A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Freddy’s just around the corner…
We continue our adventure through the sordid history of one Elm Street yet again this week. If you haven’t figured out that I will without remorse use October as an excuse for this kind of movie behavior, then you must be lucky or un-blessed enough to not know me well enough. This one doesn’t really have anything to do with the last one though, so you can largely kind of forget that one for this one - but this one is technically release 3 so you should probably know release 1 in order to really get the most mileage right? Or perhaps it’s only a spiritual successor? Either way, it’s time we find our franchise footing, as tonight we meet the Dream Warriors in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3.
The nightmares are back. Kids are being tormented by the burned dark figure with the killer fashion sense. Our intro lead is doing all she can to stay awake - popping the sodas and the tunes to 11 - but when her mother arrives home it’s a classic “Why are you up, time for bed” situation. Not long after sleep descends, we see a somewhat familiar house with a creepy run down take. Enter the tried and true horror of little kids singing twisted nursery rhymes, and our lead takes a romp through the house of Freddy. Spooks wake her, but when she goes to the bathroom to get that refreshing wake-up water splash, Freddy shows her she isn’t as awake as she thinks - well, until her mom hears her scream and opens the door to find what appears to be her daughter after just getting her wrist with a razor blade. To the mental hospital it is, where she meets a bunch of other kids with a variety of symptoms - but the same darn fedora wearing problem. Wouldn’t you know it our returnee Nancy is now in the field of helping kids out, and now there is at least one adult who actually believes and wants to help these kids survive what could be the last dream of their lives as Freddy tries to complete his collection of the kids on the block,.
Acting is good enough here. Yes, it still doesn’t really hit that super-high impressive feeling while you watch it, but everyone does a good enough job with their body language that even if they aren’t saying something, you get an idea what the character is thinking. It goes a long way to make you want a certain outcome for one person or another, or sad when that outcome ends up being not so good. There are some side characters who are kind of there for a quick little one-off suggestion it feels - like our would be pharmaceutical trip provider - but at least the core cast does a good enough job that you don’t really hate them. I wouldn’t hold it against someone if they weren’t super impressed with the acting if I was being fair, but it doesn’t need to be impressive to not be bad either in my book. This is also where we start really getting some liveliness out of Freddy as well - with Englund getting to lean into some of those mean spirited jokes like “it’s your television breakthrough” and the likes.
Character wise, it’s sort of nice to see our OG final girl of the franchise back, and her dad come back for a bit even - but outside of the fact that they are there it’s really just nice that they didn’t just do it it for the sake of doing it and instead it feels like it’s with purpose. Now, we have someone that believes what’s going on - perhaps a bit of a play on the parents not believing their kids or just thinking it’s for attention. Heck, she’s even the one that kind of provides the idea of dream powers - even though oddly enough she herself doesn’t ever seem to do anything with it in a meaningful way, which kind of says something considering one of the dream powers is literally just looking punk and getting two knives. Look, not to harp on the dream powers being lame or anything like that - not everyone dreams big - but it does help provide a bit of a desire into the inner part of the characters and what they see themselves as. So yeah, maybe it doesn’t feel like it’s the craziest character study ever given how much time is used to address any of it in comparison to the Freddy situation, but it does at least provide a bit extra to some of the characters.
Return of the house of your dreams.
Effects get to be doing a lot more here as well. We really start to see some inventive stuff with varying levels of how brutal it is. There’s also some full on frontal breast action at one point, so I feel like that probably makes this the sauciest one of the first three films. Now, the first and second both had moments with really good effects, and admittedly those might have more staying power potentially, but it doesn’t mean you won’t wince a little at the tendons-as-marionette strings part, or feel slightly impressed by the talking body-less head. There’s even a brief moment of some really smooth stop motion in there I believe, and I was surprised at just how smooth some of it was. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though, as every once in a while we do get an effect that doesn’t work quite as well, usually working with opacity to some extent. As much as people harp on CG effects, there are times that it can make something like passing through a door look much nicer then some of the old optical stuff like we get here. It’s not enough for me to think that it’s bad effects - I mean, it’s far and away still better then a lot of tomato paste blood and Asylum level bad CG sharks. I just like to be fair and point out both things, you know.
Settings get to have some fun, although we do surprisingly find ourselves spend a lot of time in the nightmare house. Thankfully, since it’s nightmare there’s a lot of variance in it and things are played up a bit more haunted-house style thanks to all the dream side of it. Of course, we also get some variable real world settings ranging from hospitals, graveyards, bars, and even a auto-graveyard. Plenty to keep things from feeling too stale or boring in that regard. The jokes will be hit or miss as always, but I feel there’s plenty of times where folks would remember or quote this one. Some of the lingo is a bit of it’s time - which isn’t to say that in the negative sense like that one movie that dropped the hard N - and can perhaps feel a little goofy because of it. We also try and delve a bit into the backstory of our main villain here as well, slapping in a line about and elaborating on his mother to really set him up as a monster of a human - you know, if the whole child murderer thing wasn’t enough. I guess you could argue maybe it wasn’t, considering the remake turned him into a child diddler instead.
Audio is balanced pretty well, although there was one part where it felt like it got quieter mid-line which was weird. At this point I never know how much of it is just the Hulu service and how much of it is the movie though. Deliveries are serviceable, with some being better than others. Some of the actors do a good job with chemistry and their characters, and that probably helps feed into the deliveries feeling better then they may be at times. Music is there, although it’s largely a background affair to me as it’s wiped from my mind by the time the movie is done. We do get the re-occurring Freddy rhyme, as the movies MO tends to be. There is some stuff to think about in there if you really dig I suppose - like believing people, being the you you want to be, the sacrifices that can be made to help people, making sure you don’t lock a lady in a mental institute with thousands of criminally insane folks. You know, the simple stuff. That said, I’m as usual not the one to talk about how powerful the thought train of embracing everything that’s you is, I’m just here to mildly point it out to prove a point that stuff is there if you want to look for it is all.
Grade A puppeteer.
Better then the second, in debate for the first. I’d say it’s a good enough movie, and unlike the last one it feels like it actually wants and is trying to progress the playing field, world, and general concepts of the first movie. It’s not just “I’m possessing people to kill them at random” in so much as the targeted extinction of those born to the ones he seeks revenge upon. It’s a gathering of power from collecting those souls. Even the heroes get to have advancements, even if some of them are sort of lame when it comes to dream powers. It’s also when we start to see old dead Fred go from a rather serious normal slasher into this witty wise-cracking evil little dream man. It’s a good enough time, and I wonder if that priest ever actually got his crucifix back.