“I can’t handle the nightmare.”
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, is, by any definition, a better continuation of the series than was the second film, Freddy’s Revenge. Dream Warriors makes better use of one of horror’s greatest boogeymen (although this film does mark the birth of Freddy Kreuger’s lamentable use of “bitch” as punctuation); it has better performances; a deepening of the original film’s mythos; and some terrific practical effects. What it doesn’t have is a beating heart at its core. It tries – Lord knows it tries – but Dream Warriors can never make one truly care about the characters. Part of that is due to the mostly lackluster performances by all but one of its young cast, and part of it might be due to the film’s streak of sadism and nihilism. To be fair, that is one of the things that works best about it. But that never comes without collateral damage.
Dream Warriors is an altogether more hellish film than Freddy’s Revenge, which works to its benefit. We first meet Kristen (Patricia Arquette, giving maybe the best performance in the film), making a papier mache sculpture of a creepy house. She’s also chugging Diet Coke and blasting heavy metal music to stay awake. It’s an intriguing setup, and shows that the legend of Freddy Krueger has taken root in town. This is a sentence that would sound like the merest gibberish when discussing any other film, but Freddy possesses the knobs on Kristen’s sink, using them to grip and slice her. It looks like she attempted suicide, so she’s sent to a mental hospital, where she lives with other children with various traumas and disorders. One thing they have in common: they don’t want to go to sleep.
The hospital is where most of the film takes place, and while it’s a decent enough location, it does lead to some of the worst performances. Craig Wasson is basically an animated mannequin in the role of Dr. Neil Gordon; not since Dale Midkiff in the original Pet Sematary have I seen a horror film revolving around such a dull character and performer. The rest of the cast is no great shakes either. Penelope Sudrow does an okay job as Jennifer, and gets one of the more memorable scenes in the film, but the rest range from forgettable to groan-inducing. A young Lawrence Fishburne (billed as Larry Fishburne) does nice work as an orderly, but ultimately the film is (mostly) saved by the reappearance of Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), who arrives fresh out of grad school (and with a trauma-induced gray streak in her hair) to help counsel the patients.
For whatever reason, I have always found Nancy to be a compelling protagonist. Langenkamp is just a decent actress, but there’s a guilelessness to the character, and a genuine desire to help others overcome their fear, that lets her serve as the film’s emotional anchor. Her return doesn’t feel like fan service; rather, it feels like the balm that this franchise needs, especially after the unremarkable blandness of everyone in Freddy’s Revenge. Nancy alone is not enough to elevate Dream Warriors, and her romance with Dr. Gordon lands with a thud, but her presence definitely helps. It serves as nice connective tissue.
Dream Warriors has its sweet moments, but at its core, this is a starkly nihilistic film, far more gruesome than either of its predecessors. The house in Kristen’s dreams is, of course, the Thompson home, and when Kristen visits it she’s greeted by a young girl, who intones, “This is where he takes us.” Later, we see Freddy’s torso, pocked with the screaming faces of dead children. I admire Dream Warriors for going to some truly hellish places (I actually think it does a better job of this than does the execrable Hellraiser), and at times Freddy truly seems to be unbeatable.
Practical effects have always been a hallmark of this franchise, and Dream Warriors doesn’t disappoint on that front. Some look dated and cheesy now – i.e., Freddy turning into a giant worm – but some are still sickly effective, like when Freddy slashes open Phillip’s (Bradley Gregg) arms and legs, pulls out the muscles, and uses them to work Phillip like a marionette. Later, he turns into a TV and smashes Jennifer’s head through his torso, but not before possessing the image on the screen. Dick Cavett, interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor, turns into Freddy and slashes her with his glove. The most remarkable thing about this scene is that Cavett and Gabor agreed to the cameo (their names are even in the opening credits). It also helps explain one of the oddest jokes from the Simpsons episode “Kill the Gator and Run.”
A bright spot of the film is the information we get about Freddy’s backstory. A spectral nun appears to Dr. Gordon, and calls Freddy “the bastard son of a hundred maniacs.” She refers to him as an “unquiet spirit”; later, another character says, “He was a child murderer in life. He’s something worse now.” This, yes, all makes Freddy too demonic, a creature borne of hell itself, but this works as a feature, not a bug. And it certainly excuses Robert Englund’s increasingly theatrical performance.
The final, inevitable confrontation with Freddy in dreamland is, unfortunately, pretty lame. Kristen has the ability to pull others into her dreams, so they all team up to take Freddy down. This is fine in theory, but it becomes unbearably cheesy when it’s revealed that each kid has special “powers” in their dreams. Kincaid (Ken Sagoes) is strong, Kristen is agile, and Taryn has a big mohawk and two small knives. It’s hard to take Dream Warriors seriously when it threatens to become a mid-80s tween Avengers. We learn the same lesson that we learn at the end of Freddy’s Revenge is that love always wins, or some hokum like that. The main difference here being that Nancy does not survive the film. I appreciate the boldness in this, even though it’s not quite earned.
The original Nightmare on Elm Street is such a stone-cold classic that sequels were both inevitable and of a predictably lower standard of quality. As far as that goes, we have to grade on a curve, and by that measure, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is far better than Freddy’s Revenge. The thing with horror is that stories rarely end. So sometimes you have to take what you can get.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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