A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

Director Jack Sholder
Writers David Chaskin
Starring Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Robert Englund, Sydney Walsh
Genre Slasher
Tagline The first name in terror returns.
Country

Talk us through it

Jesse Walsh moves into 1428 Elm Street Springfield because his Dad got the place cheap. Seems if someone is brutally slain across the street, a chick goes insane in the house, and her mom karks it in the lounge room, then the real estate market will be affected. Dad should have purchased in, say, Amityville instead, really. Right from the get go Jesse has nightmares involving some burnt dude with a glove full of knives on his right hand. Do I really need to go into details there?

Yes, Freddy’s back and he wants to take up the old hobby. As opposed to the first movie, this time round our boiler room fanatic wants to possess young Jesse for no apparent reason that I could work out; well okay, there is one theory. Anyways, people around Jesse start to turn up dead and it’s down to Jesse’s girlfriend Lisa to find a way to stop Freddy. Not quite sure what ensues, to be honest.

Ready to see what Freddy is up to in this movie?

Review

“You are all my children now.” – Freddy.

I’ve tried about eight times to get this review happening and each time have come up short in the delivery stride. Do you review this movie via its gay subtext, as a substandard follow up to Craven’s classic, or as an out and out silly “B” horror movie? After giving each approach a shot I decided to simply go with the normal approach and review Freddy’s Revenge like any other horror flick; we are into nightmare territory here and it has nothing to do with the title of the film.

Director Sholder does actually kick his movie off in some style. Our hero, heroine, oh flock, the “in the closet” Jesse, is onboard the big yellow school bus as it’s dropping kids off at their home stops. Right here the whole gay community must have been terrified, those fashions would have looked bad enough back in 1985, but by today it’s time to send in the Queer Eye dudes stat. Anyway, most of the kids are dropped off with the exception of the rather emo looking Jesse and a couple of chicks as the bus gathers speed. It’s then into the surreal as the bus careers off the end of the road and out into the desert. We quickly learn that a) Freddy has a part time job as a bus driver, and b) buses over the hell mouth aren’t particular stable. Then Jesse wakes up screaming, which is apparently par for the course around Elm Street, and we the audience are settling back to a good old dose of Freddy’s Nightmares.

Of course, like all promises horror sequels tend to offer, this one goes off the rails quicker than, well, a school bus off its assigned route if Krueger is the driver. Besides the homo on the range subplot that keeps raising its ugly head and perhaps offering a metaphor for what’s going down, we have Jesse’s dad putting the “s” back into stupid, cartoon horror developments, and a complete unwillingness on the filmmakers’ part to keep anything consistent with the mythos developed in the first movie. It’s not only the gay subtext that put people off this film amigos, it’s the whole package.

Guess we should address the whole Freddy Krueger as a “gay icon” concept, which is certainly a more plausible way of viewing Freddy’s Revenge than a number of other theories floating about. The whole movie can be viewed as Jesse, and there’s a gender neutral name, coming to terms with his latent homosexuality as embodied by everyone’s favourite dream demon. In various scenes we have Jesse going to a leather bar, Don’s Place, late one evening and running improbably into his high school coach wearing what can be best described as an S&M leather ensemble. The shower scene soon after speaks for itself. The whole relationship between Jesse and Grady which simply screams out Brokeback Mountain, and which does devolve into Jesse leaving Lisa’s party in the midst of “getting some” to spend the night with Grady. We all getting the picture here? Topping on this particular pink triangle cake is Jesse stating “He’s inside me and he wants to take me again”. The Prosecution rest their case. Oops, almost forgot to mention that Jesse has something called “Probe” in his closet that intrigued the hell out of me as it gets quite the screen time but remains unexplained. About the only thing coming out of the closet in this movie is Nancy’s diary, and don’t get me started on the naming of the lead character in the first movie given the developments in Freddy’s Revenge!

