Adam Pasen
Always a bit of a dark horse in the Nightmare on Elm Street canon, NOES 2: Freddy’s Revenge (Jack Sholder, 1985) has earned greater consideration since its release for its queer subtext. The story of Freddy coming at night to “get inside” new kid Jesse Walsh is viewed by critics such as Harry M. Benshoff as a metaphor for homosexual desire. (See this excellent article by Jordan Phillips on exactly this topic.)
To support this claim, scenes are cited such as love interest Lisa coming to help Jesse clean his room and finding him bumping and grinding to “All Night Long (Touch Me)” while a prominently displayed “Probe” game sits in the closet. Then there’s Jesse’s encounter at the BDSM bar with Coach Schneider and bare-assed gym brawl with Grady while a crowd of boys cheers “nail him!” Yet while the erotic underpinnings of Jesse and Freddy’s battle are generally acknowledged, the esoteric/magical dimensions are not.
For example, in Egyptian mythology, Osiris the king is murdered by his evil brother Set who wants to rule. With the help of Osiris’s widow, Isis, his son Horus eventually returns as the rightful heir to battle Set and reclaim the throne. Returning to the “Probe” scene, Jesse’s messy room also has posters of the pyramids, Saturn, and Jupiter waiting to be put up. In magical lore, Saturn is associated with Horus (in some accounts Osiris), while Jupiter (the striped planet) is associated with Set. Jupiter “captures” Saturn and takes its place for a while until being expelled. In the myth, this is done only with Isis’s help – just as in the movie Freddy is only exorcized through Lisa’s efforts.
Jesse’s messy room, the pictures of the pyramids and Jupiter are stacked against the mirror; Jesse’s room after Lisa’s help – note Jupiter with its “eye” pointed at Saturn but blocked by the Cross
After Lisa helps Jesse unpack, the pictures of Saturn and Jupiter appear on the wall on either side of a Simple Minds poster with a cross and coat of arms (“Don’t You Forget About These,” the poster admonishes). Jupiter’s red spot stares ominously like an eye at Saturn but is blocked by the carefully positioned cross; Lisa is a gatekeeper, a force for order guarding Jesse from Jupiter/Freddy’s evil influence.
Clues like these indicate that Revenge is (among other things) a modern retelling of the Egyptian conflict of Horus and Set, with Freddy cast as Set, Jesse as Horus, and Lisa as the Isis Figure. In the story, Horus and Set battle for the throne after the death of Osiris. In some versions, however, this war is explicitly sexual; at one point Set “lies” with Horus, but Horus catches the semen in his hands (in magical tradition, the sphincter acts as a gate to a higher level of existence and Freddy wants into our world through Jesse’s) and eventually defeats Set with Isis’s help.
Examining Revenge through this lens allows us to understand many of the film’s otherwise baffling decisions. For instance, as “The Burned One,” Set’s domain is the desert – which Kenneth Grant posits rests above the mauve zone. In the film’s opening nightmare, Freddy traps Jesse on a hellish bus ride into the desert, which falls away and reveals a reddish-tinged abyss. Grant says the waking state is associated with Horus but the deep-sleep state is emblematic of the nighttime and Set. Notably, the desert-dwelling Hyksos of Egypt worshipped Set and syncretized him with Baal Hammon, the “keeper of the brazier” (accounting for shots of Freddy tending to his burning furnace in the basement).
The sand falls away in Jesse’s nightmare trip to the desert – is that the Mauve Zone underneath?; Freddy as Baal Hammon – Phoenician equivalent to Set and keeper of the brazier used in child sacrifice
Shielding Lisa from the storm and Raven through the looking-glass – both associated with Set
The similarities don’t end there, either. Kenneth Grant associates Set with storms and ravens, which feature prominently in the poster design. Set is said to have a “red eye” (the red spot of Jupiter) and be connected to the black sun – and in Jesse’s second nightmare, Freddy tells Jesse he “needs him,” and a close-up on Freddy’s eyes reveals they are both red and contain black suns in the irises (“Daddy [Osiris] can’t help you now!”). Also telling is that as soon as Freddy takes over Jesse’s body at Lisa’s pool party and assumes the Saturn position, the first thing he does it tell all the partygoers, “You are all my children now!” And what does Saturn do to his children? He devours them!
