[Film Review] Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares - The Robert Englund Story (2023)

Like many horror fans, I have vivid memories of seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) for the first time. Or, more accurately, I have vivid memories of the nightmares I had afterwards. As a kid, I was terrified of Freddy Krueger. I had recurring nightmares where he haunted my elementary school. I avoided the water heater in my basement out of fear he would pop out (closest thing I had to a boiler room, I guess) and couldn’t even watch The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror with Groundskeeper Willie as Freddy – too scary!

At some point in my pre-teen years, I rewatched the Elm Street series and did a complete 180 on Freddy. He wasn’t just scary, he was cool! And funny! I loved watching him pop up with those one-liners before taking out teens in the gnarliest ways. While Jason and Michael Myers were silent, hulking figures that stalked you through the night, Freddy was smart, cunning, manipulative, scary, funny and charismatic. And that’s all thanks to Robert Englund.

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Englund's impact as Freddy is the linchpin of the new documentary Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story. Englund, once a character actor with a background in theatre, managed to catapult to horror icon status through Freddy by transforming the character into his own. While Wes Craven and the studio were initially looking for a stuntman to play Freddy, in the vein of Kane Hodder (who reveals he actually met with Wes), they were won over the erudite actor. And the rest, as they say, is horror history.

But the doc doesn’t just start and end at Elm Street. Instead, Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares is a career retrospective for Englund, sharing stories and behind-the-scenes looks at his work from Hustle (1975) to V(1983), to his Freddy years, to his current status as an elder statesman of horror in work like Urban Legends (2003) and Stranger Things season four (2020).

For fans of Englund or those that only know his horror work, the look back at the early days of his career may be the most illuminating. He turned down Stanford to study theatre before moving to Hollywood in the 70s to pursue a film career. He worked with Tobe Hooper (Eaten Alive), Burt Reynolds (Hustle) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Stay Hungry), and auditioned for Brian De Palma, George Lucas and more, making this portion of the documentary a veritable who’s who of 70s cinema.

This is also where viewers can muse about how, if the chips had fallen differently, he could have had an entirely different career. Pre-Freddy, he was working as a character actor, often playing criminals, rednecks and best friends to the leading man, and slowly moving from bit parts to bigger roles. He recounts the story of meeting the Star Wars team about Han Solo, but we all know that it was never meant to be.

Englund was never destined to become a traditional leading man – instead, following in the footsteps of actor Boris Karloff to become a sort of unconventional one, becoming an unlikely movie star by being synonymous with one creepy character. Although, at times in the documentary, Englund laments the opportunities he missed out on due to his Krueger obligations, he remains ultimately grateful for the role and the horror community that has kept him afloat for all these years.

As a documentary, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares doesn’t aim to accomplish much beyond a highlight reel of Englund's career. Talking heads like Lin Shaye, Eli Roth, Lance Henrikson, Tony Todd and Kane Hodder all share stories about working and watching Englund, while Englund himself fills in the gaps with fun and colourful anecdotes about his career. But the format of going decade by decade, film by film, doesn’t illuminate much about the man behind the burn makeup. The biggest takeaways are essentially what we already know: Robert Englund is a talented actor, a beloved figure in horror, and, according to co-stars, a very kind and charismatic guy. If you’re looking for new depths or insights, this might not be worth a watch. But if you’re a Freddy super-fan and want to spend a few hours listening to Englund receive his flowers, it’s time well spent.

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