10 Small Movie Roles You Didn't Know Held Signifigance

10. Robert Shaye - Freddy Vs. Jason

Before financing A Nightmare on Elm Street, Robert Shaye was hawking films around campuses. That's how he funded New Line Cinema throughout the seventies, perhaps most notably re-releasing Reefer Madness on the Midnight Movie Circuit. When the eighties proved that horror films were the next little risk/big reward payout, he championed A Nightmare on Elm Street to box office success.

Shaye also gave the film its final scare, leaving the film open for sequels that would eventually become one of the most successful franchises of the 80s.

Even during their initial box office run, there was call from fans to team up Freddy Krueger with Paramount's Jason Vorhees, but legal complications prevented it for over a decade.

When it finally did happen in 2003, Freddy Vs. Jason delivered pretty much what audiences wanted, save for a fairly run-of-the-mill group of teens. And Robert Shaye was on the production side of the Freddy-half of the team.

His years of promoting the slasher were rewarded with a winking cameo as the school principal, although fans of the series weren't unfamiliar with his face; if they didn't catch him in the numerous special features included even on VHS, they say him playing himself in Wes Craven's New Nightmare.

His role here as the principal in Springwood, however, suggests a familial connection: his sister, Lynn Shaye, was the teacher in the first film.