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BY KIT POWER Every month, I will write about a film, album, book or event that I consider horror, and that had a warping effect on my young mind. You will discover my definition of what constitutes horror is both eclectic and elastic. Don’t write in. Also, of necessity, much of this will be bullshit – as in, my best recollection of things that happened anywhere from 15 – 40 years ago. Sometimes I will revisit the source material contemporaneously, further compounding the potential bullshit factor. Finally, intimate familiarity with the text is assumed – to put it bluntly, here be gigantic and comprehensive spoilers. Though in the vast majority of cases, I’d recommend doing yourself a favour and checking out the original material first anyway. This is not history. This is not journalism. This is not a review. This is my life in horror. He’s Inside Me, And He Wants To Take Me Again! Then As I noted in my last column, historically this was my least favourite of the franchise. My memory of why is that it basically didn’t get what Elm Street movies were really all about. The core idea is a guy who visits you in your dreams, kills you there, and then you wake up dead. So why have a plot that revolves around that same guy trying to come into the real world? Like, why would he even want to do that? That said, I do remember that I watched this film a lot, and there were elements of it I really enjoyed. I have vivid, if disjointed memories of a school bus suspended over a firey pit, shower room heads extending from the wall, jetting out scalding water… and a clear image of Freddy emerging from Jessie’s stomach, slicing open the kids skin and sloughing it off to stand tall and glowering, finger blades ready to rock. I also have a sense that the real hero of the piece is not Jessie, but his girlfriend - and I don’t know what it says about the film, or my memory, that I can remember nothing about her; not her name, not what she looks like, not what she does. I’m pretty sure there’s a sadistic gym coach, and his fate is connected in some way to the shower scene…. And that’s it. That’s all I got. I suspect it’s a bad sign that the rest of the movie has slid so effortlessly off the surface of my mind with nothing sticking… but I can’t also deny it’s made me keenly anticipate the re-watch, because there’s certainly ample space to be surprised. So, let’s see how it goes… Now Well, holy shit - what a delight that turned out to be. I mean, I can see why it’s not universally beloved. There’d be quite a good argument for saying it basically falls outside of the cannon of the rest of the series, at least as I remember it, what with the drastic change to Freddy’s MO outlined above, which the series going forward completely ignores. Relatedly, the metaphysics are a bit muddled - not completely broken, to be fair, but certainly a little inconsistent and under-explained. Why, for example, is there this constant manifestation of heat as a byproduct of Jesse’s possession - especially when some of the most dramatic of these occurrences (the flaming toaster, and my favorite, the exploding attack budgie) happen without any actual Freddy activity accompanying it, and indeed no visible involvement from Jesse at all? I mean, I guess they sort-of indicate there’s something wrong with the house, and that Freddy has poltergeist powers that don’t require Jesse to be asleep… but that’s sort-of contradicted later when the coach is murdered when Jesse is clearly fully awake (and not in the house), in a storm of inanimate object activity which we will return too, because, erm, yeah, there’s some stuff to talk about with that scene. This also muddles the return to the ‘don’t fall asleep’ motif from the first movie, with Jesse chugging caffeine pills because it’s when he sleeps that Freddie gains control over him… Except he wasn’t sleeping during the coach murder scene. And then, later on, when he asks his mate to watch him while he sleeps… I mean, why, given the above? There’s also the problem that the cops in this town are clearly incompetent on a quite epic scale. I mean, at the point at which you find a naked teenager wondering around ‘near the freeway’, clearly disorientated, return him to the family home with no questions asked, and then do not return to question him after his gym teacher turns up murdered that same night... this really isn’t trying to have even the most tenuous of connections to the real world - a shame, since a closing-in police investigation could really have ratcheted up the stakes for that third act. So, flaws? Sure. Mind you, Part 1 wasn’t without its issues either, and for my money those flaws - especially the acting - are significantly less bad in the sequel. Freddy may not yet have become the full wisecracking, grotesquely imaginative killer he’ll become in Part 3, but that character is starting to emerge here, with his ‘you’ve got the looks, I’ve got the brains’ moment a startling example of that shock gross out ability. Similarly, Jesse’s family are a goddamn delight, jettisoning the ‘sins of the parents’ issues from part 1 and instead having what appear to be a late 50’s (the decade, though in age too) nuclear family - complete with kid sister who really isn’t a character at all, and unfortunate budgies. And they’re a joy to watch - especially the father, whose line in keeping-up-appearances aging salesman (with a Nixonian eye for a bargain, hence buying the house no-one else would because, well, the last movie happened there) generated actual laughs out loud on more than one