Mark Patton, who played the starring role of Jesse Walsh in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was among the celebrity guests who appeared at Creature Feature Weekend. Films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and the first Nightmare on Elm Street established the standard practice of a male villain killing his way through victims on his way to the female protagonist. Nightmare 2 disregarded that trend by making the male character the one most tormented by the villain, and it breaks from tradition even more by having a female hero come to his rescue. It is also known for the gay subtext among the male characters.

Patton left the movie industry a few years after filming Nightmare 2, then reemerged in the 2010s with his documentary, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and a string of new films. In between meeting fans at Creature Feature Weekend, Patton sat down with Scoop to talk about his iconic role in Nightmare 2 and what he’s working on now.

Scoop: It’s Friday, the first night of the con, are you having a good time?
Mark Patton (MP): Yes, I am having a good time, thus far.

Scoop: What do you like about doing horror cons?
MP: I love doing horror conventions – there’s a lot of reasons to do them. You get paid very well and I really had come to peace with being a horror icon and I enjoy it. People are very kind to me, I make good money, they tell me they love me. So, there’s nothing not to like. The travel is a bit much for me. I live in Mexico City. I left at 10 in the morning and got here at 1 AM. That I sometimes question myself about, but other than that it’s all good.

Scoop: What was your initial reaction to the Nightmare on Elm Street 2 script?
MP: It was so fast. The script was actually being written while we were making the movie because the turnaround on this is so fast. The script that I started with is not the script that you ended with. And then the thing with [writer] David Chaskin – as he was writing he got a little more suspect, as he got bolder, people were catching on to his thing that gave him license to go further and further. I have the original script and I have the shooting script and they’re very different. Even with all the controversy involved in Elm Street, I can’t be more pleased that I did it. I think it’s a really good movie and I love it. Nothing bad from me.

Scoop: What are some of the big differences from the original script to the shooting script?
MP: I think it’s the graphicness of the homosexuality, that kind of stuff. It’s all done in a way that you could go either way with it. [Director] Jack Sholder talked about it a lot and he didn’t understand what he was doing or maybe he was overwhelmed or was just not socially adept or something, I don’t know. It was really his responsibility, not mine. When you get hired to do a movie you trust the director to protect you. I assumed, because I’d worked with really good film directors, that I was being protected. And it turned out that I wasn’t. So, about halfway through, my make-up artist [Daniel Marc] said, “You know what’s happening here, right?” And I sort of began to figure it out. Trust me, it would have been a lot more if it hadn’t been for Danny because he started swatting things out of the way like, “No, he can’t do this, he can’t do that. No, you can’t put the glove in his mouth.” He’s not going to b--- Freddy.” That was basically it.

Scoop: What did you find most challenging about filming the movie?
MP: It was very fast. We shot it over the summer, and it was out in October. They wanted the money; it was a money grab. I was young, so I didn’t really need to sleep. And it was the first time that I was going to be a movie star, so I was very jazzed off that idea. I moved from a farm in the Midwest to New York and then Los Angeles to be a movie start and it was happening. It was all good.

Scoop: Nightmare 2 is one of the rare slashers that has a guy as the final character. At the time, did it strike you that that was a significant moment in horror history?
MP: That’s a hard question to answer for that particular moment. In all of theater from the beginning of time, when a hero is on the journey, the hero has to win or get killed. The real hero of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is Lisa. The girl is the hero, and I am the final girl because I live. The real hero is Kim Myers [the actress who played Lisa] because she goes back to save her man. She’s not going to come out without him. I thought that was really great. They didn’t have the social consciousness to really push that at the time. It’s like Neve Campbell. It’s iconic stuff. I don’t think they realized what they had their hands on. I don’t think that they thought that 30 years later we would have this conversation.

Scoop: That final scene in the boiler room between Freddy/Jesse and Lisa is intense. You’re watching it thinking, “Please don’t kill her.”
MP: And you think he’s going to. I love that he should have, really. We talked about it a lot because of my documentary, Scream Queen, but really what should have happened in that particular moment is he should have killed her. It would have been terrifying in the movie theater. I don’t know if they really knew, especially some of the crew, if they worked on horror before and those rules are there. You have to at least acknowledge that. You might not have to do it, but you have to acknowledge it. She should have died. If she would have died it would have set up the third one, which should have been Nancy and Jesse together trying to fight Freddy. But, we’ve had a lot of time to think about that too.

Scoop: One of my favorite scenes is in Grady’s bedroom and you’re doing that big transition into Freddy. It’s so scary. Tell me about filming that scene.
MP: It took many, many days. So, you’re covered in blood for a long time. That’s my favorite scene, in probably any Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s one of the most iconic things in Nightmare. I think that and then “You’re all my children now.” If there’s one moment that sums up the whole Nightmare on Elm Street experience, it’s that. It was fun. I got to work with Robert [Englund] and Robert [Rusler] at the same time. It’s a beautiful scene and it holds up today.  

Scoop: What does it feel like to be a part of the Nightmare legacy?
MP: I don’t really know what my life would be like if it hadn’t been. I’m not saying this out of anything but complete gratitude – I get a check every three months and I have for the last 40 years. I do this kind of stuff, I make movies, I travel the world, all on the back of Elm Street.

Scoop: Tell me about your documentary.
MP: My documentary is called Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and it’s the backstory of Elm Street. Shudder bought it, so you can see it on Shudder. I don’t really want to say what it’s about…it’s about the ‘80s. If you’ve ever been a nerd or the butt of somebody’s joke and you want to go back and correct it – that’s what it’s about. If you don’t cry two or three times, you’re heartless and if you don’t laugh, then you’re a fool. It’s a beautiful movie. Every country it goes to gets a new Blu-ray and it’s a hit all over the world. All over the world people laugh and cry at the same places, so I figure it’s international.

And then, I’ve been getting movies because of that. I have a movie on the circuit called Swallowed, and it was directed by Carter Smith, he directed The Ruins and Bugcrush. It’s me and Jena Malone. It’s an invasion kind of film. It’s winning awards all over the world. The guy that wrote it, wrote it for me. When I saw the script, I was like, “Why did you think of me?” He said, “If you would have stayed in show business, this is the role that you would be playing right now, so I want to give you the opportunity to do it.” It’s a tough part, I’m a mean, crazy mother------. Every time a review has come out it’s “Thank God Mark has come back.” Can’t beat that.

Scoop: Are you working on anything else now?
MP: I start shooting a movie in September. I have some in the can that are coming out around Halloween. In September I’m off to shoot a film with Felissa Rose from Sleepaway Camp and one of my favorite girls and one of my best friends. We play a husband and wife in a home invasion movie. The script is terrifying. I have a movie come out now with Lisa Wilcox and Danny Hassel from Nightmare on Elm Street and it’s called The Return to Hell. It’s a Scream-ish movie.

I’ve made about eight or nine movies since I came back on the circuit. I have eight movies coming out soon. It’s a blessing.

Scoop: That’s great to hear. It was so nice talking to you, Mark.
MP: It was so nice to talk to you too.

To read more about Creature Feature Weekend, jump to our Main Event.