Lost Article: A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

"You are all my children now." – Freddy Krueger

Well, it’s that time again, and what better way to ring in Halloween than with a Lost Article?  That’s right, folks, this is one that I wanted to get on the site last year, the only problem was… I didn’t have a copy of the film at hand, and had only seen it once, years before.  So, imagine my surprise and joy at finding not only this film, but the next four in the series, up to Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, on the five dollar shelf at my employer, Wal-Mart.  All I need now is Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and I’ll have the whole set.

My history with this one is somewhat distant, as I’ve only seen the whole thing twice now.  When it first came out on video, I remember a guy telling my mom about a scene where Freddy takes off his hat and exposes his brain (and says the second place quote, "You’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain").  Well, due to that, it was a little longer before I finally got to see it, but eventually, I did.  Over the years, I read about the film again (after buying the behind the scenes book about the series), and saw bits and pieces of it, but never got to see the whole thing again until tonight.  And now, I’m bringing it to you.

The film opens with a bus driving down a sunny neighborhood street (watch for an un-made up Robert Englund as the bus driver).  The bus drives along and drops some kids off, until nobody’s left aboard it except for our main character, Jessie, two girls and the driver.  The bus speeds past the next bus stop and the girl who would’ve gotten off the bus starts complaining, but the bus starts picking up more and more speed.  Soon, the bus has bumped over a curve and gone into the desert, and this time, Freddy’s clawed hand shifts the gears.  The bus stops and the ground starts shaking around it, eventually dropping off all around it except for directly underneath the chassis and the front wheels.  Freddy stands up from the driver’s seat and starts stalking towards the three extremely frightened passengers.  Just as Freddy’s about to slash into them… we cut to a dining room scene with Jessie’s parents and sister eating breakfast (with what has to be the best fictional cereal ever, Fu Man Chews).  As Jessie’s waking scream tears through the house, Jessie’s sister asks, "Why can’t he wake up like everybody else?"

Normally, I’d cover a little more, but there’s not much else to cover in the early stages of the film.  We’re treated to a couple more dream sequences with Jessie encountering Freddie again and that’s about it until the halfway point, where we get our first kill of the film.  As such, the film moves at a bit of a slower pace than some of the others… okay, all of the others.  While I have complaints on the pacing of the film, I definitely have no qualms with the acting.  We get pretty solid performances all around, even from the newcomers involved in the film.

First off, reprising his role as usual as Freddy Krueger is the man, himself, Robert Englund.  He does what he can with the time given to him in the film, but don’t worry, he appears alot more in the next one.  Mark Patton plays Jessie well, you can really feel his confusion and pain as Freddy possesses him throughout the movie.  He originally auditioned for the role of Glen in the first film but lost it to Johnny Depp.  Shortly after this film, he seemed to have retired from acting and gone into working with stage plays and musicals.  Kim Myers played Lisa, Jessie’s love interest of the film.  This was her first film, and she did a great job.  She also reminds me of a young Meryl Streep (which she apparently hears alot).  She was also in Hellraiser: Bloodlines.  Robert Rusler played Grady, Jessie’s friend and confidante.  He did a good job playing the somewhat insensitive jackass of the film.  He was also in Weird Science, Vamp, Sometimes They Come Back and Amityville: A New Generation, one of the myriad sequels of the possessed house film.  Clu Gulager plays Ken Walsh, Jessie’s father, in a bit of a humorous way.  An B-horror film legend, he played in The Return of the Living Dead, Feast and it’s sequel Feast II: Sloppy Seconds, Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter, and MST3K‘d films Master Ninja I and San Francisco International.

All in all, the film was good, but just not up to par to what I remembered.  Slow build-up to not as big of a finish as some of the others in the series leads me to give this a 3 out of 5.  However, the next film more than makes up for this film’s low score, so it works out.  And so, until next time (which shouldn’t be too far away, if you’re reading this right after I post it), this is Red Hawk signing out!