November 9, 1984: Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street is released onto 165 screens across the country. Met with critical acclaim and box office success, the film follows a group of teenagers who must combat Freddy Kreuger, the spirit of a serial killer who can only hurt them in their dreams. The film would go on to start a franchise of nine films, as well as help to financially support the burgeoning New Line Pictures, which had mainly worked in distributing art-house and exploitation films up to that point.
September 17, 1985: President Ronald Reagan addresses the HIV/AIDS epidemic publicly for the first time, trying and, ultimately, failing to ward off allegations that his administration is doing little to protect the homosexual community from the plague festering within it.
November 1, 1985: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part Two: Freddy’s Revenge is released on 522 screens across the country. A box office hit, but the film fares less than favorably with North American critics, with People magazine going so far as to call the film a “tedious, humorless mess.” European critics tend to be more favorable, deciphering the psychosexual subtext planted throughout much of the film that is seemingly overlooked by their North American counterparts.
Though many mainstream horror movies have psychosexual subtext woven within their narratives, the number of mainstream horror films with subtext that pertains to the fears of gay men is significantly smaller. In an act of great tenacity, New Line Cinema, Jack Sholder, David Chaskin and Mark Patton not only released one of the only mainstream horror film to focus on the existential fears of a gay protagonist, but did so as Reagan’s administration promoted a collective fear of the gay community amongst most of the American middle-class.
The film, happening five years after the events of the first, follows Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton), a teenager who moves to the town of Springwood after Nancy – the protagonist of the first film – supposedly defeated Freddy Kreuger. Though fitting in is difficult for him, he finds solace in the company of Lisa Webber (Kim Meyers) – his neighbor and future love interest – and Ron Grady (Robert Rusler), a bully who eventually becomes Jesse’s only male friend. As things begin to look up for Jesse, he begins having premonitions that Kreuger is trying to invade his body so that Kreuger may leave the spirit world and continue his reign of terror. While the film is seemingly focused on the horror of the knife-fingered villain being resurrected, the true horror comes when the film examines Jesse as a sexual being, positing that his sexual autonomy is nonexistent due to his sexual repression. When reading for the gay subtext within the film, this invasion of the body serves the textual function of visually communicating Jesse’s internalized homophobia.
This latent homophobia instilled in Jesse by greater American society is communicated visually in three key moments within the film. The first sees Jesse wandering around Springwood in a dream-like daze, with his journey taking him to a gay S&M bar. While inside, he is spotted by Schneider (Marshall Bell), his high school gym teacher who’s teased by the students for being a “fag.” Coach Schneider takes Jesse back to the school and forces him to run laps as punishment for being out past curfew. While Jesse is showering after his run, Kreuger comes out of Jesse’s body and murders Schneider, tying him to the wall and whipping him to death with towels and jump ropes. This sequence sees Kreuger as the manifestation of Jesse’s repressed homosexuality, with the thought of a sexual encounter with Schneider causing Krueger to burst from Jesse’s body and kill Schneider.
A similar slaying happens during the film’s climax, which involves Jesse seeking the comfort of Grady to try and prevent him from killing someone else. Finding sanctuary in the embrace of a man, Krueger returns, ripping forth from Jesse’s body and eviscerating Brady. Krueger’s presence as Jesse’s repressed homosexuality isn’t limited to the destruction of men to whom Jesse is sexually attracted. He actively seeks to reinforce the heteronormative standards for sexuality of America in the 1980s.
In the scene that precedes the death of Grady, Jesse is in a cabana with Lisa, engaging in foreplay as they finally decide to consummate their love for one another. As Jesse begins to perform oral sex on Lisa, Krueger’s tongue comes out of Jesse’s mouth. This not only subverts the previous scene of Krueger using Jesse’s body as a means to kill a man Jesse is sexually attracted to, but makes Krueger an active participant in the sex scene, thus reinforcing heteronormative standards of sexuality at the time. The film not only works to code Jesse as a gay man struggling with his own innate sense of homophobia, but also works to show a heterosexual’s perspective towards the gay community.
A great deal of the film’s second act is concerned with the tension that arises between Jesse and his parents, Cheryl and Ken (Hope Lange and Clu Gulager, respectively). Jesse’s parents seek to understand the mental duress that their son is enduring. Ken assumes Jesse is using drugs, saying that a “swift kick in the rear” is all it will take to get their son out of whatever is ailing him mentally. There is no attempt to understand what is wrong with Jesse; only suggestions of psychiatric help or physical violence to cure his illness. This attitude seeks to illustrate the attitude exhibited by a majority of the American public during the 1980s in regard to their treatment of the gay community.
Whether it be through passive ambivalence or an active sense of malevolence, the American public did not care about the problems of the LGBTQ community. This lack of empathy came to its most extreme conclusion with the death of over 700,000 people by the end of the 1980s, as a result of government inaction against the ever-growing AIDS epidemic. Freddy’s Revenge posits that this social inaction poses more of an existential threat than any disease ever could. Sure, the disease could kill you, but the pressures of conforming to a society that hates who you are means you’d never have the chance to truly live in the first place. This is the fear that resides deep within the DNA of the film and it’s this fear that makes it not only the best film in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, but one of the best horror films from a decade known for producing the best horror films.
