31 Days Of Horror Day 25 Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy's Revenge

Title-Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy's Revenge
Source-Svengoolie airing

Yep back before he got onto MeTV,Svengoolie would sometimes air fairly modern films. Thankfully various fans recorded some of these episodes. And I managed to get a DVD-R copy of Sven's airing of Nightmare on Elm Street 2.

After the original Elm Street film was a huge hit a sequel was quickly put into production. Hitting theaters a bit less than a year after the original came out,Elm Street 2 was a big hit. Sure most of the people that saw it didn't care for it. But it took a few weeks for word of mouth to get around.

Mark Patton plays Jesse. The new kid in town. His family has just moved to Springfield and they are living in Nancy's old home. Fairly quickly Jesse starts having nightmares about Freddy. But besides these nightmares Jesse isn't doing to bad. Sure he is the new kid but he has already made a new friend.

Lisa,played by Kim Myers,is Jesse's new friend. He has a crush on her but is too shy to say anything. To me Kim has always looked like a young red headed version of Meryl Streep.

Jesse ends up getting into a fight during gym class. To punish both guys the coach makes them stay after school and Jesse and Grady become friends.

Lisa comes over after school to hang out with Jesse. And they find Nancy's old diary. In which they see she had been having similar nightmares to Jesse.Then odd stuff starts happening around the house. Like when the family bird just burst into flames.

The Dad,played Clu Gulager,blames all this on Jesse. Jesse's nightmares get worse.And he starts to wander around town late at night. One night he wanders into a bar. Discovers it is a gay leather bar and sees the school coach there. To punish Jesse for being in the bar the coach takes Jesse back to the school and makes him run laps. Jesse ends up disappearing in the steam in the shower room. And is replaced by Freddy. Who kills the coach. Jesse appears again and is shocked to see he is wearing Freddy's fright glove.

The next night Jesse goes to Lisa's pool party. They end up off in one of the pool houses and start making out.

Then out of nowhere Jesse's tongue is replaced by Freddy's. So Jesse runs off to Grady's home. Sneaks into his bedroom and wakes Grady up. Grady offers Jesse some great advice.

Jesse talks Grady into watching over him as he sleeps. But Grady falls asleep and Freddy takes over Jesse's body.Freddy kills Grady.Freddy morphs back into Jesse. Jesse freaks out and runs off to Lisa's home. Freddy takes over Jesse's body again and we get a massacre at the pool party.

Lisa realizes it is Jesse's terror that is giving Freddy his power. After Lisa tells Jesse she loves him and then kisses him Freddy burst into flames and seems to die. But of course this being an Elm Street film we have to get a shitty ending that lets us know Freddy isn't dead. That is one of the my main complaints about the Elm Street series. They usually have really shitty endings.

I clearly remember that when this came out most people hated it. With the major complaint being how in this film Freddy can come into the real world fairly easy. Which is very different than it was in the first film.

In the 30+years since this movie came out there has been much talk about the not so subtle homosexual theme to the film. You got the gay leather bar. The very odd dance Jesse does in his room. And hell Jesse's friend Grady points out that Lisa wants Jesse to bang  her and Jesse runs off to go sleep in Grady's bedroom. The director of the film swears that all of this is just people reading way too much into the movie.  But there is too much in the movie to leads to this conclusion to say it wasn't done on purpose.

Sven's segments are decent. They don't have the polish of his segments now that he is on a national channel. But they are fairly entertaining. And help make up for the film being edited for TV. I was a bit surprised at how little got edited out. I know there was either no or very little nudity in the movie. And the violence and gore were not at extreme levels. Really most of what got edited out for the Svengoolie airing is the foul language.

Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy's Revenge gets a C.