The Duffer Brothers Talk About Robert Englund's Audition and the Horror Influences of STRANGER THINGS 4
The 4th season of Stranger Things dropped just over a week ago, and after binging it, fans are talking about how this was definitely the darkest and scariest season by far! There was a murderous demon terrorizing the town of Hawkins, killing troubled teens. We saw the story take us to the Pennhurst Mental Hospital where we came face to face with Victor Creel, played by the iconic Freddy Krueger actor, Robert Englund; back to the Hawkins Laboratory, where we dive deeper into Eleven’s past; and we even got to see an epic roller skate assault. It was a great season, and there’s still more to come. The show’s creators, The Duffer Brothers, recently sat down to talk about how it all unfolded.
In a recent interview with NME, the creators chatted about the horror influences in the season, with Ross Duffer saying:
“The biggest influences would probably be A Nightmare On Elm Street One and Three, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, weirdly The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. There’s IT too. The mini-series from 1990 with Tim Curry’s Pennywise scarred us, maybe more than anything else, so we talked about that a lot and why that messed us up as much as it did.”
I can absolutely see each of those influences in the season very clearly. The show has always felt like it was paying homage to some of the great classic horror influences, and this season took that feeling up a notch. As for what it was like to work with Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund, who actually put himself up for the role, NME reports:
“I wish we had been brilliant enough to think about it,” Ross Duffer says, smiling when asked about the appearance of A Nightmare On Elm Street’s Robert Englund in this season. The iconic actor behind Freddy Krueger plays Victor Creel in the new episodes – a part he put himself up for instead of being approached to play. “I cannot tell you how surreal it is to be watching audition tape after audition tape and then suddenly you go, ‘Is that Robert Englund in a bathtub?’” laughs Matt.
“It’s just a dream come true to work with him, but then for people to also see him in a role that wasn’t just Freddy Krueger,” Ross chips in. “I think he gets to do something in the episode that he’s in that is really emotional and really effective.”
It’s all brilliant! It’s my favorite season so far. It can only be that because of the strong character and story foundation that was laid in the seasons before it that have made me care so much for these characters, and the new ones as well. But I am so scared for the final two episodes and the fifth and final season. It has been said that they will break our hearts, and I wish it wasn’t so, but I trust Matt and Ross Duffer to finish telling us this beautiful story in the exact way they set out to tell it.
Stranger Things Season 4 part 1 is available now on Netflix, and part 2 will drop on July 1st.