Nightmare on Elm Street 3

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987)

Directed by: Chuck Russell
Written by: Wes Craven, Chuck Russell, Frank Darabont, Bruce Wager
Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Craig Wasson, Patricia Arquette, Robert Englund, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Jennifer Rubin, Bradley Gregg, Ira Heiden, Laurence "Larry" Fishburne, Penelope Sudrow, Priscilla Pointer, John Saxon

And despite all that, I went back for more and watched this movie. It was actually kind of worth it. Considering how crappy the second one was, this one seemed pretty good. Mind you, it had Wes Craven back on the creative team, as it were.

In this third installment, Freddy attempts to kill the surviving kiddies who are all locked up in a crazy house because they're afraid to go to sleep, except for Heather Langenkamp who is now some kind of psychiatrist or something and trains them to become the dream warriors of the title (and what a stupid title - I thought Freddy's Revenge was a little lame, but...). In the mean time, dude's family history is revealed when his GhostMom shows up and starts talking about that.

So this one has some more interesting modes of death than the last one - a kid has the veins in his arms and legs ripped out and is then manipulated like a marionette. Pretty cool.

And the dreams are more dreamlike - some of the people look different in their dreams, and have different powers, like people do (in my dreams, for example, I'm a horrible creature with the body of a lion, the tail of a scorpion and the head of a person. Actually, that's what I look like in real life).

And the casting was marginally better - I hadn't really noticed how much I'd missed Heather Langenkaamp (of course, she dies in this one, so I'll just have to get over it). Typically, I'm rather fond of Pat Arquette, but I didn't care for her too much in this one. All she did was scream and cry (in fine horror tradition).

And hey, Little Larry Fishburne. I'm not crazy about Larry, but I can't get over how young he looked. A little bit older than he was in Apocalypse Now, but still fairly little.

And none of the other people I've ever heard of (well, John Saxon, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson I am relatively familiar with...).

Anyway, this was fairly entertaining and had some of the spirit of the first one. Yay.

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