Day Two of our Nightmare on Elm Street series, and obviously we're onto Part 2: Freddy's Revenge - aka "The One With All The Homoerotic Subtext". It's also the film that made the producers realise they had a workable franchise on their hands, as the film grossed twice as much as the first one - although they had to do it without Wes Craven at the helm, as he had never wanted A Nightmare on Elm Street to become a franchise in the first place.
Jesse Walsh and his family have just moved into their new house on Elm Street, five years after the events of the first movie, but things aren't quite right there. The whole house is as hot as a furnace for one thing, especially in Jesse's room. there are bars on all of the windows from the previous owner. And Jesse is having nightmares about a badly-burned man in a dirty red and green sweater and a glove with razors attached to the fingers. Yes, the family has moved into 1428 Elm Street, Nancy's old house, and it isn't long before Fred Krueger (yes, he's still Fred at this point) is trying to return to 'life' via Jesse's body (side effects include the spontaneous combustion of parakeets and sleepwalking into gay S&M bars). Jesse has to fight Krueger for control of his own body and banish him back to the boiler room once more.
So, about that homosexual subtext. Well, for starters it wasn't accidental or coincidental as most of us had thought for so long, as the film's writer has since confirmed that, yes, he deliberately put all that stuff in there. But there is a lot of it. The main character's name is gender-neutral; he spends a lot of time in just his underwear sweating - and a good amount of that time is spent in the company of another male in just his underwear; there's the strange focus on the gay gym teacher and the S&M bar; and of course there's the whole 'other side trying to come out of him/secret he's keeping from everybody' theme that Jesse struggles with through the movie. Add to that the fact that Mark Patton, who played Jesse, is himself gay and considered Jesse to be a closeted gay man himself and you have yourself a surprisingly gay-centric slasher film for the 1980s. However (and let's face it, you knew there was a "however" coming), I'm not sure I'd class it as a 100% gay-friendly film. The biggest issue I see with it is how Jesse is saved from being taken over by Krueger by his 'girlfriend' Lisa - thus implying the whole "love of a good woman can save you from being gay" thing. There's also a rather awkward scene about two-thirds of the way through where Jesse finds himself being influenced by Krueger to harm his younger sister - unfortunate implications abound if you think about it! Still, it's still remarkably progressive, all things considered.
As for the film itself... Honestly, Freddy's Revenge is really one of the weaker entries in the series. Other than Jesse's family being in the house that Nancy lived in the first movie, there's virtually no connection to the first movie. It breaks one of the cardinal rules of the series by having Krueger kill people in the real world while no-one is asleep (the pool party massacre, although I suppose it could be argued that the rules were different for that because of the whole 'possession' aspect). Finally, the abrupt shift in protagonist from Jesse to Lisa at the film's climax is jarring and falls very flat; after having gone through most of the film via Jesse's perspective, when we shift to Lisa suddenly we've got very little that we can actually use to identify or empathise with her. She's just a rich girl who likes Jesse. Worse than that though is the fact that she's pretty ineffectual in general. When the previous film in the series had a Final Girl in Nancy Thompson, who took the fight to Krueger, dragged him into the waking world and then dropped him with her anti-personnel home defense tactics, having Lisa do nothing more than simper, "I love you Jesse!" and implore him to fight Krueger is a pretty stupid tonal shift.
In conclusion, Part 2 is a pretty weak offering, and adds very little to the whole mythos of the series. Thankfully Part 3 came along soon after to put things back on track...
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