BLOGTOBER 10/2/2021: NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2 - FREDDY'S REVENGE
I was just complaining about how hard it is to discuss movies that are the subjects of unending analysis, often by finer minds than mine...but I really asked for it this year by programming DRACULA'S DAUGHTER and the notorious NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE right at the start of the month. The informed reader may guess that I had my reasons. I was spending the weekend in a cabin in the woods with some friends, and I was trying to reward their tolerance of my preexisting daily movie commitments. My companions were not particularly interested in horror, nor in movies in any special way, so it was very generous of them to agree to spend several hours of their woodland vacation in front of the TV with me. Since they both identify as queer, I selected two movies beloved by LGBT+ audiences, and which I felt wouldn't scare anybody too badly. Apparently I chose well, because the ELM STREET screening sparked a Blogtober miracle.
First, a few words about the movie. In modern times, many of us slow-learning straights have had to do some soul-searching about our early, dare I say primitive reactions to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2. Its iconoclastic use of a final boy, and the barely-subtextual eroticism between him and the villain who "is trying to get inside (his) body," sent many of us into a homophobic paroxysm in our teen years. Sure, hilarity is encouraged by the movie's relentless campiness, but too much of the FREDDY'S REVENGE hysteria has centered on leading man Mark Patton himself. Viewers who were unprepared for his boyish sensitivity and extreme emotional vulnerability easily dismissed and derided this sequel in no uncertain bigoted terms, sending the gay actor down a dark path (to a hard-won redemption) that is described poignantly in the highly recommended documentary SCREAM, QUEEN!: MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.
Alongside Mark Patton's personal journey, the documentary illuminates the film's recent reclamation by LGBT+ critics and audiences, who feel that the movie's messaging was more elegant and deliberate than previously acknowledged. It would be fair to feel like that assessment is half-true; we see that the production itself was divided between those who believed in FREDDY'S REVENGE as a legitimate coming-out allegory, and those who maintain a frustratingly willful ignorance of that possibility to this very day. Thus, some of the narrative feels cleverly pointed, and some of it feels trapped in an awkward identity crisis. The fact that it simply isn't a highly accomplished movie only emboldened the bullying attitude of many contemporary viewers.
Grady (Robert Rusler) complains that Jesse has left his hot-to-trot girlfriend alone at her own party, "and you wanna sleep with ME!"
The discursive noise around ELM STREET 2 can make it difficult to address it in purely cinematic terms. Some have correctly identified the movie's real problem as having nothing to do with its subtext, but rather with its failure to manage its own fantasy logic. In Wes Craven's original film, Freddy Krueger is a demonic figure who can enter and manipulate his victims' dreams; whatever he does to their dream-selves is inflicted on their bodies in waking life. This establishes the ELM STREET saga as a surreal and distinctly Jungian one, focused on the private world of personal fears and desires. Contrarily, the premise of the first sequel is that Freddy wants to use new kid on the block Jesse (Patton) as a more direct bridge to the real world, but it is never satisfyingly clear exactly how that works. This produces some confounding scenes that are less than successful, but still interesting. For those familiar with the first film, FREDDY'S REVENGE offers a disorienting bait-and-switch that keeps you on your toes. When Jesse dozes off in biology class, we tend to identify his sinister teacher, who gleefully slaps a dripping cow heart on his desk, as a Freddy avatar. When Jesse is then wrapped from crotch to throat in the coils of a large boa constrictor, we assume that this is an especially Freudian nightmare...and are startled when the bio teacher angrily picks up the very real snake, and returns it to its classroom terrarium. This is the first of many scenes that begin in a dream-like mode—and that are indeed initiated by Jesse briefly falling asleep—only to blend supernatural horror with mundane waking reality. Essentially, the dream world is entirely eschewed by this movie, which is a big no-no for Elm Street in general, but it keeps you guessing as to what is and isn't real for quite a stretch, which is its own kind of thrill. Basically, I don't side completely with those who see this movie as a kitschy disaster, nor with the folks who see it as a clever and deliberate gay allegory, but I think there are plenty of ways to enjoy this film without insisting on one of these mutually exclusive takes.
Living out my dreams through Heather Langenkamp since 1984
Anyway. I figured that, whatever they thought of it, my friends would find FREDDY'S REVENGE to be a total party, and they certainly did. What I did not expect is that they would both want to watch A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET right away, and I was extremely delighted when one of them took the initiative to put it on. They liked that too, and were still chewing on it the following day. The fellow who showed more initiative actually wound up having a bit of an epiphany; like me, he grew up in the heyday of flamboyantly frightening VHS box art, and he recounted childhood memories of teasing himself with the sick feeling he got from seeing those images at the video store. Like a lot of people who don't normally confuse pain and pleasure (ahem), he assumed that no good could come from actually watching any of those movies, so he'd avoided it entirely until now...and he told me that, in confronting the first two of the infamous ELM STREET movies, he realized he was finally doing something that, deep down, he had always wanted to do. And he wasn't sorry at all. I tried not to cry awkwardly at his moving confession. It was indeed a Blogtober miracle.
