A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

For me, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors is “the good shit”. It is a rare thing for a third film in a horror series to be this good. Normally by this time the series is starting to wane if it doesn’t altogether show signs of heading towards the precipice with only a downward spiral on the horizon. Well, perhaps that can be said about this series after Part 3. Still, this is really a culmination of pure imagination, phenomenal special and make-up effects, a strong development of characters tormented by Krueger, and a definite energy that exists in performance and presentation.

Freddy delivers “This is it, Jennifer. Your big break on TV. Welcome to Prime Time, bitch.” When he does so, this is really the birth of the wise-cracking mass murderer who takes his nightmare realm and uses it to its full advantage. While Wes Craven truly set the stage for how Freddy can use dreams to kill, with imaginative special effects that emphasize how going to sleep opens a door for the nightmare psychopath to come at you with his special brand of murder, I think director Russell took what he did and went further...when you can go inside the nightmare of characters, there's plenty of opportunity to expand upon what was started by Craven, a whole universe of possibilities were at Russell's disposal. Because of the burgeoning growth in the make-up/visual effects industry, Russell had tools to bring to life ideas and set pieces not even available two years before. Whether he pulls you into a bed vortex, a waterfall of your blood forming a pool on the ceiling, or slaughters you like a pig while dragging your bloody body throughout the walls of a bedroom, Freddy has quite a way with how he murders.

You are the last of the Elm Street children.

With a story that actually gives Freddy a backstory (“the bastard son of a hundred maniacs”), in regards to being the primeval son of a nun’s rape (Amanda Krueger, left accidentally imprisoned in an institution to be raped over and over by the inmates), the key to ending his reign of terror is to find his bones (he was buried by those that burned him alive) and bury them in holy ground (why exactly I’m not altogether sure, but it is a means to get rid of him, so I’m not against it..).

This movie ties itself to the original film by bringing back the Thompsons, John Saxon (now relegated to a security guard because of his alcoholism) and Heather Langenkamp (now a grad student interning, her expertise in dream psychosis the reason she gets a job at the Springwood Mental Institution). While both of their characters fall to Fred (the series always seemed to allow Krueger to get even with his foes, for the exception of Lisa Wilcox’s Alice who defeated him twice), this film allows them to lend a hand in besting their nemesis with help from Craig Wasson’s caring, concerned psychiatrist.

I am the Wizard Master!

This third film established that the kids could get their licks in but ultimately Fred would get the last laugh. Unlike very many of the other sequels, there are actually survivors in this one. The film does fall into the pratfalls of the slasher film cliché regarding kids picked off one at a time, but at least this sequel does so with style and inventiveness. Jennifer Ruben is a troubled recovered heroine junkie whose dream is to be a spike-haired, “beautiful and bad” tough punk rocker-styled chic with switch blade knives as weapons while Ira Heiden is “the wizard master” from a Dungeons and Dragons game, with lightning bolts coming out of his fingers (he barely escapes a “spiked” wheelchair, tricked with blades, coming at him). Neither can use their *dream gifts* to overcome Fred. This does give Nancy an awesome send-off as she uses Fred’s own knife glove against him while Wasson pours holy water on the burned bones in a car junkyard (I love car junkyards, and, of course, director Chuck Russell has the cars going berserk, lights and horns going on and off, for optimum effect). Saxon faces off with Fred’s skeleton (which looks about as menacing and badass as the steel skeletal Terminator) and loses badly, stabbed by the knife glove, hurled into a hunk of sharp metal sticking out of a flattened vehicle.

I am always a bit annoyed at the need to kill off surviving characters in slasher series. All the famous ones do so, like Halloween 5, Friday the 13^th Part 2, and several of the Nightmare sequels. There just seems to be this burning desire to not allow survivors the chance to escape and break free from those that have tormented them. Saxon’s character, in particular, sure gets a raw deal; hell, Fred even uses his likeness to pretend to be his spirit saying goodbye to Nancy as a ruse to execute her. Nancy, at the very least, gets to temporarily halt Freddy long enough for Wasson to momentarily lay him to rest (that is until Part 4 when a dog’s *fire piss* resurrects him).

