Random Movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

If Chris Nolan ever needed to be consulted on a franchise, it was right after the original Nightmare on Elm Street. Granted, he may not have been up to the task at the time but he like few other directors know how to make a follow-up film to a highly regarded sequel, not by making a carbon-copy of it, but by expanding upon its original characters, story-lines, and plots. Sadly, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge did none of that.

It is almost as if New Line took a page from the Exorcist II fiasco of jettisoning everything effective from the first movie for the sequel. We replace Nancy with a whiny bitch, even though he does scream like a girl. Rather than focusing on developing the characters and humanizing them to make their inevitable deaths have an impact, we have a half dozen or so lazily-written characters with almost no defining characteristics. And most importantly, instead of a definitive motive for Freddy to avenge his death by striking back at the loved ones of those who killed him, we have random possessions to kill these totally worthless characters.



The subtitle of this movie makes no sense at all. Yes, we know Freddy is pissed about being killed/ignored at the end of the first movie. Yet, instead of continuing his streak of murdering the Elm Street children, he decides to pick a random kid who happened to move into Nancy’s old house and kill other characters who for all we know had nothing to do with Freddy or his death. It even seems strange that the events of the first movie are totally ignored except for the happenstance recovery of Nancy’s unmentioned journal detailing the events of the first film. One would think when a few teens die in pretty bizarre ways in a seemingly small town, that knowledge would still be present only five years later.

To keep continuity with the first film, no one in this movie can act. With the exception of Sir Robert Englund and Marshall Bell, no one in this movie is really recognizable or talented (not that the NOES series is famed for launching careers). For the protagonist, I am not really surprised Mark Patton did little else after this film as he is quite possibly the worse adversary to Freddy in the series. Hell, the only reason I still remember Clu Gulager is from the Feast-based Project Greenlight season.

I will give this film acclaim where due (and that is not in many places) as it was different. Not different in a good way but at least they had attempted to take the character in a different direction. After being banished by Nancy at the conclusion of the first film, Freddy needed a way to continue with his homicidal ways which he found in Jesse. The power of remote possession might have been granted to Freddy after the last installment but it was an interesting turn of events. Even the fact that Jesse was technically the murderer (as apparent by the knives protruding from his fingers as opposed to the glove) was unique we could say. Perhaps this explains why Freddy was going after the random citizens of Springwood instead of those who caused his demise but I don’t buy that and I think I am putting way too much thought into this now.

The main problem is, whether it is really Jesse in Freddy-face or not, the fairly defined rules of the first apparently do not apply here. There was some grey area established but Freddy could mostly only lash out while you were asleep. Here though, he can apparently do whatever the hell he wants to: crash a pool party, burn a toaster oven, explode a bird, you name it! Another is the fact that Lisa (who should have been the final girl as opposed to the final girl’s girlfriend) can beat Freddy using the same logic as the last film which is just plain lazy. It is not even established how Freddy came back after the first (assuming it was not all a dream) so for all the audience knows, that shit does not work. And even the burn makeup on Freddy looks horrific (and in a “man, that looks like shit” way) as he is prominently featured in a few scenes with bright lights as compared to the shadowy figure of the last film.

While we have not yet reached the point where Freddy is the main character in the Nightmare series, his screen-time seems to be increasing. I would estimate we had about 23.748% more Freddy in this movie than the last go around (give or take). This still leaves more emphasis on the characters but sadly, no one gives a shit about them in this movie. In retrospect, while this movie might not be the very worse of the series (at the very least it is tied), it was still a disappointment coming off of the exhilarating original. And I did not once mention anything about the huge homo-erotic themes as well!