffic jam in your store announcing Freddie's be in my nightmares sweepstakes the grand prize a once-in-a-lifetime chance to appear on the screen with Freddie in the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street 4 will alert your customers to this fabulous promotion with spots on MTV and ads in prime youth market magazines like willing stone us circus and Fangoria it's a fright fanatics dream come true yes ask your media representative about this limited time offer don't get caught sleeping wake up your proper picture with a feverishly anticipated video release of a Nightmare on Elm Street 3 dream warriors coming soon from media home entertainment the term deranged sociopath gets thrown around a lot by the media but it really applies to my next guest starting today you can see them in Friday the 13th party Jason Takes Manhattan please welcome Jason [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah I see all your movies where I know what I really noticed you're angry excuse me it's just the way I am but you're you're you're angry what happened man when y'all gig in was it a woman did you get cut from the hockey team in high school let me ask you this I saw the new movie Jason Takes Manhattan you killed 16 people you killed 16 people and you were responsible for the death of eight others total that's less than what you usually kill in a movie are you getting soft are you in fact it wasn't just a Friday the 13th franchise I was indeed losing a step blood gushing Lee great kills couldn't sustain a John Rowe that spiraled into creative bankruptcy as the 1980s came to a close Freddy Krueger became a joke slinging parody of himself and Jason just got kind of monotonous and Harr was no longer fringe interest for teenage moviegoers the slasher Turner would of course show its face in the years that followed but it would never be the same the slasher movies are the 2000s had mostly with a few notable exceptions taking the form of remakes everything from A Nightmare on Elm Street the prom night got a glossy update that banked on nostalgia but in reality all they did was to make us cherish the slashers of yesteryear even more [Music] their ambitions were meet their achievements weaker still and their cost of profit ratio stellar now pardon us while you watch Tom Savini get his head blown off with a shotgun and at point-blank range [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Lofi Ghosts

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Id: gqOd0HRKEEE

Length: 56min 17sec (3377 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 28 2018