A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors Reviews

The original 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is still to me one of the scariest and best horror films there is, as well as a truly great film in its own right and introduced us to one of the genre's most iconic villains in Freddy Krueger. It is always difficult to do a sequel that lives up to a film as good as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' let alone one to be on the same level.

'A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors' has often been touted as the best 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel (or one of them) and one of the best of the series. Couldn't agree more with this. For me it is the best sequel, and while it is not quite in the same level as the original it is the closest the follow-ups get to having what made the original the classic that it is and is much better than the second film.

'Dream Warriors' may not be perfect. Maybe it could have done with having a few less characters, Neil could have been more interesting and stronger developed, and the support acting is variable though none terrible.

However, Heather Langenkamp fills her role very well and Robert Englund is terrifying once more as Freddy (cannot imagine anybody else). Chuck Russell's direction is some of the best of the series in by far the best directed sequel. He is not afraid to stretch genre boundaries and does it in a way that feels fresh, a lot of it is remarkably imaginative for an 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel and the execution is great.

As are the special effects, particularly the snake and the TV set, the darkly comic humour with cracking one-liners and the truly frightening scares with the marionette scene being one of the highlights of the series.

Very little is shoddy in the production values, the production design being both dream-like and nightmarish and the photography is stylish. The music looms ominously, while the Edgar Allan Poe quote and the Ray Harryhausen montage are inspired touches.

In summary, very well executed and the best of the sequels. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The original 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is still to me one of the scariest and best horror films there is, as well as a truly great film in its own right and introduced us to one of the genre's most iconic villains in Freddy Krueger. It is always difficult to do a sequel that lives up to a film as good as 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' let alone one to be on the same level.

'A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors' has often been touted as the best 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel (or one of them) and one of the best of the series. Couldn't agree more with this. For me it is the best sequel, and while it is not quite in the same level as the original it is the closest the follow-ups get to having what made the original the classic that it is and is much better than the second film.

'Dream Warriors' may not be perfect. Maybe it could have done with having a few less characters, Neil could have been more interesting and stronger developed, and the support acting is variable though none terrible.

However, Heather Langenkamp fills her role very well and Robert Englund is terrifying once more as Freddy (cannot imagine anybody else). Chuck Russell's direction is some of the best of the series in by far the best directed sequel. He is not afraid to stretch genre boundaries and does it in a way that feels fresh, a lot of it is remarkably imaginative for an 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' sequel and the execution is great.

As are the special effects, particularly the snake and the TV set, the darkly comic humour with cracking one-liners and the truly frightening scares with the marionette scene being one of the highlights of the series.

Very little is shoddy in the production values, the production design being both dream-like and nightmarish and the photography is stylish. The music looms ominously, while the Edgar Allan Poe quote and the Ray Harryhausen montage are inspired touches.

In summary, very well executed and the best of the sequels. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Since I already have already talked about the first two Elm Street installments I think it's time I talked about the third..and the most infamous one of all Dream Warriors, oh hell yes. This is when Freddy Fever officially kicked off and when Freddy officially became a household name. The dream demon is back and this time he's going after a new group of teens, but these aren't ordinary teens...these are teens who have powers/skills they normally don't have in their dreams. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Dream Warriors. Each of them has an unique power/ability in the dream realm which comes in useful, such as Joey's super sonic scream, Taryn's needles/knives, Roland's super-strength, Kristen's ability to pull people into her dreams, and Will's magic. Also this movie was banned in Australia for some reason, well one particular scene was...the scene where Taryn dies via Freddy's needle-claws.


The kills are very creative and some of the best Freddy deaths I have ever seen in the entire franchise, including the ever memorable scene where Jennifer dozes off in front of the tv while watching a Dick Cavett interview only for Cavett to turn into Freddy and Freddy to emerge from the television uttering his famous line...'Welcome to prime-time, bitch', this definitely is the second time i've seen someone being killed via a television, okay...the third if you count Videodrome, the other one being in Grosse Pointe Blank. Does this mean that Groccer from Grosse Pointe Blank could be her father or even her uncle? Because they both die the exact same way.


I love the puppet sequence too, that's creative and has great use of stopmotion/claymation. Also it's really inventive of Freddy to use Phillip's interest in puppetry as a means to destroy him in the dream world. I also really like Joey's kill in this....Freddy appears as a sexy nurse and seduces him only to use his freakishly long tongue to pin him down to the bed. Freddy would later kill Joey in Dream Master by appearing as a sexy woman in a waterbed. Makes me wonder if Freddy would ever consider doing that type of kill often. And you can't forget Dokken's epic Dream Warriors song. And oh yeah, the freaking Freddy snake scene..the Freddy snake.


