Robert 'Freddy Kruger' Englund will shoot his third film as a director entirely on location in Calabria, the Calabria Film Foundation announced on Tuesday.
The movie by the 60-year-old American actor, who rose to international fame as the razor-hand killer in the Nightmare on Elm Street horror film series, is called The Vij and is based on a novella by Russian author Nikolai Gogol.
Calabria Film Foundation Chairman Francesco Zinnato said the film will be shot in and around Pentedattilo, a small town in the province of Reggio Calabria which lies at the tip of the Italian boot.
The film is an Italian-American co-production and will star Italian heart-throb Raul Bova, veteran British horror actor Christopher Lee and Canadian actress Neve Campbell.
Gogol's story was also the basis of a 1967 Soviet horror film called Viy, the Spirit of Evil.
The plot centers on a young priest who must preside over the wake of a witch in an old country church. This involves spending three nights alone with the corpse with only his faith to protect him.
Aside from the Freddy Kruger films, Englund is an accomplished character actor and is also known as the friendly alien lizard in the cult 1980s sci-fi TV series V-Visitors.
This year he directed his second feature-length film, Killer Pad, which is a horror-comedy about three friends in a Hollywood haunted house.
His first film as a director was the 1989 horror flick 976-EVIL about supernatural satanic killers.
Previously he had directed two episodes of the 1980s TV Elm Street spinoff series Freddy's Nightmares
