A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

Summary

“You’ve got the body…I’ve got the brain!”

Last year, Warner Bros. pleased a devoted band of horror fans when it released Wes Craven’s seminal horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street onto the 4K format. Long considered one of the best and most frightening horror films ever made, it made great sense that Craven’s film would be given a 4K release on its 40th anniversary. One year later, Warner has wisely chosen to give the entire film series a 4K upgrade, so I plan to review one film a week in the series until I have finished the whole series off. This is going to be a lot of fun for me, because I have not seen every entry in the series since I was a kid (and I am not sure which entries I have seen, and which I have not, to be honest.)

One year after Wes Craven’s masterpiece, New Line Cinema released A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Written by David Chaskin and directed by Jack Sholder, the film was a rush job that took an existing script for a haunted house/possession film and injected Freddy Krueger into it to capitalize on the success of the first picture. The resulting movie is one of the most reviled and also one of the most defended entries in the series. We will examine the legacy of the picture in detail after the plot summary.

As the movie begins, high schooler Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) sits on a school bus along with some teenage girls. The driver of the bus begins acting erratically and the bus drives off into a desert. The earth falls away below the bus, revealing a pit below. Freddy Krueger approaches the screaming teenagers. Jesse wakes up screaming. He has recently moved into the home of Nancy Thompson with his family. At school he meets Lisa Webber and also gets into an altercation with Ron Grady while playing baseball. After wrestling around on the ground together, Coach Schneider forces the boys to do pushups. At home, Lisa visits Jesse and they find a diary from Nancy that details how her boyfriend was killed across the street by Freddy Krueger. Soon, Freddy Krueger is visiting Jesse. He wants to possess Jesse’s body to kill. Jesse soon finds himself battling against the supernatural forces of Krueger To maintain control of himself.

Freddy’s Revenge is often considered one of the worst sequels ever made and is certainly considered one of the least satisfying films in the Nightmare series. I want to run through the reasons for the very vocal hatred for the film before stating the defense for it, because this film also has a very loud and devoted legion of fans.

First and foremost, anyone who understands script doctoring will notice almost immediately that this film is not really a Nightmare picture. The dream logic from the prior film is almost completely abandoned aside from a couple bookending scenes that are obviously bolted onto the script. The original script prior to adding in Freddy was a body possession and haunted house film, which makes sense given that the plot finds our main character essentially possessed by Freddy Krueger (instead of a ghost or demon or whatever it originally was meant to be.) Elements of the haunted house theme remain as well, such as when the pet bird inexplicably explodes (which is a riotously funny scene.) The script for this movie has almost nothing to do with the prior film. No characters from the prior picture pop up, aside from a diary that is found in Jesse’s house that belonged to Nancy. The first film is a horror masterpiece that had a chilling and extremely inventive premise. The premise of Freddy’s Revenge was incredibly stale and cliche even in 1985. Films where lead characters struggle with whether they really are the killer or not had been made since the noir movement of the thirties and forties, so this concept was already beaten to death by films made before it. The elements of the haunted house are just riffing off of the Amityville Horror genre from a few years before. The only difference is the elements here are executed extremely poorly. It is baffling that the studio heads at New Line thought this script would please the same audiences that had been scared (and scarred) by Wes Craven’s truly original film one year earlier. Freddy’s Revenge also moves Freddy Krueger into the real world with all sorts of powers, which directly goes against the logic of the first picture. In the first film, Nancy and her friends are able to bring Freddy into the real world for a showdown, but he is basically bound by the same physical limitations that humans face in the real world. In this movie, Freddy can seemingly do anything he wants within our world. The only thing he can not overcome is the love that Lisa shows for Jesse in a truly idiotic finale that should have embarrassed everyone who worked on it.

