A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

The Elm Street sequel train keeps rolling with this 1987 entry in the franchise. Considered by many (yours truly included) to be the best of the sequels, this is, arguably, the film that turned Freddy Krueger from great horror villain to true horror icon.
Wes Craven was back though he was sharing story and screenplay credits with Bruce Wagner, Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell. (Spoilers abound)

Also making a return to the series alongside Robert Englund were Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon which gave the film a sense of being a truer sequel than Freddy’s Revenge.

This time round it’s seven years after the events of the first film and we are informed that there has been a spate of teenage suicides. A number of troubled teens are residing within Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. With issues ranging from self-harm to drug addiction the common denominator is a so called “group delusion” that their lives are in danger from a “boogeyman” that is terrorising them in their sleep. We’re even told of a teenager who cut off their own eyelids just so they could stay awake.

The most recent arrival is Kristen (a young Patricia Arquette) who we first meet as she is building a house out of lolly sticks and felt tip pens. It’s a house that is very familiar to us already and one that Kristen is transported to upon falling asleep. Escaping from a chasing Freddy she wakes and goes into the bathroom but this is a dream within a dream. The taps turn into knives and cut Kristens wrist as her mum storms in and sees what looks like a suicide attempt which buys her a ticket to the psychiatric hospital.

The staff: Dr Simms (Priscilla Pointer), Dr Neil Gordon (Craig Wasson) and, orderly Max (Laurence Fishburne, who I nearly always forget is in this movie) attempt to calm Kristen down as she starts singing a very familiar nursery rhyme. “Nine, ten never…..never…” before a returning Nancy Thompson walks in and finishes the line, immediately disarming the traumatized girl.

Nancy (sporting a luxurious mop of 80’s hair) has just graduated and is an expert on nightmares though still suffers from them as she is taking an experimental medication to suppress these and is initially at odds with Neil Gordon who doesn’t accede to her wish to administer this to the kids.

It seems that Nancy has made an immediate impression on Kristen as, when the girl is attacked in her next nightmare by a giant snake with Freddy’s head, she cries out Nancy’s name and brings the woman into her dream. Freddy snarls at his former nemesis, recognising her as he hisses “You” before Kristen takes both of them back to their waking worlds.

Turns out that Kristen has always had this ability and used to bring her dad into her nightmares when she was little before her parents divorced.

We now go to the group session where Nancy finally gets to meet all of the victims, sorry, kids, which gives us just a little bit more meat to the bones of the characters.

There’s Philip (Bradley Gregg) who sleepwalks and makes puppets, Jennifer (Penelope Sudrow) a self-harmer and aspiring TV actress, Taryn (Jennifer Rubin) a recovering drug addict, Will (Ira Heiden) a role playing enthusiast and paraplegic (following an accident that we’re told was caused by Freddy), Kincaid (Ken Sagoes), the angry one and Joey (Rodney Eastman) a former debater who now rarely talks but has a teardrop tattoo on his face and a crush on one of the nurses.

It’s Philip who first succumbs to Freddy in a scene that sets up the franchise going forward. The kills from here on out throughout most of the films would now be more elaborate than what we had previously seen. In this instance, Philip is turned into a human puppet, his tendons/veins becoming the strings as he seemingly sleepwalks off the hospital tower (we see a giant Freddy cutting the strings) and falls to his death.