Review: ‘Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street’

I finally had the opportunity to catch Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, the documentary that explores the infamous homoerotism of the first sequel to Wes Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. Co-directed by Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen, this heartfelt documentary examines this aspect of the oft-maligned ’85 sequel in a unique way—by focusing on the human toll the film’s reputation took on its leading man.

Mark Patton was just 25 when he was cast as the lead in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, quite the professional coup after leaving home in the Midwest at 17 to pursue his dreams of a career as an actor. Patton’s all-American good looks led to immediate bookings in national commercials, with his big break coming shortly thereafter when he landed a plum supporting role in the Broadway play Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, directed by Robert Altman and starring Cher, Sandy Dennis, Karen Black, and a pre-Misery Kathy Bates—a role he repeated in the subsequent film version. By the time he landed the role of Jesse Walsh in the Elm Street sequel, Patton—who was gay and closeted, as the times dictated—had moved out to Hollywood where he met and began a relationship with Dallas actor Timothy Patrick Murphy.

Despite its commercial success, Freddy’s Revenge was widely derided and eventually became known in the early days of Internet film analysis as "the gayest horror movie ever made." Although time—and evolving social mores—have been kind to the film and elevated it to the status of a cult classic and even revered because of its not-so-subtle-after-all gay subtext, Patton’s career became collateral damage. The actor was wrecked by the negative response to the film and comments about his performance. Following an episode of Hotel and a CBS Schoolbreak Special, in which he co-starred—ironically—with A Nightmare on Elm Street final girl Heather Langenkamp, his acting career came to an unceremonious end. His personal life was no better—Murphy would die, tragically, of AIDS in 1988 at the age of 29 and Patton’s own HIV-positive diagnosis would eventually follow, complicated when he came down with tuberculosis. He left Hollywood in due course upon his recovery, retreating down to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he entered into decades of self-imposed exile—albeit with some newfound personal happiness in the form of a husband and an art store, where he sells works of his own creation, including a line of painted handbags he designed.

In 2010, Daniel Farrands, director of the exhaustive Elm Street documentary Never Sleep Again, tracked Patton down and entreated him to speak openly about his experiences and his legacy as part of the iconic film franchise. It was during his participation in Never Sleep Again that Patton came to realize just how dramatically the critical and cultural tide had begun to turn in favor of Freddy’s Revenge, with the film now hailed for the very thing that had caused him so much past anguish. Patton found himself applauded across the horror convention circuit, and that led to his desire to get his life story out into the world by developing a film (then) called There Is No Jesse. Unbeknownst to him, he would soon cross paths on social media with two aspiring filmmakers with a shared love for A Nightmare on Elm Street 2—and four years later, the trio gifts fans with Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street.

Chimienti and Jensen have crafted a polished and engaging documentary, utilizing interviews, archival footage, and a “day-in-the-life-of” approach as they follow Patton from one convention to another. Although the documentary threatens at times to burst at its seams with all that the filmmakers earnestly include here, it’s Patton—the film’s center—who grounds the proceedings with his candid, sometimes achingly bittersweet recollections of his journey. Watching Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, I found myself raging at times over the homophobic inner-workings of the Hollywood machine during the AIDS plague, cheering for Patton’s self-discovery and journey to reclaim his legacy at others. It’s hard not to find yourself in a puddle of tears watching how Patton is revered by the Elm Street fans and to feel the palpable sense of empowerment as he takes to the stage to rightfully affirm his place as horror’s original “final boy” while embracing the “scream queen” title that was once weaponized against him. 

The central conflict of the documentary is framed between Freddy’s Revenge screenwriter David Chaskin and Patton, with the latter holding firm to the claim that Chaskin disingenuously skirted responsibility for the film’s overtly gay subtext. Chaskin long-maintained that it was Patton’s performance that was responsible for the film’s gay overtones that unsettled audiences upon its release, even going on record with the proud admission that his screenplay was meant to be homophobic versus homoerotic. In this 2007 interview with Bloody Good Horror, Chaskin says:

“Yes, there was certainly some intentional subtext but it was intended to play homophobic rather than homoerotic. I thought about the demographics for these types of films (young, heterosexual males) and tried to imagine what kinds of things would truly frighten them, to the core. And scary dreams that make them, even momentarily, question their own sexuality seemed like a slam dunk to me.

If you really wanted to have fun, one might argue that the entire movie is a metaphor—Jesse is, in the end, finally able to control the monster inside him (his latent homosexuality) with the love of a good woman. Maybe they should show this film at one of those evangelical deprogramming sessions where they try to ‘fix’ gay people into regular Americans.

