Sweet Dreams: A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge!!!

Time for the gay one!!!

IDK why this font choice is so funny to me but it is.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge is easily the most deranged instalment in the series. Part of its adorably insane charm comes from the fact that the writer intentionally filled the script with gay innuendo, while the director (allegedly) remained blissfully unaware of the subtext. In this film, Freddy returns after a five-year absence with a new plan that has nothing to do with the rest of the series. None of the protagonists are children of the mob that killed him, so the title Freddy's Revenge makes no sense, unless Freddy's Revenge is an euphemism, like Montezuma's Revenge, in which case it makes perfect sense.

The nuclear family. Only 30-year-old boomers will remember this.

A new family has moved into the former Thompson residence to pursue a life of mid-20th Century situation comedy. The dad, played by Clu Gulager from Return of the Living Dead, is every sitcom dad rolled into one, and his wife is always rolling her eyes and going "oh, Ken", before a freeze frame and yellow font credits. They have a pet budgie that explodes (yes), and their daughter eats by far the best fictional cereal ever created: Fu Man Chews.

If it's not """"racist"""" in 2018, it's just not hysterically funny.

Additions to series continuity from this movie include the name of the town, Springwood, and the demonym "The Springwood Slasher" (Freddy), but for some inexplicable reason, Fu Man Chews never appeared in any of the subsequent movies, despite being the best thing about Freddy's Revenge, the 80s, and human history.

Our very heterosexual, no really, protagonist.

Anyway, the Richie in this veritable 1980s Cunningham family, Jesse, starts having nightmares about our badly tanned antagonist. This time, however, Freddy has a new goal: to possess Jesse, and thereby enter the real world. This plot blurs the lines between reality and dream even more than the first film did, but I'm not sure how much of that was intentional. For instance, there's a sequence where Jesse goes out walking in the rain, enters a gay bar where he encounters his high school coach, who takes him back to the gym (still in the middle of the night), and makes him run laps, which seems like it must be a dream because it's just so fucking strange. But no, apparently that's real, as Freddy then shows up and kills the coach, which is confirmed real by his being found dead at the gym the day after.

Yes, this is New Line founder Bob Shaye in a cameo in the gay bar. Interestingly he also cameos as a teacher in 4 who is presumably promoted to principal by Freddy Vs Jason. Make of that what you will.

The major conflict in the film is between Jesse's desire to pursue a relationship with his young-Meryl-Streep-looking neighbour, and his implied repressed homosexuality, into which Freddy figures...somehow, I don't know. Meryl doesn't believe Jesse's insistence that he's having nightmares, being possessed, or going insane, but for some reason she does believe he's getting psychic messages, for reasons she never sees fit to divulge.

Freddy Vs Kramer (1985, colourised)

Anyway, eventually Freddy takes over Jesse's body and runs around at a pool party slashing away at people, and Meryl must find a way to draw Jesse back out from Freddy's control. The pool party is the only time we really see Freddy wailing on a bunch of people at a time, which is pretty cool, and yields the hilarious scene in which a guy tries to talk down the burn-scarred, razor-fingered demon like he's just had too much to drink.

"Don't slash me bro" - Albert Einstein here.

Finally, Meryl confronts Freddy in the old abandoned factory where he used to take his victims in life. The entrance is guarded by two dogs with the faces of diseased babies. Sadly they don't chase her or anything, just sit around. Like so much else in this movie, I would have loved to see more of these monster dogs, and less of the coach's bare ass.

Even Fu Manchu wouldn't eat these fucking hounds.

Meryl kills Freddy with the power of love (really), and Jesse emerges from the charred ashes of his body, and the very next day they're off to school, all smiles, despite like ten people having died. Could this be a clue that it's a dream? Of course it is. No matter how Freddy is killed in these movies, he always just shows up again for no reason. It's entirely possible that everything that happens in this series is a dream, and Freddy's deaths are just another elaborate way of fucking with the teenagers of Springwood.

Note that about halfway through the movie Freddy's weapon changes from a glove of knives to knives just sticking out of his actual hand. Despite the amount of work required to create two versions, this is never explained.

I think the 2010 remake should have been of this film. There are plenty of cool ideas raised here that are never satisfactorily explored, and even more dumb shit that could have been ironed out. But, if you're looking for a genuinely unique motion picture experience, Freddy's Revenge is that.