Throwback Thursday Looks at “The Gayest Horror Film Ever Made”

October 3, 2024
HANK ORSO

Gays love their horror flicks. Let's spend this month discovering why.

There are deep-dive academic essays on why queers love their horror flicks, which you can Google. Until then, I'm simply gonna offer up pithy personal opinions and pseudo-psychological "facts" to suss out why I love horror films! Short answer? Because they fucking rule! So Throwback Thursday in October is going to focus on films from a gay perspective. Which means I'll be gaying up flicks that only hint at a queer subtext. OR, I'll just spoon-feed you some super gay movies, like this first one, referred to in one review as "the gayest horror movie ever made," A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. I'll get all subtle and stuff later; for now, let's go with the obvious.

When ...Revenge hit the theaters back in 1985, it received middling-to-bad reviews, but held strong in the box office. The original A Nightmare on Elm Street was a success, so audiences obviously wanted more. What they didn't expect was just how homoerotic their favorite dream realm slasher would become!

The film, along with Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger, starred a relative newcomer, Marc Patton. Patton's performance as Jesse Walsh became, naturally, the focus, not only as the unlikely teen hero as he had replaced the original film's star Heather Langenkamp as the proverbial "Last Girl," but also because of what was deemed a really gay performance. What's come down in history as a notable conflict is why the performance was "super gay." Was it because Patton, who is gay in real life, brought out subtle subtext from writer David Chaskin's script? Or was the script purposefully super gay from the get-go, enhanced by director Jack Sholder's changes, enhancements, and choices? If you ask Patton, who has claimed to have been professionally "gay bashed" for the last thirty years because of this film, it's definitely the latter.

In an exhaustive 2016 Buzzfeed article, Patton recalls sensing queerness in the script when he first read it, but that changes on set as shooting continued simply leaned into what was becoming more and more obvious.

“It just became undeniable,” Patton said. “I mean, when you’re looking at dailies and I’m lying in bed and I’m a pietà and the candles are dripping and they’re bending like phalluses and white wax is dripping all over... It’s like I’m the center of a — what do they call it? — a bukkake. Like I’m a bukkake video.”

Apparently what wound up on screen was scaled back from what was, at times, brought up as ideas to film. For instance, that scene where Freddy caresses Jesse's lips with his finger blade? Englund asked Patton if he could go further and insert it into his mouth. The answer was a hard "no." But hey, at least Englund sought permission first. Consent is everything!

Check out this fan-made montage of the film's gayer moments and judge for yourself.

If you just had some of the dialogue, it would probably have gone by unnoticed except for eagle-eyed gays who could find queer dog whistles in the most banal of Hollywood films. And they'd be right. But the amount of times young men are physical with each other, sometimes with skin showing...and oh yeah, the S/M bar scene followed by the sadistic coach in leather being towel-snapped and tortured in his own lockerroom?!...well, it's a little too on point to be an accident!

At the time, which was of course rife with homophobia, Chaskin and Sholder feigned ignorance, with Chaskin claiming he simply wrote "subtext" while, according to Patton, calling the lead's performance "too gay." But as the years went by and that homophobia has diminished with increasingly positive representation, Chaskin became more willing to own up to what were intentional choices from the beginning because of the rampant Hollywood bashing.

“Homophobia was skyrocketing and I began to think about our core audience — adolescent boys — and how all of this stuff might be trickling down into their psyches at an age when raging hormones often produce dreams and urges that make them (if only unconsciously) begin to question their own sexuality,” Chaskin wrote. “My thought was that tapping into that angst would give an extra edge to the horror.”

I'm going to go out on a limb and say "bullshit." He threw in queer-baiting material to get laughs and "knowing" nods, then later claimed it was a nuanced creative choice based on the societal norms and politics of the times.

Let's take a longer gaze at that shower scene with Coach and break it down.

Jesse, in his dream state, brings the coach in with him when the both turn up at a gay bar. Suddenly Jesse is forced to run laps in the gym. And here is one of the driving impulses behind gays' predilection towards horror: the vicarious overpowering and revenge on our oppressors. This scene is literally a visual metaphor for many young gays' childhood terrors: the sadistic coach; the bullying; looking weak and being chosen last in PE; and the list goes on. Not to mention fear of our own budding sexuality, if that was your experience. Here, Jesse, through his dream with Freddy's help, destroys much of what was tormenting him. It's his hand in the glove at the scene's close; it was him who put his tormentor on the rack. It moves from high camp with the stereotypes in the bar, the coach being pummelled by balls (hello!) and the blatant bondage, to "Jesse's Revenge."

The aftermath of the movie, for Patton, is that he would walk away from the homophobia of Hollywood, shunning this film which would come down in history after so many years as iconic for queer horror fans. It took decades for Patton to come to terms with its legacy and his part in it, but he eventually did so in the queerest way possible. He made a documentary about it, and did his own leaning into the material and his image. His film Scream Queen details the making of, and subsequent repercussions from, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. He gets to directly confront Chaskin and Sholder who still sit behind a wall of feigned ignorance. It is sweet revenge indeed.

Marc Patton, thank you for your contribution to the horror genre. It sidelined your goals and your life, making you a star for all the wrong reasons at the time, reasons we hope were righted. You are truly a scream, Queen! Now slay!

Maybe Patton explains best why queers love our horror and Halloween!

I love Halloween to watch all the underdogs put on their costumes and become the super heroes they actually are. Boo pic.twitter.com/LtS9Eo2hV1
— MarkPattonActor (@ActorPatton) October 28, 2021