A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985) is still as controversial today as it was when it was released just a year after Wes Craven’s original film that launched the franchise. It’s this controversy that has kept A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge in the conversation regarding the nature of the horror movie genre within our collective culture. Dubbed the “queer Nightmare On Elm Street“, A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge divides fans as to whether the film is homophobic or not.
It’s easy to appreciate that for many people A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was a matter of gaining representation in a genre with the most loyal and communal fanbase of any cinephilic institution. The main character Jesse (Mark Patton) is very clearly coded as a queer character and Freddy (Robert Englund) is used as a means of exploring Jesse’s repressed homosexual desires. Many of the set pieces are built around homoerotic imagery that, for the time, were quite revolutionary for a mainstream franchise release.
It’s just as easy to see why some consider A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge problematic. When the queer impulse or queer desire is personified by a supernatural serial killer it doesn’t exactly broadcast an inclusive, progressive political message. This is reenforced by the fact that the men that Jesse desires are all the subjects of the most gruesome and explicit murder scenes in the film. There’s a typically Reagan-era “kill your gays” philosophy at work in how homosexuality, in all of its forms, is punishable by death.
But these are subjective readings that vary tremendously person to person. That anyone feels validated or seen by A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge gives the film a certain sociological value that cannot be ignored. A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge had a profound effect on the life and career of its star Mark Patton that no doubt mirrors that of many of the people who cherish this film. The issue is that there really is no explicit message in A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge for people to build a thesis around because the film refuses to openly acknowledge its obvious queer content. Surprisingly, even the director of the film, Jack Sholder, maintains that he had no idea that A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was a queer text.
No matter how one sees A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge there’s no getting around the fact that, on a technical level, it’s a poorly made film. Everything about the violent set pieces feels rushed or ill thought out while Jesse’s arc never gets the development that it deserves. Some moments have a campy quality to them that is enjoyable (Clu Gulager and the exploding bird), but these moments are both too brief and too scarce. This has the effect of leaving the audience with little to consider other than Jesse’s sexual orientation and Kruger’s relationship to it.
Ultimately A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is a kind of paradox. It’s an adventurous new direction for the sequel to take that represents a rather problematic piece of queer representation. But it is representation. The position of A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge in the franchise coupled with its paradoxical nature is why the film remains a kind of test for horror movie buffs. Do you like the original or A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge more? The only way to answer that is to see it for yourself.
