A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE

by Kevin Koehler

Freddy’s Revenge is not a great film. Hell, it’s not even a very good one. It was produced for the same ignoble money-grabbing reasons sequels to horror films are always getting made. Lacking any true slasher auteurism of his own, director Jack Sholder (The Hidden) cribs sequences from zeitgeist contemporaries like An American Werewolf in London and Ghostbusters. Of the seven Nightmare on Elm Street films (we will discount Freddy vs. Jason), number two is probably the most universally derided by fans and critics alike.

This being said, Freddy’s Revenge is the kind of bad film that’s interesting to talk about - this has to count for something.

Nightmare 2 starts off five years after the original with, Freddy Krueger aside, a whole new cast of characters. Teenager Jesse Walsh and family have now moved into the infamous 1428 Elm Street (the setting of the first film), trying to make a new life for themselves in sleepy Springwood, Ohio. Jesse hasn’t even finished unpacking when he discovers Freddy is stoking the flames in his cellar, both literally and figuratively: Krueger appears to the boy at night like a homicidal Harvey, demanding that the weak-willed Jesse exact vengeance for him. The murderer’s glove acts a tell-tale heart, quietly calling out to him in his dreams. “Go ahead,” Freddy beckons, “try it on for size.”

The Fred Krueger of the original Nightmare has become Freddy in the sequel; the switch is more than just semantics for he has changed into a somewhat more non-threatening version of himself. Indeed, this switch is emblematic of the infantilization of the character that continued in the Nightmare series, a process that saw him become more wiseacre hero than villain. With Krueger, there always seems to have been things left unsaid in the early films in regards to his carnal menace. His original sin is having kidnapped twenty children, brought them to a power plant, and killed them; it was for this crime, and the ensuing failure of the criminal justice system, that the good town folk of (ahem) Springwood took justice into their own hands. Granted, Freddy is supposed to represent “evil itself,” but who just kills children (the sixth installment, Freddy’s Dead, tries to clear some of these issues up)? His glove, the symbol of Krueger's own unique sadism (anyone who manufactures such an implement takes their killin’ seriously), also has to be adjudged of its intrinsic phallic qualities (and the yonic wounds it tends to leave; see also La Bete Humaine for more about the sexual implications of death by stabbing). The point is further literalized in Freddy’s Revenge when the glove is removed, only to show the blades to be some fleshy corporeal appendage (a newspaper headline even calls him the “Springwood Slasher”). It all dovetails nicely with original series’ creator Wes Craven’s themes of hypocrisy within the American nuclear family and the sins of the father revisited unto the son; Krueger does not just appear in the dreams of his victims – he takes those dreams away. Such is the enduring injury of child sexual abuse.

Freddy’s Revenge could very likely be the most homoerotic mainstream horror film ever made. Others have posited that the picture is essentially an extended allegory for protagonist Jesse’s inner conflict over his emerging homosexuality – a compelling argument could definitely be made (the actor who plays Jesse, Mark Patton, is gay). Repetitive shots of sweaty, bare-chested Jesse waking at night reach the point of unintentional comedy (not to mention a suggestive bedroom dance to Touch Me (All Night Long)); during one bizarre occasion, he takes a nocturnal stroll down to Springwood’s local leather bar, meeting up with phys ed instructor Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell). As a form of punishment/foreplay, Schneider makes his student do laps around the gymnasium before commanding him to hit the showers. While Coach readies jump ropes for some anticipated S&M and (we presume) anal rape, Freddy intervenes; Schneider is beaten by sporting goods (balls, mostly, natch) and ultimately sliced-up “like a kielbasa” (I’ll say), with Jesse revealed to have been wielding the glove. Later on at a pool party, the teenager experiences performance anxiety of a sort with his girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers). Embarrassed/fearful of an engorged protuberance (in this case, a monstrous grey tongue), he extricates himself for the relative safety of his friend Grady’s (Robert Rusler) bedroom. “Something is trying to get inside my body,” Jesse tells him. “Yeah, and she’s female and waiting for you inside the cabana. And you want to sleep with me.” It’s very possible: the two share an unusual amount of scenes doing push-ups next to each other while exchanging commentary on their gym teacher’s sexual habits/tastes. When Jesse falls asleep in biology class, he wakes to find a snake wrapped tightly around his neck; it’s a Serpent in the Garden metaphor, but maybe another kind of snake as well.

Interesting footnote: Wes Craven was not involved in any creative capacity with Freddy’s Revenge; he never viewed his original film as having a sequel (much less six of them, plus Freddy vs. Jason). He did, however, write the first draft of the third Nightmare installment, Dream Warriors, whose writers also included Chuck Russell (director of Eraser and The Mask), novelist Bruce Wagner, and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). Craven also wrote and directed the final Elm Street chapter, New Nightmare.

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