This movie also provides a ghost in the form of Amanda Krueger, guiding Wasson in how to stop her son from doing anymore damage, appearing to him as an elder nun before he recognizes her tombstone. And then there’s the clever use of a popsickle stick house, made at the beginning of the film during the open credits by Patricia Arquette, especially at the end. In fact, the Nancy Thompson house continues to be an important place of relevance as Arquette finds herself battling Freddy or ending up there numerous occasions; it is the house Fred built and he wants to bring the kids there to play. It is as iconic as the dreaded boiler room, always symbolizing that horrible location where he lured and killed children, the evil bastard.

Fred seems consumed with “gobbling up” Arquette. His interest in her is constant; the other kids are reminders of his fate at the hands of their parents, therefore must be taken out. With the grotesque scene where we see the faces of those “stolen souls” he had killed while they were asleep and victims in his nightmare world crying out for help (quite a showcase for make-up effects wiz, Kevin Yagher), and the “aching sores” on Rubin’s arms (not to mention Joey’s “tongue tied predicament”) needing “a rush” (hypodermic fingers on Fred’s hands are quite a macabre visual, and Englund really sells the mockery of the heroine rush eerily well), we get plenty of cool effects that come to life, providing an eyeful for us horror fans.

While we get plenty of Freddy here, especially compared to the previous films where he was used effectively but sparingly, I still think he’s not overexposed. And this really allowed Englund to get to have more fun than usual, taking the humor provided in the script (it is witty and clever, with room to parody without going overboard) and applying it to the Freddy character; this film, though, doesn’t remove how intimidating he is. If there is a slight against the third film, I think it would probably be how this sets the tone for changing the Freddy character into a popular prankster who takes the nightmare world and begins to use it a bit too comically. Reducing Fred to a clown that is the object of cheer and applause, while turning the victims into barely-developed characters with no other need in the film but to die in imaginatively insane ways (the roach motel in part 4 is really rad, though), the series would eventually succumb to the overwrought nature of “too much is never enough”. Freddy’s Dead is the obvious example of this.

Thankfully this third film is only Freddy, practical murdering joker in its infancy. He’s evil and nasty and unpleasant, having a blast destroying lives as only he can. I think a valid criticism could be used against it could be when the reaction towards a murder set piece involves, “Ohhhhhh, how cool was that?!?!” instead of sheer horror, repulsiveness, and sorrow. I did have mixed emotions for how the film deals with the murder of Bradley Gregg: while I consider his gruesome fate as truly tragic (his character was quite a talented puppet maker) as the institution kids down several floors from where Freddy has “puppeted him”, crying out for him to wake up, helpless and unable to save him, the way the make-up effects in regards to the tendons used as strings, moving his character against his will to a fictional suicide, was really nifty and amazingly done. Fred as a giant worm trying to swallow Arquette (it has been mentioned that this is purposely phallic), Arquette carrying a little girl as she looks down to see her as skeletal remains in a dress, and the use of a simple tricycle all are definite hooks for this film; Dream Warriors has so much to offer the horror fan. If anything you get to see faucet heads turning into Freddy fingers, one of them bursting knives (imitating Fred’s blade glove), leading to Arquette’s slashed wrists (seeing her mom’s head severed from her body by Fred as she complains about her daughter’s being a nuisance is also quite a memorable moment), and a room of mirrors with Freddy’s face reflecting off, soon pulling our heroes into them before Joey lets out a primal scream that shatters them. I can keep going, folks.

Speaking of screaming, phew could Arquette belt one that rattles the brain! She just let it rip often. Whole scenes where she just screams in reaction to damn near anything. You want to sedate her, face the scream. Freddy, the worm, wanting to suck her down, face the scream. Take Nancy from her, face the scream. She can screech, baby. If does nothing else particularly mind-blowing, she can lift the vocals to a fever pitch.

Ken Sagoes as all-business, tough-talking Kincaid, a problem teen often stuck in “the quiet room” because he insists on staying awake, and Rodney Eastman as mute Joey carrying a torch for the über -hot nurse are interesting choices as those among the cast to actually survive Freddy. Joey is actually used by Freddy to draw the others into his lair. Joey has a great scene “sharing tongue” with the naked nurse. When these two bite the farm in the fourth film it just reiterates that nagging need to kill people who live in the previous movie. You are doomed if you stay in Springwood. When the fourth film tries to send these two back to school (with the girl replacing Arquette; this is a different topic for a different blog entry), I was at a loss for words. This is a bit too much even for me who can typically swallow such contrivances. Recasting Arquette’s part with someone who couldn’t look more different (throwing a woman with blond hair into the part doesn’t necessarily convince she’s Kristen) was also odd, but this is for a different movie so I’ll try to save these grumblings for another blog review.

