Englund looks forward to bringing Freddy to Oz Comic-Con

The only problem is those dreams turn out to be nightmares.

Spend a little time speaking with the man, and you realise, Englund is perfectly comfortable with the fact.

Now considered a legend of the horror genre, Englund's break came after accepting the role of razor-gloved, burnt, dream stalking child killer Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven's 1984 feature A Nightmare on Elm Street.

An instant hit, the film went on to spawn seven sequels, and earned Englund a place alongside classic genre names as Vincent Price and Christopher Lee.

While many other actors intentionally stray away from it, Englund is perfectly at home in horror.

"I'm very lucky," said Englund. "I've just done my 80th movie - that's 8 0 - and I've done hundreds and hundreds of hours of television and voiceover, but here's where I'm lucky, my celebrity came of age at the exact moment - now, I'd done 15 movies and I'd starred in two TV series, one which was very very big, V - but the great happy accident is that simultaneous with the Nightmare on Elm Street movie we began the video generation, so I was one of the first video generation movie stars, I was even a DJ on MTV.

"And then cable became very popular and they ran the movies. And I did those movies over 20 years, so every couple of years a Nightmare on Elm Street movie would come out and it would go to video and it would go to cable. Then there would be box sets, these beautiful box sets merchandised for the specific horror fans, and then those became very collectible. So now we're talking about a generation and a half of fans.

"Then DVDs came out, and along with DVDs we get the big beautiful flat screen TVs. So what you have to understand is, when I was a kid and we wanted to see a horror movie on TV or a movie that had been recommended to us at the Saturday matinee, you only saw it once. There was no pause button, there was no rewind button, there was no 'making of' King Kong or Forbidden Planet, or whatever it was, there wasn't anything like that. Now, young kids can get on their dad's flat screen, pop in Freddy Vs. Jason, which we did in 2004, on a 50 inch flat screen and can watch it in digitally remastered Bluray and it looks as good as any movie out right now."

Englund says it is these technological facts that have in effect helped to keep the Freddy Krueger character alive and well.

"I think this happy accident of being a movie star and then a star on video, and then on box sets and cable, and then on DVD ... I think all of those things together have given me maybe second or third generations of fans now and the movie does hold up because of that, some of them are better than others, I think the fan favourite, if you took a vote, is probably part three [Dream Warriors], my favourite is part seven, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which is now becoming quite the cult classic, because like the Scream movie, it was made for the fans and deals with all of those tropes and gimmicks and tricks that we use in horror movies and we acknowledge that we know that the fans know that we do that but we scare you anyway."

Englund will be in Sydney at the Convention Centre in Glebe Island next month [September 10 and 11] as one of the special guests at Oz Comic-Con. He will also appear in Brisbane [September 17 and 18].

While Craven's Krueger was essentially an evil character, he was adored by horror fans. Englund says the injection of humour in the franchise helped assure the outcome.

"Wes established that in the original," he said. "He's got my tongue coming out of the phone saying: 'I'm you're boyfriend now'; he's got me taking off Tina's face and wearing it like a mask and quoting her lines ... that humour was always there, very dark, cruel humour but it was humour nonetheless.

"We probably jumped the shark a little by the time we got to Nightmare on Elm Street part six [Freddy's Dead] - that was practically a Warner Brothers cartoon - but we really did react to the fans. They loved the humour and the one-liners so much, that kind of consistent Freddy insult that he would use, that kind of dirty sub-text that came out of Freddy, especially with the girls, that sort of beauty and the beast sexual innuendo and I think fans they really gobbled that up and that did become part of the franchise."

Englund says another aspect of then character fans appreciate is his ruthlessness.

"I think people do kind of like him for being unapologetically evil," he said. "He likes his work and he certainly is not politically correct. There's a great way he takes the teen culture - the culture of his young victims, the children of the people that wronged him, that burned him and sent him to his firey purgatory of revenge - there's something about them taking their own culture and their innocence and their own private thoughts and their own secrets and then taking those secrets and those fears and then throwing them right back in their face. I think that that's just a great thing that Wes Craven came up with that audiences respond to."

As for his own longevity in the industry, Englund says it all comes down to breaks created by taking on the Nightmare role.

