How many would believe that a man who played one of the most fear-inducing characters in movies for so long would be afraid of anything? Well, a lot of people would likely think that Robert Englund is in fact afraid of something, but it’s still kind of amusing to think that he’s afraid of snakes, or was. It sounds as though Englund was in movie titled Python back in the 2000s, not too long after Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube came out. Starring with Casper van Dien, it was one of the movies that you might not get into at first other than for the novelty of it and the fact that it had a few talented actors that were into doing direct to video movies at that time. But all in all it does sound interesting to pick up at this point, if you can find it, since it does sound like one that might be kind of difficult to locate given that streaming networks and even video on demand services don’t always have every title that you might be able to think of. But it might be worth the look, just for the heck of it. Robert Englund had this to say, per David James of We Got This Covered, about his time on the set:
“I did this movie called ‘Python,’ which was the low-budget follow-up to Anaconda with Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez. And it was one of those direct-to-DVD horror movies, science-fiction movies. Casper [Van Dien] was doing a lot of those because he was such a big success with Starship Troopers. And they gave me a baby python, an albino baby python in that movie for my character. I was the herpetologist who was an expert on snakes. And they actually put a shoestring through a tube sock and put the little female python, albino white python, little tiny python around my shoulder. They tied it around my shoulder and let the tube sock hang in my armpit.
And then I would pull her out, and she would coil around my fingers and coil around my wrist and hand and do scenes. I knew it looked cool on camera, I’ve got this live snake coiling around, this little, thin baby white python. And that’s how I got over my fear of snakes because the snake was so small. She’s not venomous. I worked with her for six weeks on the movie, and she was in my armpit for five of those weeks. That’s the irony of being a horror movie actor is the horror movie actor got over his fear of snakes doing a horror movie about snakes.”
Robert Englund has, over the years, become a major name in horror movies largely for his depiction of Freddy Krueger, but as many people would recognize his contributions have been far-reaching when it comes to the horror genre as he’s taken on other roles as well. The unfortunate truth is that he won’t be gearing up for another movie any time in the future as he’s already stated that he’s getting too old for the role. In a way the role almost feels as though it needs to be retired, but there’s been plenty of talk about keeping it alive and keeping it going, even though the last time around didn’t really sit well with a lot of people. It wasn’t really a horrible attempt to be fair, but something about it just didn’t resonate with the fans and despite Jackie Earle Haley being great for a menacing and intimidating role, he just didn’t pull it off this time around. Some might even say that he was a better Rorschach than he was Freddy. But all in all, on a personal level, I definitely think that the Krueger story needs to end finally, to just die out and become known for being the legend that it already is and has been for a while. It’s time to find a new horror story and run with it, and unfortunately we’re getting Scream and a few others that look as though they might be the heir apparent, which is hard to take seriously to be fair.
Considering the tales they live through the making of each movie, it’s hard to think that horror movie actors are afraid of much really, but one has to consider that some of them don’t ever see the movie in its entirety, especially those whose characters are killed off early on. Those that have finally seen their movies eventually tend to react in a much different way than people might expect. But to hear that Robert Englund, a horror master, had a fear of anything was kind of amusing in all seriousness since he played one of the most evil characters in all of cinema.
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