occasion. I need to talk about the unfortunate budgie sequence, actually, because it’s hilarious. The setup is fun - the covered cage, vibrating - but the execution? Man, When Budgies Attack! The dive bombing camera work, the ducking, cowering family, occastional quick shots of the bird in flight - it’s so gleefully, energetically absurd and wonderful and I loved it. And then the damn thing explodes, and I mean, what do you want, people? Exploding budgies! Are you not entertained? And then dad tries to blame Jesse (in the process uttering the immortal line “Animals just don’t explode into flames for no reason!”, which, come on, people), and it becomes even hilariouser. Because the dad’s performance is so good here. You can see he doesn’t really believe Jesse put firecrackers in the budgie, but he’s trying to intimidate his kid into saying he did because the alternative makes no sense, and the way Jesse responds is perfect, and the way his mother ‘now, dear’s the dad is a goddamn work of art, and seriously, this entire movie justifies its existence just on the basis of this wonderful, wonderful sequence. But there’s still so much to talk about, and I gress we need to talk about the Big Gay Subtext, and Jesse’s relationship with Lisa. I’ll start with the relationship, I think, because it’s a really stark example of something that’s on-paper kind of awful and on screen totally charming. Lisa loves Jesse. Like, no greater love hath anyone for fucking anything than Lisa for Jesse. I would suggest making it your life goal to have someone look at you the way Lisa looks at Jesse, but I don’t want you to die alone and lonely, and you will if you wait around for this, because Lisa’s love for Jesse is a once in a generation phenomenon. Consider this; Jesse is meant to be meeting her for a date, but is unable to go as his father has decided that given they moved in several weeks ago (long enough ago for Jesse to meet Lisa, and Lisa to decide this guy is The Only One Ever) he should actually finish unpacking his room. Jesse proceeds to do so in the most 80’s goofball teenager way imaginable - by putting on a cassette tape, literally upending the boxes into drawers and cupboards, before getting distracted by his sunglasses collection and miming along with the song. And then Lisa turns up. And instead of yelling at him for standing her up, or at the very least having some words about his tunes/glasses combo… she joins in helping him unpack. No purer love than this, people. More seriously, she exhibits a stand-by-your-man mentality that would make Tammy Wynette blush and mutter something about taking it too far, as it increasingly becomes clear that Jesse is, at best, someone suffering severe multiple personality disorder featuring a homicidally violent alter ego, and at worse… well, honestly, if that’s the best case scenario, who cares what’s worse? And yet when he turns up to her party, sweating and terrified, all but confessing to having murdered a man, her response is take him into the nearest empty room and try and sex his blues away, and I know how that looks on paper, but Kim Myers as Lisa just sells the shit out of it. She manages to make this patently absurd level of devotion feel real and righteous, and I still don’t know how I feel about that but it’s something to see. And then there’s the gay subtext. Which, to be clear, the movie’s star and writer have both admitted to, though the history of this is convoluted and contested to a degree. There’s a superb long piece about it here, and I understand a documentary is forthcoming at some point. I’m not going to be able to top these or other sources, but I will note that it’s a) blindingly obvious and b) something I was totally blind to as a kid. Well, and also c) kinda muddled, I think. Like, for starters, if the notion is that Freddie’s possession of Jesse represents Jesse’s own repressed homosexiality… is that not a kind of negative view of homosexuality? When Freddie takes over Jesse, he murders people, let’s not forget. And Freddie himself is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, a child murderer himself. Equating male sexuality with child abuse has a long and disgusting history amongst bigots and homophobes, so it feels like an odd choice for the metaphor here, to put it mildly. And of course if it’s the case that Freddie represents homosexual urges in Jesse, what on earth are we to make of the fact that it is the hetrosexual love of his girlfriend that ultimately delivers him from that possession? And then there’s the actually-gay gym teacher, who is also a sadist, and dies after first being stripped down to literally his bare arse and flogged by wet towels wielded by an invisible force. That’s a thing that actually happens in this movie. To be crystal clear here, I am a dorky straight guy - I have no answers, only questions. And I’m honestly happy saying this was written by a gay man and stars a gay man, both of whom know a shitload more about being gay than I ever will. It’s perfectly fine that I don’t get it. I’m just saying. I don’t get it. But oh, man, I really do love it. A lot. I found Freddy’s Revenge to be a gleeful delight from start to finish, all more keenly felt for the unexpected nature of that joy. I don’t know what it says about me now vs. me then how much my opinion has changed, but I’m already sold on this project as having been a great idea, just so I could discover this maligned gem. Next up, The Dream Warriors. RankIng so far (2018):
KP 25/8/18  FILM REVIEW: JOHNNY GRUESOME (2018)
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