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

We’re at the halfway point here in my queer horror marathon, and this tenth film was an interesting rewatch for me. As my favorite slasher series, I’ve always been a fan of the Nightmare on Elm Street films, so I had seen Freddy’s Revenge before when I was younger. However, when I was a kid, I wasn't able to catch all the queer aspects of the film. But now that I’m older, queerer, and going back through these films (see my review of Freddy’s Dead for my Women-directed marathon), this iconic queer horror film is even more fun. If you’re unfamiliar with the queer reading of Freddy’s Revenge, here’s a quick run-down from Jordan Crucchiola of Vulture:

“Freddy’s Revenge is the rare slasher to feature a Final Boy instead of a Final Girl, but its hero, Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton, who was in the closet at the time) is commonly identified as a repressed gay teen. Calling it subtext would be generous, especially when Jesse ends up confronting his male gym teacher in a gay bar, and the abundance of queer imagery. (As Patton told BuzzFeed, “It just became undeniable. I mean, when you’re looking at dailies and I’m lying in bed and I’m a pietà and the candles are dripping and they’re bending like phalluses and white wax is dripping all over … It’s like I’m the center of a — what do they call it? — a bukkake. Like I’m a bukkake video.”) Gay screenwriter David Chaskin spent years denying the homoerotic “subtext” of his movie, but eventually owned up to it decades later.”

Freddy himself, Robert Englund, even admitted this was a super gay film. In a February 2010 interview with Attitude magazine, Englund said "... the second Nightmare on Elm Street is obviously intended as a bisexual themed film. It was early '80s, pre-AIDS paranoia. Jesse's wrestling with whether to come out or not and his own sexual desires was manifested by Freddy. His friend is the object of his affection. That's all there in that film. We did it subtly but the casting of Mark Patton was intentional too, because Mark was out and had done Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." Personally, I really enjoy this installment of the franchise, believing it to be one of the more entertaining, less silly films in the series (although it’s still pretty silly!). Freddy’s Revenge has achieved cult status because of its queer themes, and deservingly so. To have something to say politically and socially, on top of haunting the dreams of adolescents, was a smart and impactful move on the part of the filmmakers and actors, even if they didn’t want to fully admit it at the time the film was released.