That said, there were certain choices that were made (e.g., casting) that, I think, pushed the subtext to a higher level and stripped away whatever subtlety there may have been. To this day, Jack Sholder says he read no such subtext into the script. It must have been by osmosis. At any rate, he should have seen it coming—when we opened in New York, we got a rave review in The Advocate.”

It’s here—with the resolution of this central conflict—that my one and only criticism with this otherwise pitch-perfect documentary comes into play: Chimienti and Jensen should have skipped it. It falls flat and lacks the requisite catharsis necessary to resolve the focal tension the film devotes much of its 99-minute running time to exploring. What should play as a pivotal moment in Patton’s liberation from this emotional shackle that he’s carried with him for more than three decades comes across as anticlimactic, with Chaskin’s “apology” being anything but. It’s a jarring moment of insincerity in what’s been nothing but a pervasive sense of sincerity throughout the rest of the film. Even Patton looks nonplussed. It’s an awkward scene that fails to give the audience the payoff it’s expecting—and the moment of unequivocal apology that Patton deserved.   

Yes, Chaskin is an asshole for intentionally injecting homophobia into his script, but I found Freddy’s Revenge director Jack Sholder far more culpable for his part in dodging accountability—and almost insultingly so. The film—as in, the one Sholder directed—includes a sequence in a gay bar (that was shot in an actual gay bar!), frequent male nudity, crotch shots, and glistening male chests, a bare-assed towel-whipping of a naked restrained man in the shower, a scene in which Freddy Krueger caresses Jesse's face before suggestively sticking a clawed finger in his mouth (which actor Robert Englund even admits was meant to be homoerotic), Patton in tighy-whities, Patton in a jockstrap, and Patton's butt-bumping solo dance to “Touch Me (All Night Long)” by Wish featuring Fonda Rae. That Sholder can claim no knowledge, no awareness of the gay subtext in his own movie is maddening to watch—especially in a later scene in which he basically tells Patton that it’s time to “get over it.” I was left shouting “WTF?!” at my television and wanting to throw the remote at Sholder’s clearly dishonest attempt to remove himself from any semblance of answerability by claiming naiveté. 

Chimienti and Jensen wisely employ a diversity of voices to fill their documentary’s requisite talking head roles, from the film’s cast and crew, to fans, to film scholars. UC Colorado Film Studies professor Andrew Scahill provides some of the film’s best academic moments, providing salient points in support of reclaiming A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 as a progressive film about sexual identity. Drag performer Peaches Christ also speaks persuasively about the connection between horror and the queer experience. The reunion scenes between Patton and his NOES2 cast members have a trepidatious energy running throughout—no one (besides maybe character actor Marshall Bell) seems completely at ease. Still, it’s great to see Kim Myers, Clu Gulager, Robert Rusler, JoAnn Willette, Englund, and Bell all together again.

The filmmakers take on a lot—from online bullying and the devastating effects of the AIDS crisis on the gay community to final girl film theory and queer cinema. Despite its ambitions that—in less capable hands—could have derailed the train, Chimienti and Jensen somehow manage to keep this hefty cinematic locomotive on the tracks, ultimately crafting an intensely personal, often painful, and surprisingly moving exploration of the life of a young gay man who reached for his Hollywood star during the Reagan era only to watch it fall from the sky as quickly as it began to rise against the backdrop of AIDS and the homophobia of the period. While Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street may have started out as a passion project for two gay horror fanboys and a lost celebrity they connected with online, it establishes itself as an instantly significant contribution to the oeuvre of film and the canon of LGBTQ studies. That Chimienti and Jensen are able to, in effect, teach an important lesson in queer history to a predominantly heterosexual audience by following Patton’s journey from closeted Missourian teenager and aspiring actor to self-described “Greta Garbo of horror” to his creative rebirth is nothing short of remarkable—especially for two first-time documentarians. As Patton says near the end of the film:

“My generation is gone. I have no friends my age. I want people to know their history. I want them to at least hear from somebody that the way the world is now…it wasn’t this way five minutes ago.”

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street is a heartrending requiem to missed potential and man’s ability to rewrite his narrative—tracing a proud scream queen’s journey from promise and unlimited potential through the darkness of crippling pathos and out into the light of hard-won personal peace. It’s about the promise of a second act no matter how long the first one runs over. 

