Robert Englund Reveals the Film That Cured a Life-Long Fear

Throughout his acting career, Robert Englund has starred in a number of horrifying narratives that have inspired fear in viewers, though the actor recently revealed that starring in the 2000 film Python cured him of his own fear of snakes, which was inspired by the disturbing depictions of the damage caused by a snake bite in a film he had seen when he was younger. Englund’s latest project, True Terror with Robert Englund on the Travel Channel, brings to life various unsettling encounters with all manner of disturbing entities, many of which are the things of nightmares. The new series debuts on the Travel Channel on Wednesday, March 18th at 10 p.m. ET.

“I did this movie called ‘Python,’ which was the low-budget follow-up to Anaconda with Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez,” Englund revealed during a press event for True Terror. “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.”

He added, “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.”

Given that True Terror rips its stories straight from headlines in our nation’s history, we can assume that the program will surely inspire a number of new fears into its audience. Check out the series premiere of True Terror with Robert Englund on the Travel Channel on Wednesday, March 18th at 10 p.m. ET.

Are you surprised that Englund was afraid of snakes? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!