Known to fans as the lovably hilarious but brutally sadistic child murderer Freddy Kreuger, Robert Englund has become one of horrors most iconic figures, but his talents aren?t limited to wielding a bladed glove and haunting teenage nightmares. Englund has made his way in the genre as a notable villain and director. We caught up with Englund yesterday to talk about his latest directorial effort Killer Pad, about three young guys who move out to Hollywood and attempt to throw a star studded party that ends up opening a portal to hell. Englund?s cast though, is actually his own star studded party featuring some of Hollywood?s upcoming young talent and of course some familiar faces including Sam McMurray and 2001 Maniacs co-star Lin Shay. But when we got Englund talking, we didn?t stop with his latest horror-comedy; we got the goods on everything from his new Italian gothic love story to the truth about a new Nightmare on Elm Street film to the details about the 2001 Maniacs: Beverly Hellbillys production delay.

How did you get involved with Killer Pad?

?I?m sort of a director-actor for hire now. I?ve been around for quite a while. My business manager, the producer Wayne Rice who?s had some big hits himself like Dude! Where?s My Car, some Mandy Moore and David Spade movies, has been very successful in the world of teen comedy. He wanted to have a little bit of fun with a horror spoof subtext to a teen comedy.

We had been talking about doing a more traditional horror movie but he found this script that he liked and sent it to me and I laughed out loud when I read it. There was something kind of wonderfully silly, Three-Stooges, metro sexual thing about it that I liked. He asked if I wanted to do it and I said yes. I just felt that this was the kind of project that would benefit from being a low budget teen comedy with appropriately cheesy stuff.?

What was your intention for Killer Pad? Did you want to create a horror film that was funny or a comedy with horror elements?

?We wanted to poke fun. I know the Scream movies were the first to really exploit it but in those movies there was only one or two comedy characters like Jamie Kennedy. Everyone else was pretty straight forward except for Arquette who was a little off beat.

Instead of making ours a slasher movie or true horror movie it?s really almost a horror-comedy for boys without driver?s licenses. It sounds funny but there?s that age just before boys get their driver?s license where girls are going out with the older boys. There?s a certain kind of subversive movie that you watch when your parents are out of town or that you download and go to see. We sort of wanted Killer Pad to be that movie and have those nasty jokes and double entendres and the cute girls. We also wanted to make fun a little bit, of the teenagers who are so dumb they go up the stairs or stay around the abandoned house or a cemetery. In our movie, you know immediately how naive these Midwestern boys are. They are completely lame from the get-go. They?re lame, innocent, na?ve Midwestern boys that are kind of like the Three-Stooges but we also wanted to give them a little sense of the show-business world.?

What was your involvement in assembling the cast of Lin Shay, Sam McMurry, Joey Lawrence, Mad TV?s Bobby Lee and some of Hollywood?s young upcoming actors?

?I was originally thinking a little broader and a little more Three-Stooges but when you cast three guys in comedy together, you just can?t pick your three favorite guys. They have to be able to work well together. We read some really good people that just didn?t fit with the other guys. We needed one guy to be funny and silly but he also had to be a little bit of a leading man. We were thinking about Seth Green for a while for the role that Shane McCrea played but we were watching Shane McCrea on this TV show Four Kings and he just knocked my socks off. The three guys became the new slacker guys that we wanted them to be. We didn?t want them to be the long haired Kevin Smith slackers because everyone has seen that. We wanted to invent these new guys and the three actors were great. That slacker image becomes a cliché and our film is so full of clichés and so fun and silly but we needed these three actors to be the new lame guys.

It?s a silly comedy but the theme of the movie is the old ?don?t sell your soul to the devil?. Even though we spoof a lot of horror stuff with the fake Friday the 13th scene and the gore scene and cheesy special effects, it also goes further back than just the horror clichés to selling your soul to the devil. Only our guys don?t know they?ve sold their soul to the devil by trying to have this Hollywood party!

After we got the three guys I was able to go get some of my favorite people like Bobby Lee from Mad TV. I?m getting older now but I still go out. I don?t like to go out on the weekends so Friday night I?m usually eating some Chinese food and watching Mad TV especially when all the shows are new and fresh and so I became a huge fan of Bobby Lee.

I was a friend of Lin Shay for years and we did a movie together called 2001 Maniacs which ended up being successful. I?ve been a fan of Lin?s since Something About Mary, King Pin and Detroit Rock City. She was even in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Everyone loves her; she?s the cult comedy older actress that all the young people like because she?s the one with the saggy tits in Something About Mary.

You kind of recognize everyone. We got Joey Lawrence to show up and do a great improv sequence where he pretends to make fun of Toby Maguire. So it is kind of like the B Hollywood party that our lame guys throw.?

We recently spoke with Tim Sullivan and he told us that shooting for 2001 Maniacs has been delayed.

