A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Movie Review - A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Seriously, check out that poster of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors that I have not seen before now. If that doesn't show the campy madness that is Dream Warriors, then I don't know what will.

This installment in the series is about a hospital of sleep-deprived kids, and guess what, Nancy survived the first movie and comes back to try to stop Freddy again! The hospital doesn't believe any of the kids, but that's to be expected, and each kid has a different power in the Dream World that they try to use to beat Freddy. We get a little backstory on why Freddy is the way he is and where he came from, and of course Freddy picks off these kids one at a time, and in fun ways.

Honestly, Part 3 is one of my favorite Nightmare movies. It's extremely fun because the scriptwriter and director took the idea to heart that THIS IS A DREAM WORLD. Anything can be done in this dream world without losing realism because it's a dream. In this edition of Elm Street, there are so many cool and creative ideas that Freddy brings to the table that it just boggles my mind that they couldn't come up with cooler ones for the other films.

Although the movie isn't really creepy, because Freddy has even more one-liners in this one than the second one, it still is entertaining. It's a great horror movie because of the creative deaths, not really for the atmospheric value. A lot of this is laughable. When Freddy kills Patricia Arquette's mother and growls, "I said where's the fucking bourbon!" I die a little inside. But even though Freddy isn't the scary dude that he used to be doesn't mean we can't enjoy the movie.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is where Freddy strings the guy who makes puppets up by his veins. I'm not sure why, with all of the horrendous images and movies I've seen, but that one always makes me wince. The creativity in the movie is totally there; while in the first movie, the tricks Freddy pulled were only meant to scare, and in the second movie Freddy enjoyed killing with his razors, in this movie all of the deaths are associated with a weakness or enjoyment of the character. It almost gives us a little depth to their personality.

While I don't actually enjoy the fact that the movie's pretty comical, I do like all of the thought that went into the deaths, and also the nun, Freddy's mom, creeps me out. I think it's the actress who plays her, because her face and sallow complexion give me the willies. One of my favorites of this series, this movie plays with the composition of dreams, giving us the possibility to combat Freddy by imagining ourselves as something powerful, but it also gives Freddy unlimited reign. It won't scare you, but it'll give you a fun time.