Like Frankenstein’s creature, the nightmarish Freddy Krueger, simply refuses to quit. He terrified audiences in Wes Craven’s “Nightmare on Elm St.” (1984) and returned in nine blood-splattered sequels, a television show, several novels and a range of comic books.  Robert Englund played Freddy through all nine movies and the TV-series, but he has stepped away and a new Freddy is sharpening his nails on Elm St.

Actor Jackie Earle Hayley has stepped into the role knowing that he has a screen legacy to honour, which is to scare new audiences witless. On a set-visit during production he told journalists that on every day of shooting he spends three-and-a-half hours putting on Freddy’s monstrous, scarred body.

“It’s not just a face mask”, he said, “it’s more like a body-suit.  Every square inch of my back and neck has got appliances glued to it,” said Hayley. “It feels like crap when you’re just sitting around, but in front of the camera it’s oddly motivating for an actor because it’s just so weirdly real. I’ve got a cloudy contact lens in one eye and I can see nothing out of the other eye so the whole experience is surreal but, strangely, it helps me to be Freddy, once we get moving.”

Hayley admits that he is not a huge horror fan but told the press that he does remember being very intrigued by the “Elm St.” series. “Out of all the monsters from the mid-‘80s, Freddy was always the most interesting because there was some depth to him that drew me in. I was always curious about what made this guy tick and now I’m finding out”, he said.

As preparation for this film Jackie Earle Hayley says “I re-watched the first one and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the other ones but I asked myself  ‘Why should I pore through every bit of this?’ The first movie really got me to understand what was going on with him and so I just stuck with that.”

“Nightmare on Elm St.” open on July 16  (pics from Nu-Metro)