If you haven't seen this installment of the Elm Street franchise, you should..and if you don't Elm Street, don't worry you will. But if you haven't heard of it, don't worry...Freddy is going to be coming for you too, so I wouldn't bother falling asleep.

Since I already have already talked about the first two Elm Street installments I think it's time I talked about the third..and the most infamous one of all Dream Warriors, oh hell yes. This is when Freddy Fever officially kicked off and when Freddy officially became a household name. The dream demon is back and this time he's going after a new group of teens, but these aren't ordinary teens...these are teens who have powers/skills they normally don't have in their dreams. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Dream Warriors. Each of them has an unique power/ability in the dream realm which comes in useful, such as Joey's super sonic scream, Taryn's needles/knives, Roland's super-strength, Kristen's ability to pull people into her dreams, and Will's magic. Also this movie was banned in Australia for some reason, well one particular scene was...the scene where Taryn dies via Freddy's needle-claws.


The kills are very creative and some of the best Freddy deaths I have ever seen in the entire franchise, including the ever memorable scene where Jennifer dozes off in front of the tv while watching a Dick Cavett interview only for Cavett to turn into Freddy and Freddy to emerge from the television uttering his famous line...'Welcome to prime-time, bitch', this definitely is the second time i've seen someone being killed via a television, okay...the third if you count Videodrome, the other one being in Grosse Pointe Blank. Does this mean that Groccer from Grosse Pointe Blank could be her father or even her uncle? Because they both die the exact same way.


I love the puppet sequence too, that's creative and has great use of stopmotion/claymation. Also it's really inventive of Freddy to use Phillip's interest in puppetry as a means to destroy him in the dream world. I also really like Joey's kill in this....Freddy appears as a sexy nurse and seduces him only to use his freakishly long tongue to pin him down to the bed. Freddy would later kill Joey in Dream Master by appearing as a sexy woman in a waterbed. Makes me wonder if Freddy would ever consider doing that type of kill often. And you can't forget Dokken's epic Dream Warriors song. And oh yeah, the freaking Freddy snake scene..the Freddy snake.


If you haven't seen this installment of the Elm Street franchise, you should..and if you don't Elm Street, don't worry you will. But if you haven't heard of it, don't worry...Freddy is going to be coming for you too, so I wouldn't bother falling asleep.

Here’s a geeky question. Just how long after the original does this film take place? A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in 1984, it’s sequel the next year. However the sequel jumped forward five years, so is this movie set seven years after the original. As such are the Nightmare on Elm Street films actually set, by and large, in the 1990s?

Nancy’s hair says no, but my heart says yes.

Regardless of the time period something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and by Denmark I mean Patricia Arqutte’s psyche. Freddy Kruger has decided to give up his summer job as the personification of homosexual Id and get back to his first love, the brutal (and for some reason Ironic) butchery of teenagers. Whilst I wasn’t utterly scathing of Freddy’s Revenge, with the film’s reputation it’s akin to curb stomping a puppy to get all critical with it, it’s nice to see Freddy back as an actual threat to children. His comedic lunging in Part 2 whilst oddly vicious always felt like a party entertainer had gone a little method rather than a homicidal maniac had achieved corporeal form and was about to get his long awaited murder on.

Here is what is magical about Dream Warriors, it somehow manages to balance wisecracking, ironic, Freddy with scary, rapey, Freddy. This is perhaps the last film in the series in which Freddy has a sense of menace and power to him but it’s also one of the more whimsical entries in the series. Despite all of bloodletting, and tits, and tendon pup petering, the entire film is built on the kind of ‘believe in yourself and you can achieve anything’ and ‘the power of love and friendship will overcome all odds’ moralising you’d usually find in Captain Planet.

I like to think that part of the reason for this tonal tightrope actually working is Frank Darabront’s involvement at the script stage. Now I know Darabront’s no miracle worker, delude yourself all you want but his Indy 4 script wouldn’t have saved that film (then again the power of Christ couldn’t have said that film), but I think he is gifted with the kind of emotional intelligence that is really lacking in most of these films. Whilst the stuff with the dream group can get a little sappy and cheesy, it feels earned and the kids actually feel like they have three dimensions (I mean this figuratively, the kids don’t get literal three dimensions until Freddy’s Dead). As discussed earlier part of the appeal of these films, too me, is that they feel focused on actually creating likeable characters rather than just fodder. We’re given enough information and time so that we actually get to like Kristen, Kincaid, and Joey, and that kid in the wheelchair, and the junkie chick, and that smart ass who gets walked off a building. OK, so it looks bad that I don’t actually remember half of their names, but I’m pretty sure the kid in the wheelchair doesn’t even have a name. Names or not they’re still a likeable bunch, like the Breakfast Club with mental health issues, and it helps Freddy maintain a hint of a threat.

