The first sequel of a film like this A Nightmare on Elm Street is probably the most difficult task, especially if you change directors. It has to be in the line of the first film and yet change a few things to make it nothing but a repeat. The character of Freddy Krueger is kept with his three distinctive elements : the right hand four finger claws, the hat and the black and red striped pullover, plus of course his ugly mug. But then we move. First the main character is a boy something like a junior or senior in high school, so not really a boy anymore. But yet the boyish side is emphasized by a hairless body, shiny and pure skin, a skin that is widely shown and slowly brushed up and down by the camera. And that's the change. The camera really centers on his body, his skin, his flesh even, except of course his front sexual parts per se. Then it uses gym scenes and even locker room and shower scenes, but once again with restraint. Very little nudity and when there is some backside scenes it is in a very traumatic situation : the gay sports teacher who is tortured and whipped in the nude of course, tied up to the showers, while the boy in the nude too is shown slightly in some darkness and flittingly. Many scenes of the boy in bed only wearing his underwear, never really ambiguous but always sexy even if once again flittingly. Then some more elements are added : his friendship with another boy who is the rather of the macho type but who does not seem afraid of a masculine friendship. Both are victimized by the gay sports teacher on the football field a couple of times and in the end the boy, Jesse, will come to ask for help from his friend, Grady, and the first reaction will be nearly openly gay even if denied in some side remark, and Freddy will kill Grady through, from inside the body of Jesse : if that is not a repressed homosexual desire, what is ? And before Jesse had gone to a leather bar and had been literally kidnapped by the gay sports teacher and it is then later in the showers that Freddy again will kill this openly gay character from within the body of Jesse. If one case is a coincidence, two are not and that is the main change of this film from a girl-centered vision of fear to a boy-centered vision. In fact we must understand that Freddy is the real character questioned here. He is an old pedophile and after having recaptured some existence through the dream of a girl in the first film, and having thus gotten a couple of boys in his bag through the desire of the girl for these boys, now he moves directly to the main target of his desire : he wants to possess a boy from inside, he is a gay pedophile and Jesse, to defend his sanity in this invasion, will have to react against this gayness that is imposed onto him and kill the boys and men Freddy desires. But this can also be nothing but a tactic from Freddy to push Jesse into killing, to titillate him where it tickles and where Jesse does not really want to be tickled, though when Freddy forces Jesse away from his girlfriend at the very moment when he was getting excited enough to let himself slip into some sex can be seen as the revulsion of Freddy for that type of sex or as the fear of Jesse in front of that type of sex, which would lead to believing that Freddy managed to get back into existence through the homosexual desire of Jesse and at the same time his resistance to this sexual appeal. But that is a real change in that kind of horror films : to take a point of view that focuses onto a boy, his desires, his fears, and his anxiety, all of it emphasized by a castrating authoritarian father and a loving, maybe too much, mother. We must keep in mind that this is a common situation for many boys when they turn sixteen or seventeen. In no way is this sequel lower and less intense than the first episode. Note finally the use of an old abandoned factory to give some density to Freddy's old personality and past, but also to open another chapter in that exploration of fear : the fear we can feel in front of and inside those old factories that seem in many ways haunted. That is a dimension Stephen King has used over and over again in so many of his books and films. Nothing really new but something definitely effective, at least by reminding the audience of other frightening scenes in other films. Then the evaluation of that reference is a question of date to know who used it first and who is a copycat or an imitator, who can anyway also be a developer.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne