Friday the 13th Actor Who Almost Played Freddy Krueger (& Why He Didnt)

Friday the 13th Actor Who Almost Played Freddy Krueger (& Why He Didn’t)

A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise villain Freddy Krueger was originally almost played by Kane Hodder, who went on to portray Jason Voorhees.

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Friday the 13th Actor Who Almost Played Freddy Krueger (& Why He Didnt)

Robert Englund’s terrifying incarnation of Freddy Krueger is a big part of what made A Nightmare On Elm Street so iconic, but the part could have gone to an actor who ended up playing Friday the 13th’s Jason. Released in 1984, A Nightmare On Elm Street was a huge hit with audiences despite being a radical departure from the conventions of the slasher craze and the earlier work of director Wes Craven. Craven’s earlier movies had been brutally realistic, grounded horrors like the “mountain mutants vs suburbanites” chiller The Hills Have Eyes, but A Nightmare On Elm Street was a supernatural story that centered on a demonic monster who killed teens in their dreams.

Meanwhile, most slashers of the early ‘80s aped the success of Friday the 13th by depicting hulking, mute madmen killing scores of interchangeable teens. In contrast, A Nightmare On Elm Street’s villain Freddy Krueger was verbose, calculating, and able to magically contort the reality of dreams to kill his victims. However, while the finished Nightmare was one of the most innovative slasher movies pre-Craven’s later Scream, the original casting plan stuck closer to the standard slasher formula.

Englund’s talkative killer was a big part of what made the movie stand out, but an uncertain Craven originally pondered a huge, broad actor who was more physically imposing for the role. Although he had not yet played his most famous role as Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees at the time, early on in the production of A Nightmare On Elm Street, slasher legend Kane Hodder was among those Craven considered for the part. Since Krueger was originally intended to be more of a traditional slasher villain, Craven sought out Hodder before opting for the more lithe, diminutive bad guy Robert Englund. According to Hodder during an interview with Fangoria in 1994:

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I had a meeting with Wes Craven about playing a character he was developing called Freddy Krueger. At the time, Wes wasn’t sure what kind of person he wanted for the role of Freddy, so I had as good a shot as anybody else. He was initially thinking of a big guy for the part… But obviously, he changed his whole line of thinking and went with Robert Englund, who’s smaller. I would have loved to play the part, but I do think Wes made the right choice.

It’s a fascinating piece of horror history as, while Hodder offered a perfect physical presence to embody Jason, a bigger, less-talkative Freddy could well have struggled to stick out among the Halloween clones during the early ‘80s slasher boom. Friday the 13th’s Jason eventually faced off against Freddy in the 2003 crossover Freddy Vs Jason, and the movie encapsulates just how much Freddy’s characterization strays from slasher convention when contrasted with Jason’s perpetual silence.

Friday the 13th, alongside Halloween, offered one of the archetypical strong and silent slasher villains, while A Nightmare On Elm Street’s invention of the killer as a tough-talking, paranormally-powered creep revitalized the genre after the first film’s release. Interestingly, Hodder did eventually (sort of) play the A Nightmare On Elm Street villain, as it is his hand that pulls away Jason’s mask in later Friday the 13th sequel, 1993’s Jason Goes To Hell.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/friday-13th-kane-hodder-freddy-krueger-almost-played-why/

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