Written by Pinocchio: Unstrung serves as the newest entry in the ever-expanding Twisted Childhood Universe (or the Poohniverse). It deserves recognition beyond the “gimmick” of turning beloved childhood characters into bloodthirsty horror villains. With a genuinely compelling story, fantastic practical effects, and a wonderfully sinister vocal performance from the legendary Robert Englund, Pinocchio: Unstrung is a callback to the early era of gore-infused horror and feels destined to become a cult classic.
With a career spanning decades, Englund has cemented himself as a horror icon through performances in films like The Mangler, Wishmaster, and, of course, as Freddy Krueger, one of the most influential and recognizable horror villains of all time. Now, he’s using that experience to bring a horror twist to one of the best-known fairytales of all time as Cricket in Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s Pinocchio slasher, Pinocchio: Unstrung. We were able to speak with the actor about his incredible career, his advice for the upcoming A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and what it was like to bring Cricket to life.
Robert Englund talks Pinocchio: Unstrung
Joshua Ryan: Hey, Robert. How are you? Joshua Ryan with FandomWire.
Robert Englund: Hi, Joshua. Are you Joshua or Josh?
Joshua Ryan: Joshua or Josh. Some people call me either or.
Robert Englund: All right. I like Joshua.
Joshua Ryan: Yeah, that’s kind of what I prefer.
Robert Englund: I like your Taxi Driver poster.
Joshua Ryan: Thank you. You know, I get a lot of comments on that when I do interviews. That’s one of the first things people point out.
Robert Englund: Yeah, I like it a lot.
Joshua Ryan: Popular movie. I’m really excited to talk to you. Big fan, obviously, for a very long time. And the question I’d like to start with is: how did you come to be involved in this movie, and what drew you to the project?
Robert Englund: Well, I realized I’d recently done another makeup role in Stranger Things. And I had recently done a little retro Halloween movie. And I had done a sort of subset horror of the games you shouldn’t play when I did Midnight Man with Lin Shaye. And I’d done a kind of Brian De Palma-esque one, The Last Showing.
Well, Finn Jones from Game of Thrones is brilliant in this film. I hadn’t really done anything really down and dirty and violent. I mean, in Stranger Things, you get to see the result of me poking my eyes out. But I hadn’t done any sort of down-and-dirty, nasty, violent, gory horror in a long time. And I sort of owed that to the fans, I thought.
And then the other thing that sort of went into my decision to get on board, I read the script, and I liked it. I could see exactly, you know, where they were going with it. But also, kind of a circle remaining unbroken for me, something that not necessarily just actors do, we all do this, I think at different times in our life, but my very first semi-professional gig, and it was a life-changing moment in my life, I was involved in a company called The Teenage Drama Workshop, and I starred at the tender age of 13 when everybody else was 16, 17, and 18 years old, I starred as Pinocchio. And I think I later on did Aladdin, and Peter Pan, and Hansel and Gretel, and some other stuff.
But it was my first experience with getting the laugh every night in the same place. I was the star of the show. I had never had that kind of power before. I had power over older kids. I mean, there’s a big delineation, you know, in teenagedom, between before you have a car and a driver’s license and after. And everybody wanted to drive me everywhere, and they were offering me a cigarette, and I got to go out with the cool, older kids, ’cause I was the star of all these shows. And the show that made all that possible was my Pinocchio, which was a great success. First time I ever signed autographs in my life. And it was great fun, and I learned a lot about comedy timing on that show and professionalism.
And so, when Pinocchio: Unstrung was bandied about, I thought, “You know, this is just something I have to have on my resume because, my god, I began my career with this. I’m getting old. This should be something in the finish, you know, or at least in my ending days of acting. You know, it should be one. It’s got to be on that resume, you know, two Pinocchios.” And I’d also been quite familiar with their success with Winnie-the-Pooh. So, I thought it was a terrific idea because I have entertained, because of so many discussions I’ve had with journalists over the years, I’ve entertained the notion of just how dark the original source fairy tales were. I mean, my god, Rumpelstiltskin and Hansel and Gretel, just to name a few. And so it seems a logical thing to do. Seemed a very logical subset of horror to do.
And my generation remembers Fractured Fairy Tales from the guys that did Rocky and Bullwinkle, Jay Ward, and that great factory he had on Sunset Boulevard with all those great cartoons. And so I’ve always loved the idea of manipulation, and mutating, and deconstructing the fairy tale. I think it’s fun. It’s sort of like I understood it even as a child because of the Jay Ward productions. And so it gave me an insight into where they were going to go with this.
And then I read the script for Pinocchio: Unstrung, and I saw what they were doing with it. I could see the fun of it. What I used was mostly an image, and it was an image from an old Warner Brothers cartoon, I think. But it’s an old trope in animation, and in movies, too. That the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other, the good conscience, you know, the yin and the yang of the personality, your dark side. I think a combination of that cartoon image of me being the devil and imagining myself as an insect on Pinocchio’s shoulder… and how insects can bore into your ear anyway. It happens all the time when people go camping and stuff. And then the idea of him being made of wood and boring into the wood. These are just all poetic, dark poetic images I had. But I loved that idea of Cricket whispering in Pinocchio’s ear. And I thought, “Yeah, yeah, I can really do something with this.”
