I watched the original Nightmare movies out of sequence, and I remenber seeing Freddy's Revenge after all the others. (I don't know why that was.) I remember seeing stills of it from the sticker album and cards, as well as clips from the awesome MTV special "Slash and Burn: The Freddy Krueger Story," and just thought that something about the movie seemed dark and creepy. I also remember seeing that awesome VHS cover in stores a lot. I had also heard a couple of stories from friends who knew family members that were actually sickened by the transformation scene. So, Freddy's Revenge had been built up in my mind as being some dark, twisted movie. It didn't end up being quite as disturbing as it sounded when I finally got around to seeing it, but I really liked the movie. It was different, sure, but Freddy was still dark and scary. I thought the actors were good; I thought the film had atmosphere and great make-up effects by Kevin Yagher and Mark Shostrom.
So, imagine my surprise when I eventually get onto the internet only to find out what a terrible reputation the movie has. People *hate* this movie. I knew friends who liked it. And I liked it, but all the while, the rest of the world apparently thought it was just about the worst sequel that could have been made. There are actually fans of Freddy's Dead who trash this movie. Freddy's Dead! While there's a lot of criticism against the movie for "breaking the rules" or being an "inferior sequel," the most perplexing thing to me was finding out about the whole "gay subtext" reading people had, which the first time I heard about any of it was on the DVD featurette from 1999.
Internet forums fall into circles of repetition, so I've found myself defending Freddy's Revenge over and over and over. Does it have flaws? Fuck, yeah. It's a dip in quality from the first movie. It's not as well made; it's not as intelligent. Being a quickly made movie to capitalize on the original's success, it doesn't have quite the same devotion as Wes Craven had put into his movie -- Craven was a creator with a story he needed to tell. Part 2's script was the first script of its writer, David Chaskin, that was made, and if you've read the script, they apparently filmed his first draft. So, the movie is not without its problems. There's certainly a couple of moments in Part 2 that make you wonder what the hell the filmmakers were thinking when they didn't leave 'em on the cutting room floor. But I still think it's better than some of the other Freddy sequels. Does it break the rules? Well, what WERE the rules at the time? The movie was made within less than a year of the original's release. It's easy now, in hindsight, to look back after eight movies and see the "rules." Look at Freddy's Dead -- the sixth movie, the "last" one, but it created its own backstory and messed with the "rules" more than Freddy's Revenge supposedly did. Could Freddy's Revenge have had more ties to the original? Probably, but...I see the first three movies as their own little trilogy, with Freddy's Revenge being a necessary break between Nancy Thompson's story, a bridge (she's even name-checked in the film). I think there's a progression to the movies that culminates with Dream Warriors, which I do kind of look at as the last real one, before the series goes in a really different, more comedic direction. I think Freddy's Revenge has a very similar look and feel to the original movie that helps make it easier to accept as a sequel even if it's going about things differently. (It would have *really* helped if they had used some of Charles Bernstein's theme music. I like Christopher Young's ominous score for the movie, though.)
Speaking of which, would you have wanted Freddy 2 to be a lazily reheated leftover of Part 1? I don't like when horror sequels stray too far in tone or content from a predecessor -- think Jason Goes to Hell -- but I don't like it when they're just going through the motions and weakly imitating their predecessor, either. Halloween 2 is a movie that didn't really need to be made, it's such a weak retread of the original, but lacks John Carpenter's skill as a filmmaker, as someone who knew what it took to maintain suspense. Halloween 2 to me is tedious, especially if you watch it closely after the first one. It really doesn't hold up, in my opinion. Freddy's Revenge might not have Wes Craven as writer or director, but the cinematographer (Jacques Haitkin) is the same, and I think we have him to thank for the movies at least looking similar, making it easier to believe that the events that transpire, what happens to Jesse is happening in the same town, the same world as Nancy's in the original. Go watch Dream Child -- there's no way THAT Springwood is the same one any of its predecessors depicted. I think by Freddy's Revenge taking such a different approach, it's really what made people put so much more effort into Dream Warriors and having further ties to the original movie. If Nancy had returned in a Part 2 that was just Freddy terrorizing her again, that wouldn't have been interesting. Having her sit out of the second movie, it packs a punch when she returns to help the new kids terrorized by Krueger. Her absence in two leaves enough space to believe she can get to the place of leadership she's in by Part 3. Like it or hate it, Freddy's Revenge was necessary in terms of getting fan-favorite Dream Warriors made.
