Elvis Nolasco, who plays the title character in the horror movie, Mr. Crocket, on Hulu Friday, said the supernatural killer is different from other Black horror icons like Candyman and Snoop Dogg's Bones.
Mr. Crocket is a children's television show host who can come out of the VCR to kill young viewers' abusive parents.
"What makes Mr. Crocket so different from these other films is that we're dealing with a character who we can all identify with and connect with," Nolasco told UPI in a recent phone interview.
Mr. Crocket's motivation is to empower children, Nolasco said. He just takes it too far, executing parents he believes are stifling the kids.
Nolasco said it is important for parents to be open to their children's developing personalities, though the punishment for mistakes need not be as dire as Mr. Crocket inflicts.
"What happens when we're raising a child and we are not allowing that child to be who they are supposed to be and who they are meant to be?" Nolasco asked rhetorically. "There's so many hidden messages in this horror film."
Those themes are also what distinguish different horror films, though they all might involve killers who use creative means of murdering victims. Many other horror films explore social themes, too.
Candyman is about racism, as he was a lynched slave who became an urban legend. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is about dreams and the sins of parents falling on their children, and even Chucky began as a macabre twist on the hot children's toys.
Since Mr. Crocket hosts a television show, Nolasco said the movie also contains a message about using screens to pacify children. Nolasco is helping to raise 10-year-old twins and being vigilant about limiting screen time, and said he also remembered his daughter's, now 27, addiction to popular TV shows.
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"In '97 we had Barney and other TV shows that I got to witness how [childrens'] attention can easily be controlled," Nolasco said. "It's time to sit down and eat as a family, but no, this program is more important and more addictive and is pulling all my attention."
In creating the fictional Mr. Crocket's World, Nolasco wrote a biography of Emmanuel Crocket. Some aspects of Crocket's past are revealed in the film and will not be spoiled, but others are only subtle background that helped Nolasco get into character.
Nolasco decided that Emmanuel was the child of West Indies immigrants. The generational conflict with his father led Mr. Crocket to take his attention to children to extremes.
"The father's way of working and raising a family was not necessarily young Emmanuel Crocket's vision or who he was," Nolasco said. "Man, does Mr. Crocket have an unfulfilled need. That hole is so huge."
More of that could be revealed in sequels, Nolasco said. Writer-director Brandon Espy and co-writer Carl Reid have more ideas, too.
"When you watch it, you're like, 'I want to know more about Mr. Crocket, how he became Mr. Crocket and what that family dynamic was like,'" Nolasco said. "Where does he go from here?"
Before he can make a Mr. Crocket 2, Nolasco will be seen in Season 4 of the MGM+ series, Godfather of Harlem, in which he plays Nat Pettigrew, right-hand man to gangster Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker).
Nolasco said Season 4 takes place in 1966.
"Whether it's in the style of wardrobe, the style of hair in which people are starting to be seen in '66, there's going to be changes," Nolasco said. "There will be a lot of Afros."
The cast will expand to include more historical figures, Nolasco said. Just which figures have been cast remains a spoiler.
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"It's going to be characters that are in the African American community and in the White community that were big socialites in Harlem," Nolasco said, adding that these characters are figures in the "Civil Rights movement or the movement in the underworld at that time period."
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