Happy Halloween, readers!
Some people might try to tell you that A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge has some gay subtext.
Those people are wrong. It’s just text. That’s sort of like saying there’s some gay subtext in Call Me By Your Name. It's text. Here’s a rundown of the glorious, glossy, studio-released exploration of horror, homosexuality and male eroticism that's unlike anything else in the history of cinema, TBH.
Beware of some spoilers.
This New Line Cinema release from 1985 is, hands-down, the gayest horror movie of all time, and one of the most overtly gay movies ever released by a major studio. 1985 was a different time, and it’s a testament to how repressed and stifled things were back then that mainstream audiences didn’t really notice.
The first sequel to Wes Craven’s smash hit A Nightmare on Elm Street (one of the best horror movies ever made) the lesser Freddy’s Revenge follows an adorable teenage twink named Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) who’s beginning to see Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) in his nightmares. This gives us an excuse to see Jesse wake up, soaking wet with sweat, in soaking wet white briefs, a few times. Woof.
What follows is pretty standard supernatural slasher fare—except for myriad gay stuff and man candy. Jesse has a female love interest (Kim Myers) in the script. Only there’s less than no chemistry between them and he totally comes off as a GBF.
The real heat here is between Jesse and his friend Ron Grady (Robert Rusler), a total stud who doesn’t have his shirt on a whole lot. Thank God.
They don’t get along at first, so they tussle on the ground on the ball field, taking each other’s pants off and exposing tantalizing bare ass in gym class, as boys who are just horsing around do, obvs.—and then they bond in the locker room. Grady calls Jesse a “pretty boy.”
At one point in the film, Jesse literally stops making out with his girlfriend so he can go get horizontal in bed with Grady. I haven’t exaggerated a single detail of this movie, and I won’t.
At another point, Jesse winds up in a leather bar. He sees his strict [dom] gym coach there, who’s decked out in muscle daddy gear.
What? This movie doesn't explore tons and tons of my own personal sexual fantasies in astonishing detail; I have no idea what you're talking about *nervous laughter* !
Then later, Jesse is naked in a hot shower with his coach, also naked. And no, this isn’t Men.com–surprisingly. The coach is killed by Freddy via having his naked ass slapped a lot with a towel. That is how I want to go out, amirite?
Sadly, Grady gets slashed too. But he’s all oiled up and in tiny underwear-like shorts when it happens. So that part is cool. Here's that part.
Then there’s the best line of the movie:
Hot.
For years, writer of Nightmare 2 David Chaskin denied any gay content was in here intentionally, an outrageous claim if you watch five minutes of the thing. In a really low, shameful move, he blamed Patton (who’s gay in real life) for acting too gay. It's pretty safe to call this fag-bashing, not to mention cowardly. In recent years, Chaskin has admitted the screenplay was intentionally queer.
Patton fully embraces his status as a scream queen, (is he the only Final Boy?), and he’s even producing a documentary about this whole experience called Scream Queen: My Nightmare on Elm Street.
I’ve honestly just scratched the surface of how gay this thing is. If you’ve never seen this classic of LGBTQ+ cinema, perhaps now is the time. It’s available to rent and purchase on most major streaming sites. You can rent in HD for $0.99 on iTunes. You’re welcome.
For even more on A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Mark Patton, check out this extraordinary long-form on the gayness of Freddy’s Revenge at Buzzfeed.
Happy Halloween!