The first three Freddy movies play like ghost/haunting/possession movies. In the first one, Freddy Krueger has somehow returned through supernatural means to exact revenge on the people who murdered him. This might be purely my own fan-made supposition, but I always saw Freddy's Revenge as being...Nancy defeated Freddy in the first one, she stripped him of his energy, so he's trying to come back in the second. He's been dormant, powerless, he wants the taste and touch of a kill again, he wants to be a flesh and blood killer again, but retain some of those supernatural abilities. So, he selects the new occupant of Nancy's house, Jesse.
He manipulates Jesse through his dreams, taking possession of him. I always thought it was interesting that Freddy did his killing through Jesse, by means of Jesse sleepwalking -- there are documented murder cases in real life in which the accused claims to have committed the crimes while sleepwalking. So, I thought that was an interesting approach for a Nightmare movie to take, still tying into the dream and sleep theme, but going in a slightly different direction. The weaker Jesse gets, the more Freddy takes hold, to the point where Jesse's not safe awake or asleep, and that's scary. The character is on the brink of madness and I always thought actor Mark Patton did a really good job conveying that, he gives a strong performance and doesn't hold back.
I think it's pretty obvious that by the time Jesse has completely transformed into Freddy that Freddy shows he's capable of using his crazy dream world abilities in the real world. Throughout the film he's shown to manipulate temperature, making it boiler-room hot in 1428 Elm Street, but he's eventually moving objects, withstanding attacks, using pyrokinesis, causing Lisa to hallucinate when she's at the factory... Freddy's "revenge" is returning from the grave and having the best of both worlds -- being flesh and blood, but still being that evil, superpowered Sandman. If Nancy weakened him, his easy manipulation of Jesse and the pain he caused brought him back to recovery.
Lisa and Jesse might think they're victorious, but all they did was send him back to the death that gave him his abilities in the first place. (This was a theory I had before Freddy vs Jason, but I'll use what that movie said to help highlight my point; that movie said that Freddy needed to be known by the kids of Springwood, feared by the kids to give him the power to kill again. Same thing here, where the terror he caused in the real world, that he caused within Jesse, created enough energy for him to regain power. I kinda think that idea in FvJ was inspired by Freddy's Revenge, anyway, when Lisa reads that section of Nancy's journal where she talks about Freddy "feeding" on their energy.)
So, Freddy was defeated by Nancy, but awoke again within Jesse, was resurrected by the end of Part 2, so by the time we reach Dream Warriors, Freddy has been back in control of dreamland, becoming stronger than before. (Nancy even notes how much stronger he is.) A vengeful spirit that's laid to rest by the end of Dream Warriors, so...that's why I think the first three movies go so well together. The franchise certainly takes a turn after them, in style and tone, and the movies don't really hit high again until stand-alone entry New Nightmare.
Jesse was the ideal puppet for Freddy because he was just an ordinary, insecure kid. He's new to town, which, when you're young, can certainly be upsetting, turning your whole world upside down at a time when you're world already feels upside down. And then he moves into a haunted house...he was easy pickings for Freddy. Like the original, this movie takes some themes about the terror of adolescence, but I also see the movie as a depiction of a young person battling mental illness. Jesse fears for his sanity as he's pushed to the edge by Freddy. His oblivious parents thinks it's drugs. He can't quite verbalize it to his girlfriend, and his best friend doesn't take him seriously. But he's trying to hold onto his mind, and he's afraid he'll hurt his friends and family. Which is a good lead-in to Dream Warriors, with the way Freddy shenanigans cause teens to be committed. (And, particularly, my piece of fanon that it was Jesse who Neil was referring to as the kid who cut off his own eyelids.)
I'd like to say real quick that, when I used to watch this movie, I always thought Jesse -- as the main character -- was the "hero." It wasn't for a while until I realized that, no, Jesse really isn't the "hero," he's just another victim of Freddy's. A different kind of victim, in that Freddy doesn't want to kill him, at least not immediately. But a victim. By being absent for a lot of the movie, it's not immediately clear that Kim Myers' Lisa character is really the heroine of the movie. She's patient and does all of the investigating into who Jesse's tormentor is. She's the one whose determination to save Jesse gets through to him (within Freddy) and saves the day. So, I feel like Lisa might be a pretty overlooked character in the series.
