Documentary Review: "Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street" (2020)
When I was a kid, I didn’t “get” A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. That statement should not be confused with saying I didn’t like the movie. I did like it- a lot, in fact. It was so different from the movie that made me fall head over bloody heels in love with horror that it was hard for my 7-year-old brain to understand how it was a direct sequel to the original. It just didn’t jibe on the surface. Between the lines, though? Below the surface? There was some shit going on. Aside from being a daringly different possession film with some of my favorite makeup effects of the entire series, Freddy’s Revenge had a lead character (and a whole motif) that were just different. Even though my age and the times I lived in gave me no ability to verbalize what that was, I knew that Jesse Walsh was a horse of a different color (and those colors weren’t just red and green).
The man in the lead role was Mark Patton, an up-and-coming TV actor who was getting his proverbial first big break. He couldn’t have forseen that the politics of the times, the AIDS crisis, and a still highly closeted Hollywood would ensure that this would be the first and last big break. Well, maybe not the last…
You see, Mark Patton was a closeted gay man in playing the lead role in what history would rightly dub “the gay Nightmare on Elm Street”. What was to be his big break turned out to be a curse that changed his life forever and ultimately forced him to look deep in his soul to understand why it happened this way. Along the way, he endured unbelievable hardships. He also came out on the other side a true survivor, an advocate, and a straight-up badass who learned life’s most important lesson: that everything happens for a reason and only the hardiest of souls can see it through.
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street chronicles his story from humble Midwest beginnings to Broadway to Elm Street to the dirt road in Mexico where he exiled himself for decades. Cameras followed him for a year on the convention circuit as he discovered that he was not only famous but an icon in gay culture and the horror community. It’s an all-access look at a man reentering the world in many ways. It’s eye-opening and inspirational, sure, but Scream, Queen! is the story of a beautiful tragedy, a tale that dares you to keep a dry eye or a hard heart.
The historical perspective, and the look you get at it from Mark’s eyes, bordered on shocking. I experienced the mid-’80s from the lens of a child. I knew that AIDS was a terrible thing, but I had no true concept of what the reality of it was for someone like Mark. This documentary does a seamless and natural job of using first-hand accounts and archival footage to make sure you know how scary his reality was even without the perfect storm of Freddy’s Revenge. It’s a nasty wake up call. The history lesson is necessary to make you feel the horror in his story- here’s a guy who had all the talent, passion, and tools to become an A-list star but couldn’t live his dream because of AIDS, Reagan-era politics, and homophobia. What a horrifying object lesson that is!
There’s an abundance of great stuff in here to chew on strictly from a horror fan’s perspective, but A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is really just the window dressing. Seeing all of Mark’s love from the fans, his film reunion, and long-awaited confrontation with screenwriter David Chaskin, you understand that the combination of the film itself and the world at large combined to created one of film’s great true stories.
It’s a story that needs to be told, especially in our current times. We’re all learning how to be more inclusive. We’re also learning how to understand the changing of the guard that is taking place in not only horror but society at large. There are still a lot of “old school” folks out there that are having trouble speaking the new language, so to speak.
I don’t completely exclude myself from that group.
Like I said, I didn’t exactly “get” A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge when I was a kid, but I still really dug it. My cousin, however, was one who couldn’t stand it. He decried it as a movie full of faggots. He refused to watch a gay Freddy movie. He was incensed. I wasn’t bothered by it; if anything I thought it made for a totally unique experience…but I couldn’t say that out loud (even though it secretly got repeated viewings). You see, I had to put on a certain face in much the same way that Mark Patton had to put on a certain face.
Am I gay? No. I married my best friend and soulmate almost 22 years ago; she just so happens to be a woman. Still, the sight of gay men doing gay things just never bothered me. It still doesn’t. What Scream, Queen! highlights is a simple ugly truth: it’s damn scary to speak out against the status quo. I was a South Carolina kid in the mid-’80s- you don’t cross that picket line if you want to continue having a happy life. It’s not a pretty thing, but there it is.
One of those interviewed in the film, an absolutely glam drag queen going by killer stage name of Peaches Christ, says it best: “They weren’t ready for a male scream queen. They couldn’t articulate it.” That’s right on the money- I couldn’t articulate what I thought at that age. Hell, I still have trouble with it…but I’m trying.
Where Scream, Queen! elevates past simply being a top-notch documentary and into the realm of being truly important is by showing us, with love and respect, the wonderful human being that Mark Patton is. His response to David Chaskin and the closure obtained is great to see, but it’s the lesson learned that seals the deal: he had to go through that experience in that way because going through it in the public eye would have killed him. The fact that he not only realizes that but handles it all with such class and grace is both powerful and inspirational.
If that doesn’t hit you right in the feels, as the kids say today, then you’ve missed the point.