Pretty much the rest of the movie is so left field that you are left wondering if the filmmakers actually saw Wes Craven’s original flick. Freddy is no longer exacting his revenge via victim’s dreams, but is trying to come into the real world via possessing Jesse. That worked out real well for him in the first movie. Mark Patton does a dance scene in his white jockey juniors that must have had Timmy Cruise green with envy. It’s always hot in Jesse’s house cause Freddy was burned up and stuff. And you haven’t lived till you have seen the toaster of ultimate evil going up in flames.

Final word goes to Jesse’s dad, played with maniacal brilliance by Tom McFadden, and the infamous parakeet of doom scene. Jesse’s sister has put the birds down for the night via throwing a sheet over their cage. Looks like a relaxing night in for the Walsh family. But no, Freddy is having none of it and I think possesses one of the birds, which leads to a prolonged scene of parakeet attacks before the bird simply explodes in a ball of flame. Awesome, you have to admit – that’s not something you see that often outside an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Jesse’s dad is onto the causation immediately – animals don’t just explode into flame without a good reason – and presents the following rational explanations: 1) it must have been a gas leak, 2) well okay, it’s that cheap feed mom has gotten the birds, 3) got it – Jesse snuck into the room and used a fire cracker! How exactly Jesse managed a Houdini number and palmed a cherry bomb up the bird’s bum remains unexplained in Dad’s universe.

Actually, a couple more of Dad’s classics. When the toaster goes up in flames, Dad voices the opinion that “it’s the craziest damn thing he’s ever seen” – well, at least since the exploding parrot I guess. He also thinks Jesse’s on drugs, which when you think about it isn’t such a bad call.

Not entirely sure I have offered a review of this movie, but then again not entirely sure they offered me a movie to review. Gosh, you do get stretched when dealing with the ginger headed cousins of any long running franchise.

Mark Patton (Jesse) simply went emo on us and came across as more of a whinny brat than someone who you can honestly believe will face up to the dream demon. Shortly after this movie he did in fact come out of the closet, which is more than his character in Freddy’s Revenge does. Kim Myers (Lisa) at least matches her counterpart in the original movie and by hell someone needed to go hard here. Myers also came out of the closet soon after this movie was released, and why on earth they didn’t go with some sort of “curse” in advertising Freddy’s Revenge is beyond me. Robert Rusler (Grady) does JD exactly as a Hollywood casting agent believes it should be done, i.e. unbelievable and completely bogus. The rest of the cast, which does include Hope Lange, do the best they can with a pretty poor script, and unfortunately don’t all come out of the closet on mass. Robert Englund is of course spot on as Freddy, the dude rocks, enough said.

T&A is restricted to exploding parrots, pop in your own joke right here.

Christopher Young scored the flick, think retread of the original by Charles Bernstein by someone without the same amount of talent. We also get a number of pop/rock tracks as devised by a suit thinking they know what those crazy kids were listening to at the time.

Summary Execution

Don’t ask me, Freddy’s Revenge still leaves me dazed and confused to be honest. Did I enjoy the second Elm Street movie? – well yes and no. It’s a film that I want to enjoy but just can’t due to the moviemakers pissing all over the concepts and mythology of the original. Freddy just isn’t that frightening in this outing, unless maybe you are homophobic or something. Someone really needs a smack in the mouth for this affront to Freddy fans to be honest.

Freddy’s Revenge made a tad under $30 million worldwide and was one of the worst performers in the franchise. Must have still made some cash as New Line pumped out a further four movies, not including the one Wes Craven waded into in an attempt to get Freddy back to his nasty origins.

Elm Street 2 is only worth a look if you are out to complete your franchise dance card, else you can happily give it a miss. To be honest the movie is a complete mess that does nothing for Freddy’s cred, insults the intelligence of the audience, and for no apparent reason involves a gay subtext. End of day, Freddy’s Revenge is less nightmare-inducing and more of a yawn.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  A confused movie trying to come out of the closet.