Okay, elephant in the room: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is the gayest mainstream horror movie ever released.
That being said, Wes Craven wanted no part in franchising his Nightmare on Elm Street movie. We cannot begrudge producer Robert Shaye for demanding follow-ups (and tinkering with the ending of the original accordingly), for without these things to prop up New Line Cinema in the 1980s, we wouldn’t today have the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Dumb & Dumber. Though Craven’s secondary complaint, that the screenplay for Freddy’s Revenge (by David Chaskin, New Line marketing guy – because nothing says “profit-driven sequel” like “we had our marketing guy write the screenplay”)…um, anyway, the screenplay for Freddy’s Revenge grossly misconstrued the point behind the character of Freddy Kreuger, and that was unforgivable to Craven.
This is a very common ailment among first sequels, so it’s time I address it directly. With the usual sequel drive to go bigger, but with the same running time, a producer must decide what to emphasize. Certain elements of the first get magnified, others diminished. It’s just as likely a sequel to Die Hard could’ve dramatized a schismed marriage for two hours. So Freddy’s Revenge makes a single, gigantic miscalculation with Freddy: What if he was in the real world.
Really, the point behind A Nightmare on Elm Street was to explore the nature of dreams; it just did so using some of the structural grammar of the slasher film. Freddy’s Revenge struggles to create a more usual horror movie from those elements. It wants to turn Freddy into someone you’d run into while walking down the street – never mind that reduces his power once nightmares mean nothing. Basically, what if Freddy were in the milieu of a Michael Myers or a Jason Voorhees? What if he were just an iconic costume and weapon? (I swear, every kill in this movie happens to people who are awake.)
Now, it’s not enough for this wholly misguided idea to fuel an Elm Street sequel. Following (however loosely) from the first, they cannot start with Freddy the party-crashing teen-slasher. The dream’s the thing, and Freddy remains solely a dream presence for much of his titular revenge – against whom exactly, may I ask? For in this conception, Freddy haunts only one person’s dreams – that’d be the new teen now residing in 1428 Elm, Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton). It takes Jesse for-damn-ever to realize what Freddy’s up to – trying to use Jesse’s body/subconscious/whatever as a conduit into the waking realm – but we parse that out in the first 20 minutes. This angle – A Nightmare on Elm Street as a piss poor Exorcist knockoff – is another inapt thread, horridly glommed onto the other half-baked notions on hand.
And then there’s the gay thing. The casting of Mark Patton marks (heh?) that out, because not only is Patton to this day a happily homosexual expat, he was known then for such material – see Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. And lest, somehow, you doubt the subtextual homoeroticism of Freddy’s Revenge, do note that several of its makers have admitted to it afterwards. Patton, of course, has. Robert Englund (that is, Freddy) says he knew at the time of filming, as did (obviously) the writer. Somehow, apparently blind to his movie’s own thematic content was its director, Jack Sholder – proof that Freddy’s Revenge was an in-house New Line effort, as Sholder shouldered New Line’s former Alone in the Dark and their later The Hidden – the precise movie Jason Goes to Hell opted to rip off. The thing is, Sholder’s gaydar somehow is so undernourished, he remained blind to the mighty Homoeroticism Quotient (from now on “HQ,” tallied up) in his own movie. That doesn’t augur confidence, that far from Craven’s fully thought-out, personal effort, we have a helmer unaware of his own product. (The 10 month turnaround after Part One aids in this one’s paltriness as well.)
So the setup: Mark is new to Elm, his dimwitted family of ‘50s-style parental stereotypes barely aware of the bad business which went down here – what? – five years ago?! Ugh, it’s just like a crappy horror sequel to use “five years ago” as the default time to start with a clean slate – it’s this precise sequel gap which fudges up the Friday timeline so egregiously. Mark commutes to school – Springwood High School, as our community gets a name – with local rich girl Lisa Webber (Kim Myers, also of Hellraiser: Bloodline). Ostensibly, they shall form the standard romantic coupling, because among Freddy’s Revenge’s faults (which include that awkward double-possessive) is an unwillingness to fully commit to the story of Mark’s coming out.
