Review of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) by Ryan H — 25 Feb 2017

By far the best of all the "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequels. This sequel sees the return of Heather Langenkamp, the heroine from the first film, now a doctor, helping a group of teens at a mental hospital who are being treated for delusions they're having about a clawed fedora wearing killer stalking them in their dreams.

This third entry in the series also saw the return of Wes Craven, who brought the focus of the horror back to what made the first film so effective, dreams versus reality, compared to the second film which mistakenly focused on Freddy Krueger simply a murderous supernatural creature.

This film did set the precedent for future entries in the series with more elaborate of dream sequences and this is also where Freddy begins to use more one-liners ("Wanna get high?). But in this film, those things work because they served the story and were clever (compared to the less original or clever of sequels).

The marionette dream/death sequence is horrific and stomach churning, yet is also clever and visually interesting. The giant phallic Freddy worm is also an unexpected and nicely icky turn as well. Then there's smaller memorable touches, such as a suckling drug tracks on Jennifer Rubin's arm that I think burned themselves into the brains of children of the 1980s everywhere.

In terms of story, this film also is better than most, introducing a team effort to fight Freddy on his own turf in dreams, when one of the teens, Patricia Arquette in her film debut, is able to pull everyone into the same dream.

We also learn more of Freddy's origin story and it's a horrific one ("the bastard son of a hundred maniacs"). I think this film is also a cut above the future sequels not just because of Craven's involvement, but because the film had quite a bit of talent, most of them before they became famous, both in front of and behind the camera.

In front of the camera you have Patricia Arquette in her film debut, and it's pretty easy to tell that she would be a star and had real talent. You also have Jennifer Rubin as the bad girl of the group of teens.

She never became all that famous, but I always liked her as an actress, especially in a neo-noir film "Delusion," that I've always thought of a very Tarantino-like film that came out several years before "Reservoir Dogs.

" There's also Craig Wasson, Laurence Fishburne, John Saxon, Brooke Bundy, and a great cameo by Dick Cavett and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Behind the scenes you have a script by Wes Craven, Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Walking Dead") and director Chuck Russell ("Dreamscape," "The Mask," and the underrated remake of "The Blob").

There's also a good score by David Lynch's regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. Overall, this is a terrifically fun sequel that is worthy of the original. So if you've never seen any of this horror francise, you really only need to watch the first and third films and then also "New Nightmare" (though you can also watch "Freddy vs.

Jason" but that film is really just for fun).