Random Movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

I would have to say my first real viewing of anything Freddy related, other than brief snippets, was Dream Warriors. I vividly remember fighting my brother for the VCR rights to record the horribly-tv-edited version while he wanted to record wrestling. That resulted in the VCR being thrown down the stairs and a hole being kicked into a door. Was it worth it? Fuck yea! At that time (I was probably about eight or so), Freddy was still savage, gruesome, deadly, and appeared in good (relatively speaking of course) movies.

This installment is more or less the true sequel to the original. Certain things were different from Freddy’s inception but the story line actually progressed instead of stalling out like Kristen running in that goop while trying to escape Freddy. Here we get a little more backstory on his origins but the pleasant thing was they did not seemed to be shoe-horned in by studio dictation into an already completed story line. These plots points added nicely to the overall mythos of Freddy but more as complimentary facts rather than a main plot-line as some sequels in other franchises had done.



So, since we have moved past worthless Jesse and his movie, we pick up with kids who are indirectly related to Freddy’s death, a point sorely missing in the second installment. While it is sad that this is really the only movie to deal with the parent’s responsibility heads-on (save for the first act of NOES 4), thematically it was quite important as these kids were eventually given validation and direction from Nancy, played obviously by Heather Langenkamp, who acted as more of a caring mother figure to these misfit, sleep-deprived, fucked up kids then their own parents did. Perhaps I read more into it but I find this comforting as all of the parents in this series are either dumb as shit or in denial as children around them drop like flies and they dismiss the kids’ claims of a fedora-wearing boogyman as nonsense. Even Nancy’s own father in this installment, still an excellent John Saxon, disregards Nancy and her thoughts again even when evidence mounts up to say otherwise.

After rewatching the film again, I will break from the conventional horror-fan base here. Most say, justifiably so, that the downturn of the series came with the star-billing and pun-wielding Robert Englund in the fourth installment. But here, the first two acts of this film feel oddly different from the last portion in tone and execution. Early on, we get a good look at Freddy but only in fleeting moments: the mirror in the bathroom scene, appearing at Phillip’s bed, emerging from a TV to kill Jennifer. While these few scenes revealed much more of Freddy and his appearance than the last two films combined, these were not lingering shots, easily missed if you are commencing a drinking game. After the remaining kids enter the dream world to retrieve Joey though, Freddy goes from being an unseen menace scratching at padded walls to thrust in your face at every turn. This is not to the detriment of this film though as the final act features some impressive effects and dream sequences. But this is where we go from the Freddy in the shadows to Freddy with syringes for fingers and in a hall of mirrors. I never quite picked it up before but it almost seems as if the script from the final thirty minutes was written totally independent of the rest of the film with the exception of a scant number of references to earlier.

Having watched the movie with fresh eyes, I would have likely anticipated a different outcome. Of course in the end Freddy is defeated (like that really matters), but the characters who live and those who die seem odd if this were a conventional movie. We know Kristen will make it and probably Kincaid as well as they were fairly well developed (in the sense of this genre at least) and noteworthy characters. Jennifer, Phillip, Will? Goners and anyone could spot that. But I am actually a bit sad that Taryn did not make it though as Jennifer Rubin played her quite well and she was tougher than the rest of them. But Joey made it? The guy who didn’t say a damn thing until the hall of Freddy? I still dispute that especially given his quite incredulous death scene in the next installment (oops, spoiler alert!).

This of course is not to mention that Nancy and her father die while battling Freddy. While Langenkamp still cannot act to save her life, her death probably resonated more than any other in the entire series, especially due to Freddy’s deceptive (and to quote The Avod) dickish behavior. The most traumatic thing though is that this would have been an awesome bookend to the original three films (even though the second does not quite fit in). All the ties and callbacks to the first film have been severed, all the main characters are now dead (for now at least), but a cryptic ending followed by a Dokken song must have convinced New Line to forge ahead to disastrous results.

All in all, there was a whole lot of good in this movie (especially coming off of the failed experiment of Part 2) but I would argue that this is the film that killed the franchise, or at least inspired the crap ahead, with a bigger budget, wackier dreams, and an open opportunity for another sequel.