Now, a few of the movie's problems. I like to think I'm a fairly open minded person, so I don't want for this to sound homophobic, because that's not where I'm coming from with this, but...I don't think that's the accurate reading of this movie. I think you CAN have that reading of the movie, if you choose, but I certainly don't think it's what was intended -- despite what those involved with the movie now claim -- and I don't think it's the one absolute reading of this movie. Honestly, I think it's something that's been really blown out of proportion, and there are only a few components to the movie that make people even think that it's a possible reading of the movie.
1) The character of Coach Schneider. I think if you eliminate this character from the movie, then probably 75% of the people who analyze this movie as having gay themes or whatever would probably have not said a word. In my opinion, the Schneider character is a pretty juvenile statement by writer David Chaskin. At school, Schneider is depicted as a hard-ass, take-no-shit, super macho coach. But, LOL, isn't it funny, it's a not-so-secret secret that he hangs out at "queer S&M joints." (Those are Grady's words. His info is slightly wrong, anyway.) Schneider spends his days tormenting his students, so Freddy -- feeding off Jesse's hate and knowledge of the man -- forces him to go to one of the bars Schneider frequents and ends up killing him by humilating him. He humiliates him with generic P.E. bullshit -- throwing balls at him and towel snapping -- and then humiliates him by mocking his after-hours activities, tying him up and leaving his naked corpse to be found by colleagues. The sequence where Schneider is terrorized by gym equipment just doesn't work and is ridiculous, and as one of the only on-screen kills of the movie, and the movie's first kill, it mars the movie and its weakness is highlighted that much further. The character and his subplot are pretty pointless, and I still wonder how Chaskin even decided to write it and put it in a movie.
2) The dancing scene. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's terrible. Yes, they made a horrible song choice. The point of the scene was to be funny and lighthearted, having Jesse be embarrassed by being caught by the girl he likes while doing some silly shit everybody's probably done at some point. (The script described him doing some '50s dances.) Would the scene have been better if he had just been, like, doing a crazy air-drum solo? Probably. But this was the bright, crazy, coked-up '80s. They had him doing a goofy dance that aged horribly, and so now people make fun of it. *shrugs* But it IS one of the movie's genuine comedic scenes. It was just ruined by bad choices. The movie has a lot of lighthearted and comedic moments that I think people misinterpret as cheesiness or hokiness.
3) Jesse leaving Lisa to go to Grady's. I never thought it was strange that Jesse abandoned Lisa to seek Grady's help; he was afraid that Freddy was taking over and he didn't want to hurt Lisa, so he went to the one friend he had, being a new kid in town, figuring Grady could handle Freddy if he showed up. The fact that Grady makes a joke about the strangeness of the situation and Jesse brushes it off, I think, pokes holes in this scene supposedly having any actual evidence of another meaning. It's just a laugh.
4) Actor Mark Patton. I don't want to insult him, because I think he does a really good job in this movie, and he's one of my favorite actors of the franchise. He gives a fearless, emotionally real performance. But...that fearlessness came at a price, because he doesn't hold back, and he does just scream his head off, so that quickly leads some viewers to go "Look, he screams like a girl!" (Which could very well be construed as a sexist take.) And so that leads people to think this or that or make some connection -- "Ha, he abandons Lisa to go to Grady's!" -- and then you end up with these out-of-control analyses of the movie about Jesse being gay and Freddy's a metaphor for gayness and whatever. Honestly, I don't feel like people ever really analyze the movie and come to that conclusion in a serious or genuine way, they use it in a humorous way, they use it as a way to mock. The whole "gay reading" of the movie is just another way for this movie to be ridiculed. And doesn't it sell Patton short as an actor -- isn't he selling himself short? -- to say that because he's a gay actor that makes his character in this movie gay, too?
I don't understand why people would be so eager to run with this "gay interpretation" of the movie when, if you break it down, it's awful. If Freddy is being gay, isn't the movie then saying that being gay is being a murderous monster? If Jesse kills Grady to then feel like he can focus just on Lisa, isn't the movie saying that it's better to force yourself to be something you're not? Aren't these terrible messages? Why are people so happy to celebrate this movie for these supposed messages? Because it's easier to point and laugh at this movie than take it seriously. It's become a "campy" thing. I'd think gay people would be insulted by some of the things writer David Chaskin claims in this 2007 interview. Keep perpetuating this take on the movie, though?
