Elm Street II...You'll Have A Gay Old Time!

S. & M. bars. Naked P.E. coach asses. Male sleepovers. It theoretically could be the story behind any movie, but it could only be the TRUE story behind A Nightmare On Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge, which will subsequently be referred to, for simplicity’s sake, as ANOESII:FR.

You know how most reviews of sequels include the sentence “the sequel picks up right where the original movie left off?” Well you could also use that line for Elm Street II’s review, as long as the “original movie” you’re referring to is any other movie besides Elm Street I. The director must’ve never seen the first movie, because this one has nothing to do with it or with anything else, really. Like most directors, this one chose to compensate for lack of story and characterization by including tons of male nudity.

ANOESII: FR is the story of Jesse Walsh, the horror genre’s most simply fabulous hero. He’s the new kid in town who instantly hits it off with cute Lisa because they’ve got so much in common—they both like rock music, they’re both into “The Cosby Show,” and they both have vaginas. One night when Lisa visits Jesse, probably to do some scrapbooking, they discover the diary of Nancy, Jesse’s house’s former occupant, and find out that the same house also used to belong to Freddy Kruger, who shows up in this movie for just over four seconds. Jesse puts two and two together and realizes that Kruger is the scary man who has replaced Scott Baio in Jesse’s nightly dreams. But it gets worse. As it turns out, Freddy is trying to possess Jesse and take over his body so that he can escape the captivity of the dream world and finally be able to tounge-kiss the captain of the football team from beyond the grave.

I’ve heard that the unspoken theme of Freddy's Revenge is Jesse's attempt to come to terms with his closet homosexuality and I know what you’re thinking--that I watched this movie and unbiasedly looked for anything even remotely queer to make fun of for the sake of this review’s humor. Not necessary. Let's get one thing straight: I have no problem whatsoever with homosexuals, but I have a huge problem with things in my horror movies that aren't horror, gay, straight, or otherwise. Folks, this movie is gay. I’m talking Steel Magnolias Sigfried and Roy gay. Which leads me to the most "did I really just see what I thought I saw?" moment in motion picture history.

As Freddy continues to take over, Jesse’s gay decent into madness causes him to stumble into a gay S & M bar that plays really gay music. As luck would have it, this is also the bar that his gay gym teacher secretly frequents. The scene then cuts to the still leather-clad P.E. teacher watching as Jesse runs gay laps around a gymnasium, which was probably also gay.

Since the filmmakers included no warnings in terms of disclaimers on the box to inform me of what was about to happen, I’m not going to pad this with anything and just rock you in the face with the facts. Please understand that I’m not making up anything in this paragraph. The P.E. teacher goes back to his office, where he is attacked by a variety of…balls. Then he is dragged to the showers by a pair of jump ropes where his clothes instantly and automatically strip off his body, followed by his bare ass being repeatedly whipped by a ghastly flying towel. Yep. That’s really what happens. But guess what? This is not the gayest thing in this movie. There’s a solo dance scene where Jesse mimes masturbation with a pop-gun, followed up by him bumping desk drawers closed with his ass. It was a scene so homoerotic that not even Roddy Piper could watch it without suddenly craving dong.

I’m never one to judge a movie simply based on where it’s target audience likes to stick their penis, and let’s be honest…I had a blast watching this. The problem was that it just wasn’t scary. Add to that the fact that Freddy really didn’t show up in his own movie until the end. Even though I’m I die-hard Elm Street III and IV fan, I can only give this one two and a half Jason heads. That half is because there’s an exploding parakeet in this movie that's totally rad.

I’m breaking my rule again for one last time tonight with a Shocktober Spectacular favorite. It’s a movie so batshit that you could watch it while eating babies and rubbing feces over yourself and still be less fucked up than anything happening on the screen at any given time.