How A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2 Director Feels About The Divisive Movie Today [Exclusive]

Just about every film franchise has at least one poorly received installment, but there's nothing quite as everlastingly divisive as the first sequel in a series, for it demarcates the moment when a large number of fans felt disappointed or worse. For the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise, that installment is the very first sequel, 1985's "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge," which was always going to have an uphill battle in the best of cases following Wes Craven's 1984 original. Craven's film brought European-influenced dream logic and (literal) nightmarish imagery to the slasher movie, thereby kicking off its own trend in the form of the "rubber reality" movie as well as a slew of imitators. The film's box office success meant that a sequel was inevitable, yet the film had troubles from its conception: Craven didn't want to return, early ideas for the script were pitched and then abandoned, and at one point, studio New Line Cinema wasn't even sure they were going to bring Robert Englund back as Freddy Krueger.

Obviously, cooler heads prevailed on that point, but it's a good indication of how all over the place "Freddy's Revenge" was from jump street. During a recent exclusive interview with director Jack Sholder on the eve of the release of the full "Nightmare" franchise 4K Blu-Ray box set, the filmmaker confessed that New Line's motivation in making the sequel was that "they just wanted to get a script out that was called 'Nightmare on Elm Street 2' with a character called Freddy, not necessarily even played by Robert Englund." When Sholder's film, written by David Chaskin, was finally released, its reception was very mixed, and only diminished as the franchise went on to more success creatively, financially, and culturally. Even the early discussions of the film as a stealth queer movie didn't get it reappraised at first. Eventually, though, "Freddy's Revenge" found its audience, and it's thanks to these newly minted fans that Sholder has now fully embraced the divisive sequel.

It's important to remember that the 1980s saw sequels as a more piecemeal affair, and although numerous films began to leave room for a possible future movie, none of them were yet being made with a concrete idea for another installment. With "A Nightmare on Elm Street," New Line Cinema only sought to leave some room at the end of the film for a sequel, so the playing field was wide open for "Freddy's Revenge" on a creative level. As Sholder recalled, the pressure for the sequel came from himself more than anyone else:

"There was never any pressure for me to make a movie that's going to be a hit. There was a pressure for me, self-imposed by me, just to make a good movie. And the only thing they said was 'keep Freddy scary, keep him dark, make him dark ... both lighting-wise and metaphorically.' I didn't feel constrained at all. I felt that I could make a better movie than Wes did. That was my attitude. I mean, it wouldn't be good if I went and said, 'Well, it's not going to be as good as Wes' film, but I'll do it anyway.'"

"Freddy's Revenge" is ambitious in its pivoting away from the lore of Craven's film toward seeing what other abilities and concepts could be tackled by the character of Freddy Krueger. There's also no question that, although cinematographer Jacques Haitkin shot both this sequel and the original "Nightmare," the movies have a uniquely distinct visual language. Yet even then, sequels were generally understood to conform to the original movie's formula, and the one criticism of "Freddy's Revenge" that Sholder holds to this day is that his sequel's breaking of the "Elm Street" formula set it apart a little too much:

"If you look at it within the context of all of it, you say 'Well, this one doesn't quite fit because they broke the rule,' that Freddy comes out into the real world. Freddy doesn't do that. Because if Freddy did that, then we wouldn't have 'Nightmare on Elm Street' because [teens] wouldn't have to go to sleep to get killed by Freddy. So that idea is kind of a dead end."

As the film's queer subtext was noticed by audiences, Chaskin denied that the themes were intentional, blaming instead star Mark Patton, who was a closeted gay man at the time of filming. Thanks to "Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy" and Patton's 2019 documentary "Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street," the truth has been clarified, with Chaskin admitting the themes were deliberate on his part. As far as Sholder's knowledge of these themes, he remained largely unaware until reuniting with Patton at a convention celebrating the film's 30th anniversary a decade ago. It helped Sholder embrace the movie after years of essentially ignoring talk about it, as he explained:

"I really hadn't followed anybody's thinking, I really didn't care what anybody thought about the film. [...] And I remember doing one of my first interviews about the film with these two women who had a podcast, I think specializing in 'Elm Street,' and they got some good comments. And then a few people said 'Oh, it's not that good. It doesn't conform to the rest of the series.' And [these women] said 'If you look at it that way, you're not going to enjoy it. But if you look at it as its own film, then it's really good.' And they were the first people to say that. And then it seemed from there that people started to look at it that way."

As it happens, it was Sholder's supervision of the new 4K remaster of the film that allowed him to embrace "Freddy's Revenge" more fully:

"When I was out in LA supervising this 4K restoration, particularly with this new Dolby Atmos track, I said 'That's a really good movie.' It really is. I had done a really good job. Again, it's not as personal for me as Wes' movie [was for him], but I felt that I really did a good job with it."

Although Sholder believes that he "would probably say that 'The Hidden' was my best film," he's now come around to accepting his "Elm Street" legacy. "It'll be in my obit. The first line of my obit will say that I directed 'Nightmare on Elm Street 2,' but I thought I did a really good job."