Long-time character actor John Saxon died this week. Saxon is best known, at least according to high-brow sources, as one of the participants/willing beat-down participants in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon (1973). Don’t get me wrong: Saxon is pretty rad in Dragon and wears some impressive robes.

However, to yours truly, his best role is as Nancy Thompson’s Sheriff Dad in Nightmare on Elm Street (1983). Granted, he mistakenly arrests Rod, which leads to Rod’s death in jail, and he is understandably a bit skeptical of his daughter’s claims that a dirty-hat wearing spectral child murder is responsible for all the carnage. That said, he comes through in the end, using some of those cop breaking-and-entering skills so he can save his daughter.

Mostly I think he is great in this movie because it was either the first or second horror movie that I saw that really scared me. I am talking about not being able to sleep and assuming that every sound was Freddy coming to give me the ol’ slash and stab type of scared. But, knowing that John Saxon was out there gave me a little hope that I might survive.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2020 at 8:16 am and is filed under Horror Movies, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.