Freddy bursting out of Kerry’s shirt with the coiled red serpent design of the ouroboros
Menacing serpent imagery throughout could also be a reference to Set, who during the Egyptians’ battle with the Hyksos became a trickster god of foreigners associated with the Chaos Serpent Apep/Apophis. Hence, we have Jesse’s nightmare in school of being attacked and suffocated by the class snake. Finally, Set is born/regenerates by bursting out of his mother’s womb, which is exactly what Freddy does by exploding out of Lisa’s friend Kerry at the end (notice the design on Kerry’s blouse is a coiled red serpent or ouroboros, the Egyptian/Greek magical symbol for rebirth).
Lisa clad in white with her bow and arrow
Of course, any Set needs a suitable Isis to battle – and, in Freddy’s Revenge, Lisa fits the bill. In one of her first scenes, Lisa holds a bow and arrow in PE while dressed in ethereal all-white, as opposed to her classmates’ regular gym clothes. White is the traditional garb of Egyptian gods, distinguished from the colorful garb of the Hyksos. Moreover, Greek Plutarch (who wrote famously about the battle of Set and Horus) syncretized Isis with Neith, the Egyptian goddess of hunting often depicted with a bow and arrow.
Lisa encounters Cerberus/Anubis at the entrance to the boiler room/Underworld
Other syncretic artwork of the Greeks depicted Isis with Persephone and Cerberus (the Greek equivalent of the Egyptian dog-headed god Anubis), accounting for Lisa encountering the dog/human hybrids at the entrance to Freddy’s boiler room in the climax; they are Cerberus, guarding the gate to the underworld as she goes to retrieve Jesse/Horus.
One of the most provocative aspects of viewing Freddy’s Revenge as a retelling of the Horus and Set story is its implications for other slashers; Isis cults had to constantly reenact a ritual to cleanse society of Set’s chaos, just as Isis battled Set anew each day. In this light, the cyclical nature of slasher sequels becomes less about cynical cash grabs or a lack of ideas and more about faithfully recreating a tradition. It also gives further insight into horror movie tropes raised by critics like Carol Clover. Why mostly blades and anachronistic weapons? Because that’s what they had in ancient Egypt. Why eye imagery and POV shots from the killer? Because Set “steals” the eye of Horus until Isis restores it.
Moreover, in the Isis Figure, we see a potential paradigm shift in how we understand the final girl. Why is she often virginal? Because Isis is a virgin. Why is she a babysitter or a camp counselor? Because Isis is tasked with protecting the child (Horus). Why does Michael Myers stalk his sister Laurie Strode? Because Set is Isis’s brother (and later the Bad Uncle who goes after her son just like Michael goes after nephew John Tate in Halloween H2O).
Wrapping up our discussion of Freddy’s Revenge, none of this diminishes its queer themes, as seen in the brilliantly ambiguous ending: one can view Freddy’s return and dragging Jesse out to the desert again as Jesse failing to overcome his forbidden desires… OR… as Kenneth Grant suggests, it may be Jesse’s inability to embrace those desires through Set that condemns him to continue “wandering the desert” – parched for the love that dare not speak its name.
Bibliography
Grant, Kenneth. Hecate’s Fountain. Skoob Books Publishing, 1992.
Grant, Kenneth. Nightside of Eden. 1977. 3rd ed., Starfire Publishing, 2014.
Grant, Kenneth. Outer Gateways. Skoob Books Publishing, 1994.
Adam is a screenwriter based in Los Angeles who wrote on the last two seasons of Power Book IV: Force for STARZ. He is also an award-winning playwright published in the Best American series from Applause Books and received his PhD in English from Western Michigan University. He is an avid slasher fan and is currently in post-production for a horror short he and his partner wrote directed by Cory DeMeyers (Halloween 2018) and starring Tait Fletcher (The Mandalorian) and Sari Sanchez (Kill Game). You can find Adam on Instagram and IMDb.
