A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)Written by David Chaskin
Directed by Jack Sholder
Also known as 'the gay one'. Because of all the gayness. I don't mean that in a negative way - you know how all the kids say "that's so gay" to describe something rubbish? Yeah, I'm not using it that way. This movie is... gay.
A lot of people don't like this one, but in recent years it's picked up a small crew of dedicated fans and I'm one of them. It's still not particularly fashionable to say you like this film - and it does have some major problems. I just think the good outweighs the bad.
First off, the film does something new with Freddy - and this film sees him playing Iago. He's like the little Devil He picks his new toy - Jesse the closeted teen - and we go into a bit of a body horror thing.
Freddy is kind of possessing Jesse in this one - forcing him to kill those he choses. It's this major shift from the plot of the original that causes the devide more than the homo-eroticism present with it.
It's a really interesting, different take on the character who at this point has only one film under his belt. Freddy has yet to degenerate into slapstick and still comes across as an evil shit in this one.
Originally, Englund was not asked to return to play Freddy. Whilst various people blame each other for this, it seems the truth is that director Sholder did not consider Freddy to be a very important character - so he was played by a stuntman. When Bob Shaye saw the results/found out about it, he went Ape Shit and demanded the Freddy scenes be reshot with Englund.
Watching the film, you can still feel the aftermath of the "Freddy is not important" attitude. He isn't given a whole lot to do and he feels more like a generic evil that he did in the previous film. Englund does his best with what he's given though, and as I said earlier managed to turn Freddy into a sick little bastard. He's one of the main things that makes the film work - and it's shocking how close we came to an Englund-less Freddy. You can learn more about this in the documentary Never Sleep Again.
I've pretty much summed up the whole plot so far - except for the fact that Jesse has a would-be-girlfriend he ends up banging - but I thought he was gay? According to this film, all a gay guy needs to become straight is a nice shag from an chick with a big chin. Is that the message they were trying to send with this film - seems like an exercise in gay bashing to me.
The standout scene is when Freddy re-enters the real world by taking full control of Jesse and literally bursting out of his skin (whilst Jesse screams "He's inside me! He's inside me!" - seriously... no one noticed the gay stuff??) and pretty much slaughters every attendee at a birthday party. Brilliant - so it's not got the character development of the first one - but it's still a creepy, entertaining film with some truly stand out sequences. There's some excellent performances and Ken Walsh (Jesse's dad) will forever go down in history as the man who blames Cheap Bird Seed for his budgie catching on fire. Nice.
In the end, the second Nightmare film is a bit of an oddity. In future installments Freddy would resume his dream slashing and from Part 3 onwards we would see a story that continued on from Part 1 and didn't end until the sixth movie. This movie interrupts an otherwise continuing story and deals with wildly different themes from the other films. Still I think it stands as a solid entry, and is certainly better than some of the films that followed.
Directed by Jack Sholder
Also known as 'the gay one'. Because of all the gayness. I don't mean that in a negative way - you know how all the kids say "that's so gay" to describe something rubbish? Yeah, I'm not using it that way. This movie is... gay.
A lot of people don't like this one, but in recent years it's picked up a small crew of dedicated fans and I'm one of them. It's still not particularly fashionable to say you like this film - and it does have some major problems. I just think the good outweighs the bad.
First off, the film does something new with Freddy - and this film sees him playing Iago. He's like the little Devil He picks his new toy - Jesse the closeted teen - and we go into a bit of a body horror thing.
Freddy is kind of possessing Jesse in this one - forcing him to kill those he choses. It's this major shift from the plot of the original that causes the devide more than the homo-eroticism present with it.
It's a really interesting, different take on the character who at this point has only one film under his belt. Freddy has yet to degenerate into slapstick and still comes across as an evil shit in this one.Originally, Englund was not asked to return to play Freddy. Whilst various people blame each other for this, it seems the truth is that director Sholder did not consider Freddy to be a very important character - so he was played by a stuntman. When Bob Shaye saw the results/found out about it, he went Ape Shit and demanded the Freddy scenes be reshot with Englund.
Watching the film, you can still feel the aftermath of the "Freddy is not important" attitude. He isn't given a whole lot to do and he feels more like a generic evil that he did in the previous film. Englund does his best with what he's given though, and as I said earlier managed to turn Freddy into a sick little bastard. He's one of the main things that makes the film work - and it's shocking how close we came to an Englund-less Freddy. You can learn more about this in the documentary Never Sleep Again.
I've pretty much summed up the whole plot so far - except for the fact that Jesse has a would-be-girlfriend he ends up banging - but I thought he was gay? According to this film, all a gay guy needs to become straight is a nice shag from an chick with a big chin. Is that the message they were trying to send with this film - seems like an exercise in gay bashing to me.
The standout scene is when Freddy re-enters the real world by taking full control of Jesse and literally bursting out of his skin (whilst Jesse screams "He's inside me! He's inside me!" - seriously... no one noticed the gay stuff??) and pretty much slaughters every attendee at a birthday party. Brilliant - so it's not got the character development of the first one - but it's still a creepy, entertaining film with some truly stand out sequences. There's some excellent performances and Ken Walsh (Jesse's dad) will forever go down in history as the man who blames Cheap Bird Seed for his budgie catching on fire. Nice.
In the end, the second Nightmare film is a bit of an oddity. In future installments Freddy would resume his dream slashing and from Part 3 onwards we would see a story that continued on from Part 1 and didn't end until the sixth movie. This movie interrupts an otherwise continuing story and deals with wildly different themes from the other films. Still I think it stands as a solid entry, and is certainly better than some of the films that followed.
No comments:
Post a Comment