New Line/Kobal/ShutterstockOf the many films that make up the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is one of its most iconic (and notorious) entries. This notorious reputation is largely thanks to its unique-for-the-franchise and well-commented-on queer subtext. Apocryphal sources point to an early text calling it “the gayest film ever made” (typically remembered as The Village Voice or The Advocate, depending on who you ask), thanks to subtext from multiple sources, all pointing to a sequel that’s surprisingly, well, decidedly not straight.At face value, Freddy’s Revenge is the story of Jesse (Mark Patton), a teenage boy increasingly plagued by Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) after his family has moved into (he finds out) the same house that Nancy Thompson lived in from the first film. Freddy wants to possess Jesse’s body, and the sleepless and isolated Jesse can really only turn to Lisa (Kim Myers), his friend and arguable love interest. He has to figure out how to push Freddy out (with Lisa’s help), lest he lose himself forever.Superficially heterosexual love subplots aside, the film genuinely is laden with homoerotic subtext. One line sees Freddy tell Jesse, suggestively, “I need you, Jesse,” and “you’ve got the body, I’ve got the brain.” In another, Jesse screams of Freddy, “he’s inside me and he wants to take me again!” Jesse also has a budding but arguably homoerotic friendship with Grady (Robert Rusler), who pulls Jesse’s pants down on a field before wrestling with him on the ground (pants still down). That draws the attention of Coach Schneider, whom Jesse later runs into in a gay club (Marshall Bell) that he’s compelled to go to. Schneider (still in leather) takes Jesse back to the school’s gym before Freddy uses sports equipment to suggestively tie the coach up, strip him naked, whip him with towels, and murder him.The jury is still somewhat out on how intentional these examples of subtext were. In a 2025 interview with The Wrap, director Jack Sholder noted that the film was about “teen sexual anxiety,” but that making explicitly gay cinema was “never our intention… it’s clearly in there and part of the story but that wasn’t our point.” Writer David Chaskin long denied intentionally adding gay subtext, blaming Mark Patton’s performance for adding that element (Patton is out as gay, but wasn’t at that time). That blame triggered a decades-long feud until Chaskin later admitted to adding an intentional gay panic allegory to the film.While the intentionality remains somewhat ambiguous, Freddy’s Revenge went on to be plausibly claimed by the queer community as a portrayal of a teen boy struggling with growing homosexual desire. For example, one scene has Jesse in a hot-and-heavy bedroom scene with Lisa, when a Freddy encounter leaves Jesse cold. “I’m not into this,” he tells her, before leaving to wake a sleeping Grady. Jesse says, “Something is trying to get inside my body.” Grady replies, “Yeah, and she’s female and she’s waiting for you in the cabana, and you wanna sleep with me.” There’s plenty to fuel that argument, but I would argue that the best read of the film is that it chronicles Jesse’s attempt to understand his bisexuality.A totally not BDSM-coded murder. | New Line/Kobal/ShutterstockJesse’s infamous scene where he cleans his room to a sexually suggestive song — “Touch Me (All Night Long)” by Fonda Rae — is often used as potential evidence in a queer read, but when Lisa enters, the phallic object he suggestively dances with “pops” in a clear bit of innuendo. When he’s kissing her before Freddy freaks him out, resulting in his barging in on Grady, the mutual passion between Jesse and Lisa seems legitimate before Freddy’s emergence scares him. Her telling Jesse that she loves him and he should come back to her weakens Freddy, and when she kisses Freddy (who fully possessed Jesse), it’s powerful enough to trigger his temporary destruction and Jesse’s reemergence. Jesse and Lisa’s attractions seem real, too. As a bi film critic who grew up in eastern Washington in the ‘90s, I can attest to how confusing and scary that set of conflicting feelings can be. That’s particularly true in restrictive environments like Jesse’s, where he may not have a framework to understand his new desires. The emergence of a new set of attractions can leave an anxious teen feeling like a freak, eviscerating self understanding until you can discover your own framework — a phenomena that seems fully true of Jesse’s experience. His feelings for Lisa are legitimate, they’re just interrupted by his feelings for Grady, which he’s unprepared for. He’s terrified and feels like a freak, ergo Freddy’s appearance.Freddy’s Revenge is an accidental masterpiece of bi representation, and that’s an important factor to keep in the forefront of its interpretation. Bisexuality is still vastly underrepresented for men and male characters. The first Best Picture winner, Wings, featured a kiss between men that seemed romantic (though they’re otherwise interpreted as straight). Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is perhaps the best exploration yet about a bi man squaring the difficult intersection of monogamy and bisexuality. Explorations of bi male protagonists’ inner life are so few and far between that it makes Freddy’s Revenge an all-time classic on the subject, if even accidentally, and we certainly can’t afford to lose it in our minuscule canon.