Horror Sequels

Lili’s Pick: Nightmare on Elm Street 2

Lanie’s Pick: Scream 2

This week, amid a cataclysmic storm of snow and ice that left millions of Texans, including my family, without power, we weren’t sure if Double Feature Thursday would even be a possibility. As I huddled around the fireplace, our only sense of warmth during below freezing temperatures, I decided that should our power ever return, our movies this week had no choice but to be spectacular. Diving into the oft-maligned and ever-misunderstood category of horror sequels, we chose two iconic followups to equally iconic scary movies: Scream 2 and Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Given that the originals of these films were so beloved, both existing among the horror renaissance of the 80s and 90s, these sequels had incredibly tough acts to follow, and yet somehow they achieved their own respective levels of horror glory—standing alone from their predecessors. Scream remains to be one of the most brilliantly innovative slashers of all time, allowing its characters to be just as in on the joke as its audience, and thankfully, Scream 2 leaned into this concept even further. The wink-wink, nudge-nudge nature of this franchise is fully realized in Scream 2, allowing the hilarious Jamie Kennedy to do just about everything but look into the camera and say “Ain’t Ghostface a stinker?” There was not one moment during this entire film where I was not having fun, between the undeniably spectacular cast of every cherished actor of the 90s (Jada Pinkett [before Smith], Omar Epps, Neve Campbell, Jerry O’Connell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Timothy Olyphant, Luke Wilson, Laurie Metcalf and somehow MORE) and their commitment to selling the self-aware script. If there comes a time where I tire of comedic horror gems like this one, let Wes Craven strike me down, because this genre, and this particularly expert portrayal of the humor that can exist within terror, is its own brand of magic. This leads me to Nightmare on Elm Street 2, a film that arrived at comedic gold completely by accident. A self-loathing writer, an oblivious director, and a young, closeted actor brought one of the greatest gay films of all time into existence. Thought to be the first-ever scream king, Mark Patton’s Jesse was a sensitive leading man, who brought something quietly revolutionary to the category of horror, and to film in general. When you watch Nightmare on Elm Street 2 now, you are unable to ignore the overtones of homosexuality throughout, so much so that it is incredibly hard to believe that every creative choice made was not a deliberate one. This is queer cinema in its purest, most genuine form. Whether this was intentional or some fortuitous aligning of the stars, the creators of this film did not leave the gay imagery and allusions in the subtext, they placed it into every frame of this movie. Between the phallic symbolism, the references to male love and male pleasure, and Mark Patton’s dazzling and dancerly portrayal of a final boy, Nightmare on Elm Street 2, regardless of its intentions, is a clumsy but innocent exploration of gay identity and agency. Freddy Krueger has an affinity for antagonizing his victims in a sexualized way, but I’ve never seen a more unabashedly clear display of specifically homosexual, hedonistic desires in my life. Barbara Creed describes Freddy Krueger as a feminine figure, given that he holds the souls of all of his victims inside of him, writing that he is “pregnant with his victims”, and I think his need for possession and bodily autonomy in NOES2 only underscores that. The troubling aspect of this film comes from the fact that this ambiguously gay character can seemingly only protect himself by retreating into a heterosexual relationship, and the fact that Mark Patton’s career was virtually ended by what was supposed to be his breakout role. Should you watch NOES2, and you really, really should, you simply must watch Scream, Queen!: My Nightmare on Elm Street, the 2020 documentary that covers this film and the world’s complicated response to it so beautifully. Though this film was met with homophobic criticism upon its release during the height of the AIDS epidemic, this film is now rightfully celebrated and studied as an LGBTQ+ piece of art. It’s one of the most goofy, gloriously gay movies you’ll ever watch, and I guarantee you’ll have a blast while watching it.