HOLLYWOOD DREAMS & NIGHTMARES: THE ROBERT ENGLUND STORY

From A Nightmare on Elm Street to Stranger Things, horror icon Robert Englund will celebrate his birthday on June 6 with the SCREAMBOX Original documentary Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story. Fans are encouraged to use the hashtag #RobertEnglundDay all day.

Back in the annals of history, well 2019 anyway an indiegogo appeared for a documentary called ICON: The Robert Englund Story.

A documentary about Robert Englund by Cult Screenings UK/Deadmouse Productions, the highly talented guys behind Pennywise: The Story of IT, You’re So Cool, Brewster! The Story of Fright Night and Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II?

I couldn’t sign up quick enough.

It’s now been completed, had a name change and is being released as a Screambox Original next month.

A classically trained actor and director, Robert Englund has become one of the most revolutionary horror icons of our generation. Throughout his career, Englund starred in many well-known movies but shot to superstardom with his portrayal of supernatural serial killer Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

If you look at the running time on this bad boy, just a little under 130 minutes you may be forgiven in thinking “that’s going to be a whole lot of Krueger stuff I’ve already heard”, and you’d be right. However these guys barely touch Krueger, instead they look at the entire career of Englund, and it’s a blast.

Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths know how to put together documentaries that would make Netlix blush.

Featuring interviews with Englund, his wife Nancy, and such genre favorites as Tony Todd, Kane Hodder, Lance Henriksen, Bill Moseley, Eli Roth, Lin Shaye, Heather Langenkamp, Mick Garris, Andrew Divoff, William Katt, Jeffrey Reddick, Corey Taylor and with some superb archive material and motion graphics helping keep your attention, the credits begin rolling and you feel like you could easily spend another 2 hours in their company.

“This old veteran character actor was surprised and flattered to find he was the subject of the documentary Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares,” says Englund. “Collaborating with directors Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths and the rest of the team was a joy as they are genre fans like me. For yours truly, watching the film is a bit like Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn attending their own funeral. Gary, Chris, and Adam [Evans, producer] managed to find old movies and TV shows I’d forgotten I was in. I’d come back from the dead! All kidding aside – it’s an accurate memory of a working actor’s journey – dreams can come true.”  

Robert Englund is one of the nicest people walking this planet, considering the memorable menaces he’s brought to the screen. If you meet him at a convention, it’s like the world has melted away and it’s just you and him in the room.

They say never meet your heroes well “The Only Thing To Fear Is Fear Himself.”

I guarantee after watching this superbly informative, beautifully shot and edited documentary that you’ll be Googling some of the mentioned movies to see how you can watch them. Well as luck would have it SCREAMBOX have you covered there too as other Englund films streaming on the service in June include A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Mangler, Night Terrors, Galaxy of Terror, and The Funhouse Massacre.

Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story is streaming on Screambox from June 6th

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