A Nightare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987)

This movie could very well be the Empire Strikes Back of the Nightmare on Elm Street series: it's the one many people have the strongest memories of (more often than not of the prerequisite nerd character squealing, "I am the wizard master!") and the one that, for better or for worse, defines the "essence" of the franchise. While it isn't as strong or as cohesive as the original, it is a fun movie, with even a few genuine chills thrown in, and without a doubt a damn sight better than the fumble that is Freddy's Revenge.

The setting for Freddy's latest massacre is an insane asylum where the last surviving kids of the parents who barbequed Freddy are checked in because of their violent dreams and supposed suicidal tendencies (really the result of Freddy's attacks). The fodder...er, dramatis personae include: Kristen, our "last girl;' Kinkaid, the stereotypical black guy; Terry, a former drug addict; Philip, a would-be artist; Will, the nerd (and a cripple to boot); and Jennifer, who wants to be a TV actress. Just when it seems the remaining Elm Street kids would be stuck with oblivious therapists as Freddy finishes them off one by one, Nancy, the heroine of the original Nightmare on Elm Street, returns as a psyhchiatrist fresh out of school who hopes that her previous battle with Freddy can help save these kids...

Wes Craven returned to work on this sequel, and it shows. The same theme of stifling adult authority dooming rather than saving the movie's teenagers comes back in force, this time with the character of Dr. Elizabeth Sims, filling the shoes of Nancy's mother, who was the main oblivious adult in the original. Unfortunately, Sims is a less fleshed-out and sympathetic character, having the words "HEARTLESS BITCH" tattooed to her forehead.

The yin to Sims' yang is her colleague Dr. Gordon, who believes Nancy's rantings about Freddy and, because this is a movie after all, becomes her lover. In a way, Dr. Gordon is the focus of the film (interstingly, you can argue the same thing about Nancy, Kristen, or even, well, Freddy); he's certainly given the most development thrown his way as a character. His eagerness to help the kids no matter what and his frustration and his reluctant realization that what Nancy's telling him is true seem to get a lot of attention from the script. He might have made a more compelling protagonist, if so much of his time wasn't wasted on a frankly stupid subplot, but I'll get to that later...

Now, Nancy...Nancy, Nancy...I really don't know if there's a story behind this or not, but, compared to the original, Heather Langenkamp's acting here is a bit more...er, well, restrained. Maybe she was having a bad month during filming or didn't want to be there, but there seems to me a definite discrepency of quality between her performance in the original and her performance here. Oh well, at the least the script wasn't giving the character of Nancy much to begin with here. And, geesh, could she hop into bed with Dr. Gordon any faster? (Hey, maybe, because she stayed a virgin in the original but lost it here was the reason she gets killed at the end!)

Despite what you might think from my earlier description of them, the teens aren't entirely cookie-cutter characters. Some of them actually show signs of a personality beyond whatever their defining chracteristic is (and at least they made Will a nerd and a cripple), although the character of Kinkaid is about as racially sensitive as a Martin Lawrence movie. And then there's Freddy. While, despite what you'd expect, Freddy never got too much screen time from the first two movies, here the script gives him room to cut loose (haw! haw!). The infamous Freddy one-liners come out in full force this film (and you start to tell easily that Robert Englund really had fun playing Mr. Krueger) and plus you get the very first appearance of Freddy's patented Personality Appropriate Deaths (PADs). Maybe this is exactly why this Nightmare on Elm Street is usually the most remembered one; it's the first one that can truly be said to belong to Freddy and Robert Englund.

Well, there's also a couple of memorable moments in this movie. You have the appearance of Zsa Zsa Gabor, in what has to be one of the most bizarre and hilarious cameos in the history of cinema (I might have spoiled what happens to Nancy, but I won't spoil this for those who haven't seen it.) And who can forget the weird (and gruesome) death of Philip, who dies while his friends helplessly tries to save him (that reminds me, who's idea was it to put Joey the mute kid and Will the crippled kid in the same room?) Plus the shifting dream world Nancy and the kids create for themselves, as well as their initial voyage into it, is fairly well envisioned, despite a few moments of goofiness.

Now, enough about the good points. There's some flaws in this movie that will only be magnified with the further sequels. The first Nightmare had-and the second one tried to have-a handful of strong protagonists, here you have the shift from characters to cannon fodder. As I said, the teens of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 aren't quite as soulless and forgettable as the standard slasher flick fare or the people on an average episode of "The Real World," but you can already tell that the teens aren't being written for anything but dying in interesting ways. Along with that, with Round Three the plots are already setting down into a comfortable template. Some teens come along, Freddy gets back his killin' power, scares and slaughters up some teens, and is narrowly defeated by a protagonist whom everyone thinks is going crazy. As much as I'm loathe to admit it, at least the second Nightmare tried to change the formula (albiet in an unoriginal way). The main original thing the plot of the Dream Warriors has going for it, the setting of a mental hospital, is dropped for the suburban background of the first two.

However, what really annoys me is that here what starts off as a beautifully simple idea-some guy was killed by a mob of angry parents so he somehow comes back in their kids' dreams and kills them-is suddenly, ridiculously convoluted. Let's call it the Michael Myers Syndrome, shall we? Just as the sequels to Halloween weren't satisfied with Michael Myers the faceless, relentless boogeyman and had to make him the avatar of some kind of global Druidic conspiracy bent on taking over the world or stealing Christmas or something, so must Freddy Krueger be given more of an "origin story." It isn't enough that Freddy was just a real sociopathic jerk; he has to become "the son of a thousand maniacs." The movie has the ghost of Freddy's mother, Amanda, impart to Dr. Gordon that she was trapped in an asylum for the criminally insane and raped by the inmates. While this does seem like the kind of chilling yet silly urban legend that would revolve around a boogeyman like Freddy, it just doesn't seem to set well. Neither does the introduction of the concept of the "dream master." While it isn't named until the next movie, Kristen is said to have the power to pull people into her dreams (it's suggested, but never made clear, that Nancy shares the same ability or something like it). Almost as though the screenwriters aren't actually planning it out, the concept of the "Dream Master" and the plot questions and problems it causes later on become almost a headache inducer.

Of course, who needs to think about plot, when you've got Freddy's side splitting zingers...

Liz, I hope you're reading this, because I have one especially for you...

"What religion do you follow?"

"Science, I suppose."

-Amanda Krueger and Dr. Gordon, who naturally can't be expected to hold any spiritual beliefs whatsoever since he's a scientist and all...