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Countdown to Halloween – A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987)

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To countdown to this year’s Halloween, Luke Owen reviews a different horror film every day of October. Up next; A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors…

A Nightmare on Elm Street is not only one of the best movies of the slasher sub-genre, but horror movies in general. While its sequel was a huge letdown, the return of Wes Craven to the series brought about a movie that many feel bettered its original – A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors. Along with Frank Darabont and Chuck Russel (who also served as director), Craven created a movie that not only captures the brilliance of his first installment, but improved upon it.

Ignoring the events of the second movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors sees a group of Freddy survivors in a psychiatric ward, working together to make sure they don’t fall asleep to avoid running into the bastard son of 100 maniacs. While none of the doctors believe their claims of a dream stalking slasher, one person does – dream therapist Nancy Thompson, herself a Krueger survivor. Together, they decide to take the fight to Freddy, to try and put a stop to his reign of terror once and for all.

Bringing back Heather Langenkamp as Nancy highlights just what A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge was missing (and why it never feels like a true entry in the franchise) – a good opponent for Freddy.  As a character, Jesse was fine enough but he was no Nancy Thompson as he never stood up to Freddy, one of Nancy’s best character traits. As mentioned in the Nightmare on Elm Street entry of Countdown to Halloween, Nancy is more than just a survivor, she’s a fighter – which makes her the perfect opposition for Freddy.

However a heroes performance can only be as good as whomever they are against. And in Heather Langenkamp’s case, she was given a Robert Englund performance that would cement the brilliance of Freddy Krueger and turn him into a pop culture phenomenon. While Englund was fantastic in the first movie and the only good thing about the second one, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors would be his defining moment as the character as he exudes the charisma needed to make Freddy a captivating entity. He treads the line of scary predator and stand-up comic perfectly to have you chuckling in one scene to hiding behind your hands the next. This level of performance helps Nancy’s surivial instincts, as well as provide the terror for her Dream Warriors. It may seem hyperbolic to claim that no other actor could have made Freddy the character that he is, but there is a strong argument for the case.

As a cast of characters, The Dream Warriors are the kind of kids you want to see survive a horror movie. As mentioned in an earlier entry of Countdown to Halloween, there is a modern idea within the genre (especially slashers) that all characters that are going to die should be unlikeable jerks so we won’t feel bad about their deaths, missing the idea that a character’s death should mean something to us as an audience as it will heighten the tension on who will be the next to go. With a large cast of likeable (albeit expendable) characters, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is the perfect example of how to write slasher victims to engage an audience and make the final climax a nerve-shattering battle.
The soundtrack kicks arse too.
The argument between horror fans on which is the best Nightmare movie will forever rage on, but the answer should be clear – A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors is easily the best of the series as it works well as its own movie, while serving perfectly as a sequel. The characters are great, the effects are awesome, the acting from its leads is brilliant and the deaths are highly entertaining (“welcome to prime time, bitch!). No matter how many times you see it, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors never fails to entertain.
Already slated for production, the next Nightmare on Elm Street had a tough act to follow…

Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.

Flickering Myth will be presenting a one-night only screening of zombie-comedy Stalled at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, London on Novemeber 14th 2013. For more information on where to buy tickets, click here.

Originally published October 24, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.

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