The acting in the picture is essentially terrible across the board. Mark Patton is one of the least compelling lead actors I can recall. He has almost no charisma whatsoever. When characters try to act like Jesse is some kind of hunk, it leads to unintentional laughter. His love interest Kim Myers is also severely miscast. A love interest in a movie like this needed to be a true beauty. I mean, this movie uses your essential beauty-slays-the-beast King Kong finale retread, and Kim Myers is simply not beautiful enough for that to work. That said, the final scenes where she is pleading for Jesse to come back are so poorly directed that I don’t know how much of the weight of bad acting decisions fully fell on her shoulders. Robert Rusler is fine in the role of Ron Grady. He would have made a more compelling lead character for sure. The standout performance in the film is definitely Marshall Bell as the leather daddy bar attending gym coach. Marshall Bell is incredibly memorable in films, and anyone who has seen Twins would agree with me. I have no idea why he took this role, but his performance is easily the best in the film. Obviously, Robert Englund is perfect in the role of Freddy Krueger, but this film gives him the very least material to work with. The cinematography and production design are decent for the film, but Jack Sholder does not manage to draw anything out of his actors. The resulting film is a catastrophic blunder, which is a shame because two of Jack Sholder’s other movies that came before and after  –The Hidden and Alone in the Dark– are both movies that I love and an absolute blast. The only aspect of the picture that can be universally celebrated are the film’s practical effects, which are pretty well done.

So, given all of the negatives for this film, why does Freddy’s Revenge have a large and devoted base of fans? The answer is that the film is incredibly gay. This is not hyperbole or some grade school name calling that I am doing here. Gay men love Freddy’s Revenge because the film is extremely homoerotic. At seemingly every opportunity for Jesse to be with Lisa he basically runs into the arms of Ron. There is no female nudity, but there is a scene where Ron and Jesse tussle on the ground and pull each other’s pants down. Jesse when he can’t sleep goes to a gay bar where he bumps into his S & M loving coach who then forces him to run laps and take a shower? The film is very gay, and for that community it was a tentpole horror film that felt like it was truly their own. The bad acting in the film? So what – it makes the picture a campy blast. This is a true example of a film that all of the negatives turn into positives when seen through different eyes.

For myself, Freddy’s Revenge is a staggeringly bad sequel to an incredible horror film, but I respect that other people can love the film. For fans of the picture, Warner’s 4K treatment is going to blow them away.

Video

The new 4K HEVC/H.265 transfer from Warner Bros., is a big improvement over the 2011 Blu-ray release. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is not the best looking film of the series, but this 4K UHD upgrade makes the film look much better than it ever has before. The HDR makes the colors in the film pop, but the restoration stays faithful to the original intentions of the cinematographers. Detail is very good, as long as the viewer understands that softer focused lenses were not atypical in this era. Honestly, this is a big leap forward for this film.

Audio

Warner Bros. have provided a brand new Atmos track for this release alongside the prior DTS HD-MA 5.1 track from 2011, and a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track. The Atmos track respects the original sound design while adding immersion when possible. This film was never the most sonically engaging, but it has never sounded better than now. Clarity is very good. Purists will be excited to have the Mono track to listen to as well. Fans probably never expected that this film would earn a full Atmos track, so they should be pumped.

Supplements:

The 4K carries over the supplements from the 2011 Blu-ray, minus the trailer

• Freddy on 8th Street
• Heroes and Villains
• The Male Witch
• Psychosexual Circus

Overall Scores:

Video – 4.5/5

Audio – 4.5/5

Supplements – 2.5/5

Overall – 3/5 …. Or 4.5/5 if you love the film!

A Nightmare on Elm Street was one of the most effective horror films ever made, and I would argue that Freddy’s Revenge is one of the least effective horror sequels ever made. The film was an absolute rush job that destroyed almost everything that worked from the first film. The acting is abysmal and the script is laughably bad. That said, there is a truly devoted fan base for the picture that adores the film for all of those reasons. It is an important film in LGBTQ cinema because it is considered to be one of the gayest mainstream horror films ever made. So whether or not the film appeals to you, it would be difficult to argue that it was not an important horror film. Fans of the picture will be over the moon by the great work that Warner put into this 4K release. Warner Bros. has given the picture a solid 4K UHD upgrade with a good looking 4K transfer and an extremely competent Dolby Atmos upgrade. This release is currently only available in Warner’s comprehensive Nightmare on Elm Street 4K Collection, which comes highly recommended for fans of the series.