|
Originally Posted by atsonicpark
Hey Joe, what do you think of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2? I think it's hilariously awful, personally. Can't believe the guy who did THE HIDDEN (a GREAT film, that Friday the 13th JASON GOES TO HELL rips off) did it. This is a great review of it:
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE (1985)
It's different...kinda the way Andy Dick is different
1986, grade 8 math club. I joined mostly because math was the only subject I knew I understood, but I really have no memory of what we ever did in it, except for one thing. Somehow around Halloween we managed to convince the teacher in charge to rent us an R-rated horror movie, this one. I think this was before I even saw the original. Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool at the time. Didn't even notice how ass-fuckedly gay it was.
And that's how this first sequel has come to be remembered...as the gay one. Some of it's obvious, like when its hero runs into the room of his buff, briefs-wearing jock friend (both guys are seen in their briefs a lot), who has some choice bedroom décor...if he was a 13-year-old girl. "Something is trying to get inside my body!" he cries. His friend: "Yeah, she's female and she's waiting for you, and you want to sleep with ME?" Some of it's more obvious: "He's inside me...AND HE WANTS TO TAKE ME AGAIN!" Some of it's just jaw-dropping, like the dance number.
The best scene is unfortunately the first one, a (natch) dream sequence where a school bus is commandeered by Freddy and is precipitously dangled over Hell. A pasty teenager in the back (Mark Patton) already had taunts from the pretty girls to deal with, and now this. Then he wakes up and it's all downhill.
Jesse, that teenager, has just moved into the neighborhood - into Nancy's house from the first movie, in fact, just five years later (always, five years later). Handily, the only thing left by her family in the house is Nancy's diary, which fills us in on what happened in the first movie (but still doesn't give any clarity to the dream/reality/dream ending, which would become a series tradition). Freddy shows up in his dreams and tells him he wants to use him to continue his rampage. Many spaz episodes ensue, treating us to Jesse's high-pitched, Ned-Flandersian scream.
One thing Freddy's Revenge has going for it is that it is the only Nightmare sequel to be put out before the whole thing set down its formula and started writing itself into a corner with its larger "mythology". Unconstrained by the kind of continuity and fan-expectation concerns of later movies, it had the opportunity to stretch out a little - in this movie, even staying awake won't save you. The script lets dorky, middle-class Jesse strike up honest friendships with both the jock (touched off by a pants-pulling) and the rich chick (who looks just like Meryl Streep, but sure doesn't act like her), though exactly why they take to Jesse is unclear, since they both put up with a lot of his spacey freakouts. The girl in particular is amazingly accommodating, trying to help him out even when he shows up at her house covered in blood, and telling him "Why won't you talk to me...we can work it out together!"
There's still some rehash though, like the obligatory sleeping-in-class scene (during a lecture on the excretory system, something the other students, as you might imagine, can't help but be interested in). But the rules laid down in the first movie are all different here, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially seeing as how this is the big detour of the series. It just moves the action a lot closer to traditional slasher territory, with Freddy seemingly not caring who he kills, so long as he gets to do it at all.
Freddy himself is nowhere near as silly as he would later become; he's still a mean ol' bastard and the one-liners are kept to a minimum (delivered in a deep death-metal grumble serving to highlight something enjoyably horrible), but that he would cause havoc at a pool party seems like, I dunno, like something Jason would do. Except for one scene where he bursts out of Jesse's chest, he doesn't really do anything very fantastical; there's no scene in the spirit of what happened to Johnny Depp in the first movie.
Elsewhere Marshall Bell is perfect as the gruff coach (who brings the REALLY unsubtle gay angle), and Clu Gulager gets some laughs as the clueless dad who just will not accept that his boy is changing in unforeseen ways ("Tell you what he needs, he needs a methadone clinic!"). Beyond their performances, Nightmare 2's freshness is largely illusory; the opportunities are sensed, but not really capitalized on, like the franchise was looking for its groove (i.e. its formula) and hadn't found it yet. Most appallingly miscalculated scene: a parakeet goes on a beak-slasher rampage and explodes.
Directed by Jack Sholder, who sandwiched this between two good films, Alone In The Dark and The Hidden.
|