The truth of where the article was published is largely insignificant, but the confusion speaks to a recurring theme of discordance in the history of Freddy’s Revenge, with Patton on one side, and Sholder and Chaskin on the other.
“My movie was being outed and I didn’t know how I felt about that.” “I feigned ignorance,” he wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News. But as he struggles to move forward, he is left trying to balance his appreciation of the film’s belated fandom with the pain he still feels over what he considers a three-decades-old betrayal. So, too, has Patton’s relationship with the film and its fanbase changed. With the destigmatization of queer representation over the last 30 years, perception of Freddy’s Revenge has shifted: The heavily coded queerness that was once a mark against it has become a charmingly dated relic of another time, and a selling point for cult connoisseurs.
At the same time, even as the AIDS crisis decimated the gay community, Patton was forced to stay in the closet, restricted by a business he eventually chose to leave behind. As the actor tells it, he became pigeonholed as gay long before being an out leading man was a possibility. And even though Patton has embraced his “scream queen” status - he had just come from signing autographs and panel appearances at San Diego Comic-Con this July afternoon - he remains driven by a need to set the record straight about the film that has haunted him for the past 30 years.įor Patton, whose only major film role before he played Jesse was as a gay teenager later revealed to be a trans woman (played by Karen Black) in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the persistent criticism of Freddy’s Revenge was its own kind of nightmare: His sexual identity was excoriated for ruining the film - and with it, his career. His sexual ambiguity made him the perfect choice for Jesse, but it gave the homophobic detractors of Freddy’s Revenge something to latch on to. With the screenwriter and director unwilling to shoulder any of the responsibility, fans began to fixate on Patton’s performance as Jesse, who is more traditionally feminine than the standard slasher film bro. “Did you actually go to a freshman English course in high school? This is not subtext.” “I love when uses the word ‘subtext,’” Patton noted.
Watching Freddy’s Revenge now, it’s hard to comprehend that there was ever a debate over the film’s subtext, which becomes just plain text in the more blatantly homoerotic scenes. Screenwriter David Chaskin spent years refusing to acknowledge any intentional subtext in his script - a position he has since reversed - and director Jack Sholder claimed not to have noticed the movie’s gayness during filming. To which Grady replies, “And you want to sleep with me?” And the death scene for Coach Schneider (Marshall Bell) - whom Jesse runs into at a leather bar in the middle of the night - has the sadistic gym teacher strung up naked in the showers, his bare ass whipped by a towel with a mind of its own before he’s slashed to death by Krueger.Īlthough the film was a relative financial success and propelled the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise along, it was derided by critics and genre fans. “Something is trying to get inside my body,” Jesse laments.
(“He’s inside me and he wants to take me again!” Jesse cries.) Jesse flees from a makeout session with his heterosexual romantic partner Lisa (Kim Myers) and ends up in the bedroom of his hunky friend Grady (Robert Rusler) - directly on top of him. Jesse’s struggle over his sexual identity is directly aligned with Freddy’s attempt to take over his body. However much Englund held back, the damage was done: That scene helps establish the indelible impression of Freddy’s Revenge as the gayest slasher film ever made. If it would have gone in and out, it would have been really not a good thing.” Don’t do it.’ And so, I turned to Robert and said, ‘I really don’t feel comfortable with that,’ and he goes, ‘OK.’ So he just did around the lips instead of going in and out. “Danny grabbed me and he said, ‘Absolutely not.
It was his makeup artist, Danny Marc, who took it upon himself to help the young actor protect his image. “ asked if he could put the blade inside my mouth,” Patton recalled to BuzzFeed News from a quiet Mexican restaurant near the highway in San Diego. That first encounter between Jesse and Freddy is loaded with sexual tension - and according to Patton, what ended up onscreen is actually a toned-down version of what the scene almost was.