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With Freddy's Revenge, we get a gym coach murdered in the showers, a best friend impaled on a door, Freddy crashing a backyard barbeque and heating up the swimming pool and, uh, well there's not much more than that, folks. The special effects are consistently good throughout and though the body count is negligible, there are any number of gory moments (such as Freddy slicing open his brain to cap off a one-liner) to make up for it. These tend to be overshadowed and forgotten however in the shadow of . . .

Point D: The camp. And I ain't talking about summer, sleepaway, or band. He may have been a loathsome and evil child killer on the other side of the grave, but here Freddy starts tossing off the bon mots that make him that much more agreeable and charming, even if they are all puns of the sort that would have gotten a veteran of the Catskills circuit nothing but groans. As mentioned at the beginning, Englund brings more to the part over the run of the series than some of the installments deserved. That Freddy remained even marginally scary as he became more of a jokester is thanks to Englund's performance.

The campy jokiness is even more noticeable in the context of a film where, to wit, a sadistic gym coach who frequents S&M bars gets slashed to death while tied up with jump ropes in the shower and the shower heads orgasmically erupt in geysers of hot red water; where the hunky best friend/antagonist of the male lead (Jesse) doesn't know how to react when told by Jesse that there's "something inside of me" trying to get out and is later attacked by Jesse; where this concern of Jesse's is explicitly visualized by the sublime coitus interruptus of Freddy's tongue coming out of Jesse's mouth as Jesse attempts to get beyond second base with sweet/hot/deeply concerned girlfriend Lisa; and that the finale features the all mighty power of true (straight?) love allowing Jesse to be reborn out of the fiery ashes of Krueger's clutches.

Even as a ten-year-old watching this for the first time with my male best friend, oblivious to camp (remember how Libby Gelman-Waxner flew over my head?), I knew that there was something unusual about the plot of Freddy's Revenge. Googling the film and checking out film fan's reactions to this mirrors my own confusion. Is it very weird unintentional anti-gay propaganda? How real is anything that happens in the film? (i.e. the part where Jesse storms out of the house and later winds up at the gay club after walking in the rain is dramatically schizoid). What I still find most puzzling is the ending of the film: the "return" of Freddy via a gloved hand bursting through the chest of one of Jesse and Lisa's friends (a minor, minor character) on the school bus. It made no sense at the time and it still seems like a gyp.

A glance at a copy of what I take to be Chaskin's original script provides an alternate compelling ending. Instead of the friend on the bus, it is just Jesse and Lisa. They go to kiss and as they do...Freddy's tongue comes out of her mouth and attacks him. Nice ironic reversal, good use of "The Return of the Repressed" motif and it offers a not-so-subtle- dig at the tragic implications of being unable to accept yourself as you are. Or is that all too much to pull out of a little tongue action?

Next week: Part One of a two-part holiday year-end spectacular. My Christmas present to you: my take on one of the most loathed films at BOP. The catch: I like it.

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