One of the most fascinating aspects of media is the stage name, at least to me. This isn’t merely when Jon Leibowitz dropped his last name and went with his middle one because of personal issues with his father. This is when a young man named Carmine Orrico became an actor and was promptly literally declared “Saxon” by his agency, because Italians were still too ethnic at the time, and Anglo-Saxon was a desirable thing. He was seventeen. It was the early 1950s. And Italians weren’t yet considered white.

Mostly, I think John Saxon would be known today for his TV work, had he not appeared in Nightmare on Elm Street. Which, fair warning, I’ve never seen. He’s done over a hundred movies, and in fact he has two in production yet, and a few of them are even legitimate classics—he is, after all, in Enter the Dragon. That said, he also has nearly ninety TV credits, including most of the standards, and that’s the sort of thing that lasts, I find. More people will remember an episode of Mary Tyler Moore than a role in an Esther Williams movie.

I’ll be perfectly honest—I don’t think I’d like Nightmare on Elm Street. It just doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that interests me at all. These days, I wouldn’t mind seeing Johnny Depp erupt in a shower of blood, but that’s not reason enough to watch it. The plot summary of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare sounds interesting, but I also suspect it’s the kind of interesting that would work for me in a summary and not in a full-length movie. I might watch it if I had someone to watch it with, but that doesn’t happen much these days.

I mean, I have no real problem with people who enjoy these movies, and honestly quite a lot of people could give a better summary of John Saxon’s career than I could. What I do find interesting is that he doesn’t seem to have the standard Eli Wallach I Play Every Ethnic Group career. He seems to have played a lot of people whose character name includes a rank, be it army or police, and a fair few criminals, but most of the characters he’s played have had names like Fred or James. I guess that’s the hazard of not changing your name in those days.

To be perfectly honest, the thing that surprised me most was that Mitchell isn’t listed under TV. It appears to have actually been a theatrical-release movie. Which is amazing to me not just because of the cast but also because it feels like a TV movie. Not just in the “why would you spend money to see this in the theatre?” sense but in the “stars Joe Don Baker and Linda Evans” sense and in the “man, this is badly made” sense. The film quality, the whole thing. It just seems low-budget in a made-for-TV way; the MST3K commercial breaks feel organic that way. I’m very confused.

I’m striking while you’re confused to ask you to contribute to my Patreon or Ko-fi!