His Name Was Jason

It’s important to take any criticism of a documentary chronicling thirty year’s worth of film with the appropriate grain of salt. After all, boiling down that much celluloid history into a tidy 90-minute running time is no small feat and one likely to leave something out.

Such is the case with His Name Was Jason, an ambitious new documentary about the iconic Friday the 13th film franchise from Anchor Bay. Produced by Anthony Masi and Thommy Hutson and directed by Daniel Farrands, His Name Was Jason is a love letter to fans of the hockey-masked, machete-wielding Jason Voorhees and his myriad victims. Beginning with the original 1980 film and its deceptively simple premise that pitted camp counselors against an unseen psychopath and continuing through its eleven subsequent sequels to the present on the eve of a franchise revamp, the documentary traces the extensive swath of Jason’s carnage, and includes interviews with everyone from final girls to film directors, from screenwriters to supporting players. It’s got the makings of a fanboy’s dream come true.

There is a litany of Friday the 13th denizens on hand to discuss, dissect, reminiscence, and recollect, and there are anecdotes and commentaries and analyses galore from those involved and a few (mostly) welcome guests. And while the F13 convention staples (Savini, Palmer, Hodder, King, Lehman, Zerner) are on hand to dole out some stories we’ve heard before, the primary joy here is having non-convention folks like Robbi Morgan (Annie, Part 1), Lauren Marie Taylor (Vicky, Part 2), Catherine Parks (Vera, Part 3), and Erich Anderson (Rob, Final Chapter) spin lesser-known campfire tales from their individual sets. Challenge: Just try to top spunky Morgan’s pure exuberance over being part of the film franchise — even if she erroneously stakes claim to being the first Camp Crystal Lake casualty. (Sorry, Annie…first victim honors belong to Willie Adams, whose Barry met with a machete to the gut after his make-out session with the nubile Claudette.)

First, the highlights: 

• Adrienne King, Amy Steel, and Lar Park Lincoln suggesting a survivors’ reunion movie(!)


• Seeing how former Friday hunks like Bill Randolph (Jeff, Part 2), Russell Todd (Scott, Part 2), John Furey (Paul, Part 2), John Shepherd (Tommy, New Beginning), Kevin Spirtas (Nick, New Blood), and John D. LeMay (Steven, Jason Goes to Hell) have fared against the ravages of time. (Hint: Todd wins hands down! Yum!)


• Peter Bracke’s (author of the sublime Crystal Lake Memories) surprising attestation that Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood was the most heavily edited by the MPAA, which is then eloquently confirmed by director John Carl Buechler. “The rating’s board raped my movie!”


• Judie Aronson (Samantha, Final Chapter) recalling the challenge of shooting her death scene in dangerously icy waters and how that film’s Jason (Ted White) took director Joseph Zito to task for his overzealousness in what becomes a cautionary tale of actress exploitation.


• Visiting the location where Friday the 13th, Part 3-D was shot 26 years earlier with the sassy Gloria Charles (Fox) serving as tour guide. Charles shares her recollections of the man-made lake and how water had to be continuously pumped in from a well on the property to keep it filled and evokes nostalgia when she revisits that film’s infamous barn in which she met with her three-dimensional demise. There is a real sense of the bittersweet passage of time when Charles points out the unrecognizable overgrown remains of the bridge Kimmel and company once drove across in flight from Jason and the now-dilapidated dock on which Jason first made his appearance in his legendary hockey mask. The clincher is when Charles stands on the burnt out ruins of the house used in the film, now reduced to rubble from a recent fire, and interviews current ranch owner Daniel Valuzat who shares the heart-tugging story of how fans wanted to send money to rebuild the house. It’s a simple, beautifully executed segment that really captures the affection that both those involved with the Friday films and the legions of fans have for the iconic franchise.


• A second location tour, this time of the Jarvis House from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter with director Joseph Zito and actor Erich Anderson (Rob). High points here include an explanation of how the once-adjacent “teens’ house” was built specifically for the film and Zito (showing greater sensitivity than he once did with actress Aaronson) sharing his reasons for not showing Mrs. Jarvis’s death on screen.


• Adrienne King sharing the intensely personal (and emotional) story of the real-life stalker that derailed her Hollywood career and sent her into years of seclusion.


• The pure fun of “The Camp Crystal Lake Survival Guide” segment on the bonus disc, during which cast, crew, and commentators share their insights into what it takes to avoid becoming a statistic in the Friday body count.


