In making a documentary about a beloved actor like Robert Englund—most famous for playing Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise— a major dilemma for the filmmakers has to be how to balance presenting the information people want with making a good movie. For Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story, co-directors Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths err on the side of comprehensiveness. Across two hours and nine minutes, their film covers most of Englund’s career highlights, from 1974’s Buster And Billie to Stranger Things and beyond, with a lengthy stop on Elm Street, of course.
Part of this choice is by necessity; the essence of drama may be conflict, but now in his 70s, Englund claims to have let go of any hard feelings he may have had, and has little but the nicest things to say about every collaborator. About the most negative he gets is mentioning his disappointment that Kane Hodder didn’t play Jason Voorhees in Freddy Vs. Jason, but he chalks it up to distraction on the part of director Ronny Yu, who was mesmerized by potential stunt coordinator Ken Kirzinger’s height. Hodder, interviewed throughout, clearly still bears a grudge, as do many of his fans. But even he can’t blame a nice guy like Englund for taking a much-deserved paycheck from the same film.
There is a dramatic arc to Englund’s career that a tighter edit might have made clearer. By the time the movie gets around to it, it’s poignant: Englund the versatile actor, seemingly trapped by genre, suddenly starts remembering his own youthful love of monsters, and realizes he’s become a new Vincent Price. Had the film stayed laser-focused on this theme, it might have become a genuinely great documentary. It’ll have to settle instead for being merely informative, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s also best viewed on the couch with bathroom breaks.
Save for a tiny bit of convention footage, this isn’t a documentary that gets out and about, like the 2017 Sam J. Jones documentary Life After Flash. Englund clearly did a few lengthy sit-down sessions in his home, thankfully with multiple angles and backdrops for variety, and he serves as the central narrator. Talking comes easily to him, of course–it’s no coincidence that Freddy Krueger is probably the most talkative movie monster in the horror canon. Englund’s by no means limited to yelling slurs at teenage victims, though—from his surfer-style narration in 1978’s Big Wednesday to his Gene Wilder-inspired friendly alien in V, he loves to speak in many different styles, and he’s always fun to listen to.
Besides interiors of talent speaking to camera, there’s lots of archival footage and images, stock film, and the occasional editorial-style still cartoon to illustrate anecdotes that scream out for a visual. Sometimes, clips unrelated to Englund’s movies serve as punchlines–after somebody says that nobody else could play Freddy Krueger, we get a brief clip of Jackie Earle Haley in the 2010 Nightmare On Elm Street remake, though his name is never said aloud, and the movie does not speak of that aberration again.
Smart and Griffith get the music right, sticking with horror sounds for their sonic backdrop, from moody score to industrial rock. Better yet, they know when not to use music, an underrated skill that’s perhaps best appreciated by reviewers who’ve watched more over-scored documentaries than anybody should have to. But in the end, this is not an especially cinematic documentary–it feels framed and paced for your TV screen, made for cable, streaming, or a really nice DVD bonus feature. You’ll come out knowing more than most about Robert Englund, but only at the very end, when it becomes clear what the arc is, does it make you feel something. Kids who grew up wanting to dress like Freddy will probably, as adults, come away from this wishing Englund could be their best friend.
It certainly captures a side of the man, and maybe that’s all anyone would ask of it. But it’s hard to shake the feeling there’s an even better movie waiting to be made from all this material.
Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story comes to Screambox and digital on June 6