I hope every one is enjoying Gay Pride Month, even the straight people. It seems the parades get bigger every year. Whatever the headlines might say about how this wingnut or that feels about it, homosexuality is now more accepted than any other time in modern history. It is a sight to see how far the queer have come in a couple decades.
When you think back, trips to the gay bar didn't always include Judy from payroll, because she's such a hoot when she gets a couple Long Island iced teas in her, and heteronormative Carlos from accounts receivable if he can be cool. Not long ago, going to the gay bar wasn't a thing to bring up in any office environment.
In 1985 nobody had a private Idaho yet, and if a screenwriter, actor or production designer wanted to make a gay movie , they had to be sneaky about it, so sneaky even the director wouldn't notice what they were up to -- la Cage aux Folles, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Kiss of the Spider Woman notwithstanding. Maybe that's too many exceptions to call it a rule. Whatever.
This week's Thursday Thriller is Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge -- an odd title considering Freddy spent the first movie getting his revenge.
For those who need a refresher, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) was a child murderer and implied paedophile who was burned to death by a mob of angry parents. In death, he has the power to turn up in teenagers' nightmares. If he kills them in the dream, they die in real life. His preferred targets are the offspring of the people who killed him. The first film, released in 1984, was directed by Wes Craven, who didn't want anything to do with the sequel.
However, the opening scene of Freddy's Revenge could pass for Craven homage. A boy named Jesse (Mark Patton) is the last on the school bus with a couple of giggling girls. The driver passes their stop. When one of the girls points out the driver's oversight, he speeds up and takes a hard right into a desert waste that is reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes. The bus stops and the earth around it crumbles away, leaving it to teeter atop a rocky pillar. The driver is revealed to be Freddy. He drags his razor-claw glove across the seats and ceiling of the bus, and lifts it to strike and -- cut to a suburban mom (Hope Lange) slicing a tomato in a kitchen straight out of a 1950s sitcom. The edit probably looked pretty cool in director Jack Sholder's mind, but in execution is a bit awkward coming out of one of the better dream sequences of the franchise.
What follows is about 90 minutes of homoerotic subtext. We learn that Jesse's family just moved into the same house in which Freddy antagonized Nancy in the first film, and even though he has cool, dream demon powers, Freddy has a burning desire to be made out of flammable, ole flesh again. He wants Jesse's body. He wants to possess Jesse. He wants to be in him.
Sholder has maintained he was somehow oblivious to the nuances while working on the movie. Writer David Chaskin said he intended the subtext, but a series of happy accidents made the movie gayer than he ever dreamed.
Freddy's Revenge doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It swings back and forth from well-crafted horror to low-budget kitsch and camp throughout. There's a cool transformation sequence, though not as cool as The Toxic Avenger, and the fate of the gym teacher (Marshall Bell) is pretty entertaining. Some of the special effects are spot on, but then there are these dogs with people faces that don't really do anything. There's an unspoken story centered on Jesse's complex feelings about his sexual awakening, and then there's a pool party where Freddy for some reason announces to the guests, "You're all my children now." It's an uneven movie, but still a fun watch.
If you get to the end of it and have any lingering questions, like, "What the fuck did I just watch?" you should check out the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. Take your adderall in advance, though. It covers the entire Elm Street franchise and is about four hours long.
Both Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Never Sleep Again stream on Netflix.
No comments:
Post a Comment