Oh, but it’s there! At school, Mark meets tough guy Ron Grady (Weird Science’s Robert Rusler). In fact, they “meet cute,” as it were, tussling on the PE baseball field, their bare asses waving about for all to see (HQ #1). For this transgression, Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell), who is implied to be an S&M freak and a [cough!] chickenhawk (HQ #2), punishes them. Forced into proximity, including some very friendly showers (HQ #3), Mark and Ron became the best of friends – better than Mark ever becomes with heterosexuality lure Lisa, which becomes a major problem when the climax revolves around his love for her. But that’s a ways away.
Meanwhile, Jesse’s every evening is plagued with strange visitations – um, no HQ for that one (yet…?), but it’s pretty easy to explain nightmare visions of Freddy as bottled up sexual yearnings. Easier still since that was one of the first’s successful metaphors, so kudos to Chaskin for picking up on that. Freddy (undoubtedly FredDY now) retains a certain amount of dread, lots of it courtesy of Englund alone. Under Sholder, the scares are reduced and anemic – most of the spookier imagery, including jump rope girls, is lifted wholesale from Craven’s original. Add to that a dysfunctional soundtrack, when the first’s wasn’t too great anyway, content to just go “BI-DONK!” every twenty seconds on the dot, regardless of context.
And Freddy’s threat is much vaguer this time out – I mean, fine, his saying “You’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain” is a pretty clear indication he intends to possess Jesse, but…Jesse’s life isn’t in immediate danger here! You lose that visceral edge, especially as Freddy cannot become a physical threat until well towards the end. Combine this with Jesse himself, a (possibly intentionally) spineless doormat of a hero, compared to the spunk of Nancy Thompson.
Then the nightmares end, and Jesse awakes drenched in a thick coating of sweat (HQ #4).
Sticking with Jesse, his weakness makes him a prime vessel for Freddy’s torments (the dream stalker patently refuses to haunt Jesse’s little sister, which is a big slap in the face for Jesse). With such a milquetoast protagonist (way to positively paint the homosexuals, guys!), it falls to Lisa of all people to parse out the plot’s direction. It’s she who uncovers Freddy’s past, already so well known to us. Actually, she doesn’t even do it alone. She finds Nancy’s diary, perfectly preserved in Jesse’s bedroom lo these past five years, and reads information only when it’s pertinent to the story. You know what, movie? We know about Freddy! We saw the first movie, and replaying the mystery a second time around just makes time drag. And if Nancy could research Freddy on her own, why can’t these sods?
But Freddy’s Revenge’s problems do not remain subtle structural faults for long. Soon, the stupid rises to the surface, for all to see! As part of his paltry poltergeist parlor tricks, Freddy manifests some rather…bizarre events in the real world. He makes one parakeet go mad, kill another, fly around all “scary-like” (piss-poor Birds homage!), then explode. Bye-bye, credibility! Then Freddy makes it his mission to systematically destroy everything in the Walsh’s kitchen, exploding their oven, stove, toaster oven – I may have imagined some of those, or am confusing my own kitchen for the movie’s, but still. Indeed, Freddy has a curious obsession with fire now – Possibly appropriate, seeing it’s how he once died. More likely, it’s a pun on the word “flamer,” making this (begrudgingly) HQ #5.
Now, when Freddy isn’t busy farting out fright scenes, the movie is content to be a parade of further HQs. Unpacking his room, Jesse listens to – what is that? – ‘80s disco (HQ #6)? He pops a pop-gun at his groin (HQ #7). He wears Elton John glasses (HQ #8), an aloha shirt (HQ #9), showers regularly with muscled, visibly naked men (HQ #10), and is tormented by a no-doubt phallic boa constrictor in science class (HQ #11). Also, what the hell?!
