About This Event
This month, in honour of Halloween and all things spooky, Rainbow Film Club dives into one of queer horror’s most celebrated cult classics, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. The movie stands apart from its slasher peers with its infamous queer subtext, its groundbreaking “final boy” protagonist, and a story that can be read as a struggle with identity, desire, and the fear of being different. Over the years it has earned a reputation as one of the most overtly queer films to emerge from 1980s Hollywood horror.
Starring Mark Patton as Jesse Walsh, the film creates a uniquely queer nightmare, blending supernatural scares with themes of repression, shame, and self-discovery. Over 40 years later, Freddy’s Revenge remains a fascinating snapshot of queer representation in genre cinema and a testament to horror’s enduring power to explore the things society fears most, including queerness itself. Join us for this unforgettable queer horror landmark and see why it has become a beloved classic for generations of LGBTQ+ horror fans.
Get your tickets on The Princess website https://princesscinemas.com/movie/a-nightmare-on-elm-street-2-freddys-revenge-rainbow-film-club
Our guest speaker will be Emme Kay Kennedy.
Emme (she/her) is the Events and Fund Development Coordinator for Spectrum Waterloo Region’s Rainbow Community Space, and performs locally as a stand-up comedienne. She has a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership from Thomas Jefferson University and a Master of Fine Arts in Devised Performance from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and once served as Experience Consulting Creative Producer for industry-disrupting edutainment company Museum Hack in NYC. She loves iced “canadianos” and resisting all categories of definition, including her resistance to categories.
Content Warning:
Coordinators of the Rainbow Film Club may not have screened films in advance and may be viewing the films for the first time along with the audience. Selection of films for screening should not be interpreted as condoning the content of the film. While a film may be on a “classic queer film” list for being notable at the time it was released, this does not mean that the film has “aged well”. Many films may contain outdated and problematic language or themes that be disturbing to some audience members.
If you are considering attending a Rainbow Film Club screening, please review the film rating and year of release to help assess your level of comfort in attending. All films are expected to be old enough that online reviews and plot synopsizes should be available. Given prevailing societal views at their time of release, even “progressive” films may unfortunately conflate or depict queer themes alongside scenes or themes including (but not limited to) sexual assault, violence, child abuse/pedophilia, self-harm and suicide, body hatred, pornographic content, mental illness, racism and racial slurs, sexism and misogyny, classism, hateful language, transphobia and trans misogyny, and homophobia and heterosexism.
We encourage those considering attending film screenings to conduct their own independent research into the film to inform their decision whether to attend.
This series is organized by: Rainbow Coalition of Waterloo Region in conjunction with Spectrum