Robert Englund knows the importance of having humour in a horror movie – as it stops the audience laughing at you rather than with you.
Robert Englund on humour in horrors
Pinocchio Unstrung is a terrifying take on the classic children’s tale sees Pinocchio “launch a violent crusade to carve himself into a real boy like his brother James, one piece at a time”.
Robert, most famous for playing Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, voices Cricket in the film – due for release later this month – and said he relished the opportunity to have some cracking one-liner jokes in the film.
Speaking to ComingSoon.net, Robert said: “You have to have that. Here’s why. If it’s just gore, violence, and action, pretty soon the audience, instead of laughing with you, starts laughing at you because they’re so keyed up emotionally and cathartically by the action, violence, or pace.
“You have to relieve that pressure, and humour does that. Then you can set the audience up again. You kind of get them back to net zero, and you can start building on them again for another sequence.
“I was so happy to have jokes and great profanity.”
Robert was also determined to keep Krueger out of his portrayal of Cricket in the film.
He explained: “I worried about falling into my muscle memory and doing the Freddy laugh. I didn’t want that. I wanted to come up with Cricket’s own laugh and make it a little higher, a little more hysterical, as if you could see a little bit into Cricket’s psychosis.”
And off the back of Pinocchio Unstrung, Robert is hoping that they will be able to look to other fairytales for inspiration – especially the darker ones.
“My God, Hansel and Gretel is about parents who are poverty-stricken during a famine,” Robert mused.
“The kids don’t behave, so they kick them out to punish them. They’re lost in the dark forest. If you’re starving, what’s the first symptom? You begin to hallucinate. What do they hallucinate? A house made of food. That stuff is dark.
“Rumpelstiltskin is nasty and dark too. That’s one they should do. I think Rumpelstiltskin should be the next one because you could really go to the boards with that!”