• Commentators who are logical and augment the proceedings: Bracke, How to Survive a Horror Movie author Seth Grahame-Smith (for the most part —see below), Fangoria editor Anthony Timpone, and Hatchet director Adam Green. Big props to Masi, Hutson, Farrands and company, too, for their inclusion of notable web journalists like Ryan Rotten (ShockTillYouDrop.com) and Brad Miska (Bloody Disgusting.com). It’s nice to see hard-working webitors getting recognition for the part they play in modern journalism.
• The delightful end credits doubling as a quasi-blooper reel during which some of the cast re-enact their (in)famous movie lines. While Parks and Lerner hysterically revisit their Vera/Shelley banter after Lerner pranks Parks onscreen, it’s Steel – whose hilarious “There’s somebody in this fucking room!” redo is rivaled only by Green’s dead-on Crispin Glover “Ted, where’s the damn corkscrew” impersonation – who, well, steals the show.

Farrands maintains a playful, yet respectful, tone throughout the proceedings. I mean, it’s impossible to accord the Friday the 13th mythos – complete with its almost cartoonish serial killer who resurrects and reanimates and reincarnates more times than Lara Spencer changes dresses on The Insider – with overt academic seriousness. So there’s some snark. Plenty of it, in fact. But, for the most part, all involved tow the line admirably — with the exception of author Grahame-Smith, whose unnecessarily mean-spirited misstep is the only sour note in the double-disc set. In a bonus segment entitled “Worst Monologue Ever,” Smith suggests that actress Dana Kimmel’s monologue in the film’s 3-D installment should be shown at the Julliard School as a cautionary tale for actors. Ok, bad enough, but all’s fair in love and snark, right? But when Grahame-Smith further suggests that Kimmel actually visit the school “like recovering drug addicts talk to school children,” he crosses the tacky-with-a-capital-T line and the harshness of the suggestion is as gratuitous as the gore effects in a Friday film. At least the bonus feature isn’t part of the documentary proper.

Some other misfires:



• The inexplicable proliferation of actor Shavar Ross (Reggie, New Beginning). He’s like an African-American version of Dustin Diamond...the Screech of the Friday films. And he’s everywhere here.


• Too many MIA final Friday girls. No Dana Kimmel. No Kimberly Beck. No Melanie Kinnaman. No Jennifer Cooke. No Kari Keegan. No Lexa Doig. Where are all these ladies of the lake?


• A surprisingly lackluster chapter on the upcoming 2009 reimagining with not a single clip or trailer.


• Tom Savini’s corny hosting and the equally cornball amusement park Crystal Lake set pieces that connect the various chapters.


• Commentators who are illogical and detract from the proceedings: Sleepaway Camp screamer Felissa Rose, Final Destination screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick, Seth Green(!), Psych’s James Roday, and some guy named Hugh Sterbakov. File all under “W” for “why?”


Finally, my biggest gripe – thus warranting its own non-bulleted, full-fledged paragraph proper – is with the “In Memory Of” section of the end credits. Rightfully, Laurie Bartram (Brenda, Part 1) leads a list of five that includes David Cohen (writer, New Beginning), George Hively (editor, Part 3), Robert Howland (production designer, New Beginning), and actor Steve Susskind (Harold, Part 3). Anyone want to venture a guess at how the passings of two of the franchise’s most notable actors – Tom McBride (Mark, Part 2, who died tragically of AIDS in 1995) and Walt Gorney (Crazy Ralph, Parts 1 and 2, who’s possibly the most recognizable Friday character next to Jason himself) – were left off the list? While we’re at it, how about Rex Everhart (ass-grabbing Enos from Part 1) or Sally Anne Golden (Sandy, Part 1’s drag queen-esque diner waitress) or Mark Venturini (Victor from Part 5, who died of Leukemia at the age of 35) or David Wiley (Abel from Part 3) or Antony Ponzini (Vincent from the Final Chapter) or Ric Mancini (Mayor Cobb from Part 5) or Vernon Washington (George from Part 5)? Small but important details that are indicative of the inevitable sense of incompleteness that His Name Was Jason is destined to leave viewers with after their exhilaration ebbs and critical thinking skills kick back in.

It’s natural to expect fans interested enough in watching a documentary about the film franchise to lament over what’s missing. While His Name Was Jason is far from definitive, it’s closer than we’ve ever gotten. And probably as close as we’re ever going to get. Warringtom Gillette (Jason, Part 2) sums it all up rather nicely: “Thanks to Friday the 13th, my 15 minutes just keeps going.” And at the heart of His Name Was Jason, there is a genuine sense of celebration over the franchise’s seemingly never-ending 15 minutes.