And Edward G. Robinson’s sort of manipulative, nagging voice kind of came to me from movies he did, like Key Largo and Double Indemnity, and that Orson Welles movie The Stranger, of course, Little Caesar, the gangster movies, you know? But then maybe a little bit of Don Rickles sprinkled in there, you know, the insult comedian, that kind of attack. Actors work with different inspirations. And when that stuff doesn’t work, then you have to go back completely to technique, you know, or to internal, really deep internal work. So, I didn’t really need to do a backstory on Cricket or look at his motivations. I mean, I knew I was going to be animated, and I knew the folklore involved with Pinocchio by Collodi. So it just seemed to me that I could almost imagine a toy made 100 years ago in Italy that somebody would whittle for a child’s toy. An old uncle or something, and it’s going bad. Maybe it was from a cursed root or a piece of bark. And you just let those images float around with you, and then you try to find the voice. And that’s just fun to do. It’s fun to do voice work because you don’t have to worry about your good side, or your nose casting a shadow down your face, or the blocking, or any of that. You can really tune yourself more into the music of the piece. Unfortunately, a lot of times with voice-over, you’re not working with other actors, so you can’t really bounce off their cadences or answer their cadences rhythmically. So you’re in a bit of a vacuum. But other than that, it is fun to kind of play with the music of the words, even if it’s guttural and mean.
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Joshua Ryan: Which, yeah, this movie is definitely… You talked about the violence and wanting like a gnarly… this movie has some really well-done, crazy practical violence. It was surprising how good it was, how good it looked. It was good to see some good old-fashioned practical effects. I really liked it.
Robert Englund: Well, I had also recently seen Predator: Killer of Killers. And it is that same thing. On an aesthetic level, it’s a 10. But it really delivers what the fanboys and girls want, you know? It’s really… and the action sequences in that are choreographed so magnificently and very different stylistically from each other, ’cause it’s a triptych. It’s weird. I had an image of Cricket that was a printout, and it’s just not as true, because you need to see it animated. When I saw the trailer, I was like, “There’s so much more light and shine on Cricket,” you know, that I loved. I could see that. The same thing happened to me when I watched Predator: Killer of Killers, because I watched the first segment of the Viking lady that’s sort of like the queen in Game of Thrones, and it’s so dark. But when you watch it at night, with all the lights turned off, the detail in the blues and the blacks and the grays, it’s just magnificent. And I think there’s just some great, great work in Pinocchio: Unstrung. I think it looks terrific.
Joshua Ryan: Absolutely. I think I have time for maybe one more quick question. I just wanted to say, obviously, you are iconic in the horror genre in general, with your voice work, but Freddy Krueger is your most iconic role.
Robert Englund: That’s going to be on my tombstone, I think.
Joshua Ryan: It would probably have to be. So with the announcement that they’re remaking it (A Nightmare on Elm Street), I just wanted to know if you had any advice for actors who are going to be coming in, a younger generation, and taking on these iconic characters, especially the role of Freddy?
Robert Englund: All I say about some of that stuff is, when you’re in a surrealistic frame, when you’re not in. A lot of actors are coached to go for truth, to feel normal in that world of green screen and exaggerated scenery and everything. And, of course, in your interaction with other characters, that has to be primary. But also, there is a sense of style. You almost sometimes should allow yourself, especially in a blocking rehearsal, to paint yourself into that frame, because it’s not a reality frame. It’s larger than life. So perhaps your movement, or the way you’re displayed within that frame, can be a little larger than life at times. What you think, and the way I say it, is that you think about dreams and how things look in dreams. And I think that’s sort of what I’m hinting at there.
Joshua Ryan: Well, that’s fantastic advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. As I said, I really liked this movie. I was like surprised by how much I liked it. I thought it was a step way above what you kind of expect with the adaptation of a fairy tale into a horror genre, but it was great, and the fans love it. So, having you be a part of it, I think, just knocked it up a notch.
Robert Englund: Well, I’m a little surprised that some of this hasn’t been done before, even live action, because fairy tales’ sources are really dark. And you’ve got to remember that, yeah. They weren’t, and they weren’t Disneyfied yet. In our collective consciousness, we think of it differently. But, in fact, someone recently told me that the original Snow White is a child, which makes it even weirder that the queen is jealous of her.
Joshua Ryan: Yeah, there are a lot of weird stories. Plenty of more work to be adapted. Maybe you’ll be in some more.
Robert Englund: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Please, sir, I’ll play Rumpelstiltskin.
Joshua Ryan: I’d watch it. Well, thank you, sir. I think my time is up, so I’m going to get out of here, but thank you so much. It was great to talk to you.
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