"We're the dreeeeeeam waaaarioooors!"
Horror movie sequels are rarely good as the originals that spawned them, and the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels are no exception. It is even rarer that a "part 3" - or three-quel, if you will - is anything but dreadful. The first sequel to the original Nightmare on Elm Street, while the idea behind it is pretty interesting (if baffling), is quite bad indeed, and pretty staggeringly homophobic, honestly.
But there's something special about Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors that saves it from the three-quel curse. One reason it's special to me is because I'm pretty sure it's the first true horror movie I ever saw. And get this - I saw it at a CHURCH YOUTH GROUP LOCK-IN. And the OTHER movie we saw that night was the Eddie Murphy gem The Golden Child. LOL 1980s lackadaisical adult supervision!
Anyway, I wouldn't say NOES 3 is a masterpiece, by any means. It falls short of the original and there's a heavy dose of eighties cheese that occasionally makes me grimace with embarrassment. But I can't help loving it. The basic premise is that Freddy is trying to kill the last of the Elm Street kids, the children of the people who killed him. The kids' suicidal patterns (they're not actually suicidal, but the effects of their Freddy dreams make it look that way) have caused them to be placed in a psychiatric hospital. Nancy, the final girl from the original, is back as a new staff member of the hospital and she helps the kids, with the idea being for them all to enter a dream together and fight Freddy as a group.
I kind of wish the Nightmare movies had stopped here. Freddy was already starting to be more funny than scary, and after this it was really difficult to take him seriously as a villain or be scared by him at all. I mean, in the original, he barely says anything - mostly chuckling sinisterly and whispering the kids' names - "I'm your boyfriend now" being (I think) the one and only pre-kill one-liner there. This was the movie that started the one-liner dreck, but they were actually pretty decent in this one. The teens and their varied personalities, especially the dream versions of themselves were ... okay, somewhat corny, but still kind of cool ("In my dreams, I'm the wizard master!" LOL). And the kills were pretty awesome (guy having his muscles pulled out and used as puppet strings, for the win!).
One of my favorite things about it, though, is the music. The score was done by Angelo Badalamenti, who is probably best known for his work on David Lynch's films, which is creepy cred all by itself. And then there's the theme song ("Dream Warriors" by Dokken) that plays over the credits. Not only did this song come out when music videos used to be a culturally relevant Thing, but this was also when, if your song was the theme song for a movie, you were pretty much obligated to make a video that incorporated elements of the movie. I don't just mean scenes from the film intercut with shots of the band playing the song in some dark, smoke-filled warehouse. I mean the video was themed after the movie, with, like, the band interacting with the characters and stuff. It's actually kind of fitting for this movie, though, since the movie is actually about Kristen (Patricia Arquette) and her ability to pull people into and out of her dreams and the video is kind of like her pulling Dokken into her dream to slay Freddy with their delicious metal riffs.
But there's something special about Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors that saves it from the three-quel curse. One reason it's special to me is because I'm pretty sure it's the first true horror movie I ever saw. And get this - I saw it at a CHURCH YOUTH GROUP LOCK-IN. And the OTHER movie we saw that night was the Eddie Murphy gem The Golden Child. LOL 1980s lackadaisical adult supervision!
Anyway, I wouldn't say NOES 3 is a masterpiece, by any means. It falls short of the original and there's a heavy dose of eighties cheese that occasionally makes me grimace with embarrassment. But I can't help loving it. The basic premise is that Freddy is trying to kill the last of the Elm Street kids, the children of the people who killed him. The kids' suicidal patterns (they're not actually suicidal, but the effects of their Freddy dreams make it look that way) have caused them to be placed in a psychiatric hospital. Nancy, the final girl from the original, is back as a new staff member of the hospital and she helps the kids, with the idea being for them all to enter a dream together and fight Freddy as a group.
I kind of wish the Nightmare movies had stopped here. Freddy was already starting to be more funny than scary, and after this it was really difficult to take him seriously as a villain or be scared by him at all. I mean, in the original, he barely says anything - mostly chuckling sinisterly and whispering the kids' names - "I'm your boyfriend now" being (I think) the one and only pre-kill one-liner there. This was the movie that started the one-liner dreck, but they were actually pretty decent in this one. The teens and their varied personalities, especially the dream versions of themselves were ... okay, somewhat corny, but still kind of cool ("In my dreams, I'm the wizard master!" LOL). And the kills were pretty awesome (guy having his muscles pulled out and used as puppet strings, for the win!).
One of my favorite things about it, though, is the music. The score was done by Angelo Badalamenti, who is probably best known for his work on David Lynch's films, which is creepy cred all by itself. And then there's the theme song ("Dream Warriors" by Dokken) that plays over the credits. Not only did this song come out when music videos used to be a culturally relevant Thing, but this was also when, if your song was the theme song for a movie, you were pretty much obligated to make a video that incorporated elements of the movie. I don't just mean scenes from the film intercut with shots of the band playing the song in some dark, smoke-filled warehouse. I mean the video was themed after the movie, with, like, the band interacting with the characters and stuff. It's actually kind of fitting for this movie, though, since the movie is actually about Kristen (Patricia Arquette) and her ability to pull people into and out of her dreams and the video is kind of like her pulling Dokken into her dream to slay Freddy with their delicious metal riffs.
Click to view