Each day this week we're going to bring you a look inside Robert Englund's (A Nightmare on Elm Street series) new book, Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street with the Man of Your Dreams, which is available at booksellers now.

Today we have an intro for the book written by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper. Hooper amusingly recounts directing Englund in The Mangler and the killer croc flick Eaten Alive. See below for the full book excerpt and be sure to stop by each day this week for more. And don't forget to check out Robert Englund in FEARnet's latest original series, Fear Clinc.

INTRODUCTION BY TOBE HOOPER

In 1974, not too long after I shot The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was checking out a movie at an art theater—at least that’s what they alled 'em around Austin, Texas college campuses, art theaters; I don’t know what they called 'em in New York or wherever—called Buster and Billie. It starred some hot guy and a good-looking girl, and they were great, but there was this little albino co-star, a high-powered fireball of mischief and energy. I watched this man smoke up the screen, and thought, Who the hell is this? The energy that he has, the passion, the verisimilitude, the chops, man, this cat is great!

That was the first time I ever saw Robert Englund. And man, I hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

A couple years later, I was in a casting session for a movie I was directing called Eaten Alive. I was wrapping up a rambling conversation with the great character actor Neville Brand, during which time he convinced me that he should play the lead, when in walked Robert, and I thought, Farrrrrrr out. It’s that guy. It’s the albino from that art movie. It’s Robert fucking Englund. After Neville took off, I told Robert, "Man, I'm a big fan of yours. But I’m also becoming a big fan of the casting director who sent me you and Neville." Robert read a few lines from the script, then we talked about Buster and Billie, and we vibed, so there wasn’t any of that Let-Me-See-Other-People-And-I’ll-Get-Back-To-You bullshit. I didn’t need to waste his time. I didn’t need to waste my breath. He had the part before he left the room.

The thing about Robert is that as an actor, he’ll always offer you eight hundred different choices for each scene, but even if you agree on something Tuesday night, he’ll come into work on Wednesday morning with eight hundred more ideas. He’s so in the moment, and when the space or atmosphere hanges, Robert changes right with it, and that makes for great filmmaking.

Robert was a delight to work with from the first second, unbelievably inventive, as much of a fireball as I could’ve hoped for. But as energetic as he was, it was his subtlety that consistently blew me away. In one scene—and this was a tiny moment, but it’s these sort of tiny moments that turn a movie into art—he shuffled his feet and kicked some dust up onto Neville’s pants, kind of like he was a dog who’d just taken a piss, and wanted to cover it up. It was about three seconds of screen time, but it was the most unique fucking thing I’d ever seen, and the best part about Robert is that he brings all kinds of unique fucking things to each of his characters. Now I like unique fucking things, so Robert and I became fast friends. We’re both movie guys, and this was a moment in time when film could rightly be called art, so we always had plenty to talk about, and our discussions were a lot farther out and cooler than your typical movie set conversation. I suspect that people would’ve been surprised had they known that Mr. Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Krueger spent an inordinate amount of time chatting about Greek mythology and Fellini.

Twenty years after Eaten Alive—that’s twenty fucking years, dear readers—I brought my old friend aboard to star in The Mangler, a movie that in spite of a grueling shoot in South Africa, ended up being one of my favorites.

Robert’s character, Bill Gartley, walked with crutches and leg braces, and even though he had to hobble around the set for eighteen hours a day, Robert wasn’t at all fazed, even when he had to do his own stunts. There was one scene in which Robert was supposed to get hit with a lamp, then do a cartwheel and end up out of frame. To allow him to really go for it, we had a couple of people standing off to the side, ready to catch him, because if he’d have fallen at the speed he was moving, he’d have been dead. After we shot the stunt a couple of times, I watched it in my monitor, trying to decide whether I wanted to try it again. I was all lost in my head, when I heard a puppy dog whimpering over my left shoulder. I turned around, and there’s Robert. "I think my wig is fucked," he said. "I think my makeup is fucked. And to make things even worse, when they caught me after my cartwheel, they put me on the concrete floor, and this big Teamster stepped on my head." He pointed at his face. "And look at this." One of his eyes was hanging from its socket, and the other one was gushing tears. Now the eye hanging from the socket was fake, of course, but it was still stunning, and all I could do was laugh. That movie was a bitch to make—we accidentally spilled a shitload of fake blood, and one of our key grips was electrocuted on three separate occasions—and if Robert hadn't graciously hauled ten-someodd cartons of Marlboros with him from the States, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to make it through the film with my sanity intact.

In terms of Robert's place in the horror pantheon, there's Frankenstein, there's Dracula, there's Michael Myers, there’s my main man Leatherface, and there's Freddy Krueger. Freddy's right up there in the Fucked-Up Shit Hall of Fame, and that’s almost all Robert. Most of these other literal and figurative monsters are completely hidden and unrecognizable under a mask, but Robert's right out there for the world to see, oozing blisters and all. This is a small batch of people we’re talking about here, dear readers: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, and Robert Englund—and I’m honored that this fireball graced my film sets. And I can’t wait to work with him again, so I can deposit more Robert Englund memories in my memory bank.

Look for more excerpts all this week as we count down to the premiere of Fear Clinic starring Robert Englund next Monday.  For more about Hollywood Monster, visit the book's official site at SimonandSchuster.com.