?We got postponed from last year because Tim got this great illustrator to do the comic book for 2001 Maniacs. I?m looking at it right now and it?s really great and nasty and dirty and almost pornographic. It?s a really dirty kind of X-rated comic book. The comic can sort of be a bridge between the two movies. Now they have to wait for me because I?m running off to Italy to do a film, a gothic love story horror next month. I think we are going to get Christopher Lee to be in it. It?s a great little film but we?ve been working on the script because it was originally inspired by a Russian folk tale. We?re making our movie sort of like that Shamaylan movie The Village. It kind of takes place in a village in Europe but you don?t really know when. It could be last year, 10 years ago or 30 years ago. It sort of takes place yesterday. I just finished the third draft with my Italian producers yesterday. Tim has to wait for me to finish that now. We probably won?t start 2001 Maniacs: The Beverly Hellbillys until May.?

I guess with the writer?s strike you have been delayed as well?

?The strike hurts but also, it?s where we are going to shoot. We are going to shoot it out behind the San Fernando Valley. It?s sort of like high desert with the big amusement park out there. It?s really hot in the summer but it?s also really cold in the summer. I think late spring is the perfect time to shoot it since we are shooting a lot of nights. A lot of it takes place in sideshow tents sort of like Carnivale the HBO show. It?s a good time of year to shoot nights there.?

What about the gothic love story you mentioned filming in Italy. Do you have a large hand in writing or editing the film?

?I?ve had a big hand in editing it. It came from a Ukrainian-Russian translation into Italian; into English. That made it very awkward and cumbersome. We had to be very careful with the dialog which we?re still working on because it has to be a little bit formal and sympathetic but it also has to be a little bit conversational. Now it?s just a matter of me casting it. I have to go to Italy, Spain, and Canada to cast. I?m hoping to get the camera man who shot The Orphanage.?

Killer Pad is coming out soon, and 2001 Maniacs: Beverly Hellbillys is delayed for now, so what other projects are you working on these days?

?Well I have a lot going on. I have to go to Slamdance because I have a film there called Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and another film by one of my favorite directors Lucky McKee called Red. So I figured I ought to show up this year, keep my ears warm and grab a couple of beers. It?s been about 5 years since I?ve had a film there but it?ll be fun.

And then I have Killer Pad coming out. I say I made it for the kids of my fans, not the fans of Nightmare on Elm Street but their kids. It?s a silly fart-knocker, devil?s got my soul spoof, but it?s really a teen comedy.?

Have you ever had your own "killer pad" or a really awful place that you?ve lived?

?I did. I had a bunch of roommates in college. We were from UCLA and Cal State Northridge and one of my roommates was a famous child star. I mean really famous. Everyone would recognize him if I told you but I better not tell you who he is. He did lots of Disney stuff. This was back in the late 1960?s and we were all college age. His brother in law was this famous guy from Mexico with this really nice house so when he went back to Mexico for a year, we went to the house. It?s not that we trashed the house. It?s just that we were bachelors and had some really big parties. We took out the trash and we weren?t dirty but things just got kind of worse and worse. We would have these giant parties and I don?t think the neighbors were too happy. We didn?t do any yard work so the weeds grew really high in the back and we wound up getting in trouble with the fire department. It wasn?t an Animal House but it was sort of the cool actors pad from college. I remember waking up in the morning and stepping over bodies. We had this long hall and I remember all the passed out girls in the hall propped up against the wall in their dance clothes. I sort of remember this whole call of girls in black tights and leotards sitting up with an empty glass of wine next to them and me stepping over them to go take a test. That?s about as close as I came to having a killer pad. I don?t think my roommate has ever forgiven us.?

After the Halloween remake and the anticipation for the Friday the 13th remake, there has recently been some buzz online about a new Nightmare on Elm Street film. Have you heard anything about this?

?I don?t know if it?s going to be Nightmare on Elm Street the original remake-which is not a bad idea especially with the success of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween-and get some new director to breathe new life into it. I always thought there was room for a prequel. I would be interested in being in that! It?s funny because they are all good. Texas Chainsaw Massacre the original was great and the original Halloween was great and some people even think that the original Nightmare on Elm Street is the best of them all. I don?t know if you?d want to remake it but it all happens sooner or later. There have been some spin-offs talked about with Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers which is interesting but maybe that?s kind of silly. Maybe one was enough. At one time there had been a prequel to Nightmare on Elm Street. I haven?t read that script but I heard things about it that John McNaughton the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer might direct it. That was kind of interesting. That?s the one I would be interested in being involved with.?

The Prequel?

?Well yeah because I?d obviously get to do it without the make up. Even though I?m getting old I?m not getting too old to play Freddy. I always figured by the time he was all burned and everything I figured he was in his 40?s anyway. I could pull that off. It?s going to be interesting to see what they do with it.?

As Freddy Krueger you?ve haunted so many nightmares but what is your personal biggest fear?

?There?s not a lot of things that make me jump but when I was a little boy I would go see matinee movies for kids. At some point in the day the movies would change from kid movies to adult movies. I?m talking about the late 1950?s and early 1960?s. I would go to a double bill thinking it was a kid?s movie and the second half of the double bill was sometimes the adult movie. Sometimes they would be scary, creepy movies. One of the old features I saw was by Norman Mailer about World War II called The Naked and The Dead. In this movie a soldier gets bitten by a snake on an island during World War II. His death scene was so freaky and so scary and gross that I still have a fear of snakes. Whether it?s snakes on a plane, or a rattlesnake attacking a horse in an old cowboy movie or I see one when I?m hiking but snakes still really work on me. ?