It was always cool to me seeing Arquette in a Nightmare film because you go back to when these actors were young and fresh-faced. I didn’t feel she really had to act herself out of every scene just portray the character as struggling and exhausted. Arquette basically has to mirror how the Nancy Thompson character appeared by the end of Nightmare on Elm Street, out of options, stuck in an institution because her mother has spent lots of money on psychiatrists and is tired of being bothered with this “messed-up child just looking for attention”. Part 3 establishes that kids have “gifts”, abilities that could help them while stuck in the nightmare with Fred. Arquette can perform martial arts maneuvers, walking up walls gracefully, turning flips, and kicking Fred; too bad Tina didn’t have such moves at her disposal! With the Kincaid character knocking down walls and bending chairs, Joey shouting “Noooooo” in a key moment when he had become silent (he used to be on the debate team in school before Fred’s antics screwed him up), it was only natural that Arquette’s Kristen could perform cartwheels and flips only a gymnast could envy to give Fred a hard time. I have to say, though, that Arquette’s performance this Friday night in the last day of November wasn’t earth-shattering. She was actually, I believe, cast for that eardrum-piercing holler. I think even Arquette has admitted she primarily screamed for most of the film, not exactly asked by the filmmakers to give a performance that moves the audience to tears. Nancy’s death sentence was supposed to take care of that; and it did for this ole boy.

The masterwork Welcome to Prime Time Bitch sequence is really what captured my attention when I was a newly minted horror fan starting to get my hands on the genre films I could sneak past my mom in the late 80s/early 90s. This is probably, truth be told, the sequence that etches Freddy in our minds as the “special effects comic character”. How these arms, made from wires within the television set high off the ground, bolted to a wall, burst from the sides of the tube, Freddy’s head emerging, issuing his zinger that her big break on silver screen would be short-lived.

I think what does set apart this film from its predecessors is certain imaginatively staged set pieces such as the destruction of a padded cell as feathers explode all over the room as those within it brace for cover or the group meeting room steadily turning into a simmering oven; the mirror room, with Freddy’s face and figure used effectively. This film adds to the iconography of the steel-bladed glove, dirty brown hat, and red-and-green sweater. I remember the Dream Warriors video, especially, which gave Freddy Krueger pop culture significance, and, I must admit, Dokken songs are on my MP3 player song list. “Into the Fire” getting some attention from Dokken during the first of the film as Kristen tries to stay awake. I think while the first two films have moments that solidify Fred’s foray into pop culture and horror fandom, Dream Warriors with the Dokken video and so many well remembered set pieces and special effects sequences of note gave the Nightmare series a certain push needed to establish the evil burned-face psychopathic nightmare man as a franchise phenom. While I believe he should have been best served as a villain not worthy of hero worship, as the franchise continued, it seems his ghoulish crimes against children fell away from memory, the jokes and effects taking precedence. When you remove the menace in favor of laughs, I think that is where the franchise went wrong. I think the franchise could have ended here with Part 3 and would have kept that from happening, but all that money made certainly changed a few minds, soon giving us a different kind of Freddy than what we seen in Freddy’s Revenge (1985).

 

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Freddy in Image

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I wouldn't forgive myself if I failed to mention how refreshing it was to have a character like Wasson's appear in a supernatural slasher film. He tries so often to help his kids, and I felt Wasson does a fit job of conveying the agony of defeat. I think we can see a gut-wrenching failure in his face and demeanor, how the answers are not there to save these kids with the usual, clinical methods his training could used to provide. With each death, the room with one less kid, I think Wasson brings an anguish that adds weight to the Freddy murders. So rarely does the victims falling to a killer in a horror franchise elicit an emotional response afterward;  that is because there aren't scenes like what we get in Part 3 where we see the others in a state of emotional disrepair. You literally see that fear and loss, heads down, acceptance that death could be eminent. Too often slasher films just simply move on to the next developed kill scene without the loss of characters given any thought. At least in this film we see the other kids, and their adult psychiatrists, trying to come to terms with the deaths, desperately longing for a solution. Only the end of Fred can put a damper on their sorrow.