Freddy’s Revenge and Queer Identity: A Nightmare on Elm Street Analysis
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is a slasher film that was the second in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Like most slashers, this film has interesting views on sexuality, mostly played through insinuation and metaphor. Unlike many others though, the second Nightmare on Elm Street film comments on homosexuality rather than heterosexuality. In analyzing this film through a queer lens, we will discuss first, the historical context; second, the film itself; and third, the behind-the-scenes details. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is famous for its gay subtext, and for good reason.
This movie was released in 1985, which was not a great time to be gay in the United States. Homophobia was rampant, and AIDS was spreading at an alarming rate, leaving the gay community not only fighting for their rights, but also for their lives. Ronald Reagan was president and was doing nothing to help, instead focusing on drugs and Legionnaires’ Disease. Reagan had not even addressed the issue yet, choosing instead to ignore it and let its victims die. It was in this environment that the second Nightmare on Elm Street movie was released.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge takes place five years after the end of the first film, with the main character, Jesse (an appropriately gender ambiguous name), moving into the house from the original movie and having nightmares, as one might expect. The difference from the usual slasher formula is that Jesse is a boy. In slasher movies there is the trope of the “final girl”, the main character of the movie who manages to survive through to the end, usually due to their “purity”. Putting a male in that position says a lot about that character in a way. Jesse has a love interest in this movie, Lisa, but he also has his new friend Grady who he met after fighting him. Lisa is very into Jesse, but Jesse keeps having issues with those titular nightmares and Freddy trying to turn him into the new Freddy. Jesse attempts to fight against Freddy, but when he sleeps he is vulnerable.
One night he begins wandering the streets in his sleep, ending up at a gay BDSM bar where his gym teacher, dressed in leather, catches him and takes him back to the school gym to run laps, Grady having hinted in an earlier scene that Coach Schneider got off on that sort of thing. The teacher then sends Jesse to the showers where the steam makes him disappear, and Freddy takes his place to kill the teacher.
The following night, Jesse goes to Lisa’s pool party and kisses her in the cabana. Afterwards, his body begins to change, and he leaves in a panic. He flees to Grady’s house, confesses to killing Schneider, and instructs Grady to watch him as he sleeps and to stop him if he tries to leave, deciding to sleep with Grady instead of Lisa. When Grady eventually falls asleep, Freddy emerges from Jesse’s body and kills Grady. Freddy then changes back to Jesse, who finds himself looking at Freddy’s reflection in Grady’s mirror. He flees before Grady’s parents enter the room. Returning to Lisa’s house, Jesse comes out to her about what is going on. Lisa realizes that Jesse’s terror is giving Freddy his strength, but Jesse cannot control his fear and transforms again. Freddy locks Lisa’s parents in their bedroom and attacks Lisa, but realizes he cannot harm her due to Jesse’s influence. He goes outside, where he begins to slaughter the partygoers. Lisa’s father emerges with a shotgun, but Lisa stops him from shooting Freddy, who escapes in a ball of flame. She drives to the factory, facing sudden nightmares and having to control her fear before confronting Freddy. She pleads with Jesse to fight Freddy, but Freddy’s hold is too strong. When Lisa confesses her love for Jesse and kisses Freddy, Jesse begins to fight back against his new form. Freddy combusts and turns to ash, from which Jesse emerges.
Essentially, Jessie is a repressed homosexual trying to be heterosexual, but he just can’t until the end. His homosexuality manifests itself as Freddy, who kills the people around him, which is downright insulting when you think about it, especially when you consider that it could be a metaphor for AIDS.
Behind the scenes this queer coding was definitely intentional. Mark Patton, who played Jesse, was a closeted gay man. The filmmakers knew this and seem to have shaped the film to have the gay subtext partly because of it, which of course angered Patton, especially since, at the time, Patton was beginning to be typecast as a gay man. Patton in particular blamed David Chaskin, the writer, who in turn blamed Patton for playing the part “too gay”. After denying for years that there was a gay subtext to the film, in the 2010s he admitted it was a deliberate choice on his part. “Homophobia was skyrocketing, and I began to think about our core audience — adolescent boys — and how all of this stuff might be trickling down into their psyches,” he explained. “My thought was that tapping into that angst would give an extra edge to the horror.” Co-star Robert Englund, Freddy himself, thought that this was the intention the entire time, saying, “… 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 were 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.” Of course, this makes it seem that he was unaware that Patton was still closeted at the time of the movie’s production, and that the AIDS epidemic was still ravaging the queer population during the film’s production and release.
One scene that would have made the gay subtext more apparent, however, was toned down. Englund was actually prepared to insert one of his hand’s knife blades into Jesse’s mouth instead of merely caressing his lips with it as he does in the finished film, but Patton did not feel comfortable with it. The film’s makeup artist recommended to Patton that he not do the scene that way in order to protect his image. Patton was very hurt by this film, saying in 2016 in regards to Chaskin that, “Nobody ever affected my confidence — the boys that threw rocks at me, nobody — but this man did.” Patton quit acting soon after this film’s release, going into interior decorating instead.
The queer coding in this movie is pretty offensive, but it has developed a gay cult film audience because it is representation, much like how many lesbian audiences enjoyed the lesbian pulp novels of the 50s and 60s that demonized lesbians, sometimes literally. So, while in some ways the representation of homosexuality in this film is harmful to the gay community, it still is a representation, something not given by Hollywood very often. The film is considered to be the black sheep of the franchise, though, because of how different it is from the other films, and how it doesn’t connect to any of the later movies — possibly a reactionary “no homo” move by later filmmakers (or the IP owners worried about a hit to their profits). This is a shame, too, because it is one of the better films in the franchise, which I say as a fan of the franchise. Either way, gay audiences can still enjoy this, and enjoyability is really what every film hopes to achieve.