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

I recently re-watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street and was very impressed. I hadn't seen it since I was 14 and that was long before I started watching horror movies so I closed my eyes during a lot of it and missed the wonderful effects. I did remember that I enjoyed the second Nightmare film though as it was a unique take on a werewolf or vampire film (instead of turning into one of those monsters the main character is turning into Freddy Krueger). But I never cared to see anymore of a series I perceived as only continuing its existence because Hollywood executives knew how to milk a franchise and market towards teenagers. I thought the clever Psychological (and almost blood and deathless) second entry in the franchise was as good as it got for Freddy films. Then within the last year I started seeing references to the Dream Warriors sequel pop up all over the place. I heard about the song/music video that 80s hair metal band Dokken did for the film and I read all the comments on the youtube upload of the video written by devoted fans who loved the third film the most of the series. I also saw that the site where I buy my horror movie t-shirts made a couple different shirts dedicated to the film. At this point I had to at least look up the film, so I did and I was surprised to find an interesting plot involving the main character from the first film training a new group of teenagers how to control their dreams and fight back against Freddy like a horror movie version of the X-Men. I love the paranormal and movies about psychic phenomena and the like, so after hearing this description and all the praise the film got from all around the corners of the internet (as well as seeing this was Oscar winner Patricia Arquette's film debut, and features a young Lawrence Fishburne) I had to see this for myself. In this film Freddy (essentially

the boogeyman) has once again returned from beyond the grave to kill children in their dreams with his famous finger knives. For starters it was nice to see the franchise finally make a direct sequel to the first film after the second film was kind of more of a reboot than a direct sequel (it completely ignored everything about the story of the first film except for Freddy, his origin story, and the fact that murders happened). It was nice to see Heather Langenkamp return, and since I myself am a fresh out of college aspiring Counseling student, it was nice to see a character from a horror movie I like pursuing what I hope to be my future career. The movie starts with a horrific dream sequence showing that this film is not afraid to get right to the action. That being said the film has a wonderful pace, wonderful cinematography, and arguably the best effects and acting out of the entire series. Freddy personalizes his attacks on the teenagers much moreso in this film than the previous two. A former heroin addict is killed by Freddy with syringe fingers instead of knives. A mute kid has his tongue ripped out and is tied to a bed with it while Freddy quips "Feeling Tongue-tied??" It was also nice to see the franchise finally come into the humor it (like the Child's Play/Chucky series) would become famous for. Freddy has wonderful one-liners like when he kills

a girl who longs to be an actress, he transforms into a TV and tells her "This is your big break in TV Jennifer! Welcome to prime-time bitch!" as he shoves her head through the TV glass electrocuting her. As mentioned before the effects are incredible in this movie, in one scene Freddy turns into a giant worm (while still retaining his face) and attempts to gobble up one of the kids. The film also embellishes on Krueger's origin story now giving him the badass nickname "The bastard son of 1000 maniacs". My only problem with this movie is the ending. I won't give it away but like how Game of Thrones functions, you're going to be upset if you get attached to too many of the characters. The movie is definitely one of the better horror movie sequels of all time. It was so good it makes me sad to hear that none of the series' later films are supposedly anywhere near as good as this one. What I love overall about the Elm Street franchise is that the teenagers in these movies are not the mindless horny teenagers you see in most other horror films. Most of the time the kids in these movies are actually smart, and likable, which makes the villain all the more scarier for killing these kids, it makes the viewer feel like this could almost happen to anyone, even you. Also I have always loved surrealist art music and films, and Nightmare is the surrealist horror franchise, no doubt about it. For someone like myself who has some of the most effed up dreams ever, it's nice to see terrifying dreams in a movie actually reach my level of weird/terrifying.  I give the film a 4.5/5 stars. You can watch the trailer below: