Mark Patton’s ‘Scream, Queen!,’ ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge’ & finding queerness

“I couldn’t stay where I was. I mean, apart from being an actor, the gay me… I would have been dead. Some redneck would have killed me on a backroad, and that would have been my life,” actor and activist Mark Patton remarks on leaving his hometown of Riverside, Missouri, for New York City. His pain, and more importantly his bravery, shines through the new documentary, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, a production co-directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, dissecting the homoeroticism of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge.

I suppressed the waterfall welling up behind my eyes. I didn’t want to miss a beat of Patton’s heartfelt and heart-wrenching story for my blubbering. So, I clenched my jaw, wiped away a stray tear, and firmly reset my gaze at the TV. I was enthralled by his candor, his daring to confront his own real-life demons, and his ability to ask pointed, unrelenting questions in the face of true terror. There’s nothing more horrifying than having to swallow that lump in the back of your throat as you stare into the eyes of someone who hates you, letting their disgust rip through your body ⏤ and feeling like you could die.

Scream, Queen! is exposing and confrontational, and Patton’s battle to be heard and seen runs far more universal than many might realize. Growing up a ’90s baby in a small town, tucked away in West Virginia, that was largely a Bible-beating red state, I knew I had to keep my mouth shut. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” they said. I’ve always known I was queer (here’s my full story), and seeing a character like Jesse Walsh, whose raw vulnerability was magnetizing, go up against one of the greatest slasher villains of all time showed me that I was worth something.

Patton dispatches an emotional, beautiful, and moving performance; even now, 35 years later, he remains as commanding and heroic as ever. Thanks to my parents, I had Freddy’s Dead recorded on a nondescript VHS tape, the granular tilt-a-whirl tracking part of its charm, and I played that thing as much as the 1984 original, starring Heather Langenkamp as the level-headed Nancy Thompson. Both protagonists were vital for me in those early days, as a young boy who didn’t and couldn’t understand the swelling queerness inside his chest. Nancy was the definitive final girl, and Jesse was an emblem of liberation: I was watching myself on the screen, navigating uncertain waters of religion, tradition, and an ever-changing modern landscape.

Freddy’s Revenge has always been the most terrifying series entry. Jesse’s agonizing journey is the tip of the iceberg; the way Freddy taunts him, as a real-life homophobe would do, using his very vulnerable state against him, sends chills down my spine even now. Jesse, and Patton’s ability to rip your heart out, embodied the full emotional scale I’ve undergone in my life, sliding between denial, shame, fear, depression, and numbness.

Upon watching Scream, Queen!, in which I was both moved to tears and blood-boiling rage, I understand the man behind the screen in a way I never expected. “My agents went to watch the movie, and they were like, ‘Yeah, you can carry a movie, but we’re going to have to make you a character actor, because you can’t play straight.’ The minute I heard that, I heard everybody that had ever called me faggot in my life at the top of my lungs. I was like, ‘I can’t do this,'” Patton comments later on. Those simple words cut to the core of the homophobia that sought to destroy him and continues to destroy those like him. It’s the masked bigotry hidden behind ancient texts, which have long been misconstrued and reapplied to uphold one’s hate for another human being, and I’ll never get over hearing the word “faggot” in any circumstance.

The documentary also contextualizes the very real paranoia, fear, and death in the early days of the AIDS crisis. When Freddy’s Revenge opened November 1, 1985, famed actor Rock Hudson had died from the disease a month prior, fueling delusions, misconceptions, and hatred for queer people. I mean, gay men still can’t donate blood unless they have been abstinent for 12 months (FDA recently loosened those restrictions to three months due to the COVID-19 pandemic), but still. We are still combatting rampant homophobia.

Throughout the documentary’s 99-minute runtime, containing interviews with writer David Chaskin, director Jack Sholder, and much of the cast, including co-star Kim Myers (as Lisa) and Robert Englund, the filmmakers address many plot points, themes, and nail-biting sequences in Freddy’s Revenge which are unapologetically embroidered with homosexuality. Englund goes on record in describing the iconic “you’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain” scene, in which Freddy yanks Jesse closer by the shirt and caresses his cheek, tip-toeing over a very clear line. “I’m playing with a lot of symbolism there,” he says. “But mostly, for me, it was disfigured Freddy playing with Mark’s beauty, which is what? Beauty & the Beast.”

Lines are crossed like lightning-struck zig-zag patterns all over the place. From the queer S&M bar downtown to the legendary dance sequence, as Jesse is cleaning up his room to Wish & Fonda Rae’s 1984 hit “Touch Me,” to Coach Schneider’s S&M shower death, Freddy’s Revenge is an allegory for queerness. In the third act, Lisa, god love her, begs Jesse to fight against Freddy ⏤ to suppress the midnight demon from popping out of his body again. It’s all right there on the surface, even though writer David Chaskin denied it for years ⏤ and director Jack Sholder remains totally oblivious or ignorant or whatever, even gaslighting Patton at one point in the documentary. It’s infuriating.

In a 2007 interview with Bloody Good Horror, here is what Chaskin had to say about the film’s surface-level homoeroticism:

“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.”

Oh, yes, being gay is every straight man’s worst nightmare.

He goes on:

“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.”

13 years later, Chaskin appears to have done some growing, or at least recognizes the hurt the film caused. Look, it’s not my place to forgive or not forgive Chaskin. In Scream, Queen!, Patton and Chaskin have a much-needed heart-to-heart, and Chaskin finally apologizes. It’s clear by the final few minutes that Patton has been able to let go of the hurt, the resentment, and the anger and make a good life for himself. That is what truly matters here.

Patton is an icon, and I am forever grateful. His turn as Jesse Walsh sent me on a path of personal reckoning, and while I wouldn’t come out, first as a gay man, until college, Freddy’s Revenge was always on my mind. Witnessing Patton’s entire story, from a middle-class upbringing to chasing his dreams in New York City to the unfortunate spiraling out, packs an all-too-real punch. Scream, Queen! ⏤ narrated by Cecil Baldwin ⏤ is necessary viewing for any diehard horror fan. And I just hope it opens more eyes to the truth of what it means to be LGBTQ+ in this country.

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