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This article is about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge film. If you are looking for one or more other versions of the film, please check the A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (disambiguation).

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is a 1985 slasher film, and the second film in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series.

It is the sequel to the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film. The film was directed by Jack Sholder and stars Mark Patton as Jesse Walsh, Kim Myers as Lisa Webber, Robert Rusler as Ron Grady and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger. Despite the film's title, Freddy Krueger's screen time in the movie is just 13 minutes. Distributed by New Line Cinema, the film received mixed reviews, mainly due to the departure from the theme of the first film and it is unfavorably compared to the first A Nightmare on Elm Street film. However, it would later become a cult classic, with critics even reconsidering the homoerotic themes and subject material.

Plot

A Springwood Independent School District school bus turns a corner and goes down a street, going through two intersections before coming to a stop. As some teenagers got off the bus, the bus driver is revealed to look exactly like a pre-death Freddy Krueger. The bus then drops off most of the other passengers at another bus stop before continuing on. The remaining passengers are teenager Jesse Walsh and two girls.

The school bus goes through another intersection, and the bus driver skips a stop. Ignoring the protests of one of theteenage girls, who tried to tell the driver that the skipped stop was her stop, he, now revealing to be Freddy Krueger, drives the bus at full speed off the road as the sky darkens, despite the attempts of the two girls to get him to stop. The bus eventually stops and the ground below gave way, and the bus is now suspended above a chasm as lightning rolls underneath a dark sky. As the vehicle teeters, Freddy Krueger began advancing on Jesse and the girls before slashing at them with his bladed-glove.

Cheryl Walsh is then shown slicing tomatoes. Jesse is then heard screaming. Angela comments on this. Jesse comes downstairs. The doorbell rings. Lisa is at the door. Jesse and Lisa get in Jesse's car.

At school, Jesse is having a difficult time. He gets into a scuffle with a student named Ron Grady and they are both punished severely by the gym teacher. Grady mentions that the teacher, Schneider hangs out at gay S&M bars. When Jesse mentions what house he lives in, Grady tells him how Nancy Thompson went crazy and watched her boyfriend (Glen Lantz) get butchered across the street.

That night, Jesse has another dream. Wandering outside, he looks into the basement window and sees Freddy Krueger taking his glove out of the furnace. Upon re entering the house, Freddy confronts Jesse. He tells Jesse that they have special work to do since Jesse has the body and Freddy has the brains. Jesse wakes up screaming.

The following day, Jesse falls asleep in class. A snake slithers over his body. The audience is supposed to think, at first, that this is Jesse having a dream, but it turns out be occurring in the physical world, with the snake having been placed there by the other students.

On his way out to hang out with Lisa, Jesse's father forces him to unpack his room. After an embarrassing incident where Lisa and Jesse's mom walk in on him dancing, Lisa helps Jesse unpack. They stumble upon a diary written by Nancy Thompson which mentions her experiences with Freddy Krueger. Jesse recognizes some of Nancy's descriptions of Freddy.

Later that night, Jesse appears to wake up to find his belongings melting in his room. He gets up and goes into the basement. Finding the glove in the furnace, Freddy appears and coaxes Jesse into trying it on. He then tells Jesse to kill for him until Jesse wakes up.

The following day, Jesse learns that Lisa is having a party and he loans her the diary.

That evening, the Walsh family are burning up in their house which is 97 degrees in temperature. One of their pet parakeets kills the other one and then gets loose and flies around the room, scratching Jesse's dad's face, and then explodes. Jesse's dad eventually accuses Jesse of using a cherry bomb to kill the bird. In a fit of anger, Jesse leaves.

Jesse goes outside and walks to Don's Place, where he orders a beer. He runs into his coach, Schneider, who is always punishing him. Schneider takes him to the school gym to run laps. He then orders Jesse to take a shower. Schneider gets a jumprope. The implification here is rather obvious. In the shower, Freddy uses his power from within Jesse to tie Schneider to a wall with jump ropes as Freddy takes over Jesse's body, transforming Jesse into him (minus the clawed glove, which Freddy is usually seen with, instead Freddy actually has knives coming out of his fingers). To Jesse, it seems that someone else is committing the murder. Freddy slashes Schneider in the back a few times, killing him. Afterward, he turns back into Jesse, with the clawed glove.

