Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street
Directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen
Featuring Mark Patton, Cecil Baldwin and Marshall Bell
Running time: 1 hour and 39 minutes
Jessie Forever
by Judson Cade Pedigo
Do you remember that time that Captain Kirk went looking for God in space and then he taught Spock how to sing “Row, row, row your boat”? Or when Michael Myers was replaced with Halloween masks that turned kids faces to bugs using the power of Stonhenge? How about when Jason Voorhees turned out to be Roy the paramedic? Every long running movie series has one, the entry that is...how shall we say...received less favorably than the others. For many Freddy Krueger fans the black sheep in the franchise has always been Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Times have changed, however, and these once reviled movies are now being rediscovered and celebrated. Halloween III is more popular than it’s ever been, Roy the Paramedic just got his own action figure, and Captain Kirk singing “row row row your boat”...well some things are better off forgotten.
To this day though, Nightmare 2 is still the most divisive chapter in the franchise. The difference with Freddy’s Revenge is that when people go after the movie, it’s not just an attack of the writing or directing. More often than not, it feels like an attack on the movie’s “sexuality” because it has gained the reputation for being the “gay” Nightmare movie and the brunt of the criticism over the years has been hurtled directly at lead actor Mark Patton. The brand new documentary Scream, Queen! My NIghtmare On Elm Street explores the unique relationship between Mark Patton and his role as Jessie Walsh and how the two will be forever linked thanks to the boogeyman Freddy Krueger in his most unique cinematic appearance.
I’ll give you full disclosure going into this review, I love Nightmare 2. So just by it existing, I was primed to like Scream, Queen! Listen movie pals, I don’t just like this movie, I love it. I love it as a Nightmare on Elm Street fan and I love it as a movie fan.The Nightmare fan in me absolutely loved seeing all the Freddy’s Revenge alumni again. It was like a high school reunion, except with my movie friends. There’s Kim Myers and Jack Sholder and Clu Gulager! As a filmgoer, it was refreshing to see the queerness of the movie explored without the usual wink and nod we’ve gotten in the past. Scream Queen is an unflinching and intimate look at Mark Patton and how he’s been haunted by the fallout of the second NOES film.
The plot of Freddy’s Revenge is basically an inversion of the original premise. Instead of teens entering Freddy’s domain through dreams, he is attempting the kill again in the real world by possessing the body of the newest kid on Elm Street. It’s more of a haunted house movie that just happens to involve Freddy Krueger and really has more in common with Amityville II: The Possession than anything else in the Nightmare series.
For many, the most egregious error and biggest obstacle to overcome was the casting of a male protagonist. In a genre known for its final girls, no one seemed to know what to do with final boy, Jessie Walsh. Then people began to pick up on the homoerotic tones of the movie. As I got older, it suddenly started to make sense. The copious amount of male nudity, the phallic imagery, the leather bar. I was just incredibly naive, I guess. I just thought that’s where adults went to get their drink on, the leather bar. The popular read is that the movie is actually about a young man struggling with his repressed homosexuality represented by Freddy. With lines like “He’s inside me and he’s going to take me again!” it makes this interpretation kind of hard to ignore. As the series progressed and Freddy went back in the closet, it only made NOES 2 stick out even more. But while most wrote the movie off, it began to gain a cult following of people who saw Jessie as a horror hero.
We are living in an age of boutique documentaries where everything from Troll 2 to The Return of the Living Dead get paid their proper respects. Due to the longevity and popularity of the Nightmare series, we’ve gotten Never Sleep Again, I Am Nancy, and now Scream, Queen! In preparation, I went back to revist the NOES 2 portion of Never Sleep Again to see how the movie was presented back in 2010 and it’s basically a bunch of straight white guys winking at the audience about how gay the movie is. At the end of the day, it’s not their story to tell, it’s Mark’s. This is why Scream, Queen! is needed. Mark’s story needs to be told and it needs to be told from a gay perspective. Not only that, it’s a very interesting story.
Mark was an up and coming actor with a lot of promise. When he was 18, he was being directed by Robert Altman and working with Cher. Then, shortly after making Freddy’s Revenge, he left Hollywood. We first meet Mark travelling the horror convention circuit, connecting with fans and trying to navigate his new place in the world as a cult celebrity. There is a certain sadness in his eyes and melancholy in his demeanor as he speaks. Mark Patton has been through a lot, and not all of it on the set of a movie. The film goes back and forth between following Mark on his journey of self (re)discovery and Mark’s early career using his journey to initiate discussions not just of Elm Street but homophobia in Hollywood, the exploration of queer themes in horror movies and the very real struggles of the AIDS epidemic in the 80’s. Directors Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen expertly guide us through Mark’s life, past, present, and future, while exploring all of these different narratives.
While Nightmare 2 has gained noteriouty over the years, it’s also been celebrated in gay cirlcles. We’ve got appearances by queer icon Peaches Christ and other members of the gay community talking about the impact of Nightmare 2 within those circles, recounting their relationship with the movie and how they saw themselves onscreen in Jessie. It’s all very well done and will be a documentary I see myself revisiting again and again.
Mark’s search for closure and resolution is something we can all relate to. Things get uncomfortable at times as Mark speaks very candidly about how much of the perceived failures of NOES 2 have been directed at him, notably during conversations with director Jack Sholder and writer David Chaskin. Chaskin, in particular, has notabley refuted the gay elements in the script for years, placing the blame on “certain casting choices”. As Sholder emparts to Mark that maybe it’s time to let it go, Mark’s answer is brutally honest and important, “Everybody’s having a great time with this. Meanwhile, I’m being called fag a hundred times a day...This is not all about me and it never has been all about me, because it really is about me and it’s about people like me.I talk to young people and say “Look, you’re standing on the shoulders of a lot of different people. Know your history. Don’t forget your history.” Ultimately the movie is about taking back the power from those that will do you harm and reclaiming it for yourself. Mark has taken this nightmare chapter from his life and turned it into a beautiful dream. It’s like a certain starship Captain once told me, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
Available to watch now on demand starting today, March 3.