Review: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

When his teenage psychiatric patients start getting bumped off one by one after complaining about nightmares that are scarily consistent from person-to-person, shrink Dr. Goldman (Craig Wasson) enlists the help of the institutions newest employee, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp). Nancy, a psychiatrist herself finds the kids’ nightmare stories all too familiar and comes to realise that her dreamland tormentor Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is back at it, killing the kids in their sleep. Alongside a new inmate named Kristen (Patricia Arquette) who appears to have special dream powers, they attempt to turn the tables on Freddy. The other patients are non-verbal Joey (Rodney Eastman), combative Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), TV-obsessed Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow), puppeteer Phillip (Bradley Gregg), wheelchair-bound “Dungeons & Dragons” geek Will (Ira Heiden), and tough ex-junkie Taryn (Jennifer Rubin). Priscilla Pointer plays Dr. Goldman’s stern colleague, Larry Fishburne is an orderly, and John Saxon briefly reprises his role as Nancy’s cop father, who is in rough shape and somewhat in denial about what he witnessed last time out.

I don’t like all of the “Elm Street” films, I mean “Freddy’s Revenge” is one of the worst films ever made and even in 1991 at the drive-ins to see one of my first-ever horror films I knew “Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare” wasn’t very good (2017 viewpoint: It’s terrible!). I will say, though that the series is easily the most imaginative of the 80s horror franchises on a conceptual and visual level. Everyone has a favourite “Elm Street” sequel, and mine happens to also be my favourite film in the entire series. Yes, I really do believe this 1987 flick from director Chuck Russell (“The Mask”, “Eraser”) is better than the original. If you don’t like humour with your Freddy, then I can see how you’d disagree with me. However for me, this is the film that gets the balance of horror, comedy, and interesting themes down to a fine science. In fact, I think of these films as more dark, violent fantasy rather than horror anyway.

You’d certainly hope with four credited screenwriters that this would have a few ideas in its head. The whole concept of Freddy targeting young adults in a mental hospital, each with different issues (but insomnia as their main common bond) is really interesting and more thoughtful than the average film of this type. Similarly, Freddy’s back story is interesting too (even in the lesser entries). Yes, the earlier “Dreamscape” and later “Bad Dreams” dealt with some similar issues as this one, but not nearly as effectively in my view. The only issue with the script that I have is the connection these kids supposedly have to Elm Street. They’re called ‘the last of the Elm Street children’ at one point. Whether this is mere lip service or whether they are genuinely tied to Elm Street is never adequately explained, and I don’t think it’s a necessary addition anyway.

As I said, the film is really creative and imaginative on a visual level too, even if the quality of the FX is extremely variable. If this film was at all storyboarded, I bet the person who had more fun than anyone else here was the storyboard artist (s). I’m pretty sure this was the first entry where we got to see the souls of the kids Freddy wears, and it’s memorably disgusting. The stop-motion skeleton is admittedly a bit corny, but an earlier bit of stop-motion with a Freddy marionette puppet is cute as it leads to the film’s most celebrated death involving a ‘human puppet’. Sick, but memorable. The cinematography by Roy H. Wagner (who would later forget how to shoot and light a movie with the murky “Streets of Blood”) is particularly excellent, the familiar house looks great, and so do all the creepy dream/nightmare visuals and sounds, so long as you can get past some of the dated FX. The Freddy snake still holds up pretty well and is definitely the stuff of nightmares. This was also the last time Freddy was even remotely scary or intimidating. Yes, there’s fun lines like ‘Welcome to prime time, bitch!’ (The final visual of that death scene is pretty memorable too), but the scene where Freddy taunts a recovering junkie with his razorblade glove now adorned with needles, and gaping track marks on the victims arms is pretty cruel stuff. The ‘Wizard Master’ scene, for this wheelchair-bound critic is also Freddy at his most sadistic. He’s a child-murdering sadist to begin with, but picking on a drug addict and a D&D kid in a wheelchair? Fuck you Freddy, you prick. The subsequent sequels got way too cute, but as I say, this one gets the balance right.

On the wrong end of the scale is the horrific end credits song ‘Dream Warriors’ by Dokken, one of the lower rungs on the ‘hair metal’ ladder (to be charitable). The performances are extremely uneven, with Patricia Arquette for me giving her one and only really good performance to date. Yes, I’m including her undeserved Oscar win for “Boyhood”, and in my opinion her debut performance here eclipses that fairly safe performance (Ethan Hawke and the kid were much more impressive in that film). Here for once her shy and sleepy demeanour seem to fit the role of a girl who has sleeping issues and is only slowly growing in confidence. Priscilla Pointer, meanwhile is perfectly cast in a one-dimensional role, and the soon to be Laurence Fishburne (he was still going by Larry at this point) steals his every scene simply by being the coolest guy in the room. Bradley Gregg’s career as an actor has been fairly sparse, but he was good in “Stand By Me” and this film, though you won’t see much of him.

Some of the kids are pretty amateurish to be honest, but Ira Heiden is perfect as the D&D kid whose failed suicide attempt has left him in a wheelchair. He’s playing a geeky stereotype, but let’s face it, stereotypes are sometimes truthful, at least in part. We’ve all known D&D kids in our time, I’m sure. When I first saw this film, my favourite of the bunch was tough guy Kincaid, played by Ken Sagoes. Seeing it again in 2017, I no longer feel this way. In fact, I think he’s a bit goofy for a tough kid, and sounds alarmingly like Hooks from the “Police Academy” franchise. There’s no doubt that Jennifer Rubin is well-cast as a tough chick drug addict, but at times her performance is way off. Her ‘beautiful and bad’ speech is corny as fuck, and Rubin doesn’t sell it at all convincingly. By far the weakest actors in the film are the completely bland and talentless Craig Wasson, and series returnee Heather Langenkamp. Wasson is just an awful actor and has the charisma and presence of beige wallpaper. Also, his character is a terrible shrink: He says one of the kids who apparently killed himself was a coward. He says this to a group of similarly troubled kids, at least one of whom is a suicide survivor. What an irresponsible arsehole. Langenkamp doesn’t improve on her flat performance from the first film (and wasn’t any better at playing a version of herself in 1994’s overrated “The New Nightmare”). She’s only here because Nancy is here, and frankly I wouldn’t have been upset if they recast the role with someone who could actually give the impression that they’re not on downers. I get that it’s a film about nightmares and sleep medication factors in, but that’s clearly not what Langenkamp is going for, she’s just a flat actress. On a more positive note, Angelo Badalamenti (“Twin Peaks”, “Blue Velvet”) contributes a good music score that doesn’t seem out of place with what Charles Bernstein (who also composed the scores for two of 1983’s most underrated genre films, “Cujo” and “The Entity”) originally introduced in the first film. It’s my favourite score of the series next to the original, though the score for “The New Nightmare” is outstanding too.

I don’t expect everyone (or anyone, really) to agree with me that this is the best of the “Elm Street” films, but it’s definitely the most well-written, imaginative, and best of the sequels by far. In fact, it’s one of my favourite horror films of the 80s. Funny, scary, bizarre, and creative for its type. This one’s got few flaws. The screenplay is by Craven, Russell, Frank Darabont (director of “The Shawshank Redemption”, “The Green Mile”, and “The Mist”, all Stephen King adaptations), and Bruce Wagner (David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars”).

Rating: B