The next two films in the series will start to see the kids having their personalities scaled back (presumably for budgetary reasons) and their dream sequences becoming grand circus of ironic hilarity rather than something truly horrible. There’s elements of that mean-spiritedness here, the weird looking kid who gets smashed into a TV seems to be get way more abuse than anyone else, but in general you’re rooting for these kids and Nancy, whose now all PHD’d up and kind of looking like the Bride of Frankenstein.

Nancy’s an interesting part of the texture of the Elm Street films as she kick starts a precedent for the survivor girl appearing in the next movie, dying, and handing the reins over to the next survivor girl. As such as soon as Nancy sees Kristen you know she’s going to get all clawed up at some point.

This is the iconic Nightmare film in a lot of ways, simply because it introduces the elements people know and love about Freddy. You ask people what they think about Freddy Kruger and they’ll tell you he’s a burned dude who cracks wise whilst dragging people into crazy dream worlds. This is the film which introduces wise cracking Freddy, which introduces gauche personalised dream worlds and which subtly redesign the costume to what we know it today. Gone is the massive jumper, in is a svelte sweatshirt. Hell ,they even call him Freddy this time rather than the rather unassuming Fred of the first film.

“Fred Kruger mom! He came into my dream and advised me about my tax rebate”

In the original you dream and you go to Freddy’s weird little boiler room, it’s essentially the horror house from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left transposed onto dream logic. With this film we start to see Freddy actively using dreams as something grand and almost operatic. Whilst the stuff with the kids gaining their dream powers is cheesy, it shows a level of ambition and a level of psychological savvy that the films never really see again. It also allows us a weird dream world where four of the kids ostensibly gain super powers (although the one black kid being able punch things REAL hard feels a little questionable) whilst the other gets a Mohawk and some flick knives. Now I’m not debating the merits of a Mohawk and flick knives, but compared to the kid whose scream can destroy matter, or the kid who can acrobatically defy physics or the kid WHO IS A FUCKING WIZARD just asking for flick knives and a hair-do seems a little reductive.

We’re also treated to some more inconsistencies with regards to Freddy’s powers. Now you see I think it’s kind of hilarious that Freddy has no hard and fast rules in regards to what he can do, but I do wonder if anyone gets seriously agitated by him flouting the rules. Anyways after killing the wizard kid and somehow overcoming the girl with the Mohawk and flick-knives Freddy is facing down our intrepid heroes when he realises something ain’t right in the material world and he fades out to possess his bones, don’t ask, and go Harryhausen all over John Saxon’s ass. Two things strike me as odd about this. One, Freddy can reanimate his bones seemingly at will but has chosen not to do despite the fact that surely an unkillable bag of bones would surely be just as an effective avatar as a whiny kid who’s so far in the closest he’s been proclaimed the king of Narnia. Two, why does Skele-Freddy have his blade glove when Nancy’s mother apparently stole it from said corpse years ago. Three, why the fuck did Nancy’s mother steal Freddy’s glove all those years ago? Did she feel that at some point down the line she’d need an appropriate visual aid to explain to her kid how she firebombed some dude for the greater good?

This film also starts the tradition of Freddy killing people fairly innocuously but going full on with the build up. He lobs one kid off of the roof of an asylum which doesn’t sound all that interesting, the main thing about this is the lead up to the actual death, with Freddy ripping out the kids veins and tendons and turning him into some squirming teen marionette. It’s painful and gooey and really effective and it sort of marks the transition from Elm Street being a slasher film (Tina and Glen in the original are, despite the theatricality, fairly standard murders) to being something halfway between body horror and slasher. Freddy lingers with his victims and often the level of violence inflicted on one person becomes almost monstrous, and that’s a part of the films odd charm. Jason and Michael have to have ever increasing body counts because they’re essentially blunt objects, Freddy can spend five minutes putting each victim through agony. Lamentably this is probably as much a progenitor of Torture Porn, and in particular the Saw films, as Last House on the Left.

One last thing to mention is the score. Now the first Nightmare film was scored by good old Charles Bernstein (who created the really fantastic main theme), the second film got Christopher (I’m a truly fantastic composer, but I don’t seem to get any credit) Young for the scoring and in the third film we get Angelo (David Lynch taught me to eschew soundtracks in favour of random buzzing sounds) Badalmenti. Badalmenti does some nice ambient stuff and seems to homage Bernstein a lot, which is nice. From this point on the Nightmare films get overtaken by tie-in heavy metal songs, a trend started by the Dokken track from this film, and that’s a shame because Bernstein, Young and Badalmenti all bring really interesting layers to the films that get lost in the later films.