Harefooted Halloween: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

What I Liked: This film establishes the Krueger we all think about whenever you bring him up.  In the first two films he doesn’t speak very much, mostly uses his knife hand to dispatch his prey, his face was more unevenly burned with blotchy spots and he mainly sticks to his boiler room lair.  Here he throws out one liners, adopts the insult “bitch” as his catchphrase, has a more even scarring covering his head and devises imaginative elaborate deaths.  He’s also referred to as Freddy instead of the usual Fred.  These changes make him cheesier and a touch less threatening but they give him gobs of personality.

There are an incredible amount of effects throughout.  They throw everything they have at you including mechanical, optical, stop motion, puppetry, etc.  It feels like fifty percent of what’s on screen is some sort of effects shot.  Impressive work.

It’s nice to see Freddy return to his original plan of picking off the Elm Street children to get back at their parents for murdering him.  In Freddy’s Revenge he switched tactics attempting to cross over into the real world but that didn’t go great so now it’s back to plan A.

What I Didn’t Like: There’s a lot of sloppy storytelling.  For example there’s this entire setup that demonstrates how Kristen (Patricia Arquette (Flirting with Disaster)) has the ability to pull others into her dreams.  It’s unclear if that other person also needs to be asleep but regardless we’re led to believe this will be important for later on and then it never comes up again.  The movie switches to our group of heroes being able to collectively dream together so they’re all in the same dream at the same time.  But there’s also the scene where Freddy can make people magically walk through locked doors in the real world and he also cuts them in the dream but for some reason it doesn’t translate to also being cut in the real world.  Plus the dream powers the kids have sometimes work and sometimes don’t.  And I’m not even gonna get into the whole clandestine nun character thing.  All this stuff is convenience for whatever the movie needs at any given time.

People like to rag on Heather Langenkamp’s (Shocker) performance in the original but I thought she was fine in that and phoned it in for this one.  She just looks so disinterested all the time but as far as I know she was excited to work on the picture.

Whenever someone is dreaming the filmmakers try to trick you into thinking you’re still in the real world for a few moments.  I think in almost every instance the character starts out in the room they fall asleep in but then something strange happens and you realize it’s a dream.  It’s fine to do this once but they keep pulling this crap and it’s not effective.

The score is made up of synth orchestra which gives the film a cheap B movie edge.  Not a good sound.

Overall Impressions: Wes Craven returned to the series by taking on producing and writing duties (along with others including Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption)) to craft a more straightforward follow up to his original.  Surprisingly though they keep Freddy’s Revenge as canon referencing that this story takes place six years after the first one (that would make the year 1990 for those keeping track).

Chuck Russell came in to write and direct this time (check out this fuckin’ resume he’s built up for himself: The Blob (1988), The Mask, Eraser, The Scorpion King).  He and Craven pushed the visuals and overall content into darker territory, however they ironically pushed Krueger himself in the opposite direction.  These changes resulted in the template that would be used for nearly the rest of the series and I’ll give credit to Russell and his team for creating that mold.

Dream Warriors is most folks favorite sequel, or even downright favorite in the entire series, but I don’t exactly get it.  I like the idea of Krueger marching on to finish what he started but all the pieces don’t quite fit together.  Honestly I’m torn about the modifications to Krueger to make him funny because the character was perfectly fine before.  But at the same time his turn to goofiness is partly what makes him stand out and so memorable.  And the kids with their dream powers is an aspect that seems like it’s gonna be really important but ends up bearing minimal fruit.  Visually though I’m down with the exaggerated and inventive dreamscapes the filmmakers came up with.  They stick with me.

To be clear I don’t dislike this installment.  It’s a fun time even though the topic is kids in a mental hospital who have serious problems including self-inflicted violence and suicidal tendencies.  A lot of hard work went into the production with all the ridiculous sets, makeup and effects.  I think it might be that Freddy’s Revenge gave you so much to process with each element fascinating to examine.  That was too much of a departure for everyone though.  Dream Warriors is more of a meat and potatoes kinda sequel with Freddy doin’ his thang slashin’ up teens.  Totally enjoyable but I’m hoping we can do better.