David Miller of David Miller Creations has posted a comment and shared some insights into the Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 Freddy Gloves issues raised in that article.
Because there is no obvious notification of reader comments on the blog, I thought I’d repost his comments here so readers can have the full benefit of his insights, information, and opinions:
Hello Jason. David Miller here. An anonymous person alerted me to your blog, so I thought I would take a minute to clear up a couple of things for you.
The above link to the”Sample” certificate is definitely not the certificate that we send out with our reproduction gloves. If you click the link that you have posted, you will see that it says that “This is just an example of your actual certificate. The wording on the actual certificate will reflect the item that you have purchased.” We are definitely not selling reproductions as “Originals” I can see now that it is confusing because the sample picture says “original” But again, the line at the bottom explains it. I think I will tell the guys to change it. Thanks for the heads up!
I believe the glove that StarWares was selling is one that I had in storage since 1989. It was a glove that was given to me by Alan Munro. He was the visual FX supervisor on Nightmare 5. I don’t know where he got it, or who made it, but he gave it to me to put on a Freddy dummy that we had made. Actually it was more than just a dummy. It was an articulated puppet of Freddy from the knees up. It was used in a scene towards the end of the film in which all of Freddy’s victims came bursting out of his back.
Since the puppet included Freddy’s arms, we had to have a glove for his right hand and that was the one that Munro gave us. It was officially filmed on our puppet. After filming, we put everything into storage until the film came out. This is a precaution in case they need to shoot any inserts or additional footage at the last minute. Eventually we did “house cleaning” and sold the puppet to Planet Hollywood. This sale did include the Sweater that was on the puppet, but not the glove. The glove went back into storage until around 2001. There was a guy named Mike (I don’t remember his last name) who kept hounding us for months for original props. I kept telling him no until finally I downsized my facility and decided to sell a lot of stuff from storage. I don’t even remember what he paid for it. (I think around $1,500.00)
It turns out that he was a very unscrupulous scam artist. He would buy props, recast them and sell them as originals. He would even copy certificates. I washed my hands of this guy and never heard from him again. He’s probably in jail.
So, the StarWares certificate pictured above does look like the original that I had a graphics friend make up for the sale of that particular glove, but if it was bought from that Mike character, it could be a duplicate. It’s really hard to tell. It was a long time ago.
The glove in the eBay auction pictures above looks like the one that we sold to Mike. This was the one that we used on our puppet. We took a lot of pictures of it before we sold it and it was from these pictures that we later began to make our reproductions.
I just didn’t want you or anyone else to think that we were offering reproductions as originals. I could see why it would be confusing however, to see the “Example” certificate. I will see to it that we change the example. It hasn’t been a problem until now. I think most people just read the line under it and understood that the wording on the actual certificate would be different.
A final note to you is that I think your blog is a wonderful thing. There are a lot of collectors out there and there are also a lot of bad people out there. Hopefully you and people like you can educate everyone before they make a big mistake. Please keep up the good work!
David Miller
David Miller Creations
I want to thank David again for sharing his comments and taking the time to post them.
Jason De Bord