Horror Countdown 2015: Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) dir. Chuck Russell, Heron Communications/Smart Egg Pictures

Funny that  I do the third film before the first, but then again dreams don't have to make sense. Wes Craven helped with the script, so we get a film keeping with the spirit of the first film.




Teen Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) is having a reoccurring vision of a house that she's never seen before. She's also having a reoccurring dream of a burned man with razor blades for fingers. The dreams are getting more vivid; so vivid in fact that the most recent one has her mother convinced she's suicidal after the burned man cuts her wrist.

The hospital she's sent to has a large population of teens. Dr. Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) specializes in dreams, and the patients seem to all have some pretty vivid ones. The kids this time out are:

Philip (Bradley Gregg)-puppeteer
Will (Ira Heiden)-wheelchair bound and a geek
Taryn (Jennifer Rubin)-punk girl and former junkie
Jennifer (Penelope Sundrow)-dreams of being an actress
Roland (Ken Saoges)-anger issues
Joey (Rodney Eastman)-doesn't talk

New intern Nancy Thompson (Heather Langkemp) gets along with the kids well enough, but she can't help but notice that all the kids come from Springwood, specifically the same neighborhood that a certain Mr. Fred Kruger (Robert Englund) used to prowl.

When Nancy sees the model home that Kristen has been building, she puts it all together. Not enough to save Philip or Jennifer, both of whom die in what could be charitably be described as unusual circumstances.

At Philp's funeral, Dr. Gordon sees a nun, Sister Mary Helena (Nan Martin), who hints that she knows more about Freddy's origins than most.

Nancy also discovers Kristen has a most unusual ability to draw people into her dreams. With that she trains the rest of the patients to take the fight to Freddy as Dr. Gordon and her father (John Saxon) team up to recover Freddy's mortal remains and give them a proper burial. Of course, Freddy isn't keen on either plans and with his power growing, he's in a position to do something about them both.

A bigger budget helped. One thing that puts this apart from other slasher is the characters; most of them are developed. Even the ones that die at least have some nice moments. The visuals are amazing. Freddy doesn't just stab his victims, he gets creative. Of course, this would lead to some issues down the road, but those are reviews for later.