With its queer/coming out ‘subtext as text’, homoerotic thrill-scenes, rubbery transformation effects, ‘Risky Business’ dirty dancing, and exploding budgerigars, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE (1985) has been dubbed “the gayest slasher of all time” and its hero, Mark Patton (Jesse) branded the “first male scream queen”.
Growing up an isolated gay teen in Riverside, Missouri, Mark Patton left his family home town for New York in the late 1970s to pursue a career in acting, but he had no real idea how. Patton gave himself 5 years to make it and just before his deadline expired, he appeared on Broadway with Cher, Kathy Bates, Karen Black, and Sandy Dennis in a play directed by Robert Altman: COME BACK TO THE 5 AND DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN (1982).
Patton also appeared in Altman’s film adaptation (also 1982), reprising his role as pre-transition trans teen Joe who reappears later in the story as Joanne, played by Karen Black. Gay but not out — although he’d made “no secret” of his sexuality when living in NYC prior to his acting career — this was Patton’s first brush with the dark side of show biz: he was told not to do an interview with The Advocate despite playing a trans+ role, and his wardrobe was edited by his agents to help him dress ‘straight’ for future auditions.
ELM STREET 2 was to be Mark Patton’s major break into the film industry but it didn’t quite work out that way…
He had already relocated to Los Angeles, working in TV and commercials, and was in a longterm relationship with Timothy Patrick Murphy, a highly successful TV actor and popular / closeted heartthrob. The two lived together in a house in Beverly Hills, next door to Madonna, with their pet dogs. As Patton was getting cast in ELM STREET 2, gay and bisexual men men across America and Europe were getting sick from a mysterious illness, including Murphy. Murphy would die of AIDS on 6 December 1988, in Sherman Oaks, California, aged 29. Before his death, he was outed by a tabloid undercover sting that caught out Patton into revealing his illness. They then snuck into his hospital room to take pictures.
The world become aggressively toxic to gay and bisexual men. AIDS — before HIV was widely diagnosed and understood — was referred to as a ”gay plague”, and gay men widely demonised as monsters spreading disease. With all of the very obviously gay elements in ELM STREET 2, Patton was unwittingly thrust into the homophobic and AIDS-phobic spotlight of 1980s Hollywood, unfairly outed as a gay actor amidst the worst of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and exposed to the wrath of fans not ready for a queered sequel to Wes Craven’s original. The negative feedback was vile and vitriolic.
In response, screenwriter David Chaskin threw oil on the fire by initially denying making any of the gay elements of the screenplay intentional and blaming the fallout on casting a young gay man in the role. Both Chaskin’s denial and Patton’s accusation that he’d known what he was doing have been rebutted by co-stars Robert Englund and Robert Rusler who claimed the gay themes were evident from day one (bewilderingly, director Jack Sholder said he didn’t have a clue…). As Patton would assert in his own words: “David would just blame me any time it came up alluding to something along the lines of, ‘Well, he’s a big old fag and he chose to play the part in a big old fag way’” (Patton in HIV Plus magazine). The ELM STREET 2 fallout and Hollywood’s homophobic response to the HIV/AIDS crisis ruined Patton’s career and changed his life. He relocated to Mexico, almost died of AIDS himself, married his longterm husband Hector Morales Mondragon, and completely disappeared from public life.
But ELM STREET 2 was more “dangerous” than an “unowned” gay movie.
Patton’s film star fame was revived when a documentary film NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY (2010) sought him out for their forensic account of the franchise (the doc is 4 hours long). After hiring a private investigator, the producers finally located Patton in Mexico. He discovered that attitudes had changed considerably towards Jesse’s stay on ELM STREET, and he started engaging in the eternal cycle of conventions that keeps ‘one-and-done’ movie stars and their fans’ love alive. Later, he would co-produce his own doc, SCREAM, QUEEN! MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2019) that ends with him confronting Chaskin. Chaskin apologises on camera for blaming Patton when he had indeed written a “gay movie”, but only after having made his own prior confession in an interview about the true meanings of ELM STREET 2.
Chaskin had never wanted to make a slasher sequel to Wes Craven’s “piece of shit” (Stanley Dudelson, head of distribution at New Line Cinema) smash hit A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984). Instead, he wrote a “possession” story: “I especially liked the concept of a nice person… being invaded”. In Chaskin’s screenplay, a young boy’s body is taken over by a dead child killer. But rather than merely writing a “gay movie” as Patton had been pursuing him to admit, Chaskin had intentionally set out to make a film that would provoke homophobia. Which makes him even more culpable and ELM STREET 2 even more problematic. We aren’t meant to be subtly aroused by the pseudo seduction scene between Freddy and Jesse — that falls just short of Jesse fellating Freddy’s blades — we are meant to be revolted and enraged by it. In Chaskin’s own words:
“There was certainly some intentional subtext but it was intended to play homophobic rather than homoerotic. I thought about the demographics for these types of films (young, heterosexual males) and tried to imagine what kinds of things would truly frighten them, to the core. And scary dreams that make them, even momentarily, question their own sexuality seemed like a slam dunk to me…” .
David Chaskin interviewed on Bloody Good Horror
Chaskin digs deeper in a statement he has subsequently referred to as “a joke”:
“If you really wanted to have fun, one might argue that the entire movie is a metaphor — Jesse is, in the end, finally able to control the monster inside him (his latent homosexuality) with the love of a good woman. Maybe they should show this film at one of those evangelical deprogramming sessions where they try to “fix” gay people into regular Americans.”
But he again blames the backlash on Mark Patton:
“That said, there were certain choices that were made (e.g., casting) that, I think, pushed the subtext to a higher level and stripped away whatever subtlety there may have been.”
In SCREAM, QUEEN! director Jack Sholder tries to gaslight Patton’s anxiety, saying “it’s not all about you”. But of course, it was. As young queer/trans people, we’re taught to hate the thing that’s hidden inside of us, that we’re a deviant threat to society, and a danger to ourselves. This is why we have paired ELM STREET 2 on our 2025 Halloween schedule with an earlier screening of William Friedkin’s leather bar slasher, CRUISING (1980). They are both films that seem to suggest homosexuality can be transmitted, and the act of becoming homosexual results in you becoming a threat to yourself and others. The two films make startling screen companions from other perspectives: ELM STREET 2 has subsequently been outed as a “gay movie” but CRUISING’s setting was always clear and was originally protested by queer activists during filming and on release for ‘demonising’ leather sub culture and queers generally. While ELM STREET 2 offers a thoroughly pantomimic vision of homosexuality, CRUISING cast real leather guys as extras, with Friedkin scoping leather joints in just a jockstrap to fit in. The jockstraps in ELM STREET 2 suggest some sort of dress code for problematic queer representation…
Despite both films equating repressed homosexual desires with queer monstrosity, it is violent acts of oppression and repression that are truly monstrous. This is why we are staging ELM STREET 2 with a blood-soaked exorcism which will be performed by Co Kendrah — the most shamanistic of drag creatures — before the film. We want to expel the homophobic “possession” that lingers in ELM STREET 2 and to celebrate the fierce queer beauty that lives inside each and every one of us that struggles to find expression and acceptance. In doing so, we hope to revive a triumphant queer/horror classic that’s thoroughly deserving of its place at the dark heart of our community (but only after we’ve made it our own).
We can’t wait to see you there. THx
BOOKING NOW: Queer Horror Nights presents A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE at Rio Cinema, Dalston on Friday 31 October at 11:30pm / Pre-drinks from 10:30pm. Bring your freak…
All unattributed quotes from SCREAM, QUEEN! MY NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2019).
