Freddy is back on my review list again. This time the second outing of the Elm Street demon of the night. Released in 1985 a year after the original movie and there may be an element of rushing this one out to coin in on the success of the first movie. It was produced on a slim $3m and then went on to gross $30m at the box office which has to be seen as a major success. It also set up a whole host of sequels, that lets just say had mixed reviews. This one equally had different reviews seeing as I’ve given this movie the highest of the usual three. When I say high I mean higher by a long way as IMDb gave it 5.5 out of 10 which is even better than Rotten Tomatoes who really didn’t like it with a small 43%. I will get to the plot after mentioning that this movie starred Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange and of course Robert Englund. Surprisingly very little input from Wes Craven, which may explain the low scores. Onto the plot.
After being killed off in the last movie Freddy needs a way back into this world and he has his victim in Jesse a kid of the family that moved into Nancy’s old house and room. I say kid he is a teenager and he is having dreams about being stalked on the school bus. Which are pretty intense and he is waking in sweats. They feel so real to him. He meets a girl called Lisa and is invited to a pool party. Meanwhile Freddy is telling Jesse to kill for him in his dreams. In an attempt to escape he wanders to the streets. In one of his dreams he is caught by the school coach ordering a drink in a gay bar and is punished by being made to run laps. In the showers afterwards Jesse disappears in the steam and the coach is attacked by Freddy. Jesse comes around and finds Freddy’s glove in his hand and runs out into the street and is picked up by the police for being naked. At the pool party after speaking to Lisa she works out that Freddy is feeding off his fear and he needs to control himself if he is going to stop Freddy from breaking into this world and killing a lot more people.
I think I’ve given away way too much of the story there as I will mention that the whole pool party scenes scared the whatsits out of my younger self. I think being scared of Freddy in my younger days is a big reason why these movies are so high in my list. They do not get the outings that they once did and sit ready for action the next time I feel like a reminisce. They were for their time scary as hell, these movies had many people and my family included running for cover they were intense scary clever and smart. Although this one was probably not one of the greatest in the series. This was no where near as bad as the 5th Dream Child film which was pretty poor. This one did not stand up to the first movie in terms of quality, horror, story or anything you would want to grade a scary movie on. This was clearly second best to the original. Its not the worst movie out there and I think the other scores are a bit harsh but I can see where they are coming from.
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