A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is a 1985 American slasher film and the second film in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. The film was directed by Jack Sholder and stars Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.

The film is about a teenage boy, haunted in his dreams by Freddy Krueger who is out to possess him to continue his murdering in the real world.

Plot
It has been five years since the events of the first film. A new family, the Walshes, have moved into the former home of Nancy Thompson. The Walshes' son, Jesse, happens to move into Nancy's old room. He eventually begins to have nightmares of Freddy demanding that Jesse kill for him.

Jesse finds Nancy's old diary in which she had been keeping track of her nightmares and her encounters with Freddy Krueger. He goes to his parents in a panic, but they argue and Jesse storms out. Jesse finds himself walking the streets late at night. One night, he walks into a bar where he runs into his gym coach, who takes him back to the gym to run laps. The coach has Jesse hit the showers, while he goes back to his office. While he is in his office, the shelves begin to come alive, hurling balls and other sports equipment at him. Two ropes grab him by the wrists and drag him into the shower. The shower fills with steam and we see Freddy's silhouette in the background, clawing the coach's back. As everything comes into focus, Jesse is the one with the glove on his hand. Jesse's friend Lisa begins to do some digging and uncovers information about Freddy, including the location of the factory where he brought his victims. Meanwhile, Freddy visits Jesse's younger sister, but when she wakes up, it's actually Jesse standing there, with the glove on his hand. Jesse enlists his other friend, Grady, to watch over him while he sleeps. Once Jesse falls asleep, Grady turns out the lights for himself. As soon as Grady is asleep, Jesse awakens and begins to scream in pain - Krueger is coming out and Jesse cannot stop him. With the door jammed, Grady is helpless against Krueger, who impales him on his own door with his glove, killing him. When Krueger looks in the mirror it turns out that it was Jesse, with Krueger staring back at him from the mirror.

Jesse runs to Lisa's house where she is having a pool party. However, Freddy takes control of Jesse and attacks Lisa. Lisa is able to fight off Freddy, who runs from the house and out to the party. Most of the teenager guests run for the fence, only to be confronted by scorching hot metal. Everything begins to heat up, including the pool, burning anyone that is near. Some of them try and talk Freddy down, but are killed immediately. Freddy has them all cornered against the back fence; he exclaims, "You are all my children now!"(Meaning he is going to kill every last one of them as explained in "Freddy's Dead The Final Nightmare" and "Freddy vs Jason") After Lisa saves him from being shot by her father, he vanishes into a fiery wall. Lisa runs to the old factory, thinking she might save Jesse there; she finds him and tells him that she loves him and that he can fight from the inside. Freddy begins to lose control. As the factory begins to burn to the ground, Freddy himself starts burning. After he dies, the rest of the factory suddenly extinguishes. Just when Lisa thinks it is all over, Freddy's burnt corpse begins to move. Jesse begins to crawl out of Freddy's ashes.

The following Monday, Jesse goes back to school. He climbs the bus, finally relieved that it is all over. But something is wrong; the bus is traveling too fast. Jesse panics and jumps up, only to find out there is nothing wrong; the bus is coming to its regular stop. As he and Lisa rest at ease, Freddy's glove bursts through their friend's chest killing her and the bus speeds off the main road and into the open land just like in Jesse's nightmares, followed by Krueger's laugh in the background.

List of Deaths
List of deaths in the film, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

Development
Pre-production for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 began in April 1985. Screenwriter Leslie Bohem pitched the producers with his idea of using pregnancy and possession as a plot device for the second film: "My concept was a homage to Rosemary's Baby. I came up with a plot that had a new family move into the house, a teenage boy, his pregnant mother and a stepfather the boy didn't get along with. It was a real bloody, scary idea, much more physical and realistic because the dream reality stuff was less central to these movies then. My story was more of a possession scenario with Freddy getting inside the mother's womb, controlling the fetus. But New Line passed on it because [executive] Sara Risher was pregnant at the time, and I understand the idea upset her. So they went with David Chaskin's concept instead."

Though both films ended up using the spirit possession concept, the pregnancy idea would eventually be used in the sequel A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, which Bohem would write the script for.

Robert Shaye offered Wes Craven the chance to direct again, but he turned down the offer since he had many problems with the script, such as the "possessed parakeet" that seemed very ridiculous to him, and of Freddy merging with the main character and manifesting in real life at the pool party to kill scores of teenagers of which many are bigger than him, which Craven thought would diminish Freddy's scare factor as Robert Englund is not very tall in stature.