The police bring Jesse home, having come across him wandering naked after the murder. His father accuses him of doing drugs before his mom takes him to bed. Jesse thinks the whole thing to be a dream until he and his friend Lisa Webber arrive at school the next day to find out that it really happened.

Angela Walsh sings the jump rope song. The following morning Jesse reveals to his family that his dad knew about Nancy's experience in the house. Afterwards the toaster catches on fire without being plugged in.

Jesse confides in Lisa about Schneider but she insists that it was a dream. Lisa does some research on Freddy and shows Jesse the boiler room where he took his victims. She hopes Jesse will get a psychic vision by being there. That night, Freddy nearly makes Jesse kill his younger sister. At school, Grady and Lisa try to help Jesse. Ron reveals that he has to miss the pool party because he's grounded and Lisa pleads with Jesse to talk to her.

While Lisa is having the pool party, Jesse originally attends and almost has sex with Lisa. Freddy, however, begins to take over. Scared and to Lisa's chagrin, Jesse leaves and goes over to Ron's house where Ron has been grounded for throwing his grandmother down a flight of stairs. There Jesse tells him to watch over him while he is sleeping. After Jesse falls asleep, Freddy takes control of him again and impales Ron.

Jesse then returns to Lisa's house where Freddy takes control of him again and attacks Lisa and kills six guests at the pool party (boiling some in the pool and burning some to death, while stabbing others). Lisa's father tries to shoot Freddy, but she stops him and follows Freddy to the power plant where he used to work in the past. Outside the power plant, she encounters two human faced dogs, for which no explanation is given. Once inside the boiler room, she encounters what appears to be a mutant cat and a mutant rat, for which no explanation is given, either. Lisa then encounters Freddy and encourages Jesse to fight him. This causes Freddy to begin losing control (an injury he suffered earlier, to which he was previously immune, opens up and starts bleeding). After Lisa kisses Freddy, Jesse is able to use his power from within and start a fire, which burns Freddy to a crisp. It turns out Jesse was inside Freddy's burnt corpse.

In what at first appears to be the next day, Jesse gets on the bus with Lisa and Kerry Hellman. Jesse thinks the bus is moving too fast, but it stops to pick up a passenger. When all seems well, Freddy's right hand, which has knives on the fingertips, stabs through Kerry, and the bus drives into the desert. Whether or not this was a dream remains a mystery as Jesse wasn't mentioned again.

Cast

Sequels

This film is followed by A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. It, however, gives no details as to explain the ending of this film, as Freddy returns to his old ways in Dream Warriors.

Box Office

The film opened in just 614 theaters, and making $3.3 million in its opening weekend. Domestically, the film has made over $29.9 million, making it another huge success on a budget of only $3.0 million. It is also the sixth highest grossing film of the whole series.

Reception

Despite being a box office success, the film has generally received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Much of the negative criticism of Freddy's Revenge, from both film critics and fans, was aimed at the fact that the film, while continuing the storyline of its predecessor, takes on a completely different direction. Rather than just stalk the teenagers and kill them in their dreams, Freddy would commit random acts of violence (which he did only briefly in the first film) in the physical world, and, in the case of Schneider, against someone obviously well into adulthood. Also, very little was seen of Freddy in this film.

Trivia

  • With 10 total victims, this film has Freddy Krueger's highest kill count of any A Nightmare on Elm Street film.
  • This is the only A Nightmare on Elm Street film in which the main protagonist is a male character.
  • This second movie was filmed from 26th June to August 1985.
  • Freddy Krueger only appears in 13 minutes of the film.
  • During the end credits, the film's main title theme was used for its original theatrical release, first few home video releases and Blu-ray releases (and also later DVD release). It was also used for the cable TV airings (from 1987 to late 1990), and the HBO Max streaming service. For the last VHS releases, early DVD releases, and cable airings (starting in 1990), it was replaced by Bing Crosby's song, "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?".
  • It is the first film in the franchise that Robert Englund appears without Freddy's makeup, playing the bus driver first at the beginning of the film.
  • Whenever Freddy is on-screen, whalesong has been added to the background music. This only adds to the eerie dream feeling.
  • This movie has been considered one of the homoerotic horror movies. A documentary film was created in 2019 entitled "Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street" largely focusing on this subject and the incorrect assertion that Mark Patton was solely responsible for the homoeroticism.
  • This movie makes no mention of Freddy's vendetta against Nancy Thompson.

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