Okay, the movie still has deniability; maybe I, and all cultural commentators, am reading too much into it. That’s until Jesse, under some inexplicable compass, strolls out into a rainstorm in his pajamas, and heads right on over to Springwood’s local friendly S&M gay bar (HQ #12). Here’s where I cry “Bullshit!” on Sholder’s professed ignorance! Jesse meets up with Schneider, clad all in leather (HQ #13), and suddenly he (Jesse) is jogging around the school gym at night, and taking a shower. Okay, guys, what just happened between these two? Did our hero just get sodomized? Maaaaaybe.
Now, we’re how far into this slasher sequel? About halfway. And yet, no one has died yet. That’s about to change. Here in the real world (I’m sorry, I just cannot fathom how Freddy manages all this), Schneider’s gym equipment turns on him. He gets a face full of balls (HQ #14), et cetera. Jump ropes drag Schneider to the showers, and somehow strip him naked and splayed right besides Jesse (HQ #15). Towels perform the dreaded rat tail (HQ #16). Oh, and all in glorious close-up of Schneider’s reddened ass, of course. Then that old knife glove we once knew so well makes its welcome reappearance, and slashes Schneider in twain. Oh, and it’s Jesse wearing the glove!
Freddy’s Revenge doesn’t have the immaculate construction of A Nightmare on Elm Street, so they aren’t really going anywhere with this. It’s just a horror movie in a blender, a little werewolf-style “I am the killer!” nonsense to go with the possession, hauntings, and (when they feel like it) stuff cribbed from the original. The movie doesn’t really feel like it’s ramping up to anything, as we’re still expected to believe Freddy has yet to fully take over Jesse – and there’s no visual shorthand to indicate this process, making the story’s underlying mechanic rather nebulous. So a few more generic nightmares and toaster explosions pass by, until all of a sudden we’re at Lisa’s climactic pool party, a bevy of death-ready teenaged non-entities. That happened without warning, I tell you what.
Frankly, this lack of momentum has a lot to do with Freddy’s absence, an odd thing given he got his name in the title in only the second movie (as compared to Part VI for Jason, or 4 for Michael, say). The greatest entertainment comes from a movie studio’s strange interpretation of 1980s teenager behavior (filtered through filmmakers who evidently grew up in the ‘50s). And as if I needn’t any more help arguing that there is a homosexual subtext to Freddy’s Big Gay Revenge, once again the movie obliges. Thank you, movie, keep making that same point and refuse to improve.
So Lisa tempts Jesse off into the cabana, for the frankest (i.e. still tit-less) sex scene an Elm Street movie can offer up. Well…it never even makes it to “sex scene,” as Jesse is horrified by his own Freddy tongue. (Lisa doesn’t seem to mind it one bit.) Terrified by this supple, comely redhead, Jesse flees…
Straight to Ron’s bedroom. (It’s implied Ron is getting a good, early night’s rest, as it’s possibly only 9 PM right now – Also, why is Ron not at Lisa’s party?!) Whatever, Jesse fears now his imminent Freddification, and wants Ron to watch him sleep, lest anything unusual arise. Wait for it!
“Something is trying to get inside my body.”
Wait for it!
“Yeah, and she’s female and she’s waiting for you in the cabana…And you want to sleep with me.”
It took a while but we have HQ #17, the mightiest one of all!!! (Again, I am just flabbergasted that anyone on production could miss the intent behind this dialogue.)
(For what it’s worth, Ron’s bedroom is the most whole-hearted crypt to 1980s pop culture I’ve seen since, well, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, in keeping with this franchise’s general new wave sort of vibe. This, and the under-budgeted pre-CGI SFX, really make these things wholly worthwhile time capsules.)
Okay, we’re, what, almost done with this slasher movie now? And only one death? That’s about to change! Jesse (who is awake, mind you) undergoes his latest Freddifying. Knives grow from his fingers. His skin rips away. And Freddy emerges all Alien-like from Jesse’s chest – but Jesse is okay, somehow. You know, there is no consistency to Freddy’s abilities in this one, other than conforming to whatever effect the makeup guys wanted to pull off next.