Jack Sholder, who had previously written and directed Alone in the Dark for New Line was offered to direct. In a 2020 interview he explained that he had "no interest in making horror films" and that his initial feeling was to turn Robert Shaye down. After realizing that A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge could put him on the map as a director, he said yes.

The intro scene with Jesse's nightmare of Freddy driving the bus was carried over from the previous film; Craven was vehemently against Freddy appearing in person as the driver of the car in the epilogue scene, as he felt the storyline for Nancy, Tina, Rod and Glen should be self-contained in the first film. The compromise between him and Shaye was therefore to use the idea of Freddy driving the vehicle for the sequel, but not for any characters from Craven's film. The character of Lisa Webber was named Lisa Poletti in the script. On Wes Craven's suggestions, Chaskin put more emphasis on Lisa in the film than he originally intended; he explains that Craven "suggested that we shift the focus from Jesse the male lead. In the script the focus was on Jesse for 90% of the film, then suddenly it shifted to Lisa, his girlfriend. I pretty much added some focus on Lisa, and now it's like 50-50."

Casting
New Line Cinema originally thought to save money by simply using an unnamed extra in a rubber mask to play Freddy - as had been the case for masked, mute, impersonal killers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers - but reconsidered when they realized that the man had the gait and posture of "a dimestore monster" or "Frankenstein's monster" as opposed to Robert Englund's classically trained physical acting. The extra as Freddy still remained in one scene left in the film, during coach Schneider's death scene in the shower, though obscured by excessive water steam. Realizing their mistake, the producers quickly brought back Englund for the rest of the film and series. Robert Shaye, head of New Line Cinema, wanted to play the role of Ron Grady's father but was denied from doing so by director Jack Sholder who gave him the non-speaking role of the bartender at the S&M bar that Jesse visits. Shaye would later recall in Never Sleep Again that his leather outfit was purchased from LA Store The Pleasure Chest.

Filming
Principal photography commenced in June 1985. Director Jack Sholder said in an interview he "had very little time to prepare" and that the movie contained "a lot of special effects, none of which I knew how to do". The film's special effects were headed by Kevin Yagher, who handled Freddy's design, and Mark Shostrom, who was responsible for the transformation effects wherein Freddy comes out of Jesse's body. David B. Miller, who created the makeup for the original film, was busy working on Cocoon and My Science Project. In a later interview, Yagher expressed disappointment and confusion regarding the ending of the film.

Box office
The film opened on 522 screens in the New York, Washington D.C., Detroit and Texas areas. Varying figures have been reported for its opening weekend. Daily Variety reported it opening with $3,865,475 placing it second for the weekend behind Death Wish 3. An advert in the following day's Weekly Variety claimed it had grossed $3,220,348 placing it third behind To Live and Die in L.A. and contemporary websites such as Box Office Mojo report it grossing exactly $1 million less than the initial Daily Variety figure, with only $2.9 million, coming in fourth place. Whichever figure is used, the per screen total was higher than the other films in the top 10. The following weekend, it grossed $1,819,203 for a 10-day total of $5,569,334 (which New Line also reported in an advertisement), which indicates that the initial figure reported by Daily Variety was overstated. In the US, the film eventually made $30 million on a budget of $3 million.

Critical response
Critical reaction of the film was mixed upon release, with some criticism in comparison to its predecessor. Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised the film, saying that it has "clever special effects, a good leading performance and a villain so chatty he practically makes this a human-interest story". The review also gave the lead performances positive reviews, noting, "Mr. Patton and Miss Myers make likable teen-age heroes, and Mr. Englund actually turns Freddy into a welcome presence. Clu Gulager and Hope Lange have some good moments as Jesse's parents, and Marshall Bell scowls ferociously as the coach who calls his charges dirtballs and who is eventually attacked by a demonic towel." Variety gave the film a positive review saying, "Episodic treatment is punched up by an imaginative series of special effects. The standout is a grisly chest-burster setpiece." In a negative review, People called the film a "tedious, humorless mess". On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 43% based on 30 reviews. The site's consensus is: "An intriguing subtext of repressed sexuality gives Freddy's Revenge some texture, but the Nightmare loses its edge in a sequel that lacks convincing performances or memorable scares." On Metacritic the film has a score of 43% based on reviews from 6 critics.