Freddy’s Revenge a.k.a Am I reading too much into this…?
As a citizen of this fair town of Springwood, I have to admit I’ve been quite remiss of late, and have been neglectful in keeping up with our good friend Frederick C. Krueger. As a result, I recently decided to sit down and re-watch ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street Two: Freddy’s Revenge’. Now, it’s probably been a good few years since I last watched the second installment in the Nightmare series, and while I could remember the general gist of the film, and a few stand out scenes (the glorious exploding parrot scene amongst them), much of the plot had been largely forgotten by yours truly.
So it was a genuine surprise to sit down and watch a film that had better acting, a better storyline, and was overall, simply much better than I remembered. For a plot overview, check out IMDB or wikipedia. Probably because of the reputation that the subsequent Nightmare films have garnered over the years, I had prepared myself to laugh my way through this film, and instead found that, while having a few LOL moment (see the aforementioned ‘parrot scene’..!) it actually had an unexpectedly inventive take on the Freddy story.
"What's happening to me?!"
Basically Freddy is trying to return to the waking world via the body of Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton), whose family has recently moved into the home of previous tenant Nancy Thompson, of the 1st Nightmare film. Freddy begins to take over Jesse’s body, and through Jesse commits a series of murders in the real world, as opposed to only killing his victims in their sleep.
Now, while I did say the film was better than I expected, this should not be interpreted as a glowing endorsement. Better doesn’t necessarily equal good, especially when my expectations couldn’t have been much lower. The acting is occasionally stiff, the script is often less than good, and some scenes just don’t quite convince. That said, ‘Freddy’s Revenge’ is actually a quite enjoyable film that’s has the charm of one of those ‘not great but ok’ 80s films, that on a repeat viewing aren’t really as bad as expected.
However one thing struck me as I watched this film, leading me to the question in the title of this post. If you have recently seen the film, you probably know what I’m referring to. Is it just me, or does this film have a none too subtle gay subtext? Or, as I have already asked, am I reading too much into this?
Firstly, we see Jesse wake from a nightmare and head straight to what is clearly a gay leather bar, where he encounters his gym coach, who, being in a leather bar, is appropriately dressed in a studded leather vest. Suddenly we are at the gym, where the coach has Jess running laps of the basketball court. Ok, fair enough. Then the coach sends Jesse to the showers, while the coach is suddenly assaulted by flying balls in the storeroom (I was going to make a joke about the balls, but I won’t…). Coach is then dragged to the showers, strung up, stripped, whipped with a towel on the bottom, then finally killed by Jesse/Freddy. I have to say I watched this with jaw agape, wondering how it could be that I don’t remember THIS scene, or questioned just what the hell was going on.
Subtext anyone...?
From this scene on, all I could see was what I could only interpret as Jesse’s struggle with his burgeoning homosexuality, as he tried in vain to keep Freddy/sexuality repressed. The high point comes when Jesse and his female friend Lisa (Kim Myers) are about to consummate their relationship, and Freddy begins to rear his head. Jesse runs away to his (male and attractive) friend Grady’s bedroom, where he tells Grady about Freddy (a.k.a. homosexual feelings) rising up inside him. Freddy eventually splits Jesse in two, and emerges to kill Grady in the bedroom.
In conclusion, I have to say I don’t think there is anything necessarily funny about a sexual subtext, gay or straight. What is the most hilarious part of all this is that director Jack Sholder apparently claims the subtext is unintentional. My god, I ask you, HOW? Check it out and let me know your thoughts…
Until then,
CS.