Oh, and Ron, ever the horror movie victim, knows nothing better to do in Freddy’s presence except cower and die. Fine, his bedroom door was locked (for some reason), but Jesse shows Ron up once he recovers (after whatever happened), and escapes through the window in under three seconds.
Okay, so we’re looking at hallucinations, or pockets of dream reality, or some such, every time Freddy pops up, because Jesse remains intact, and remains Freddy’s conduit, despite the fact we’ve already seen Freddy emerge from him. (Part One provided a wholly elegant means to get Freddy into the real world, making this movie-long effort that much more infuriating.) Jesse returns to Lisa, and the batch of potential pool party victims she’s graciously lined up, pleading inanely for help, or whatever. But then Jesse simply becomes Freddy – And Freddy retains certain dream powers, and his own body, here in the real world, so that whole body possession angle simply goes ker-splat right here.
Not to mention Jesse, the lead, is MIA throughout this entire final sequence, forcing Lisa to inherit the mantle of Final Girl from Jesse by default. But first order of business, how about letting Freddy have himself a massacre? With a meager body count of two for the majority of its running time, Freddy’s Revenge doctors the books in a most misleading way by offing something like six teens in the next minute and change. Don’t be fooled, there is no gore to be had here, nothing to really live up to the brain’s sick notion of what’d happen when you mix Freddy with a crowd of trapped homo sapiens. Still, it’s mighty fun to see Fred posing beside the tiki torches to bellow “You are all my children now.” Too bad it doesn’t mean anything.
And most of those partiers survive anyway, as Freddy just strolls off for whatever reason. Because the effects guys wanted to show him vanish into a flaming hedge, regardless of context. Not that his killings have meaning to begin with, as Revenge loses the actual idea of revenge which drove A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Instead, seemingly Freddy opts to go hang out in the nearest gigantic industrial boiler room, at the oh-so-convenient abandoned power plant a few blocks away. No comment. Now it’s just a matter of Lisa arriving in order to stop Freddy’s inhuman rampage of…occasionally crashing parties. The question of killing Freddy (until the next sequel) isn’t nearly as daunting here, seeing as everybody is awake. Rather, Lisa’s challenge is to separate Freddy from Jesse, who’s still there inside of Freddy this whole time. The result is ten minutes of Lisa weeping “I love you” at Freddy Kreuger, which is the kind of asinine thing I’d expect to see in a schmaltzier anime. It’s irritating partly because it drops the entire HQ thing, rather telling the touching story of how Jesse Walsh turned straight forever – at the cost of, oh, eight other human lives (entirely dudes). Way to not commit to the one unique idea you had floating around there, Freddy’s Revenge.
All is well, except we end with the same sort of nonsensical stinger ending as the first. Lisa, Jesse, and all the sarcastic teenagers who survived Freddy’s bloody killing spree all ride the school bus. Then Freddy appears, kills one (maybe), and drives the bus into the Californian desert. Ooh, scary! No, I don’t know what this ending means. Probably nothing, which retroactively means the rest of the movie means nothing too.
Well, that’s surely not going to be the trend the rest of the series takes. Freddy’s Revenge is an aberration, a radioactive thing rather like Halloween III (only with the proper villain). And even though it did better than A Nightmare on Elm Street (but only by a mere few million dollars), fan outcry dictated that the series could not go on in this light. Credit now goes to producer Robert Shaye. For while he allowed for the conditions which stillbirthed A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, he was also clever enough (a necessity, when running a fledgling independent movie studio) to understand improvements were necessary.
RELATED POSTS:
• No. 1 A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
• No. 3 A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
• No. 4 A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
• No. 5 A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
• No. 6 Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• No. 7 Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
• No. 8 Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
• No. 9 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
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