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A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, often cited as the “gayest horror film ever made,” is getting an official 4K restoration just in time for its big 40th anniversary.
The new remaster of the queer-laced cult classic is being supervised by director Jack Sholder, who confirmed the news on his official Facebook account on April 1. “I just spent last week on the Warners lot working on the restoration of Nightmare on Elm Street 2,” the filmmaker said in the post. “The remastered 4K picture off the original 35mm negative looks fantastic, and I was able to make adjustments and corrections only possible thanks to the incredible digital tools now available.”
The director also raved about the new Dolby Atmos sound mix, saying it “blew me out of my seat,” and hinted at some new sound effects work that will “really lift the film into another dimension.”
He added: “The whole experience was like someone restoring an old Renaissance painting and finally seeing the amazing blue that the painter had used, or the cat now seen hiding behind the table, although in this case, those colors and sounds had never fully been seen before but were implicit in the material and now are explicit.”
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Sholder also shared a brand-new photo with Freddy Krueger himself, the great Robert Englund, who was also on hand to record some new interviews for the upcoming release.
“Warners also shot some interviews for the new release and I got to see my old buddy Robert Englund whose performance now jumps off the screen,” he shared. “Keep an eye out for announcements of the release from WB. The new version really needs to be experienced by new fans and re-experienced by old ones.”
With the horror legend recording new interviews for the cult classic film, it’s probably safe to assume that he will, once again, talk about the sequel’s heavily apparent queerness — something that’s been analyzed, talked about, and well-documented for decades. In fact, during an October 2024 interview with ReMIND Magazine, Englund even suggested that A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 would be a good jumping point should Warner Bros. ever choose to reboot the horror franchise.
“Freddy’s Revenge is a great fodder for a stand-alone remake,” he told the outlet. “We’re in a much more modern culture now that accepts bisexuality and sexual proclivities, and I think it would be really fun to show Freddy playing with the boys in that and their friendship, and also his confidant, the role played by Kim Myers, and how Freddy manipulates that, and that would be fun, and you could really go further with that.”
Released on November 1, 1985, the plot of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge centered on Jesse Walsh (played by a then-closeted Mark Patton), a high school boy who lives in the Elm Street house from the original movie that is now haunted by the charred slasher Freddy Krueger. This time, the razor-clawed dreamstalker devises a plan to possess the teen boy and use him as a vessel to kill for him in the real world.
From Jesse’s flamboyant dancing, to the strange sexual tension between him and Freddy, the film is loaded with homosexual subtext, not to mention, a lot of bare male butt scenes. There’s even a moment in the film where Jesse panics during a hot-and-heavy makeout session with his girlfriend (Myers). Seemingly unable to perform, he flees to the safety of the bed belonging to his hunky best friend Ron (Robert Rusler). And let’s not forget the scene where Jesse wakes up from a nightmare only to inexplicably wander to a local leather gay bar only to run into his sadistic gym teacher, who Freddy gets him to murder. It’s no wonder the film has been recognized by many as some sort of homo-repressive allegory.
If you’re curious about the complex queer subtext of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Patton thoroughly explores the blatant homoeroticism in the film, his tumultuous relationship with the film’s screenwriter, and how it all impacted his career in his 2019 documentary, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street.
As for the release date of this new 4K edition of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, there’s no official street date, but we can assume it’ll likely arrive close to Halloween season ahead of the film’s November 1 anniversary date.
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