"Here's the great thing that happened to me too," he said. "I did those movies for 20 years and I did other movies and I was kind of popular in the make-up for a while - I did Phantom of the Opera and Stephen King's Mangler and I wore extensive make-up in that and I wore a bit of make-up in other films - but when I was all done with Freddy and I came out of the make-up in 2004, which is 10-12 years ago, the great thing was I had aged.

"When I went into the make-up I was a very young man and I had a baby face to begin with but when I came out I had matured and I was starting to look like a young George C. Scott back then. I had a little bit of Klaus Kinski going for me, now I have some bags under my eyes, so I'm a little more Klaus Kinski, even the long sharp features of Vincent Price, so I sort of inherited the Vincent Price and Kluas Kinski roles ... somebody has to do those roles, they're part of the pantheon of the kind of roles that are written, and I find myself now playing the wise old doctor and the mad scientist and the old Van Helsing character and the redneck white trash stepfather, but its fun for me; the old poacher, the old professor.

"But I would never have been chosen to play those parts had I not done Freddy. I had done almost exclusively comedy and best friends and sidekicks, so its great for me now. I do those roles and they get a lot of screen time and they have a lot of dialogue. I just finished one with Lin Shaye of the Insidious franchise. She and I have a movie coming out next year called Midnight Man that I'm quite pleased with and I had a movie that's coming out in Australia called The Last Showing where I play the old projectionist who has his revenge.

"These are great starring roles that I would not normally have been asked to do had I not had the success and not been loyal to the horror genre."

Englund says loyalty and passion for the genre are common traits of fans and their hunger as cunsumers is now being fully recognised.

"The horror fans and the science fiction fans and the fantasy fans, there's a huge overlap and no pun intended, they kind of bleed together, and they also all gravitate towards gaming and comic books, but also, over the last I would say at least 10 to 15 years and certainly further back, there's been this huge amazing sophistication in the merchandise," he said.

"It's easy to remember the stuff from Star Wars, but now there's these magnificent action features for The Walking Dead and for Lord of the Rings and the Nightmare on Elm Street films, there's great stuff for all of this stuff. There's new stuff every year and it's more and more collectible and it's more and more intricate and wonderful. All of these things together are like this massive stew for these fans.

"In the 70s and the early 80s they were very neglected and they were bullied a bit I think by the industry and by their own peers and now they're sort of in the driver's seat. They're not just limited to the specifics of whatever my recent hit is or my classic iconic franchise is, they can talk about anything. I know at the last Comic-Con I was at we were talking about this great movie Green Room with the young boy that just died, Anton Yelchin, and I was mentioning to them the movie before that that the same director had made called Blue Ruin and it was great that so many of the fans had seen those movies.

"It's great when a younger generation that can also talk about classic horrir movies from the 70s and 80s and even beyond, and I love turning them onto earlier stuff as well, whether its an old Brian De Palma movie or even something from the black and white era. There's this great give and take."

Englund says he can understand the attraction of fans towards horror films.

 "I think with the horror fans there's this certain experience that happens, whether you're in a movie theatre or watching it on a flat screen alone with the lights off, or terrorising your kid brother or your kid sister with some movie that was a favourite of yours when you were younger and turning them onto it, but I think something happens," he said.

"I think people feel more alive, like when you're skydiving, or your surfing, or the brakes go out on your car, or you hit a patch of grease on the street. For those few seconds you feel very alive and I think there's an equivalent catharsis with a horror movie, especially when you're seeing it with a whole lot of other people.

"It's one of thoses places you really confront your own mortality, because you're identifying with somebody in jeopardy up on the screen and you make that bridge with that character on the big screen or the flat screen and you identify and you are in there sharing their jeopardy and you confront you're own mortality for a second and I think it does make the heart beat a little bit faster and it does make you feel a little bit more alive. and I think that's part of the attraction of the horror movie, just like rhythm is part of our great love of rock n roll."

On the topic of collectibles, Englund speaks with mock regret about the iconic Krueger glove he kept from the first Nightmare film, something fans would kill to have their hands on.

"I gave the glove years ago, when I was starring on television and I had no idea that the franchise was going to go on and on and on," he said.

"I gave the original glove to my agent. I stuffed it and I floated it in a neon box outlined in red and green neon and he still has it. He has the Smithsoneon, Planet Hollywood, Hard Rock Cafe quality glove and he's not giving it back! And I can't ask for it back because he's still my agent."

For details about Englund’s Australian visit, go the the official event website www.ozcomiccon.com/2016/