Nicholas Mele
Nicholas Mele's filmography is a map of where American movies put a working actor in a suit. His first job was an uncredited taxi driver in The Ritz in 1976, and the decade that followed handed him a maitre d', a waiter, an assistant director, a photographer, a shoplifter, an inspector and a gangster called Jerry, spread across studio comedies including The Lonely Guy, Unfaithfully Yours, Young Doctors in Love and the fever dream of Mommie Dearest.
The part he is actually remembered for arrived in 1988, when A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master cast him as Johnson, and he came back as Dennis Johnson in the following year's The Dream Child. Two films is a real run in a franchise that replaced most of its cast every time out, and horror audiences keep a far longer memory for faces than comedy audiences do.
After that the credits thin: television guest spots, a 1990s crime picture, and by the early 2000s the record stops. It is an ordinary career and a completely typical one, which is exactly why the Elm Street sequels matter as much as they do to it.
Movies (12)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
- Mommie Dearest (1981)
- Young Doctors in Love (1982)
- The Last Days of Frankie the Fly (1996)
- Unfaithfully Yours (1984)
- The Gift (1979)
- The Lonely Guy (1984)
- Wholly Moses (1980)
- The Ritz (1976)
- Impulse (1990)
- All Night Long (1981)
TV (3)
Where to start with Nicholas Mele
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master is the reason anyone looks him up, and it holds together better than a fourth franchise entry has any right to: the effects are inventive and the film knows it is a pop record rather than a nightmare. Follow it with A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, which is stranger, darker and far less liked, and which I would defend on its imagery alone.
Outside horror, Mommie Dearest is the famous one and the camp landmark, Young Doctors in Love has the best gag rate, and The Lonely Guy is the oddly melancholy Steve Martin vehicle worth catching. Impulse is the deep cut, a decent 1990 thriller that nobody talks about.