What doesn't help matters is Chaskin kind of going back on his word. If you've watched the documentary Never Sleep Again, most of the staff members said they didn't think there was a gay subtext to the movie. Mark Patton actually says he doesn't think Jesse was intended to be gay, which completely goes against Chaskin's claims that he intentionally put this into the script. In interviews at the time of the release of Freddy's Revenge, Chaskin claimed his idea for the script began with the idea of "paranoia," not knowing yourself, like after a "bad acid trip." Not a single word of what he claims in Never Sleep Again. Personally, I think Chaskin knew that Freddy's Revenge spent years with the title of worst Freddy movie, and since some of its only positive reception came from the people who interpreted it to have a gay reading, or laugh at it as camp, Chaskin thought it would make him look cool and really forward-thinking if he started to claim it was his intention all along. Basically: I think he knew his material was considered by many to be weak, and that this take on it retroactively gives it "depth." I think if it had been intentional, it would have been reflected SOMEWHERE in the script, which just only describes Jesse as average and insecure, while also having descriptions of how into Lisa he is. I think it would have been reflected in the script in the scenes depicting the dreams. If he had intended any of it, it would be hinted at in the script to inform the cast and crew, who were all mostly oblivious to the supposed subtext.
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| [Screencap from part of Chaskin's interview with Bloody Good Horror.] |
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| [Another screencap from the same interview.] |
If that's your interpretation, that's your freedom. I just don't think you can claim it's THE definitive interpretation. And I don't think it's necessarily the interpretation you'd want to get from it, because it really doesn't hold up to examination. But, like I said, it's easier to just laugh than it is to think about it seriously.
Now, onto the scene that I think really should have been excised from the movie: the bird attack. I think this scene probably gives the movie more of its negative reception than anything else like goofy dancing. How...how did they film this, watch it in editing, and think it worked? It's a laughable scene, only you don't actually laugh because it's so stupid, and it's kind of embarrassing to watch. When you watch the movie, you're thinking to yourself, "Jesus, at this point in the original, we're getting Johnny Depp chewed up and spit up from a bed. That was disgusting, that was something you'd never seen before in a movie! Here, we're getting POV shots of a parakeet attacking a middle-aged guy."
Despite missteps like that, and the strange sight of Freddy Krueger attacking a bunch of teens at a pool party, I do think this movie is better than it's given credit for. Director Jack Sholder -- who, sadly, always makes his discomfort at doing genre stuff known in interviews -- prefers to stay grounded and focus on characters, and I think it really works for this movie. He helps lift it higher than it might have been and hold it together. They can be a bit stage-y at times, but I think he gets good performances from all of his actors and does a good job at creating a dark, unsettling, disturbing atmosphere. Through the combination of Sholder's direction, D.O.P. Haitkin, and Patton's performance, a lot of the nightmare scenes have this dreadful, sickly feel to them. Patton's Jesse just always looks feverish and unwell in those scenes. They might not be innovative nightmare scenes like the original's, or as outlandish as the later sequels, but they have an uncomfortable dread seeping through them. The movie's not without memorable sequences, though, as the opening sequence perfectly captures the bizarre turns a nightmare can take, and the disturbingly violent scene of Freddy bursting through Jesse is on par with any of the series' best creative gore effects. I really think Sholder's the glue of the movie and is responsible for taking the script and making it work. We also have Jack Sholder to thank for getting Robert Englund back, when the studio wanted to just use a stunt-guy. Freddy's Revenge also coined "Springwood Slasher" and actually calling him "Freddy."
What I find funny is the way people like Wes Craven and Robert Englund criticize this movie for "breaking" rules, but they were OK with other entries doing it. Craven criticizes the pool party scene, but in his original Dream Warriors script, Freddy is loose and causing panic at a dinner party of Kristen's mom. Dream Warriors "breaks" the rules by having Freddy be able to reanimate his skeleton in reality in order to stop Neil and Donald Thompson from burying it, and Robert's OK with that? Or how about the fact that New Nightmare is basically the same plot as Freddy's Revenge -- Freddy's taking possession of Dylan in order to cross over into reality the same way he did Jesse. What do you have to say about that, Wes? Also, look how series producer/eventual director Rachel Talalay has said it was a mistake to center a horror movie on a guy, but devotes 75% of her Freddy's Dead to the John Doe character.
All in all, I can understand why moviegoers in 1985 might have felt let down, and maybe I benefited by seeing some of the later sequels beforehand, but I still like this movie. I still think it has a worse reputation than it should, and if people had been more open-minded in terms of what "rules" it had to obey, maybe perception of Freddy's Revenge would be different.
